Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

He attempted to quote the no establishment clause to her, and he blew it. That's what i was talking about. It's something which leaves him open to right wing ridicule, and even those who are not politically reactionary can be influenced by things like that.

WE agree to disagree

I think that yoiu and HS are criticizing Coons from a comfortable position of our living room chairs. Heres the entire lead up to his "bobbled quote" of the establishment clause. I think you are wrongfully criticizing him for one (mini) gaff when , as you can see, ODonnell , just would not SHUT UP . Coons was being rather patient (IMHO) and he got all the facts right. That she wanted to dwell on the"where is it in the constitution", I think he handled quite well in that he made it clear that it, and Roe , were as the USSC interpreted the Constitution. His bobble was probably because it was getting more tense as ODonnell kept digging her own holw.
What I saw was that the audience was hooting and booing and laughing ALL throughout the 10 or so minute exchange .

http://politifi.com/news/Christine-ODonnell-Questions-Separation-Of-Church-State-VIDEO-1225259.html

I've got nothing against the boy, and for obvious reasons, i don't have a dog in the fight. I think that the record should accurately reflect the event.

N.B. bold added:

You're right that we're all commenting from the sidelines, not being candidates ourselves. Still I, also, got the impression that Coons had no deep knowledge of his own, but had been well briefed in advance and memorized his sound bites. If O'Donnell had done her homework she could have thrown the Yoder name at him, among several others. She showed up unprepared and tried to wing it - sad.

P.S. Thanks to you and Francis for name of case. It was one of several mentioned by a political adviser I know when I asked him for case law casting doubt on the "absolute wall" between church and state.

Heres the Cornell School of LAw archive of significant USSC cases and their decisions and dissenting opinions (where applicable)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cases/topic.htm

I don't know that anyone has alleged an absolute wall between church and state--but nevertheless, Yoder doesn't dispute the no establishment clause, it just affirms the free exercise clause.

Given a free vote the great mass of people in our societies would choose, ( vote with their feet, their eyes and their cash), football, soaps, reality shows, bingo and slapstick before Homer, Aeschylus, Euripedes, Ovid etc etc.....Joyce.

Pretending otherwise, and taking the Jeffersonian, Arnoldian and Marxist line on the humane and civilising benefits of mass education, is pure cant in the sense of uncritical and empty rhetoric.

Those who actually generate the syllabus are a mere handful. The cant derives from second, third and fourth-hand journalistic assignments of highly subjectivised, and polarised, cultural and social prescriptions and has no commitment to anything other than a sense of decorum and self-interest. A self-flattering posture. To be seen making an effort to influence the syllabus for the educational system of a populus nation is little different from having nice curtains or a well cut tuxedo. It is easily shown to represent, psychologically, a disatisfaction with one's humble and powerless station in life.

And thousands, tens of them, are at it. Hundreds maybe. At the lowest level it is the complacent nod, or grunt, of approval on reading an editorial in a Cox newspaper about only science being taught in science classes. It is a pretence than one is a mover and shaker. A climb from obscurity in one's own eyes and requiring little effort. Even the school board member is spouting rote learned cliches gleaned from carefully selected sources.

The coy assumption of a maturing population developing a sweep of perception on which a liberal consensus for determining and validating values is founded is spurious. So much so that it is laughable when one considers that those engaged in such activities with all seriousness and pomposity are unknown to ever attempt to introduce an original figure of speech into their Aeolian windbaggery, on which they fill their sails, and demonstrate in their every fatuous utterance that they are barely literate according to the standards of the handful who do matter. Indeed, constructing a creditable sentence is beyond their wits.

It's the economy--stupid. The education of the kids is nowhere in sight. They are being patronised as is Science itself.

Correctomundo. I dont have (I did a character search) any ref to a"wall of separation..." in YODER, whereas, Wandel's reference to EVERSON v EWING TOWNSHIP BOARD (1947) uses that very term twice in the decision and several times in the concurrence opinions.

Yoder was , as HS stated in her summary, a case re: the "free expression" clause.
Ill look again cause that Cornell site is a keeper.

I saw Mr President Carter on CBS last night expressing contempt and disgust on some court ruling on the funding of political campaigns. And President Obama did the same on drilling restrictions. Another court ruled Prop 8 out in Cal.

Am on a very slow connection waiting for a flight to take off in half an hour, so can't look this up right now, but somehow thought that the "wall of separation" phrase originated with Jefferson somewhere in the Federalist Papers - could be wrong. You're right it appears in Everson, and not in Yoder, but on the latter I wonder if Douglas wasn't right to dissent - those Amish children were 14, not 4, and should have had a say on their studies.

Jeffersons letter was 1802 to the DAnbury Connecticut Baptists Association in which he explained what the 1st AMendment conveyed to an individual .

