Foxfyre wrote:I DO care whether they use science class in an attempt to make children anti-religion.
I don't want science teachers using their classes to make children anti-religious, and I don't know anyone on this thread who does. So there's probably no debate on this issue.
There was a post over on the global warming thread that I think probably warrants consideration within the broad spectrum of ID. The anti-religionists do not wish to consider that ANY form of intelligence is involved in the process, they disallow observation, reason, and/or testimony of personal experience as support for that, and they won't consider ID as anything other than a belief in God or gods which, according to them, makes them the reasoned and open minded ones.
So lets go with their point of view for a bit.
1) According to the anti-IDers, all the matter of the universe just appeared out of nothing. (They don't call this magic, so we don't need to discuss any considerations about how that might have happened.)
2) Over a very long time, the substance of the universe acted in such a way as to produced life forms. Again there is no speculation on what forces caused this to happen but it wasn't magic.
3) Those life forms all on their own began selecting what they would be next and over a very long time this one became a crabapple tree, that one a shoot of crabgrass, another one a creature with no choices in its environment or fate, still another a fish, bird, reptile, or mammal with a brain, instinct, and ability to move about and ability to prey on other living things for its survival.
4) Among those life forms the human evolved from a common ancester shared with the apes. (No explanation is offered for why humans continued to evolve while apes remained in a more primitive form, but things like that aren't important after all.) The human became the most intelligent and most adaptable of all living creatures, but in the grand unschemed mechamisms of an independent and unguided universe, the human is nothing more than just another creature that evolved through the process of natural selection.
So now we are left with questions the IDers ask, but the anti-IDers won't.
A. Why are humans apparently the only creature with a sense of right and wrong, a sense of morality versus sin, ability to reason rather than react to instinct alone? Even anti-IDers accept some kind of moral code.
B. Elk and cattle and horses and wolf packs establish social pecking orders with the biggest and strongest afforded leadership honors, while birds build nests, coyotes prey on rabbits, beavers build dams, and whales harvest huge quantities of plankton from the oceans. Some species destroy or abandon defective young and survival of the fittest is accepted as a necessary component of natural selection. Apparently, humans alone sometimes criticize and condemn each other for altering their environment for their own needs or wants, for exploiting other humans and sometimes animals for their own benefit, and for failing to alter their nature so that they do not injure or kill each other? And forget survival of the fittest where humans are concerned.
Summary: Humans evolved just as all living creatures evolved. But human activity, alone in all activity by living things, is not considered natural. But why isn't it? Why isn't what humans do as much a component of the whole system as what any other animal does? What gives humans a responsibility for the well being of the whole when no other creature is assigned such responsibility?
I don't know if any anti-IDer is capable of understanding the implication of this and I don't expect many to admit it if he or she does. I rather think that all or most IDers will, however.
rosborne979 wrote:Foxfyre wrote:I DO care whether they use science class in an attempt to make children anti-religion.
I don't want science teachers using their classes to make children anti-religious, and I don't know anyone on this thread who does. So there's probably no debate on this issue.
Thank you Ros. But I still can't get past your statement that, if asked, you would tell that child in science class that religion is nothing more than magic.
In Keith Thomas's famous study Religion and the Decline of Magic, which it is self evident ros has not seen fit to expend any effort upon, as befits the average compulsive blurter, he says that in 1668 "over half the population were decreasing the wealth of the kingdom". He goes on to identify this group as "those who earn less than they consume."
But "earn" is not all that easy to define. To what extent is a person entitled to say "I earn such and such" when the income derives from land which he has stolen using armed force, fraud or has inherited from those who used those methods.
Even on that simple consideration "All men are born equal" is a magical incantation albeit it may well have utility for some persons.
If one is going to lump together religion, superstition and magic it is intellectually discreditable to confine such an assertion to only those areas that suit one's personal vanity and to ignore aspects which don't.
