Barak Hussein Obama? or Barak Hussein Osama?

wrote:

First, people cannot be "taught evolution" or "intelligent design," they
can only be informed about them (or "taught _about_ them, if you
prefer).

Do you take yourself seriously? I mean after typing the above, can you?
Like your "clarification" made any difference to anything at all?

That said, I agree that people should be "taught" about both,
as well as about religion. I don't think "intelligent design" is the
way life came about and evolution is the more-reasonable explanation,
but I'm certainly aware of both, and I'd make sure my children were as
well. And I think you'll find that most voters would want their kids as
well-educated as possible, and many of those would truly believe that
intelligent design is the more-reasonable explanation.

So let's say clearly what you mean: to be well educated you must be
"informed about" ID. I bet McCain never says that, ever ... I mean
they're kicking school boards out in that blue of blue states, Kansas
for pushing ID. What's sad is that McCain is pandering, but God knows
what you're doing. You may actually believe what you write. Let me be
clear: I've seen the greatest minds of my generation and they don't know
**** about Intelligent Design.


Giuliano is polling better then McCain right now.

"Giuliano"...was that the guy in the porno with Paris Hilton, or the guy
Tony, Bruce Springsteen's guitar player, and the guy with the
Fraankenschteen's Bride hairdo whacked in the season finale of the
Sopranos?


Someone's just seen Britney's summer do. We get it. I thought you
would've got a Harvey Wallbanger reference in too ... try putting ~ in
front of the word in Google next time ... and for my part, I won't trust
TB's spell checker quite so readily.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"Wolfgang" wrote in
:

Actually, the story isn't quite that simple. The flat versus
spherical debate (not to mention infinite variations) raged for a long
time. It certainly IS true that most educated people knew a long time
ago that the question had been settled, but it was by no means a dead
issue as late as the mid-15th century......any more than evolution
versus intelligent design is today. Washington Irving may have
popularized the myth about Columbus, but many of the sailors aboard
his vessels undoubtedly had serious concerns about this spherical
Earth "theory."

Incidentally, while Columbus was obviously right about the shape of
the Earth, he was WAY wrong about its size (thus leading him to
believe that he'd arrived at the East Indies).......which had been
pretty accurately estimated by a number of folks centuries earlier.

Wolfgang


"Settled" might be an overstatement-- after all, we still have flat
earthers today. There do seem to be some historians that hold that the
flat earth theorists were influential at the later Middle Ages, but most
historians seem to agree that based upon a relative scarcity of traceable
reference to a flat earth after about 800AD, the influence was marginal.

As for Columbus, if he did in fact use a flat vs spherical Earth
hypothesis to bilk Spain out of funds, it certainly wouldn't be the last
time a scientist set up to disprove a straw horse to secure funding (but
it might have been the first!)

Size was a different matter. I think that the Late Middle Age "natural
philosophers" had a fair problem understanding scale, and the fact that
people didn't understand that the distance of stars was so vast as to
preclude parallax errors was responsible for geocentrism holding on as
long as it did.

This isn't what gave Columbus problems, though. Indeed, his estimation
of how far he travelled is remarkably accurate given his dead reckoning
preference (see http://www.columbusnavigation.com/v1a.shtml). The
problem was that he used Ptolemy's huge underestimation of circumference.
Almost 500 years before Ptolemy, Eratosthenes had an estimation of
circumference to within 8%.

While he preferred dead reckoning, Columbus also had a quadrant on board.
I would think that a well developed technique for quadrant based
navigation at Columbus' time would indicate a well developed sense of a
spherical earth.
--
Scott
Reverse name to reply

On 13 Dec 2006 21:34:05 GMT, Scott Seidman
wrote:

wrote in news:u0r0o25h0d94dedjp6qvpubkb4c82jj7m3@
4ax.com:

On 13 Dec 2006 20:46:43 GMT, Scott Seidman
wrote:


Inquisitors teach this kind of intelligent design crap and call it
science. The enlightened do not.

That's pretty bold, calling something "crap" when you don't know
anything whatsoever about it.


Decades of my scientific training, including federal grant review
responsiblities, all teach me that an untestable hypothesis expounded as
"truth"is shoddy science (aka, crap). Therefore, when we teach something
like this, we don't make believe that it is good science.

