Diversity of Everything but Thought

true and true...

the debate is one that fascinates me. the difference between the two is the physical, scientific "relics" on one hand and a series of conflicting "affidavits" on the other. i'm admittedly quite new to researching biblically related texts and deeper history. but from what i've read of early writings, or affidavits, seems like they don't all concur.

"the debate is one that fascinates me. the difference between the two is the physical, scientific "relics" on one hand and a series of conflicting "affidavits" on the other. i'm admittedly quite new to researching biblically related texts and deeper history. but from what i've read of early writings, or affidavits, seems like they don't all concur."

And if you study the evolution of the Theory of Evolution, you will find that the writings there do not all concur either.

Point is, at the current time, I see no clear advantage of one theory over the other. Which is rather surprising to me since I am a retired aerospace engineer who tends to value quantitative analysis over value judgments or simply faith.

ahhhh... that explains a lot about the "quirkiness" that i've enjoyed in a lot of your posts.

so' maybe you'll appreciate this. no book that anybody wrote convinced me of anything. but my wife got me a telescope for christmas about 15 years ago. from the moment i saw the moon in detail through the thing my whole headspace changed. for me, that was the "evidence" of the great creator. no faith involvd there.

so, larry? when the heck are we gonna be able to go to alpha centaury for vacation???

"so, larry? when the heck are we gonna be able to go to alpha centaury for vacation???"

God only knows.

NASA is not the "can do" agency today that I worked for from 1960 to 1986...from Mercury to Space Shuttle, and has not been for at least a decade.

What happened to NASA?

They were the victims of a national movement AWAY from rationalism... and in the conflict between Science and Religion, the religionists got the upper hand.
Those Religionists have ever been wary of the "Tree of Knowledge"...

Who needs Science when you have Faith?
(If Science UNDERMINES Faith, it has to be "evil", right?)

As Falwell and his fatuous cronies gained power, NASA lost funding... and THAT was not a mere co-incidence...

The scientific achievements of NASA undermined Biblical accounts wherein the Universe was created a little more than 4,000 years ago... lunar exploration challenged the Creationist perspective of how things are.

And so it had to face the consequences.

Science indicates that the Earth and the Universe is FAR older than the approx. 4,000 years indicated by Biblical accounts.
(We can't allow Science to contradict the Sacred Scriptures, can we?)

Once the "Race to the Moon" battle of the "Cold War" was won, the value of scientific advancement and exploration was severely discounted...

America increasingly leans toward "Faith" and away from Science... on our way to becoming a ThirdWorld Theocracy like the Islamic states.

Fear not, "God is on OUR side"...

Magus: As a veteran of NASA since Mercury, I have a slightly different view.

After several successful landings on the Moon, the value of continued journeys there were neglible.

After the Space Shuttle had successfully accomplished its missions on 25 flights, the Space Station was the only real miission it really had. The Challenger and later the Columbia tragedies interrupted the schedule on delivery of Space Station components and we had to turn to the heavy lift capability of the Russian machines to fill that void...which they have successfully done.

Mars is the next logical manned space mission, and today's costs for that make it difficult for it to compete for the availabilty of scare budget resources. That, coupled with the fact that the unmanned Mars missions have revealed little more of interest on Mars than we found on the Moon.

So, I think it will be some time before we will see the resources neccessary to perform that mission committed. It is not something that can be done on the cheap.

BTW, it is going to take decision makers with very large balls to commit the 25 year old Space Shuttle to launch again next year. I use "balls" figuratively since many of the decision makers are now women. One of them was my Administrative Assisstant when I was a Program Manager there until I retired in 1986.

hahahahahaha! good one!



oh man, you were there for all of the really great stuff! that must have been tremendous. i was just starting school in '60, and the space program was one of my big interests.

it bums me out that the mysteries of space and it's human exploration has really fallen on the "things to do" list.

Larry, James Michener cranked out a few interesting novels... fictionalized histories, based upon extensive research into actual events..

In 1982, he got one published, titled "Space", about the USA's foray to the moon... and how, upon completion of THAT mission, NASA was left in a precarious situation.

Have you read "Space"?
I speculate that you might find it very entertaining, and I would be interested in your feedback/response to what he wrote.

You know, I never read the book but I did see the TV mini-series. Michner came to the Space Center in Huntsville when doing his research as I recall.

I still vividly remember the night Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and still remember the overwhelming sense of awe and pride that event provoked, I think in virtually every American. When President Bush first put forth a proposition that we now set our sights on a manned mission to Mars, I felt the same rush of anticipation and pride....before everybody, Dems and GOP alike, started throwing cold water on the idea.

Once the Constitutional requirements for government are fulfilled, what better use than to go see what's out there? Maybe a larger vision would squelch some of the more mundane pettiness humankind seems to involve itself in these days.

boy, you can say that again. i really think, foxy, that a lot of the meanness that's going around is born of plain old fashion boredom. look at the way kids act. if they have something interesting and fun to do, they get along great. if not, they start bugging each other.

when did the americans loose the pioneer spirit, anyway??

I'd like to try to rerail this topic.

A few weeks ago, a pair of studies found that Democrats vastly outnumbered Republicans among professors at leading universities. Conservatives gleefully seized upon this to once again flagellate academia for its liberal bias.

Why do conservatives see this finding as vindication of something?

After all, these studies show that some of the best-educated, most-informed people in the country overwhelmingly reject the GOP.

Why is this seen as an indictment of academia, rather than as an indictment of the Republican Party?

To my way of thinking, Republicans don't particularly want to be university professors. To go into academia -- a highly competitive field that does not offer great riches -- you have to believe that living the life of the mind is more valuable than making a Wall Street-sized salary. On most issues that offer a choice between having more money in your pocket and having something else -- a cleaner environment, universal health insurance, etc. -- conservatives tend to prefer the money and liberals tend to prefer the something else. It's not so surprising that the same thinking would extend to career choices.