The orderly arrangement of the relations between the sexes derive from similar "frauds", as any feminist worth her salt will inform you, oftentimes forcefully, and stem from the view, a belief, that women were the property of men and the tradition, a culture's Superego or character armour, is another external reference.
It is not a question of "fraud". It is a question of "utility".
All anti-IDers refuse to answer questions relating to anti-ID's utility in the future except for the assertion, in one sweet easy breath, that American science will go down the tube without it and I don't buy into that.
I am happy for some collections of fossils to exist but when an industry of fossil collectors, fossil exhibitors and fossil interpreters reaches a certain point in its expansion where any further utility it has over and above the main collections I am inclined to think that it is, as an industry, earning less than it consumes and is, as Mr Thomas says, "decreasing the wealth of the nation". If, in the very unlikely event of them finding cures for some diseases, which evolution took care of naturally, and extending lifetimes, they have yet to even try to demonstrate the utility of those laudable ambitions. An economist, speaking as an economist and not as a man undergoing a mid-life crisis, would probably take a different view of their utility.
In view of that I hardly think that this industry is in any position to tell us all that we are IDiots when those it is insulting like that, or most of them, are "increasing the wealth of the nation".
I think people in that industry should be content to skulk in the mausoleums of long dried bones they inhabit and continue living off the fat of the land and avoid going around banging a drum and reminding us of their existence. If they wish to go on safari in the company of their carefully selected young assistants, I won't say female for fear of being arraigned as a sexist although female is the normal condition of the young assistants who get to go on such difficult and arduous trips which are funded by a nod from Uncle Silas who worked tirelessly to get the Govenor elected, I have no objection. It isn't my role in life to spoil other people's fun. Live and let live is my motto. I even remove flies, which have penetrated my living spaces, with an empty jam-jar and sheet of paper and I set them free outside wishing them good luck.
Fun is different things to different people. I enjoyed singing in the choir and learning about the wiles of the daughters of the congregation. And it has stood me in good stead. How would anti-IDers provide a ceremony which contrasts starched, print-frock piety with the grasp of the mantis on the gasping groom.
Thus anti-ID is anti-men. As is quite obvious from a cursory study of the coalition which supports it and which was obvious to me long before I ever posted on this thread. I will say, however, that I'm inclined to think that anti-ID will win out but no sooner will it get up speed than the buffers will present themselves.
I would bet that the % of women who vote the way their minder tells them to is smaller in the US than in Europe or even England.
On that metaphor it is interesting to speculate that the financial system, about which we hear so much, might be a team which has the job of keep putting the buffers back at a speed which keeps up with the anti-ID gravy train as it accelerates. Assuming it does.
I'll leave it at that as I can get quite carried away if I become expansive on that particular arrangement of smoke and mirrors.
ros wrote-
Quote:I don't want science teachers using their classes to make children anti-religious, and I don't know anyone on this thread who does. So there's probably no debate on this issue.
So using ID-iot to label religious people and telling them they are suckers for a bit of cheap magic is not purposed to make people anti-religious is it not.
It struck me just then that nobody questions the fee a magican charges at a kid's birfday party as long as the kids have a good time. So why do anti-IDers keep harping on about the fees the magicians of Christianity charge. Are they not having a good time? I can hardly believe my luck given that I got lumbered with this lot through no fault of my own.
And the magicians of Christianity that charge the most are the poshest, like expensive hotels are, and the poshest of all allows the poorest into its precincts for free and its CEO washes the feet of paupers once a year.
Foxy wrote-
Quote:Now it is my turn to gently chide you, my friend. You are allowing them to intentionally pull the thread off course from ID and Darwin into another circular 'did too - did not' 'is too is not' attack on religion. There is no reasoning with anti-religious fanatics, so I rarely try any more.
While I resist attacks on my religious freedoms, I don't care so much if the anti-religionists don't like religion. That is their choice and it is why most are anti-religionists.
