I can see spendi enjoying one of those disgusting English breakfasts, redaing the on-line Times and clicking the articles to us .
Of course its past lunch in UK , almost time for those disgusting cucumber sammiches
Lunch just coming up Farmer... Do you want a butty old lad?
fm-
I have the same breakfast 7/52
Glass of pure apple juice
Porrige with water and sugar
Banana.
Cup of tea and two Golden Virginia roll ups.
I thought you would find both articles "interesting". If not it isn't that unusual.
Nice healthy breakfast followed by two nails in your coffin.
If Truth in Science are the new heroes of the creationist movement then Richard Dawkins is the pin up boy for the country's non-believers.
The Oxford University geneticist is the author of a series of best-selling books, including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion,
his latest work, described as a sustained polemic againsrt religious faith.
A supporter of atheist groups, such as The National Secular Society
and the British Humanist Association, he has long campaigned against attempts to push Biblical Theories in school science lessons.
Now, like Truth In Science he is taking his fight into the classroom, by publishing his own teaching materials.
A spokesman for the academic said yesterday that two foundations - in England and one the USA where Intelligent Design is openly taught in many classrooms were in their very early days
However, it is thought the foundations will apply for charitable staus winning thousands of pounds in tax breaks- and they are likely to be bank-rolled by the author and his supporters.
His foundation will conduct into research into what makes some people more succeptible to religious ideas than others and whether they are particularly vulnerable.
He also said he plans to campaign against children being labelled with the religion of their parents.
Daily Telegraph.
Matter of opinion fm.
It looks like you have swallowed the propaganda in one gulp. You obviously haven't bothered with the science. It is a rather large and complex subject so I can see it is much easier to stick to sound bites.
Your assumption on the breakfast was incorrect. And on the cucumber.
At my last health check the doctor expressed envy at the quality of my blood.
spendi, constantly confusing everyone saidQuote: It looks like you have swallowed the propaganda in one gulp. You obviously haven't bothered with the science. It is a rather large and complex subject so I can see it is much easier to stick to sound bites.
I know I somehow up your ire but Im afraid Im an innocent standers -by.
Mathos, the crying shame about Dawkins is that, had he remained at the scientific level as he was in the 80's, hed have become a real popularizer of science. Sortof like tyhe way our own Carl Sagn was revered. Unfortunately hes taken the rant highway and has cashed in (IMHO) much of his scientific bank account. For some reason hes become the equivalent of our long past madelaine Ohare, with a PhD.
As Timber said , and I paraphrase, crap is crap no matter from which side it is extruded.
Quote: "Just because it takes a negative look at Darwinism it doesn't mean it is not science. I think to critique Darwinism is quite appropriate."
To debate and critique Darwin from an informed position is quite acceptable. However, to debate and immediately default to a position that requires heavenly intercession or alien intervention IS loony.
The problem is that the debate occurs AS the learning is going on. The debate needs more information to be valuable in reaching conclusions. So far the only "evidence" in the entire ID camp is"Life is too complex to have arisen naturally, therefore it must have had a designer". Everything else they say also begins with incredulity, and, of course, ID ignores or tries to dismiss many "inconvenient truths" of science.
fm wrote-
Quote: ID ignores or tries to dismiss many "inconvenient truths" of science.
Not me fm. Anti-ID does that too you know but I'm not going to elaborate.
Quote:Anti-ID does that too you know but I'm not going to elaborate.
. Probably because you are unaware of any instances.
Fresco's hinted at the fact that science doesnt relax with one piece of evidence, it relies upon evidence being cumulative and overwhelming before we pay much attention to it But the Anti-science crowd fails to understand that..
I'd maybe put you in the picture in the pub fm under certain circumstances.
Yes-the evidence is cumulative and overwhelming.
Indeed. Which subject are you applying it to though?
The evidence is that something happened in northern Europe in, or shortly after, the 10th Century, which had incubated out of the middle east and which saw off the Dark Ages and produced light and which led through complex steps, which are argued endlessly about, to where we are now. Some think that is in the ****.
But I'm an optimist. We are still in short pants is my view. And if you are in education you will know what a bunch of short pants are like with nobody to keep them in order.
The best track through the maze is the one taken by the best writers of fiction.
You must know the Joycean idea of epiphanies. All those writers produce an epiphany in an astute reader which may differ from reader to reader.
Later writers are adept at connecting them together and producing greater epiphanies. And lesser writers tempt one into cul-de-sacs.
I rate Dylan so highly precisely because he is the end of the line for us at this, and I'll say it, scientific trick. He's no better than the others, although he has said that Shakespeare's in the alley with his pointy shoes and his bells. Are they the bells of Ring Them Bells fame.