Second, professors don't particularly want to be Republicans. In recent years, and especially under George W. Bush, Republicans have cultivated anti-intellectualism. Let me just cite one example; remember how Bush in 2000 ridiculed Al Gore for using all them big numbers? "Fuzzy math"?

That's not just a campaign ploy. It's how Republicans govern these days.

The Bush administration has regularly and consistently disdained the advice of experts. And not just liberal experts, either. Global warming, the national debt and occupying Iraq are just three areas where the logic of Republican wonks in conservative think-tanks was ignored.

We all know Bush prefers to follow his gut.

In the world of academia, that's about the nastiest thing you can say about somebody. Bush's supporters consider it a compliment.

There's a problem with this picture, all right, but it doesn't lie with the universities.

Maybe one of the reason people roundly rejected Bush's talk of going to mars is because it reminds people of star wars, not the movie.

To each his own, pdiddie. Different strokes for different folks.

Trite? Of course, but still good advice.

pd... this is why a few days back i suggested that instead of complaining about the liberal educators, conservatives encourage their young people to become teachers an professors instead of becoming a ceo.

after all, ya can't honestly bitch about not being hired for a job you never applied for.

Many of those at the top of the Academic establishment today are the most radical of undergraduates during the late '60s and early '70s. Marxism was fashionable then among many of our classmates. The perfidy of LBJ and Richard Nixon were held up to "prove" that the U.S. government was evil and should be radically changed. It was pretty hard to find anyone who wasn't vehemently against the U.S. and its policies. We KNEW better than the nation's leaders, because we were college sophomores and had read Marx and learned of the crimes of capitalism. Our hearts bled for the poor kept in deplorable conditions by the bloody bayonets of America. We were activists on the streets and we took some measure of importance by being able to shut down the university for a day, or a week. J. Edgar was still around in those days, and we knew that our paranoia had substance. Some of the most radical moved on to the commission of violent crimes against the "establishment".

Some of those students were imprisoned or killed for blowing up their father's banks and businesses. Most left college still radicalized, but reasonably prepared to contribute to world betterment. They got jobs, found mates and had children. They mostly found that much of the stuff they thought about how the world operates in college was bosh. Their naive expectation that truth, generosity, and sharing would remake the world was seriously deficient. The world is competitive, and theory get trumped by reality 9 times out of 10. They learned to compete and found that the acquisition of property and wealth has not so bad, and that it was far satisfying to be "rich" than "poor". Their politics and social attitudes changed more slowly, but remained mostly liberal and suspicious of the government and any authority.

Some of those students never left the academy, and so they never had to deal with the "real world". They remained "pure" and dedicated to the Marxist ideals of their youth which was the high water mark of their lives. Their views were reflected back at them from classrooms filled with other idealists, and the children of old classmates who were raised to hate authority of any sort. They became tenured professors, and wrote papers that their peers applauded. They became convinced that they were the intellectual elite of the nation, that they KNEW better what should be done than all those ignorant citizens who work for a living. They rose to become the heads of departments, and they hired others whose views never challenged their own.

I've more than my share of degrees. I was on the fast track to spending my career in academic life, and might have ended up teaching Asian History. My wife and I were Hippies and protesters who chanted, "Hey, hey, LBJ how many children did you burn today". We sat sometimes all night talking about how corrupt the government was, and how we would replace it with a more egalitarian system that would banish prejudice, insure true Justice, redistribute the wealth, and that would lead to a world where everyone was fully able to reach their own potential. I think that even at the time we knew better. We were young idealists. We felt that the world was unfair, and that we had to choose between the existing system or overturn it completely. Oh well, some of us learned that things aren't so simple, aren't so black and white. Maturity comes to most.

Speaking of "Star Wars"... major $billions are about to be (covertly) spent under the auspices of "Intelligence"... supposedly for new surveillance Satellites.
As if we couldn't recognize "Star Wars" under a new label.
The Military/Industrial Complex has had this package in the wings for decades, and are not daunted by its obsolescence... nah, they're just repackaging it; throw on some new labelling to sell us the same non-functional programs they tried to foist upon us back in the Reagan Era.
Marketing, ya gotta love it.

amen.

As a student of journalism with my sights set on being a foreign correspondent and a Pulitzer prize, I believed the power of words could inspire the visionary Utopia as Asherman described it. After all, our parents had failed to achieve it. It was up to us with fresh, progressive, radical views to do it. Ours was the first generation to completely reject the values of the previous generation. And those of our professors for that matter.

As Asherman also noted, deep down we knew better and sometimes we had to mentally block out the flaws in our vision and the emptiness of our rhetoric.

In time many of my generation married and had children of their own and our perspective changed, for some more slowly than others. Now, though my own parents miserably blew it in many ways, I can very much appreciate and respect much of their generation. I gave up media work, except for private organizations, when I could no longer stomach the unprofessionalism and requirements for ideological bias.

But some others never quite left the rebellion with all its fuzzy logic and mostly empty idealism. And
now they are the majority of college professors and media figures and entertainers and writers. They head organziations like NOW, PETA, the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood.

That they have a distinct influence on our culture cannot be denied. But I think one would find it very difficult to prove that it was a superior education that made them the way they are or that those of the radical liberal left are in fact more or better educated than are those of more conservative persuasion.

I hope the more conservative visionaries win out in the end and we get back to exploring new ideas and new worlds and new possibilities as DTom suggested and get mostly away from the cultural tyranny of the radical left.

I think it's called "tenure".



Conservative movements are some of the largest on campuses these days...yes, even East Coast institutions.

Meanwhile, there's this view from one conservative Harvard professor:



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