amen!

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"myths invented in the Bronze Age by superstitious desert nomads"

It wasn't invented by them; it was given by God! ;)

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Emacs is better than Vi!

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For the mentally challenged.

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xemacs is capable of anything

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Awesome.

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It was going great until he started going on about Northern Ireland's troubles being based on religious differences. Even back when it was about religious differences it wasn't really about religious differences.

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But thankfully, religion always adds that extra serving of "crazy" that might otherwise be lacking in a purely economic battle.

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They couldnt use racism as an excuse for hatred, so they had to find something.

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Just yesterday he posted a 1238-word personal ad to his blog. Hmm, I've never been to Las Vegas, and I'm not doing anything this weekend ....

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This is all well & good, JWZ, but when can we expect "Faith vs. Predator"??? It's the matchup we've been dying to see in these pages for years now.

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Actually the linked magazine article that inspired the letter is even better:

Currently, I'm thinking the best course of action would be to remove science entirely from public school curriculum, because it doesn't seem that Americans want their children to learn how science works. Bits of trivia about prisms and how snowflakes form is all very good and well - isn't it nice how smart my Junior is? - but actually understanding scientific method, or accepting that there might be such a thing as objective truth regardless of whatever medieval notions one might personally ascribe to ... Lord, no, we can't have that.

Americans seem to believe that the word "theory" is a synonym for "some bullshit I made up that might be true or not." This is incorrect. A better word for that might be "religion."

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I personally liked the: Americans seem to believe that the word "theory" is a synonym for "some bullshit I made up that might be true or not." part. How true that is- but look at our culture, full of movies 'based on true events' and magic supplments that 'may' make you loose 300 pounds and also encourage mr happy to grow 4 inches (but 'these comments have not been evaluated by the FDA and this product is not intended to cure any disease'), we are bombarded with fiction presented as non-fiction with funny sounding small print disclaimers, after all nike doesnt run any sweatshops! (and thats part of its 1st ammendmant rights!), so in the end- with all the shit floating around presented as fact but with little disclaimers- is anyone truly surprised that in this culture 'theory' is a synonym for 'some bullshit i made up that might be true or not'.

More astounding than that however, I find it amazing we trust the FDA or any other similar agency (hey this pill was tested on monkey's, had no side effects on them and helps you not be so hungry [however it also destroys your nervous system, increases your risk of stroke astronomically and funny enough- we are not fucking monkeys, 2% of dna is a huge difference).

hrm, im ranting, point made, good night.

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sfgate article

Damn fundamentalist christians. I'm a pretty tollerant person; I see religion as a spectrum, not a rigid set of teachings and requirements. I was raised catholic in a progressive environment and formed my own beliefs: the bible (an interesting read if you haven't read it) is a collection of stories from many people (and hence have a certain amount of "creative leeway"), a long time ago, and has been translated many times. Don't take it word for word. Likewise, God may exist, or may not exist. No way to prove either condition. So as long as I'm generally a good person, I shouldn't let God (or perhaps lack thereof) affect my life.

Whether I believe God exists or not doesn't change this fact: people didn't just magically appear 6000 years ago direcly because of god. That being said, "creationists" and fundamentalist christians (also, BushCo) are helping divide the world between "religious" and "non-religious" people. Classic example: my mom is catholic, sings in the church choir, wields power tools, and is about the most liberal person I have ever met.

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A friend of mine is studying political science. He recently did a study and found that religious affiliation (or lack thereof) has absolutely no correlation with political affiliation.

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"Organized religion destroys who we are by inhibiting our actions, by inhibiting our desicions, out of fear of an intangable father figure who shakes a finger at us from 1000 years ago, saying do it or, or i'll fucking spank you!" --The movie Dogma

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That's "intangible". Time for your spanking.

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I am of the growing opinion that religion *must* be taught in schools. Aggressively and completely. It has played a important historic role in the development of modern society.

Much like feudalism should be taught - so we don't make the same mistakes. "Here is what people believed, some people still do this today" is a perfectly valid and truthful education. For feudalism, show the modern warlords of Africa and the resulting famines, show the royalty of France and the beautiful courts. Turn to religion and show modern creationism with all the problems the belief has and show the glorious Sistine chapel and the beauty of the ceiling. In such education you are advocating neither a feudal society or a particular religion, but rather showing how they affected us and what they produce.

Education is about teaching children how to think and then giving them knowledge. Teach them how to think critically and show them how we got to where we are. Let them decide: if you have presented a full view of our modern world and the history that got us to where we are... *and* have taught them the tools to think and research, they will come to their own beliefs. Hopefully these beliefs will not mirror ours - hopefully their beliefs will be a little better. We will have then hoisted them a bit higher to become the giants upon whose shoulders *their* children will stand.

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To some extent, they do teach religion, and not in the sense of Sunday School or anything. I took world history in highschool in a public school in Texas, and we learned about the rise of Christianity, the Protestant Reformation, the rise of Islam, etc.

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Believing that life and the universe are too complex to exist without a creator is irrational.
Believing that an infinately complex complex being exists on it's own and created everything is rational.

Thus, Occam's Razor is the wrong tool. The correct tool is Goldberg's Rogaine, which states that the most complext answer to any problem must be true.

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Whoopi or the wrestler?

