The fine people of Dover, PA, have made their voices heard. They have declared loudly that they are members of the reality based community.
Author: terry
I am a socially liberal, fiscally conservative Berkeley grad who loves words and makes my living manipulating people with them. In short, I am a marketing consultant. Straight, married, white female with a healthy appetite for good food, fine wine and great times with friends and family. I've got a thick skin, a sense of humor and I am absolutely without shame or political affiliation. I don't do religion, though I do believe in God. I am a true believer in personal responsibility, personal privacy and active philanthropy.
My personal philosophy: Live with integrity, love passionately, fight bravely and never give up!
So, go ahead, challenge me, my opinions, my facts - I'm looking forward to it.
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I believe the world was intelligently created by Klingons. How is that any different from believing it evolved from fungi and bacteria?
It is fundamentally different in the expression of intent. “Created by Klingons” (intelligently or otherwise) implies a conscious act by a sentient being. Evolving from anything is a random chemical and physical process that is influenced by environmental conditions.
The other fundamental difference is that one is demonstrably true and the other is fucking fantasy. I will leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Let me preface with this, I’m neither a scientist nor a politician. I’m not religious and I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe in god(s) or even aliens.
That question was meant more of a joke to poke fun with your reality comment. Yes, there is a huge difference between evolution and creation. I even think there’s a big difference between creation of the earth and creation of the universe, that’s part of the whole debate. The beginning mass could have been intentionally been created, the Big Bang happened, that spawned the Earth, that spawned life, that spawned evolution. Maybe whoever created the beginning mass blew up when it did bang. Just because you don’t believe there could be intent doesn’t prove there wasn’t. Can we prove there was? I doubt it. Should it be taught to 9th graders? I don’t believe so but we do teach Greek mythology so maybe there’s some room in the philosophy department. Should it be discussed within the scientific community without ridiculing the minority? Definitely.
If you live your life only believing and doing what is tangible or proven, would you ever advance as a society or even as a person? Atoms where mythical until the 1800’s. The concept of splitting atoms was thought improbable until the early 1900’s. Until recently, the first tenths of a second of the Big Bang couldn’t be proven by physics. The fact is we just don’t know so to dismiss it would be un-scientific.
Well, I definitely don’t claim any scientific or political authority either and I was obviously too harsh in my response. However, there are theories that explain the Big Bang as the inevitable result of physical forces rather than intent by some creator.
I have a personal belief that anything that does not deal with the physical realm should be reserved for anything but science. Science should be strictly reserved for the disciplined study of observable phenomena. Atoms may have been mythical but it was the observance of anomalous phenomena that pointed to the theory and then advances in other technology allowed that theory to be confirmed.
I live every day of my life with faith in something – even if it is only the idea that I will actually survive the day. But I don’t try to wrap my faith around a half-baked explanation for why we are how we are and then attempt to shove it down the throats of the unsuspecting and the uneducated. And I definitely do not try and pass it off as science.
I completely agree with you. I was just trying to make sure that we don’t discount their theory as ideological non-secular mumbo jumbo and saw that there is no need for the firings and ridiculing of these scientists that do believe in it. A lot of these people are loosing their jobs because of what they believe and so they are afraid to speak up and that stifles humanity on so many levels. We should all feel free to speak our minds w/o fear of recourse. Just like with everything else, I respect their opinion and I’ll allow them to share it as long as everyone knows it is an opinion until proven otherwise. It’s too bad that it’s been politicized into elephants and donkeys.
Try this on a conservative. If an entity was powerful and omnipotent enough to create worlds, galaxies, gravity, man, etc. then surely it had the power of foresight. If it could see the future then it knew there would be homosexuality. If it knew there would be homosexuality and felt it wrong then it could have taken necessary measures to ensure that it would never happen. But gay does happen thereby giving us an existential moment of choice: 1) If the universe and everything in it was created by some divine hand, then homosexuality must have been created or allowed intentionally or 2) there was no creator so homosexuality is a product of “random chemical and physical process that is influenced by environmental conditions†[terry] and is within the natural order or science and life.
First, I don’t agree that people should be fired for believing something. However, if their beliefs undermine the quality of their work and therefore negatively impact their performance in their profession, then I believe they should be held accountable for their poor performance and treated accordingly. (It is kind of like pharmacists that refuse to dispense drugs because of their personal beliefs. These people should find a different profession.)
This issue was politicized by the very people that are trying to force philosophy into the science classroom. The very people who would gleefully stomp the Establishment Clause into dust and install an evangelical Protestantism as our national religion. The sadly ironic thing is that these are also the same people who are fighting for “democracy” in the ME while doing their damndest to install a theocracy here at home. We are walking a very thin line between “respecting their opinions” and “lending their ideas credibility.” We have seen the damage that can happen when religious fundamentalists are harnessed as a voting bloc at all levels of government. And I for one refuse to allow them unfettered access to the youth of this country when their goal is to warp and undermine a solid grounding in the sciences. We are already falling behind in our ability to compete at all levels in the global economy. Advocating the teaching of religious beliefs as a tenet of physical science is suicidal from an economic POV and just plain stupid from any other.
While I would dearly love to watch a religious conservative go into meltdown, I have one word that undermines your argument for homosexuality that is currently in use: choice. Religious conservatives believe that people choose their sexual preference (or lack of it). And the argument goes further that as the only sentient beings that were granted free will by our creator, like we are some kind of maze experiment, we choose our path in all aspects of our life. So, if you will surrender your will to “god” and do whatever the preacher tells you, you will go to heaven. Otherwise you are bound for eternal damnation. (it is very “master and servant,” don’t you think?) And Pat Robertson (as Paulette pointed out, yesterday) has proven my point.
So, I guess it just comes down to the fact that the ID crowd pisses me off and actually scares me a bit (which only serves to piss me off more). I applaud people who oppose the insertion of “god” into the teaching and work of scientific endeavor; and will forever oppose those who seek to eliminate this division.