I DO care whether they use science class in an attempt to make children anti-religion.
I have chided. Many times. On other threads too. But I soon realised that "off topic" was a natural condition within A2K. I chide on here from time to time because it is a science thread. And I think you have forgotten my post on the "audience".
Have you never wondered why the anti-religionists have such an attitude?
It is an effect. We seek a cause. They might say that they are so intelligent that they can see that the Emperor has no clothes on. But I think it has more mundane causes. Mr Dawkins is on his third wife so it is easy to see the cause in his case. A vaulting ambition. Who would be surprised to discover that he is softening up No 4?
I gave a classic example of how Vic, my mate in the pub, became a lifelong communist as a result of a random happening in time and space.
He is on the mend though now. Telling a young lady not to be so silly to reserve her virginity for after the signatures were on the dotted line just because some magician says she ought to is more pressing than what happened to Vic. He just polished the communist badge up and fastened it in his lapel because it looked flash. He had a pile-up so to speak.
Arguing with an authority figure, which military men learn to avoid, is often a cause. A parent or teacher.
Judging from the literary abilities of anti-IDers I hardly think it is their superior intelligence.
And finally- there would be no religious science teachers trying to make children anti-religion. There is plenty of anti-religion in kids in their very nature. They don't need to be made anti-religious. Teachers don't do that. What they do is undermine the kids respect for the previous generation and cloak it with scientific (stop tittering at the back) justifications and respectability. And the coalition which supports anti-ID is well up for that.
Foxfyre wrote:rosborne979 wrote:Foxfyre wrote:I DO care whether they use science class in an attempt to make children anti-religion.
I don't want science teachers using their classes to make children anti-religious, and I don't know anyone on this thread who does. So there's probably no debate on this issue.
Thank you Ros. But I still can't get past your statement that, if asked, you would tell that child in science class that religion is nothing more than magic.
Perhaps you missed the discussion a couple of pages back where Ros explains that he
did not say that magic was synonymous with religion.
But he gave that impression. It was a smear. He only started backtracking when pulled on it and substituted another word.
Quote: I agree magic can be synonymous with the supernatural.
I don't agree with that. Magic is a human category. The supernatural is only a human category in our use of the word to try to define something unknowable and indefineable. Magic is involved with "anima" in things and can also be "white" magic or "black" magic. Magic involves incantations, dancing, symbols, wands etc. The supernatural is outside of such human triviality.
Isn't an expensive tuxedo, with a flower in the lapel, not a magical incantation whereby a spindly-legged, stupid, munching and defecating organism is transformed into a person of dignity and authority in the eyes of those who fall under its spell?
Foxfyre wrote:Summary: Humans evolved just as all living creatures evolved. But human activity, alone in all activity by living things, is not considered natural.
I
do consider human activity to be natural.
By the way, apes didn't stop evolving, they just evolved in a different direction. Based on your post, I think there are still a few glitches in your understanding of evolution, cosmology and the scientific method in general.
Foxfyre wrote:rosborne979 wrote:Foxfyre wrote:I DO care whether they use science class in an attempt to make children anti-religion.
I don't want science teachers using their classes to make children anti-religious, and I don't know anyone on this thread who does. So there's probably no debate on this issue.
Thank you Ros. But I still can't get past your statement that, if asked, you would tell that child in science class that religion is nothing more than magic.
Not "Religion". The "Supernatural". Haven't you been reading the posts? Or do you not see the difference?
What Ros specifically said verbatim is
Quote:I would hesitate to get into any discussion of religion with a student, but if cornered, I would tell them that they had the right to believe anything they want to believe. But if they asked, I wouldn't try to deceive them by denying that the supernatural is the same as magic, because it is.
If a parent has a problem with that, then they should get their kids out of public school and cloister them at home where they can be protected from reality.