IOW, that's your "untestable hypothesis expounded as truth"...

In fact, we try to make it clear that its not science at all.

I don't think it is "science" and I don't suggest it be called
"science." But I don't think that trying to hide the idea that it is
the way life came about is conducive to education, and I certainly don't
think that all information provided in a general "science" class must be
universally agreed as "science."

Theologans and religious instructors are perfectly free to discuss such
matters all they want, with whoever I want. If its taught as science in a
school system supported by my tax dollars, I'll be at the top of the class
action suit.

Now there's an open-minded attitude AND a great use of the court system!

HTH,
R

wrote:

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:03:03 -0600, Conan The Librarian
wrote:

Ah, so because some hypothetical Joe Sixpack doesn't know who DeLay
is, he magically is no longer a major player in American politics?

See my reply to Joe - he was never a real player, at least not on his
own.

I said he was a "big name" on the right, and you said he wasn't. I
said he was the majority leader of the house and you went into your
song-and-dance about how Average Joe wouldn't know him.

I pointed out to you that equating whether Joe Average knows him to
him being a political big name was irrelevant.

And now you've changed the discussion once again to say that he's
not a "major player .. on his own". Well of course not. He's a
frontman for the Ridiculous Right. That's exactly the point; he is a
big name who is trotted out for things like re-districting (remember
that?) and other "issues" where they need a sleazeball with no ethics
or self-respect.

HTH, but I doubt it.


Chuck Vance (but please ... do keep on shufflin' ... it's one
thing you do well ... relatively ...)

wrote in news:ans0o2tjpmnhntqmashl448skfu4b8k63s@
4ax.com:

But I don't think that trying to hide the idea that it is
the way life came about is conducive to education,

No, YOU believe that this is the way life came about, and your absolute
statement using the phrase "is" speaks well to your faith. Others, in fact
many others, don't believe this to be the case, and have a variety of
hypothesis that all fall under the general class of "evolution". The
hypotheses are close to, if not actually testable and demonstrable, are
very consistent with current concepts of genetics, and none of them call
for the precendent "and then a miracle occurred". For me, that last phrase
really encompasses the difference between science and religion.

--
Scott
Reverse name to reply

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:37:38 -0500, GM wrote:

wrote:

First, people cannot be "taught evolution" or "intelligent design," they
can only be informed about them (or "taught _about_ them, if you
prefer).

Do you take yourself seriously? I mean after typing the above, can you?
Like your "clarification" made any difference to anything at all?

Obviously not to you and a few others. And you're perfectly entitled to
be as wrong as you decide to be.

That said, I agree that people should be "taught" about both,
as well as about religion. I don't think "intelligent design" is the
way life came about and evolution is the more-reasonable explanation,
but I'm certainly aware of both, and I'd make sure my children were as
well. And I think you'll find that most voters would want their kids as
well-educated as possible, and many of those would truly believe that
intelligent design is the more-reasonable explanation.

So let's say clearly what you mean: to be well educated you must be
"informed about" ID.

Is that what I mean? Well, thankfully, you're here to explain it...

I bet McCain never says that, ever ... I mean
they're kicking school boards out in that blue of blue states, Kansas
for pushing ID. What's sad is that McCain is pandering, but God knows
what you're doing. You may actually believe what you write.

Let me be clear: I've seen the greatest minds of my generation and they don't know
**** about Intelligent Design.

Well, sure, but one really shouldn't hold that against a bunch of 10
year old kids, no matter how much smarter they are than you...

wrote:
On 13 Dec 2006 21:34:05 GMT, Scott Seidman
wrote:

wrote in news:u0r0o25h0d94dedjp6qvpubkb4c82jj7m3@
4ax.com:

On 13 Dec 2006 20:46:43 GMT, Scott Seidman
wrote:


Inquisitors teach this kind of intelligent design crap and call it
science. The enlightened do not.

That's pretty bold, calling something "crap" when you don't know
anything whatsoever about it.


Decades of my scientific training, including federal grant review
responsiblities, all teach me that an untestable hypothesis expounded as
"truth"is shoddy science (aka, crap). Therefore, when we teach something
like this, we don't make believe that it is good science.

IOW, that's your "untestable hypothesis expounded as truth"...

