Posted on 05/12/2006 12:13:47 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
In his op-ed "Evolution's bottom line," published in The New York Times (May 12, 2006), Holden Thorp emphasizes the practical applications of evolution, writing, "creationism has no commercial application. Evolution does," and citing several specific examples.
In places where evolution education is undermined, he argues, it isn't only students who will be the poorer for it: "Will Mom or Dad Scientist want to live somewhere where their children are less likely to learn evolution?" He concludes, "Where science gets done is where wealth gets created, so places that decide to put stickers on their textbooks or change the definition of science have decided, perhaps unknowingly, not to go to the innovation party of the future. Maybe that's fine for the grownups who'd rather stay home, but it seems like a raw deal for the 14-year-old girl in Topeka who might have gone on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in high school."
Thorp is chairman of the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina.
can I give you more links ...
http://www.donquijote.org/culture/spain/history/inquisition.asp
"The Spanish government and its religious officials proclaimed the need for a pure and unified Spanish-Christian race, forbidding intermarriage between Christians or converts and Jews, which would destroy their ideal of purity of blood (limpieza de sangre). Following this ideal the Jews were either killed or driven out of the country, although when the Spanish Inquisition was finally suppressed in the early 19th century, many thousands of practicing Jews were still living in Spain.
The political justification for the Spanish Inquisition was the existence of a threat to the monarchy. The Spanish Christians (Christianity was the most widespread faith) were outraged at the Jews for a variety of reasons, most of them religious, and saw the Spanish Inquisition as a means of controlling the Jewish population, removing the actual source of the problem." (exerpt)
"... The government would soon turn to the Spanish Inquisition in search of an instrument capable of restoring the balance; the execution of hundreds of thousands of Jews was at once a form of revenge and a way of acquiring money and possessions at a stroke."
http://jmgainor.homestead.com/files/PU/Inq/si.htm
"This was a quasi-ecclesiastical tribunal established in 1478 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella primarily to examine converted Jews, and later converted Muslims, and punish those who were insincere in the conversion.... The Spanish Inquisition was much harsher than the medieval Inquisition and the death penalty was more often exacted, sometimes in mass autos-da-fe. It judged cases of bigamy, seduction, usury, and other crimes, and was active in Spain and her colonies. Estimates of its victims vary widely, ranging from less than 4,000 to more than 30,000 during its existence...." -Compton's Concise Encyclopedia
"The Catholic Monarchs ... . in 1478 ... first obtained a papal bull from Sixtus IV setting up the Inquisition to deal with the supposedly evil influence of the Jews and conversos.... ¶ ... The Inquisition's secret procedures, its eagerness to accept denunciations, its use of torture, the absence of counsel for the accused, the lack of any right to confront hostile witnesses, and the practice of confiscating the property of those who were condemned and sharing it between the Inquisition, the crown, and the accusers—all this inspired great terror, as indeed it was meant to do...." -Encyclopædia Britannica
... anything ... anything...??
Ummm, you'd have a hard time explaining that to the Jurassic Park folks--we don't acutally observe dinosaurs anymore, and we infer much of what we accept about them on the basis of analogies to currently living organisms.
The idea of science is about questioning old myths and superstitions to figure out what actually is valid about the planet we live on.
You mean like Atlas holding up the Earth? Greco-Roman mythology had a great deal more of the anthropomorphic gods and direct intervention in the affairs of man and nature than does Judaism / Christianity.
Cheers!
Agree completely. Having been reared on scholasticism, they have a hard time changing mental gears to empiricism, and are often not even familiar with the concept.
Science really is something apart from religion. It is allowed and basically expected to change its story. After all, it is argued from the current preponderance of evidence. It converges over time upon an increasingly accurate description of nature. No religion does this or even claims to.
See the first comment; sometimes the misunderstanding is mutual--scientists who are of the bent of "everything must be empirically verified" are sometimes left in the cold when religion dealing with a personal God tells them to trust, instead of verify.
