Speaking of "viewpoint discrimination," how about "homophobic discrimination?"
Up above, dear viewers, you can see an example of a propaganda technique which, though wanked out with overuse since Homer's time, even Goebells himself was not averse to employing.
You take the worst and most extreme statements of the opposition, which might easily be misreported, taken out of context or uttered when pissed or overexcited with being on a microphone too long and contrast them with the sweet reasonableness of the carefully drafted statements of your own side to which nobody could possibly take exception to.
The equivalent extreme anti-ID statements, such as those of the Marquis de Sade, La Mettrie, Choderos de Laclos, Gustave Flaubert, Jean Genet, Baudelaire, Kingsley Amis and their ilk being impossible to quote as it would cause the mods to have something akin to a freak out.
On a Science and Mathematics forum such a playpen tantrum is patently ridiculous and can only have a feather of significance if it assumed that the viewers are as thick as a pile of bricks.
spendi: You take the worst and most extreme statements of the opposition (homophobic discrimination is a reality), which might easily be misreported (how can anyone misinterpret homophobic discrimination?), taken out of context or uttered when pissed or overexcited (there is nothing "taken out of context or uttered when pissed.") with being on a microphone too long and contrast them with the sweet reasonableness of the carefully drafted statements of your own side to which nobody could possibly take exception to.
Take exception, spendi. You're good at that!
Well c.i.- People are always complaining about how their brains are being manipulated so I thought I would take the opportunity to enlighten them on one of the crudest techniques known to the art seeing as how an example of it was fresh in their minds up above.
By seeing how it is done in a simple case some viewers might discover how to resist having their brain manipulated in more complex cases.
An additional motive was, of course, to expose anti-IDers as half-baked propagandists who are so confident of the stupidity of those they are addressing that they don't mind leaving dollops of their DNA all over the place so they can be easily identified.
But seriously, how many viewpoints should the schools open for? Alchemy? Astrology? Phrenology?
Good Morning.
The viewpoint discrimination reference is not so new as to be the "latest" approach that the clowns of ID are taking. I recall how the one biology perfesser in Texas got his uppance to come by requiring his students to provide assurance that they maintained a :"belief" in Eolution, otherwise he wouldnt write them letters of endorsement to med schools and the like.
This ran afoulof TExas law by administering a form of viewpoint discrimination. He was instructed not to persist.However, He got around the issue by requiring that his students demonstrate an "understanding" of evolutionary theory should they wish an endorsement. He prevailed by requiring the demonstration of a metric that is, in MHO, one that is entirely reasonable. The schoolscan require an understanding, not a belief . Im calm with that, if the students wish to subsequently squander intellectual capitol on personal beliefs in gods or Easter bunnies, I guess I dont want to stop it. However, since I control the questions in my tests, I can probe the undestandings of students all I wish. If the kids wish to maintain two conflicting bases of their understanding, then Im going to require them to learn the science way. Ive run against 2 "Scientific Creationists" as students . One has since reassessed her "beliefs" and accepted the emptiness (but intellectually honest) world of science, while the other has gone on to another grad school and is comfortable in its less rigorous demands .
The actual trials re: viewpoint discrimination have, IMHO, a decent chance to be ruled in favor. However, in order to benefit from a court ruling favorable to the new batch of plaintiffs, they will have to admit, if not on direct, then on cross, that they are convinced of this purely religion based worldview. They cant claim that "design theory" is even that. Its neither a theory , nor is it a science, and sure as heck cant begin to demonstrate "design" (at least till the present).
The ultimate "fall back" position of the IDers is that "life is too complex to have arisen without divine (or at least intelligent) intervention" Even as science keeps drawing back the curtain of the boundaries s of that statement, it still persists among the majority of the living. I believe it relies on a way that some people process information. Im always amazed at how the 911 conspiracists have their theories based upon a firm set of beliefs that cant be swayed no matter how much counter-evidence is accumulated. Same thing with IDers and the Creationists. The first is bound up in the mistaken belief in"irreducible complexities" and the latter is convinced of the existence of unicorns and krakens and wordlwide floods.