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I dunno about that "further and further into irrationality" bit. We've always been this stupid about things.

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Gee, like I wasn't bummed enough. =(

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The thing about myths is that back then, in many cases they were looking for a rational explaination...the way of thinking and general understanding of the world was just a lot more limited. I think even if you took a great brain like einstein or hawking and they grew up with the same culture and knowlege of the time, they wouldn't have come to the same conclusion as they have in modern day. Scientists today have a lot of information gathered over hundreds of years to work with.
Of course that doesn't explain the people who still believe the myths, god, or voodoo... I saw an interesting thing about explaining greek mythology based on archeology... in example, wooly mammoths have a big single nostril opening in the center of the head...cyclops!

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The thing about myths is that back then, in many cases they were looking for a rational explaination...the way of thinking and general understanding of the world was just a lot more limited. I think even if you took a great brain like einstein or hawking and they grew up with the same culture and knowlege of the time, they wouldn't have come to the same conclusion as they have in modern day.


Agreed. When I read older text's that were/are considered brillant, I often come away thinking 'well thats not really that profound, its kinda common sense', however then I have to think about the times they were in and how uncommon of a thought it must have been, in many cases they were the first to (publically) present such an idea. I think it even happens in modern times with modern things, its inevitable- this is going to go a little specific into one field for my example, but consider a programming error like a 'buffer overflow' (long technical explanation left out), its a pretty low level 'feature', and yet it seems so obvious- but I wonder if without having it pointed out, would I have caught it?

Have you ever read much about Isaac Newton? The man was literally a genius, of the type I fear the world hasn't seen in a long time, and probably will not see in a long time either. I mean he came up with the basic laws of physics that we all take for granted now, but when you read about his life- it really is quite astonishing, I remember at one point in his life some european mathmaticians council presented a problem that they expected would take the entire community months to solve- however Mr. Newton came in and within a few _hours_ solved it; and even he laid credit to the work of his predecessors (if i have see far it is because i have stood on the shoulders of giants). It makes you wonder where he would have gone had he been born in say 1970 or 1980...

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"Science and religion don't conflict. They're about different things."

"All religions are the same, they all share the same values."

"Oh yeah? Well, science is a sort of religion too."

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One: having grown up and attended school in a nation where religious education "of a predominantly Christian nature" is the law of the land, I can swear that nothing generates agnostics as efficiently as an institutionalized state religion.

Two: it's my impression that the only nation where the theory of evolution isn't believed by a majority of the educated population is one where, in large areas, as William Gibson says, "what really smarted about Darwin, down there, was the logical implication that blacks and whites are descended from a common ancestor. Butt-ugly, but there it is. That was the first objection to evolutionary theory that I ever heard, and it was a very common one, in fact the most common. That it was counter to Genesis seemed merely convenient, in the face of an anthropoid grand-uncle in the woodpile."

Creationism == racism. Spread the meme.

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You MORONS! Don't you know that the soil is fertile becuase I go out on the winter solstice and howl at the moon all night? Are you completely unaware of the fact that the avian flu pandemic hasn't hit because I have a little tiki doll upon which I burn incense and mumble incantations? I'm not sure why I bother on behalf of you doubters. I mean, you laughed at me the first, second, and third time that I told you I had been praying for Voice Over IP but now, now, do you BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF THE LORD?

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Don't annoy me or I'll stop throwing the magic powder of the bus windows and we'll all be over-run by elephants.

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I put no faith in my science, and no science in my faith.

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Did you think that one up All By Yourself?

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I for one think the word "theory" is misleading: "model" would maybe better...

I don't think religion and science should be in conflict anyway because I consider that they address two different problems: science is striving to answer the question "how" whereas the religion tries to give an answer to "why". Science explains, religion motivates. Now I'm agnostic and I think it's the only scientifically defendable position.

That "why" question is one that everybody either ignores or tries to answer - some with religious faith, some with scientific one (i.e, belief in something they cannot demonstrate). The question of how life first began on Earth for example is one that science can't (yet) answer (let alone the "why" question). So no flame wars!

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Many of my friends are scientists (doh - given where I am) but they also happen to be theologians. Some of the most brilliant scientists I know agree that Science and Religion can be reconciled. I suppose it's become a semi-professional hobby for me. Well, maybe, humans are classical machines but are interesting non-classical machines possible? Somewhat fancifully, I say such non-classical machines could have "artificial souls".

In my PHD thesis I have hypothesized that in an abstract, natural ecology a selective advantage could be gained from Quantum Information Processing. Tomorow I'm visiting a group at Oxford that is studying the possibility that bacterial photosynthesis centers can do Quantum Information Processing. If there's a selective advantage for quantum logic and biomolecular machines can support it -- it could be the case that living systems have quite "mystical" properties (that emerge from properties of QM). The world is an interesting place.

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Frankly, as long as the evolution side of the debate refuses to understand why cultural identity and religion are more important to people than the objective reality revealed by science, they will continue to lose ground.

Cultural identity and religion are the forces that have held people together in societies since we were bright enough to form them. Attempts to supress these things have largely led to either mass genocide or eventual open, violent revolt. It's not something you dismiss with a wave of the hand and calling it irrational.

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mad props to who ever you are for placing some sense in the confersation.

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