And if religion is not primarily concerned in the first place with obtaining an accurate description of nature, then don't ask it to. Take it, as you would science, on its own terms. Moral strictures are not empirically derived.
Cheers!
I can understand why you would say that. Whether or not a scientific theory is true cannot be resolved by its moral implications.... But it's simply false to say that a scientific theory cannot have any moral implications.
Doctors used to believe that patients were making it up when they complained of enormous pain when anesthetized with curare. Confirmation of the scientific theory that the curare had relaxed their muscles so it seemed as though they were not in pain, but that they really were did not simply pass along in silence. It had a moral implication:
using curare in the way we have been is immoral. We must change the way we use it or stop using it.
Marx thought that because human nature was elastic--- a scientifc theory (although vaguely expresed), man was perfectible (a moral implication). His scientific theory turned out to be false--- here Darwin largely confirms Aristotle; see Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate."
It's for this sort of reason, I assume, that Thomaswest finds Darwin's theory to have the moral implication that women should be treated equally.
There's nothing illegitimate about examining the moral implications of "events that occur in the universe". Suppose for the sake of argument that O.J. Simpson killed his wife. That's an event occuring in the universe. The moral implication is that he should be punished.
Suppose the "Greenhouse Effect" is almost totally due to sunspot activity. The moral implication is that the Kyoto Treaty is a bad idea.
By your definition, Darwin himself, who dealt quite honestly and thoughtfully with the moral implications of his theory, would have to be "fundamentally dishonest" or "fundamentally ignorant".
But he was not.
That's studs coli on the bottom, oversexed and proud of the hair on his chest, if he has one.
The result....birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it..
Very well played, indeed, sir!
Reminds me of an elementary school report on bacteria, which included this phrase (ahem):
Another popular germ is Yersinia pestis (Bubonic plague)
...popular?
Cheers!
That was only the begining ...
"Much has been written of the inhuman cruelty of Torquemada. Llorente computes that during Torquemada's office (1483-98) 8800 suffered death by fire and 96,54 (sic) were punished in other ways (Histoire de l'Inquisition, IV, 252). These figures are highly exaggerated, as has been conclusively proved by Hefele (Cardinal Ximenes, ch. xviii), Gams (Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, III, II, 68-76), and many others. Even the Jewish historian Graetz contents himself with stating that "under the first Inquisitor Torquemada, in the course of fourteen years (1485-1498) at least 2000 Jews were burnt as impenitent sinners" ("History of the Jews", Philadelphia, 1897, IV, 356). Most historians hold with the Protestant Peschel (Das Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, Stuttgart, 1877, pp. 119 sq.) that the number of persons burnt from 1481 to 1504, when Isabella died, was about 2000...." - New Advent (Roman) Catholic Encyclopedia, Fray Tomás Torquemada - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14783a.htm
"And on the Medieval Inquisition page, the same New Advent (Roman) Catholic Encyclopedia told us that the "most active period of the institution" was when 5 of 24 'convicted' during a 7 year period, and 42 of 930 'convicted' during a 16 year period, were burned in the early 14th century. But here we have, by the most conservative (Roman Catholic) estimates, "about 2000" executed over a period of 25 years. That is a best case scenario average of 80 each year, or 1 every 4.5 days - for 25 years! And, since these numbers only take into account those for which records exist, it's likely that the true numbers are higher. David A. Plaisted makes a compelling argument that the true numbers exceed 50 million. And these are the doings of those who claim that they are the descendants of the apostles, and the infallible vicars of Christ." - http://jmgainor.homestead.com/files/PU/Inq/si.htm
Somehow reminiscent of the famous post of old about "1720".
Full Disclosure: To quote The Phantom Tollbooth:
"Since I'm the only one who can drive half a car, I get to use it all the time."
Cheers!
