Re: Oh Dear, we are doomed!

FCS goes:

On Sep 16, 10:11 am, Alan Hope <usenet.ident...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
michael adams goes:

"Alan Hope" <usenet.ident...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:kbiuc459boo48g4kbihuaatv93sr1c3mtn@xxxxxxxxxx
michael adams goes:
It's highly unlikely thatcreationismcould ever be imposed on anyone. But
even assuming that it was - given that questions such as the age of the Earth
don't normally impact on most peoples daily lives - what practical difference
would it make to you, whether you believed in the Theory of Evolution
or increationism? Whether you'd been brainwashed into believing it or not.
What actual difference would it make ?
They start off wantingcreationismtaught in schools, and before you
know it you're being ruled by the Christaliban, and sex outside
marriage is illegal, gays are being hanged from cranes, and you get
your hand chopped off for listening to pop music.
For a start that's all geopolitical, a reaction to Western influence and
interference in the Middle East. Chopping people ears off - as they did
in Britain the 16th and 17th centuries in Britain would probably be a better
solution to the pop music problem in any case.

A religious nut is a religious nut.

Yes, and of course it's going only to be religious
nuts who discuss creationism in science classes.

By definition.

One thing religious people have going for them is
a spectrum of values that is sadly lacking from
the self-proclaimed "Scientists" who often have
little background in the disciplines on which they
comment except a "we scientists must stick
together against the fundies!!!!! because we know
we're right, because it's science..."

Oh right, and religious fundies are not at all dogmatic.

Case in point: diamonds

In the 1970s one of the kids scientific TV shows
or a kids magazine with a scientific slot, whether
it was How or Magpie or whatever, did a spoof
Blue Peter craft item on how to make a diamond.

Yes, that's right you left it in the oven for a few
million years.

Yet now we do make industrial diamonds from
Carbon which are used for drill heads and so
forth.

Yet if you'd come on USENET in the 1980s and
said aught about making diamonds - with any
kind of 6-day, Young Earth Creationism, just an
option, you'd have been slammed quicker than
McEnroe's umpires, because everyone knew
it took millions of years to make a diamond,
because science told us so.

Nonsense. Science tells us no such thing. Two things and two things
alone are required to turn bog-standard carbon into a diamond:
temperature and pressure. Time is simply not a factor.

In this instance it's a bit of a shame that what
seems to be happening as traditional media
start to encroach on craze space, like USENET,
is that rather than researched, balanced and
considered opinion seeping through into the
public domain journalists seem increasingly
to think crude, puerile polarities and knee-jerk
sensationalism are what people are paying
for (why should they? they can do it themselves
for free!)

Because journalism was so upstanding before the Internet came along,
yeahright.

Let's look at it another way.

Many scientists are religious and many religious
people are scientists. As most religions do have
some teaching about giving of oneself, about
altruism for the sake of it,

Not at all. For the sake of escaping damnation, maybe. Hardly
altruism.

as a joyful duty to
one's beneficent godforms, and the motivation
for people do to socially beneficial things lessens
without religious conviction (after all the average
student leaves with more debt than the properties
I rented whilst a student were worth at the time)

Fucking imbecilic nonsense. Morality predates all religion, and
certainly the ones we're concerned with in Britain.

it's going to be the religious ones who end up as
over-represented in such "soft" and "fluffy" and
altruistic occupations as teaching (which requires
qualifications).

Not true. Check your facts.

Michael Reiss, who called for teachers to be
willing to discuss a variety of perspectives in
the classroom has resigned.

Good. What a fuckwit.

Yet, in all fairness, it doesn't matter what you
believe about how the planet came into being
you either can deliver a lecture on The Haber
Process, Rutherford's Model of The Atom or
the principles of perceptual biometry (optics,
audiometrics) you can't--and it needn't be at all
misleading.

Sorry, I got tired of you at this point.


--
AH
http://grapes2dot0.blogspot.com
.

Loading