Stamp out anti-science in US politics

[Viking]

Every three generations or so a religious revival sweeps the USA leading to some sort of conflict. Previously Prohibition, Abolition and The Great Revival have all started with religious fervor leading to a culmination (The Civil War or The Revolutionary War (the great depression pre-empted any violent prohibition conflict)). The violence usually exhausts or discredits the religious fervor. The question is now, what will burn out Dominionist Fervor?

Yeah, the Civil War sure discredited abolitionism.  Damn good thing, to;  if abolitionism had ever really caught on I wouldn't be able to have slave girls to draw my bath.

He did'nt say it discredited abolitionism, he saids it discredited religious fervor. It's in the text you quoted.

Not to mention I added the option of exhausting the religious fervor. It's amazing how much effect you can get from quote mining even a short text.

[Josquius]

I`ve no problem with intelligent design, it is indeed a valid idea that is fine to teach in schools, afterall its a commonly believed answer to one of the great questions.
The only problem is when it gets into creationism and starts saying evolution is wrong, there it`s just outright wrong and anyone who supports that needs shooting.

[Neil]

I`ve no problem with intelligent design, it is indeed a valid idea that is fine to teach in schools, afterall its a commonly believed answer to one of the great questions.
The only problem is when it gets into creationism and starts saying evolution is wrong, there it`s just outright wrong and anyone who supports that needs shooting.

[Viking]

I`ve no problem with intelligent design, it is indeed a valid idea that is fine to teach in schools, afterall its a commonly believed answer to one of the great questions.
The only problem is when it gets into creationism and starts saying evolution is wrong, there it`s just outright wrong and anyone who supports that needs shooting.

eh? I'm sorry, but getting into high school biology textbooks is going to require a higher standard than being "a commonly believed answer to one of the great questions", even in countries that don't have a separation of church and state. You should look up Kitzmiller vs. Dover, ID is Creationism.

[CountDeMoney]

I don't get why the US body politic is anti-elitist in the first place. Sure, you may hold a view that the "elite is not what it's used to be" or that wrong people are considered the elite, but a genuine anti-elitism has always baffled me. Surely, there are people who are wiser, more intelligent, or otherwise better than the rest. How can you function without agreeing that basic fact?

Good honest salt of the earth rugged individualists have no need for the soft city folks who have never worked a day in their lives and do not understand the real world.

It is part of our national myth.

Nobody likes the smartest kid in the class.

[Razgovory]

I`ve no problem with intelligent design, it is indeed a valid idea that is fine to teach in schools, afterall its a commonly believed answer to one of the great questions.
The only problem is when it gets into creationism and starts saying evolution is wrong, there it`s just outright wrong and anyone who supports that needs shooting.

eh? I'm sorry, but getting into high school biology textbooks is going to require a higher standard than being "a commonly believed answer to one of the great questions", even in countries that don't have a separation of church and state. You should look up Kitzmiller vs. Dover, ID is Creationism.

This is simply not true.  It's like arguing that Lamarckian evolution is the same as Darwinian Evolution.  I agree that it's not appropriate in a public school, but it's not the same as arguing that God created the Earth over the course of a week.

[Ideologue]

I don't really have a problem with the weak form of intelligent design.  When it gets any stronger than unproveable assertions, and it gets there really fast, it becomes intolerable.

[Razgovory]

I don't really have a problem with the weak form of intelligent design.  When it gets any stronger than unproveable assertions, and it gets there really fast, it becomes intolerable.

It's a philosophic concept, not a scientific one.  I suspect that the majority of people who are religious or at least spiritual who don't believe in a literal creation story believe in ID at some level.

[The Brain]

I`ve no problem with intelligent design, it is indeed a valid idea that is fine to teach in schools,

[Habsburg]

Forever.  China can never pose an existential threat to the US the way that the Emperors and the King of Prussia did Poland.

[Ideologue]

I don't really have a problem with the weak form of intelligent design.  When it gets any stronger than unproveable assertions, and it gets there really fast, it becomes intolerable.

It's a philosophic concept, not a scientific one.  I suspect that the majority of people who are religious or at least spiritual who don't believe in a literal creation story believe in ID at some level.

Yeah, but the stronger ID gets, the closer it gets to Creationism.  The idea that God played a role in shaping the development of the human eye (which really isn't so fucking fantastic, and I don't know where they get their superlatives) is even more damaging than saying the world was created 6000 years ago, because people are probably more willing to ignore the finer points like how sight developed than they are slightly more obvious retardation like cavemen riding dinosaurs.

[Josquius]

h? I'm sorry, but getting into high school biology textbooks is going to require a higher standard than being "a commonly believed answer to one of the great questions", even in countries that don't have a separation of church and state. You should look up Kitzmiller vs. Dover, ID is Creationism.

I never said anything about it being in biology text books. Nothing of this nature belongs in science class.
In RE class however?

Intelligent design is a pretty broad spanning term. On one extreme then yes, it is creationism, god created the earth 6000 years ago and pulled humanity, fully developed, out of his arse. On the other though it is a pretty valid viewpoint; evolution is obviously right, the universe quite clearly is a few billion years old, etc... but...what caused the big bang? Maybe there was something divine there. Perhaps something had a role in guiding human evolution?
I don`t agree with this stuff but it isn`t outright wrong, wrong, wrong, in the way creationism is, we haven`t  totally disproven god in those gaps yet. Its not such a retarded viewpoint it needs utterly stamping out and in a social studies context is certainly worth teaching.

[Martinus]

If we are talking about religious education class, then the "intelligent design" has as much place there as creationism or a belief that the earth is flat and rests on a bunch of turtles (since religious education is a factographic science about stuff people believe in - it does not purport to make any value judgement about individual beliefs or how true or untrue they are). You are either an extremely confused person who does not understand the scientific method or are now backpedalling from your ridiculous statement about ID being appropriate to be taught as a "more likely true than creationism" theory in class.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think Tyr is arguing that Intelligent Design can be as weak as saying that God initiated the Big Bang and then sat back and watched it all unfold. It is the viewpoint to which most of my Christian friends would subscribe, though I don't think that they would call it Intelligent Design.

[Martinus]

I don't really have a problem with the weak form of intelligent design.

What do you mean by "not having a problem" in this context? Could a religious person believe in it without being totally ridiculous? Perhaps. Should it be referred to or otherwise mentioned in a biology class? No, because it does not fulfill the criteria of a scientific theory.