There may be others but I haven't noticed them.
And there is cumulative and overwhelming evidence that it has been designed, however imperfectly, and thus, if it has to have a God, which it doesn't but you're on your own with that, it will choose a designing God.
Who else ever had a designing God. Out east their God didn't give a shite. It was warm and food was plentiful and it was fun catching it and when you had eaten it you went to sleep. But in northern Europe it was fleeing cold and the grub could run fast. I bet it was no fun posing at -10 for a cave painting in France with an erection. They had a motive to get designing.
Is the scientific study of us lot not science then? Not much. It is the Puissant Science. Studying evolution is a cheese roll.
And here we are. Golfers have golf ball heaters because drives with cold balls don't go as far as drives with hot balls. They run off batteries.
Only in winter I mean. That's not bad. I know a guy who not only has heated seats in his car but a machine which tells him where he is.
Who did it eh? Heaps of them bunches timber mentions of them in discussions sometimes calm sometimes not.
So if we kick the silly old goat of a designing God into touch we might lose our own designing capacities which take into account what's already there, us lot, not some fanciful notions cobbled together on the back of an envelope over coffee in the senior common-room which begin with our perfection which isn't that different from the perfection of the cobbler.
did you post that in one breath? Can you get to a point?
About 10 minutes I think. Maybe 15.
Can you really not see the point?
That would say something interesting about communication. About you, me and the medium. Possibly about a difference in how we each read.
From Proust I learned how to read as if he and I were on two bar stools and I was so fascinated and mesmerised by the tales he was telling and the manner in which he told them that I never had the feeling of interrupting him or the desire he would stop. I had read Rider Haggard like that as a kid but without thinking about it. A lot of people are like that. They say "I couldn't put it down". Homer, from being boring, became marvellous and as The Odyssey is the first novel those writers who followed him were mine. And what a mine.
So I suppose if you don't read something like that I might well be a bit incoherent but some might not find that.
Joyce said that he only ever expected two or three nutcases would ever read his books. Stendhal said about 100.
What that means is that if you expect a lot of people to like what you write it must be shite.
Ya dig?
and I learned from Kay, and Hubbert that when you dance around in obfuscatory phrases, quoting "how you were led to the light" is all very nice, but it begs the points famously.
Gotta catch a plane this afternoon. See yas all before Xmas.(I hope)
Good hunting. I would miss you if anything untoward happened.
Quote:Scientist Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils Kendrick Frazier
Skeptical Inquirer
Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is giving no quarter to powerful evangelical church leaders who are pressing Kenya's national museum to relegate to a back room its world-famous collection of hominid fossils showing the evolution of humans' early ancestors.
Leakey called the churches' plans "the most outrageous comments I have ever heard."
He told The Daily Telegraph (London): "The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely strong in presenting a very forceful case for the evolutionary theory of the origins of mankind. The collection it holds is one of Kenya's very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the forefront of this branch of science." Leakey was for years director of the museum and of Kenya's entire museum system.
The museum's collections include the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7-million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Leakey's team in 1984 near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
The museum also holds bones from several specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the first hominid to walk upright, four million years ago. Together the artifacts amount to the clearest record yet discovered of the origins of Homo sapiens.
Leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal congregation, with six million adherents, want the human fossils de-emphasized.
"The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.
"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory," the bishop said.
Bishop Adoyo said all the country's churches would unite to force the museum to change its focus when it reopens after eighteen months of renovations in June 2007. "We will write to them, we will call them, we will make sure our people know about this, and we will see what we can do to make our voice known," he said.
It was these comments Leakey termed outrageous. Calling members of the Pentecostal church fundamentalists, Leakey added: "Their theories are far, far from the mainstream on this. They cannot be allowed to meddle with what is the world's leading collection of these types of fossils."
For its part, the museum sounded like it was trying to walk a tightrope. It said it was in a "tricky situation" in trying to redesign its exhibition space for all kinds of visitors.
"We have a responsibility to present all our artifacts in the best way that we can so that everyone who sees them can gain a full understanding of their significance," said Ali Chege, public relations manager for the National Museums of Kenya. "But things can get tricky when you have religious beliefs on one side, and intellectuals, scientists, or researchers on the other, saying the opposite."
This article first appeared in Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20061203/sc_livescience/scientistfightschurchefforttohidemuseumsprehumanfossils
I guess this is what is to be expected from ignorant conservative Christians.
It is self-evident that there is something here to debate.
The use of the word "ignorant" to label one side of the debate is the real ignorance.
It's all old hat anyway to regular members of this thread so it's a bit ignorant shoving it in at this late stage. It's a bit like going into a room of bridge players and explaining to them that the ace outranks the king.
The thread develops. It doesn't run on the spot.