In fact, we try to make it clear that its not science at all.

I don't think it is "science" and I don't suggest it be called
"science." But I don't think that trying to hide the idea that it is
the way life came about is conducive to education, and I certainly don't
think that all information provided in a general "science" class must be
universally agreed as "science."

Theologans and religious instructors are perfectly free to discuss such
matters all they want, with whoever I want. If its taught as science in a
school system supported by my tax dollars, I'll be at the top of the class
action suit.

Now there's an open-minded attitude AND a great use of the court system!

You know what I think would be a lot of fun? I think it would be a lot
of fun to sit in a dark corner of an absinthe bar sometime and listen
to you and Bubba Jim and Earl Bob practice these junior high schoolyard
debate tactics on one another.

Wolfgang
yeah, that would be a WHOLE lot of fun!

wrote:

... I certainly don't
think that all information provided in a general "science" class must be
universally agreed as "science."

Say goodnight, Dick.

--
Ken Fortenberry

On 13 Dec 2006 22:33:17 GMT, Scott Seidman
wrote:

wrote in news:ans0o2tjpmnhntqmashl448skfu4b8k63s@
4ax.com:

But I don't think that trying to hide the idea that it is
the way life came about is conducive to education,

No, YOU believe that this is the way life came about,

I do? And you arrived at this new untestable hypothesis expounded as
truth how, exactly?

and your absolute statement using the phrase "is" speaks well to your faith.

Ah. No, it doesn't. The use of the _word_ "is" in the _phrase_ "it is"
is completely accurate when describing the idea. The phrase nor its use
speak to the writer's beliefs or faith. It would be the noun that would
do that - i.e., if I had used the word "fact" rather than "idea," one
might reasonably (but still possibly erroneously) guess that I
personally believed it to be a fact.

Others, in fact many others, don't believe this to be the case, and have a variety of
hypothesis that all fall under the general class of "evolution". The
hypotheses are close to, if not actually testable and demonstrable, are
very consistent with current concepts of genetics, and none of them call
for the precendent "and then a miracle occurred". For me, that last phrase
really encompasses the difference between science and religion.

All fair enough. And most of the former part of the above is why
"evolution" cannot be "taught," only "taught about" without moving from
hypothesizing to hypostatizing. And how do you reconcile the above,
acknowledging the variety and the fact that the hypotheses are not
absolutely "testable and demonstrable," with your pervious statement
regarding "untestable hypothesis" being crap.

R

Scott Seidman wrote:
wrote in news:ans0o2tjpmnhntqmashl448skfu4b8k63s@
4ax.com:

But I don't think that trying to hide the idea that it is
the way life came about is conducive to education,

No, YOU believe that this is the way life came about, and your absolute
statement using the phrase "is" speaks well to your faith.

Now, now, Scott.....no need to resort to that sort of thing to beat up
on a punching bag. dicklet may well believe that.....it would be
thoroughly consistent with his perpetually demonstrated
muddle-headeness.....if he had anything resembling beliefs at
all.....but there is nothing in his sentence to support your
contention. Best to just beat him up in the usual fashion.

Others, in fact
many others, don't believe this to be the case, and have a variety of
hypothesis that all fall under the general class of "evolution".

Here's a good place to use that much belabored word, "about." There
are many theories "about" the mechanisms that drive evolution.
Biological evolution itself is NOT theoretical. Biological evolution
is a FACT! Moreover, it is just "about" the best documented and
supported FACT in all of science. And what makes the whole continuing
"debate" endlessly hilarious is that the first great proponent of the
correct model got it right in all of its essential details on the very
first try alomst a hundred-fifty years ago, and the vast majority on
BOTH sides of the question STILL don't get it!! What could possibly be
funnier?.......well, o.k., yeah, there's dicklet.

The
hypotheses are close to, if not actually testable and demonstrable, are
very consistent with current concepts of genetics,

Many hypothoses concerning evolutionary mechanisms are most assuredly
testable.....and have been tested.....repeatedly.....and have passed
brilliantly.

and none of them call
for the precendent "and then a miracle occurred". For me, that last phrase
really encompasses the difference between science and religion.

Oh, it's all miraculous enough. The trouble is that most folks don't
understand what "miracle" means any more than they do "evolution."

Wolfgang