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And space aliens . . . don't sell the space aliens short.
The UK seems way ahead of the US in "that" respect; hurrah for them! With Bush as the "leader" of our country, any hope of seeing something similar in the US is remote.
With the Supreme Court more doctrinaire than ever in recent years (except in a fashion that is just the opposite from the French Historical reference), Im afraid that the toxic residua from this administration will live well beyond Bush's brief "cumstain" on our history. With the definitions of ID being more thinly sliced and more attempting to stand as secular teaching and the new fights looming concerning such things as "viewpoint discrimination" , I predict that we will yet see some law or precednt established that will slow or stop the post 60;s progress weve made to remove Mideaval worldviews from our schools. As long as the majority rules, Bush's legacy will be a return to "faith based" science . Im sure then, that this will be moderated in some distant future when evryone tires of the Christian jihadists .
fm wrote-
Quote:As long as the majority rules, Bush's legacy will be a return to "faith based" science .
There you go folks. The authentic voice of the elitist. fm obviously would like to see certain qualifying rules for voting rights. They will, as one might expect, include himself.
If he's against "faith based" science, and according to some philosophers there is no other form of science, he is ipso facto against majority rule.
spendius wrote:fm wrote-
Quote:As long as the majority rules, Bush's legacy will be a return to "faith based" science .
There you go folks. The authentic voice of the elitist. fm obviously would like to see certain qualifying rules for voting rights. They will, as one might expect, include himself.
If he's against "faith based" science, and according to some philosophers there is no other form of science, he is ipso facto against majority rule.
If you lived in any of the middle east countries, you would also be against majorty rule.
If there were more atheists than Christians, you would also be against majorty rule.
The minority opinion by defination does not agree with the majority opinion.
I was educated in a faith based science atmosphe5re. The Catholic Church School I attended was famous for opening biology classes with a Hail MAry or two.
" We beseech thee oh Lord , that we thy humble servants, and with thy divine guidance, may be shown the secrets of energy transfer within the frogs mitochondria"
Faith based science is , of course, an oxymoron.You dont need to be DEorion Sagan to catch on.
fm wrote-
Quote:Faith based science is , of course, an oxymoron.
Ask fresco about that. He's our resident Wittgensteinian I gather.
Spendius,
please sum up what you have learned in this thread.
Cheers,
Chum
I will one day if I can find a method which has a reasonable degree of probability that it wouldn't blow the fuses in the monitors of the mods.
We all know how expensive it is to get electricians out to mend fuses and I like the idea of keeping A2K's cost down to a minimum.
With christians and muslims already in the millions, we don't need any more religions. They'll destroy the earth between the two of them!
my logiccannot believe the theory that intellegent design created everything for where did this thinker come from in the first place if nothing existed before anything..
Look wande-
Your thread doesn't mention Creationism. Why do you continually keep banging on about it? We are all agreed, I think, on the merits of Creationism. It looks like you might have doubts.
One would expect socialists to say all that anyway. We know socialists are against any form of religion. Socialists see only The State as deserving of our obedience. A State they are running of course.
And the Council looks opposed anyway and they are more powerful than the committee. The name of the game is holding socialism back and, to some extent, militant feminism which I suspect you know little about.
If you think you can tar the idea of intelligent design by associating it with Creationism you are going to have me reminding viewers here that the concepts are miles apart. Polarised even. Enemies.
I'm beginning to think you don't understand the issues.
The issue really is whether or not to teach evolution theory to young people in a manner which undermines their various religious viewpoints and those of their families and communities.
A teacher teaching evolution could plumb the sort of depths Wilso reached in his last post. Are you up for that in the food growing states.
I've met teachers with those sort of views and manners of expression. Teachers are not, as a group, particularly intelligent. The number of teachers required, the working conditions and the salary scales make that a certainty given the areas under the IQ graph. And these days a large number of them are politicised in a half-baked way.
A building firm that specialised in rebuilding burned down schools might well be in favour of a Wilsonian teaching evolution but are you anti-IDers on here? A respectable anti-IDer would have taken the trouble to distance himself from Wilso's post in my opinion.