Wow .. I can hardly believe I get to use Plastaid against them ... THIS IS GREAT ...
www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/estimates.doc
I don't know weather to feel good or kinda icky ...
I didn't write the example very well, sorry.
The patients had full awareness and sensitivity to pain--- the manner in which the physicians at the time were using curare was merely immobilizing them and thus making it SEEM as though they were not in pain.
The physicians did not realize this and thought the patients were making things up because they seemed under curare to be in no pain, even though they complained of being in pain later.
So when the discovery that, yes, curare as it was then applied did not prevent the patient from feeling pain, the doctors realized that, morally, they needed to adjust the way they used to curare or to stop using it.... Otherwise they would have been guilty of knowingly torturing their patients.
Don't post drivel.
Can you post any specific evidence for each of these claims, or are you merely mindlessly parroting what others in a position of authority have told you?
You might try reading up on William Wilberforce (or even Charles Dickens' American Notes) before wanking off about how Darwin extended humanity to minorities.
And as for women not being equal, you might bother to read passages of St. Paul ('there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor master, for you are all one in Christ Jesus'); or (since Catholicism is oft-mentioned in this thread) consider the unique position ascribed to Mary, before saying that Christianity primarily subjugated women (i.e. neither the Jews nor Christians had temple prositutes...).
I could say more but I don't want to start a flame war.
Cheers!
Don't remember if it's peer-reviewed: but 5 minutes on Amazon should be able to tell you.
Cheers!
<< I only know of two people who have changed their minds on evolution. One of them is Michael Denton. >>
I did. I was among the most rabid creationists -- young-earth, evolution is a commie-plot, flood-geology -- the whole nine yards. It all started when I read Morris's *The Genesis Flood* in 1972, on a long bus ride. Took me decades to clear the fog.
You who have never been in that mindset have no idea how strong a hold it can have -- and what it does to one's reasoning, and sense of reasonableness.
Well, that's one of the problems, since it introduces nature as the arbiter. It is pure folly to think that the implications are not there.
<< We see petitions saying "scientists" disagree with Evolution. We see Project Steve in favor of Evolution. Both are phony arguments. >>
Just to clarify -- Project Steve fully admits that it is using a phony argument. It is doing so in order to highlight the phoniness of the same argument in all those lists of "scientists who do not accept evolution" from creationists.
Project Steve is saying, "If finding a list of scientists that take one side is a valid argument -- then finding another list that takes the other side is just as valid. We can find more scientists named Steve who accept evolution than the other guys can find scientists who don't."
Delicious argument.
If you didn't want to get dragged into the muck of a crevo thread, my apologies.
JEC41,
Congrats, you have raised quoting Adolph Hitler to an art form.
Just waiting for the DUmmies to read your post and call all of us FReepers a bunch of Nazis.
...or was that your plan?
In the meantime, just quoting Mein Kampf out of context is not enough. Europe as a whole was not entirely post-Christian in the 1920's and 1930's, so that Hitler may have been politically compelled to couch his appeal in that language; as a matter of expediency, and not that he believed it.
Even Bill Clinton attempted to pass himself off as a Christian; but people know better than that.
Finally, of course, you have the words of Jesus Christ Himself regarding Christians, "By their fruits you shall know them". Hitler failed beyond the point of recovery to demonstrate that he was a Christian, despite the wishful thinking of trolls such as yourself.
BTW, are you related to the lass who wrote this site?
No cheers, unfortunately.
This should be required to be posted at the top of every crevo thread--it would prevent a lot of unnecessary arguments and misunderstandings.
Cheers!
And that's a real stretch. There's nothing in what I said that could justify that kind of comment. It's just an accusation to be inflammatory. What's your problem?
Oh, I don't know--maybe my problem is that if someone drops into a conversation I'm engaged in about whether Hitler was a christian or not, with both feet, that they might possibly respond to a counter-argument without being snarky and dismissive, even if it is phrased as a question.
Are you a fan of Ptolemy?
Cheers!
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