Thank you, Alamo-Girl, as always, for your keen erudition and profound grasp of the subject at hand. I lack your meritorious training in the sciences. My background is in philosophy and theology, although I do not consider myself scholarly in any field. I am, rather, populist and Renaissance.
I have an eclectic intellectual palette with just enough depth to get myself in trouble. I sit at your feet in wonder when reading posts such as those you have just generated.
This brings me to an issue that troubles me deeply. I have, on this and other threads, been gang raped, mauled, slaughtered, buried and circle pi$$ed on my grave. Actually, it was not me to which these travesties were done. It was a cartoon characterization of me, created by my tormentors for their sadistic pleasure.
I do not have a background in the sciences yet am keenly interested in the impact that scientific thought has on society in general and our children in particular. Thus, I find myself injecting my opinions in matters where I am told I do not belong. I have never been much good at kowtowing to effete snobbery.
My assumption has been, since the late 90’s when I first encountered you and others on this forum, that anyone can play. The rules of the playground are simple: no cussing, no personal attacks, no chewing up bandwidth for self- aggrandizement.
Now, on this and other ID/evo threads, I find there is a gang of bullies on the playground that beats up anyone deemed to have broken its esoteric rules. If this were a purely intellectual exercise it would be acceptable. It is not. The attacks are personal and nasty.
I have been berated, belittled, insulted, maliciously taunted, pompously dismissed, accused of illiteracy (gasp), and told I cannot play because I do not know the rules. All on this one short thread!
I deem my tormentors to be college professors and graduate students, self-styled protectors of scientifica didactica. They are not research scientists, theoreticians or engaged in applied science. They are teachers: pompous, oafish, supercilious, ivory-towered elitists, the keepers of the keys, who grade peons like myself on our ability to follow their rules, as if we were all students in their vaunted classes. They remind me of a gaggle of lanate theologians protecting sacred dogma. As I said, I am not good at boot licking.
I am a layperson with opinions about matters inmpinging upon the teaching of science to children. I am also a theist who practices the presence of God-principles in my daily life. These I deem to be central to the nature system.
If there is no room in scientific methodology for foundational principles that are expressive of something other than happenstance then fie on science and fie especially on those who wish to protect the hallowed grounds of theoretical science from the incursions of God. I am okay with a raucous debate on the confluence of theism and science. What I am not okay with is being treated as a Neanderthal.
Not that I have anything against Neanderthals.
And thank you for your encouragements – but truly, I am nothing notable in any earthy respect at all.
The result is the dangerous “second reality” so obvious in Lewontin, Singer, Pinker and Dawkins – which would merely be amusing if it were not that, from their lofty positions of power over the sciences, they also effect public policy. Singer, for instance, suggests that parents be allowed to kill their children within months or perhaps a year after birth.
If any here would protest that statement, I welcome the debate! Remember though that methodological naturalism itself is a philosophy and thus science has never successfully made a wall between itself and all the other disciplines of epistemology. Science used to be most closely related to epistemology, BTW. Sad that it no longer is this way in the U.S.
I do not have a background in the sciences yet am keenly interested in the impact that scientific thought has on society in general and our children in particular. Thus, I find myself injecting my opinions in matters where I am told I do not belong. I have never been much good at kowtowing to effete snobbery.
My assumption has been, since the late 90’s when I first encountered you and others on this forum, that anyone can play. The rules of the playground are simple: no cussing, no personal attacks, no chewing up bandwidth for self- aggrandizement.
Now, on this and other ID/evo threads, I find there is a gang of bullies on the playground that beats up anyone deemed to have broken its esoteric rules. If this were a purely intellectual exercise it would be acceptable. It is not. The attacks are personal and nasty.
I have been berated, belittled, insulted, maliciously taunted, pompously dismissed, accused of illiteracy (gasp), and told I cannot play because I do not know the rules. All on this one short thread!
I deem my tormentors to be college professors and graduate students, self-styled protectors of scientifica didactica. They are not research scientists, theoreticians or engaged in applied science. They are teachers: pompous, oafish, supercilious, ivory-towered elitists, the keepers of the keys, who grade peons like myself on our ability to follow their rules, as if we were all students in their vaunted classes. They remind me of a gaggle of lanate theologians protecting sacred dogma. As I said, I am not good at boot licking.
But here’s the good news: when your correspondents turn to personal attacks it means they have run out of ammunition and have nothing left to use but verbal spitwads. It means you are winning the argument, and most all Lurkers see this and understand it.
On the downside, it discourages the Lurkers from joining Free Republic and posting themselves – because they wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, receiving a personal attack. When that line has been crossed, it is bad for the forum and is time to mash the abuse button.
That is what the abuse button is for. If a Freeper feels he has been subjected to a personal assault – or notice it happening to another poster – then he should complain directly to the moderator by mashing “abuse”. There are consequences, especially if the abuse button is hit by more than one Freeper. Some threads get removed, others locked, some banished to the smoky backroom, some Freepers get warned, some suspended and some banned.
It has happened around here many, many times and especially on religion, science and drug enforcement threads (we have a lot of libertarians evidently).
If there is no room in scientific methodology for foundational principles that are expressive of something other than happenstance then fie on science and fie especially on those who wish to protect the hallowed grounds of theoretical science from the incursions of God. I am okay with a raucous debate on the confluence of theism and science. What I am not okay with is being treated as a Neanderthal.
To the extent underlying principles are not translated to religious doctrine in publicly funded schools, I see no prohibition in the Constitution or by legal precedent in Supreme Court decisions of Lemon, et al.
In private schools and homeschooling – both of which are gnawing away at the establishment – there is no legal prohibition under the “establishment clause” but there remains a cultural prejudice against the body of believers so educated. Christians, however, were warned it would always be this way and we should not be intimidated by it (I Timothy 6:20-21)
After all, if there were no underlying, organizing principles to the universe and life – it would be completely unintelligible and neither science nor math would have anything to do.
Drama queen much?