The AMish are happy with thweir separate ways. They require a kid to be schooled up to a certain age and I think its 16. ANything beneath that age and they are minor members and subject to all the requirements of the local Ordnung. They require specific lesson plans and thats part of their community's plan. When you think AMish, you gotta think that the entire community is ONE ORGANISM, theyre sorta like Ants in that they dont have any word for individual achievement.

16 was the age specified in the Wisconsin statute - so the Amish children in Yoder must have been younger than that. I actually saw the Jefferson letter when it was restored (including all the edits, courtesy of the FBI lab) and put on display in DC - there's interesting historical background in the edits:
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danbury.html

Great resource HS. How was ypour flight? pretty windy no?

The problem with the mathematics is this: in a finite universe, given infinite time, everything that is possible will happen. Not "may" - "will". Bolzmann brains will arise from quantum fluctuations. They will have consciousness, same as we do, but not be material entities. We find ourselves in an extremely low-entropy universe - of course possible, but so very, very, low probability that chances are we made a mistake in the calculations somewhere. Tegmark (linked his article earlier) solves the paradox by postulating parallel universes, for which he thinks we can actually design a test and run an experiment (something to do with satellites testing string theory results, not clear how it works). Feynman linked the paradox to the irreversibility of the timeline:

Horribly windy - and never mind all these mathematical paradoxes, there was plenty of praying going on in that airplane

Once, long time ago, I was flying from Philly to Albany with a newproject engineer. THis kid was straight from his surveying internships and was going to be working as a new rod man on a field crew already up there.
We were flying into Albany and it was terribly windy. The plane was bouncing on approach and we were buffeted into a "crab" Everyone was white knuckling when this guy looks at me and says in a real loud voice

"Oh God were gonna Crash, and this is my first ride on a plane"
Some people started crying and , after e landed, we got stepped aside on deplaning to get a really nice but firm lecture about the inadviseability of that phrase and what rules we were breaking . The attendants and the pilot were carrying most of the reprimand and all I could do was tell em that it was the kids first flight and he went to school less than 200 miles from his home and they always drove to the Jersey shore so this was, in essence, his first airplane flight, and Ill take full responsibility should there be any fines or hearings. We were just let go with the lecture and a really stern look from everybody> I could sympathise with teh airline but I could also see the kids view since he had never experienced flying "into ALbany" and that this kind of **** happens a lot up at that airport.

Ever since then, and at project meetings in which this (now hes a company vice president) "kid" was present and I was the principql, I would, sometimes (not always cause it loses effectiveness if you can constantly be counted on to say the same old tired remark), See whether there was anything he wanted to "blurt out" in the passion of the moment.

Usually laughter ensued, (I think I remem ber that part correctly)

The first time i went to Ireland, i had two very amusing experiences. On the way over, i was on a travel agents flight. Just as soon as the seat belt light went out, they were out of their seats, commandeered the drinks wagon, and started getting just as drunk as they could in the time it took to fly from New York to Shannon Airport. One of them loudly admonished the flight attendants that they had paid for an open bar (apparetnly this was true--the senior steward went into the pilots' cabin, and then came back out with a grim look on his face). It was a wild flight, i'll tell ya.

On the way back home, i was on an immigrant flight--mom, dad and all the kids, as well as aunts, uncles and grandparents here and there. We landed through a rain storm, and although never in any real danger, it was quite the dramatic and bumpy ride. I first flew on a jet airliner when i was 13, so i'd been through this kind of thing more than once. The immigrants, however, were probably on an airliner for the first time in their lives. It was so quiet in that cabin that you could have heard a pin drop, and everywhere i looked i saw grim-faced people. When the plane touched down, the passenger cabin exploded in applause.

Every so often I have to attend FAA seminars on "ground avoidance" and the like. As part of the instruction we have to listen to the actual tapes of cockpit conversations in the last minute before the crash - never once do you hear actual panic, which is in a sense amazing, because it's clear pilot and co-pilot know beyond doubt they're not going to make it. Anyway, back to Tegmark - he bases his "experimental proof" on the latest satellite data showing our universe is mathematically flat. That would provide for infinite duration, Boltzmann brains, and suchlike oddities - or parallel universes. So, not to digress from Wandel's original topic, cosmology, rather than evolution, may be the more direct intersection of philosophy or religion with scientific theories.

http://www.iscid.org/papers/Stephan_TegmarksUniverses_042903.pdf

That is probably something that we dont have. Depending on the speed and acel/decel-eration of the universe as to how long the universe will exist, but once galaxies start to fly apart (or come together) it will be over for most probablilities based on matter.

This in no way impacts on the improbablity drive.