So now that we're well into the nineteenth century with our hilarious 10th-grade textbook, World History and Cultures In Christian Perspective, we're getting to some of the pivotal Bad Guys from the editors' closetful of nightmare boogiemen. Last week it was
<i>&quot;Foundational to Communism is the atheistic idea that there are no absolutes &mdash; that everything in the universe is in a constant state of change and flux, and that the only reality is matter in motion.&quot;</i>
Interesting corollary: Communism rules on billions of uninhabited planets throughout the universe. No wonder a fundie missionary&#039;s work is never done!
<i>Doesn&#039;t that reduce the argument (such as it is) to one of competing religions? </i>
Yes -- because it&#039;s so easy to win that argument when <i>you</i> are the one with the one true religion. When everyone else is, by definition, misinformed, misled, or enslaved by their unfortunate reliance on observing reality, then by golly they&#039;re wrong, and you win. The logic is irrefutable.
The problem with that theory is that the ultimate in scientific cred, fame, and (sometimes) fortune is earned by those who succeed in knocking down accepted thinking. <i>Unexpected results are what real scientists live for. </i> That&#039;s why they sometimes get carried away with what they think is a breakthrough (cold fusion, anyone?) Other scientists &quot;being invested&quot; in the status quo is part of the process; it&#039;s why nobody believes the crazy stuff until others replicate the results.
The &quot;faster than light&quot; results from a few months back are another classic example: because everybody is very heavily &quot;invested&quot; in General Relativity, the experiments were put under a microscope, and the results were soon shown to be incorrect. If they&#039;d been proven correct, those guys would be heroes, not heretics, and installed alongside Newton and Einstein.
New theories do have a hard time getting accepted, but they will succeed if they&#039;re correct. Giordano Bruno&#039;s unfashionable questions probably helped to get him killed, but it wasn&#039;t at the hands of other scientists!
Gosh, I hope there&#039;s nothing on the test about the <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Menshevik" target="_blank">Mensheviks</a>, because these kids would like <em>completely</em> blow that.
True; as Jesus said in the parable of the pin factory, &quot;it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.&quot;
Oh goody. Someone else who doesn&#039;t know the meaning of &quot;irony&quot;. I&#039;m beginning to think Alanis Morissette was unfairly laughed at. Anyway, there&#039;s a huge literature on the evolutionary basis of altruism, pretty much all of it ignoring Kropotkin. I suggest you dip a toe in it. Then you&#039;ll know as much about the subject as I do. I won&#039;t try and pontificate about it in public.
I really don&#039;t understand fellow Canadians whining about our system. Sure, it&#039;s not perfect. But my father survived a traumatic illness back when I was in university- 6 weeks in intensive care, 3 months in hospital, and yet I and my younger sister were able to finish university. No hassles from insurance companies, no bills for anything that wasn&#039;t covered. My oldest sister, 12 years ago, was diagnosed with leukemia, received a t-cell transplant, and is still with us, and despite the fact that she was basically broke at the time this all happened, she received the same care that anyone else would have received. The only uncovered expense, as far as I know, was some medication for my little sister, the t-cell donor. Tommy Douglas (the founder of medicare) is my hero.
WTF? Seriously, WT fucking F? Does anyone have the faintest inkling what this woman thinks she&#039;s saying? I know there&#039;s a wing of the homeschooling movement that&#039;s dedicated to bringing back classical education, and believes that all schoolchildren should know that Barbara gets it on with Darren. But ... Congress should stop taxing people who write in the margins? I feel faint. I must retire.
<i>&quot;Foundational to Communism is the atheistic idea that there are no absolutes &mdash; that everything in the universe is in a constant state of change and flux, and that the only reality is matter in motion.&quot;</i>
Interesting corollary: Communism rules on billions of uninhabited planets throughout the universe. No wonder a fundie missionary&#039;s work is never done!
Ummm.... who were you replying to, exactly?
You should ask Kid Zoom to go over your stuff. Assuming he&#039;s anything like my kid.
<i>Doesn&#039;t that reduce the argument (such as it is) to one of competing religions? </i>
Yes -- because it&#039;s so easy to win that argument when <i>you</i> are the one with the one true religion. When everyone else is, by definition, misinformed, misled, or enslaved by their unfortunate reliance on observing reality, then by golly they&#039;re wrong, and you win. The logic is irrefutable.
The problem with that theory is that the ultimate in scientific cred, fame, and (sometimes) fortune is earned by those who succeed in knocking down accepted thinking. <i>Unexpected results are what real scientists live for. </i> That&#039;s why they sometimes get carried away with what they think is a breakthrough (cold fusion, anyone?) Other scientists &quot;being invested&quot; in the status quo is part of the process; it&#039;s why nobody believes the crazy stuff until others replicate the results.
The &quot;faster than light&quot; results from a few months back are another classic example: because everybody is very heavily &quot;invested&quot; in General Relativity, the experiments were put under a microscope, and the results were soon shown to be incorrect. If they&#039;d been proven correct, those guys would be heroes, not heretics, and installed alongside Newton and Einstein.
New theories do have a hard time getting accepted, but they will succeed if they&#039;re correct. Giordano Bruno&#039;s unfashionable questions probably helped to get him killed, but it wasn&#039;t at the hands of other scientists!
Have any wingnut preachers claimws Hurricane Sandy is because of God&#039;s judgement on &#039;merica because of gayz/socialism/teh deficits?
If Obama can&#039;t be blamed for the storm won&#039;t he be blamed for the response to it?
How can Sarah Palin take advantage of the storm to get publicity?
Gosh, I hope there&#039;s nothing on the test about the <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Menshevik" target="_blank">Mensheviks</a>, because these kids would like <em>completely</em> blow that.
There&#039;s nothing else like Command Presence&copy;. West Point has a whole department to teach it.
True; as Jesus said in the parable of the pin factory, &quot;it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.&quot;
Oh goody. Someone else who doesn&#039;t know the meaning of &quot;irony&quot;. I&#039;m beginning to think Alanis Morissette was unfairly laughed at. Anyway, there&#039;s a huge literature on the evolutionary basis of altruism, pretty much all of it ignoring Kropotkin. I suggest you dip a toe in it. Then you&#039;ll know as much about the subject as I do. I won&#039;t try and pontificate about it in public.
NFL and pr0n: made for each other.
Not to mention that medieval Christianity was a kind of collectivist society, albeit also hierarchical.
I really don&#039;t understand fellow Canadians whining about our system. Sure, it&#039;s not perfect. But my father survived a traumatic illness back when I was in university- 6 weeks in intensive care, 3 months in hospital, and yet I and my younger sister were able to finish university. No hassles from insurance companies, no bills for anything that wasn&#039;t covered. My oldest sister, 12 years ago, was diagnosed with leukemia, received a t-cell transplant, and is still with us, and despite the fact that she was basically broke at the time this all happened, she received the same care that anyone else would have received. The only uncovered expense, as far as I know, was some medication for my little sister, the t-cell donor. Tommy Douglas (the founder of medicare) is my hero.
Don&#039;t forget- Joe Biden ran for his Senate seat in 2008, too, also.
Sorry.
WTF? Seriously, WT fucking F? Does anyone have the faintest inkling what this woman thinks she&#039;s saying? I know there&#039;s a wing of the homeschooling movement that&#039;s dedicated to bringing back classical education, and believes that all schoolchildren should know that Barbara gets it on with Darren. But ... Congress should stop taxing people who write in the margins? I feel faint. I must retire.