KU prof's e-mail irks fundamentalists (Christian Bashing OK)

Wichita Eagle ^ | 25 Nov 2005 | Associated Press

[Right Wing Professor]

Well gee golly, "Professor"........let me clue you into a little word called "context". Look it up. It explains the exchange you butted into.

What part of 'forum' don't you understand? Golly, you're just dying to tell people what they can and can't say, aren't you?

Now, "Professor", care to debate the impact of the First Amendment on the REAL issue on this thread and the reply above you deigned to stick your up-in-the-air nose into?

I'd love to. Call me when you've finished high school.

[Right Wing Professor]

Go somewhere and learn to think

ROFL!

Keep working on the GED, guy, and remember, threatening your teachers is not usually a good route to an A.

[longshadow]

Is it my imagination, or does it seem to you that the Blowhard Troll Association is holding a "Get to Know the Internet" Seminar tonight?

[orionblamblam]

> Heavens to Murgatroyd, can't you people *think*?

Better than those who "feel" and go on "faith," I'll wager.

>Not "equivalent to," analogous to.

Nope. "Mythology" is not insulting, nor does it imply moral wrongness. "Perversion" does.

Woudl you be *slightly* more offended if the class topic was "Creationists, Baby Rapers and other Perverts of That Caliber?"

> However, science types also seem to be unable to perform the type of abstract thinking that is necessary to solving certain classes of problems.

True. Only an artist could have dreamed up the Holocaust. And I guess only a seminarian could have come up with the reality that was the Stalinist utopia.

[RightOnline]

Dial up, Prof. I'm 50 years old, long out of high school, and you're way out of your league.

You wouldn't understand the true Constitutional implications of this 'issue' if it bit you in your ass.

I have known far too many of your type and I am still disgusted every time I run across one of your ilk.

Don't challenge me on the Constitutional issues here, amateur.

[Right Wing Professor]

Indeed. "Git yer ass down here to East Jesus, Kentucky, and we can settle this like men, right here in this h'yah trailer park"

[Right Wing Professor]

Yeah yeah. Everyone's a Supreme Court Justice on the internet. Just because you're 50 doesn't mean you've finished high school. Or that you should have been allowed to.

[RunningWolf]

What is this? Whether one finished high school or not has nothing to do with how much they understand the Constitution.

I probably learned more about the US Constitution in high school than some did at Universities.

Wolf

[RunningWolf]

Not a good idea Prof. Better to stay within the confines of your lecture halls.
Not all that have higher education care to flaunt it.

It those guys in east Kentucky that have paid with the blood of their lives that you can come over to America and say those things.

Leave America and perhaps the real world to us "ya'heuh"

Wolf

[Right Wing Professor]

It's just a shame, RW, that you don't confront people who post loony challenges and death threats here, rather than people who make fun of them for it.

Not everyonbe who has served cares to flaunt it either.

[RunningWolf]

I have not seen any death threats.

And both of us could be better at confronting loony challenges wihout and within.

Agree?

Wolf

[Right Wing Professor]

We could all be better, nicer, saner people.

[RunningWolf]

To that end I hope we have common goal.

Joe Frank is on PBR Chicago.

Out

Wolf

[j_tull]

Thanks for the argument to eliminate the "Religious Studies" department. A waste of money, no doubt.

I'm sure that someone could make me look like an a$$hole if they had full access to my e-mail account.

Full access won't be necessary, you do a fine job with your public posts.

[grey_whiskers]

And I guess only a lapsed seminarian could have come up with the reality that was the Stalinist utopia.

And only a failed minor-league player for the Yankees could have turned Cuba into the socialist paradise it now is.

And only an actor could have delivered the line "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" with such conviction.

Cheers!

[RunningWolf]

Touche

[donh]

I have no problem with the fact that, at bottom, all reasoning, including from assumed axioms in formal systems, requires some element of faith.

Not necessarily. The Axiom of Choice is a great example.

Um...are you arguing with me or agreeing with me? I agree that if you are going to offer formal proofs, you have to reveal what are the assumptions of your formal system--which you accept on faith, since you don't prove axioms, and that would include the Axiom of Choice.

You don't have to "believe" it, you just have to say whether or not you assume it.

What would be the point of assuming Axioms you don't know are true? There are important meta-mathematicians that have touted formal systems entirely divorced from domains of discourse, real or ideal, but you have been touting mathematics as the uber-cover of Everything, so I would not have thought you would be going in this direction.

[donh]

You never told me whether your accusation that I started the quarrel was a mistake or a lie.

It was a mistake. Thank you for your polite, straightforward and relevant correction.

[dsc]

"Keep working on the GED, guy"

Oh, I have a degree, and some graduate work, but I consider the ongoing study and experience I've gained since then to be much more useful.

Matter of fact, one of the densest wastes of space I ever knew had a Ph.D. (As have a number of the dense, useless wastes of space I've encountered on line.)

An educated fool is still a fool.

[dsc]

"Better than those who "feel" and go on "faith," I'll wager."

You'd lose.

"Nope. "Mythology" is not insulting, nor does it imply moral wrongness. "Perversion" does."

Case in point. It is blindingly obvious that it is gravely insulting to label a person's religious faith "mythology." I don't know what could account for your statement except bigotry or an inability to think.

"Woudl you be *slightly* more offended if the class topic was "Creationists, Baby Rapers and other Perverts of That Caliber?"

Actually, no, because that is so extreme that there's little danger of it being taken seriously.

"True. Only an artist could have dreamed up the Holocaust."

Really? Mao outdid the Holocaust four or five times over. Was he an artist? How about Mengele, was he an artist?

"And I guess only a seminarian could have come up with the reality that was the Stalinist utopia."

It would be more reasonable, to the thinking man, to say that only an ex-seminarian who had rejected his faith and become an atheist could have come up with the reality that was the Stalinist utopia.