This, in context, was in response to the child's question re God or ID during a class exercise or discussion on Darwin. So if 'religious belief' is translated 'supernatural' and equated with magic, tell me again how the child is not being led to disbelieve in his/her religious beliefs? Explain how the child would not feel that his/her religious beliefs are being attacked? How is this not suggesting that if the parents don't want their kid indoctrinated with Atheism or Atheistic beliefs, don't send your kid to public school?
ros wrote-
Quote:I do consider human activity to be natural.
Do you mean all human activity or just that you engage in yourself?
Quote: I think there are still a few glitches in your understanding of evolution, cosmology and the scientific method in general.
I have recently shown those few viewers who didn't already know, the younger ones, that the translation of that is that ros has no glitches in his understanding of evolution, cosmology and the scientific method in general because otherwise he wouldn't be able to identify the glitches Foxy has in her understanding of those things.
Foxfyre wrote:What Ros specifically said verbatim is
Quote:I would hesitate to get into any discussion of religion with a student, but if cornered, I would tell them that they had the right to believe anything they want to believe. But if they asked, I wouldn't try to deceive them by denying that the supernatural is the same as magic, because it is.
If a parent has a problem with that, then they should get their kids out of public school and cloister them at home where they can be protected from reality.
This, in context, was in response to the child's question re God or ID during a class exercise or discussion on Darwin. So if 'religious belief' is translated 'supernatural' and equated with magic, tell me again how the child is not being led to disbelieve in his/her religious beliefs? Explain how the child would not feel that his/her religious beliefs are being attacked? How is this not suggesting that if the parents don't want their kid indoctrinated with Atheism or Atheistic beliefs, don't send your kid to public school?
I can't change the facts of life Fox. The supernatural is synomymous with magic. It just is. If you want kids protected from definitions, then you are going to have to hide the facts from them, and that's not what schools are about.
If you don't like the fact that the basis of your particular religion is a belief in the supernatural, which is the same as magic, then I can't help you. You need to come to grips with the way you've chosen to see the world.
rosborne, You're asking the impossible. People who believe in one religion or another devote their life to the belief in their supernatural god(s). That will not change now or in the future. What I find most interesting is the fact that people who pray to their gods often sway while "communicating" to their god. Their heart and soul are forever in their god's grasp. They will "believe" until the day they die.
Foxfyre wrote:What Ros specifically said verbatim is
Quote:I would hesitate to get into any discussion of religion with a student, but if cornered, I would tell them that they had the right to believe anything they want to believe. But if they asked, I wouldn't try to deceive them by denying that the supernatural is the same as magic, because it is.
If a parent has a problem with that, then they should get their kids out of public school and cloister them at home where they can be protected from reality.
This, in context, was in response to the child's question re God or ID during a class exercise or discussion on Darwin.
Also, I didn't assume that this type of question would come up in class. As I said above, I would only say something like that if "cornered". And by cornered, I assumed that some kid was approaching me after class and unwilling to just accept my class answer, which would simply have been that God and ID are not topics for a science class.
rosborne979 wrote:Foxfyre wrote:Summary: Humans evolved just as all living creatures evolved. But human activity, alone in all activity by living things, is not considered natural.
I
do consider human activity to be natural.
By the way, apes didn't stop evolving, they just evolved in a different direction. Based on your post, I think there are still a few glitches in your understanding of evolution, cosmology and the scientific method in general.
I think I probably understand evolution as well as most 'laypersons' even if I am chastised for taking shortcuts in explanations. I accept that apes did not stop evolving, and this was a misspeak. What I should have said was my complete question as to why natural selection would produce apes that people observe 'in the wild' or keep in zoos rather than to evolve into something more humanlike. Would you like to tackle that particular question?
If you consider human activity to be 'natural', do you then accept that humans should simply do whatever their instincts or wants prompt them to do? Or should those things be modified and regulated by a moral code humans impose on themselves? If you opt for the latter, you would still consider such moral code to be 'natural'? If not, how do you explain the existence of a moral code? For that matter, can you think of any code, law, rule, or regulation that is not based on some sense of morality? Are there any genes or dna to produce that morality? Is it magic? Or something else? What is the something else?
cicerone imposter wrote:rosborne, You're asking the impossible. People who believe in one religion or another devote their life to the belief in their supernatural god(s). That will not change now or in the future. What I find most interesting is the fact that people who pray to their gods often sway while "communicating" to their god. Their heart and soul are forever in their god's grasp. They will "believe" until the day they die.
I'm not suggesting that they have to change CI. I'm only saying that they need to understand what it is they are chosing to believe in. If someone is offended by the concept of the supernatural, then they shouldn't make that a basis for their beliefs.
Lots of people belive in the supernatural, and they know it's no different than magic and they have no problem with that. And I have no problem with that. It's just a choice people make.
rosborne979 wrote:Foxfyre wrote:What Ros specifically said verbatim is
Quote:I would hesitate to get into any discussion of religion with a student, but if cornered, I would tell them that they had the right to believe anything they want to believe. But if they asked, I wouldn't try to deceive them by denying that the supernatural is the same as magic, because it is.
If a parent has a problem with that, then they should get their kids out of public school and cloister them at home where they can be protected from reality.
This, in context, was in response to the child's question re God or ID during a class exercise or discussion on Darwin. So if 'religious belief' is translated 'supernatural' and equated with magic, tell me again how the child is not being led to disbelieve in his/her religious beliefs? Explain how the child would not feel that his/her religious beliefs are being attacked? How is this not suggesting that if the parents don't want their kid indoctrinated with Atheism or Atheistic beliefs, don't send your kid to public school?
I can't change the facts of life Fox. The supernatural is synomymous with magic. It just is. If you want kids protected from definitions, then you are going to have to hide the facts from them, and that's not what schools are about.
If you don't like the fact that the basis of your particular religion is a belief in the supernatural, which is the same as magic, then I can't help you. You need to come to grips with the way you've chosen to see the world.
I know what the basis of my religious beliefs are and you don't. So let's leave that out of it. Please answer my question re what you statement is saying to that child. Please explain how that would not be seen as a criticism of the child's belief. Please explain how that is not a form of Atheistic indoctrination.
Foxfyre wrote:I think I probably understand evolution as well as most 'laypersons' even if I am chastised for taking shortcuts in explanations. I accept that apes did not stop evolving, and this was a misspeak. What I should have said was my complete question as to why natural selection would produce apes that people observe 'in the wild' or keep in zoos rather than to evolve into something more humanlike. Would you like to tackle that particular question?
Fair enough, I misspeak sometimes as well. And I think you probably do have as good an understanding as most 'laypersons'.
The answer to the question is related to the basic process of evolution. Evolution does not lead toward humans, so it's not surprising that Apes didn't evolve toward being human. Natural Selection can only select from what it has to work with, and that's the natural variation which occurs in populations. Again, and I don't mean to belabor the point, until this answer becomes obvious to you, then you are subtly missing one of the basic tenets of evolution.
Foxfyre wrote:If you consider human activity to be 'natural', do you then accept that humans should simply do whatever their instincts or wants prompt them to do? Or should those things be modified and regulated by a moral code humans impose on themselves? If you opt for the latter, you would still consider such moral code to be 'natural'? If not, how do you explain the existence of a moral code? For that matter, can you think of any code, law, rule, or regulation that is not based on some sense of morality? Are there any genes or dna to produce that morality? Is it magic? Or something else? What is the something else?
Morality comes from compassion which comes from empathy which is a neural function of our biology. There have been several threads on this a few years/months back.
For human beings, survival is strongly affected by our ability to get along in social groups, so there are strong forces of natural selection which prefer individuals who know how to "get along". Morality, despite it's variance within our cultures is not a surprising result.
There is no magic here. Other than the magic that is Nature itself.
