Charles Johnson quite rightly excoriates Tim Pawlenty for some answers Pawlenty gave about evolution in a recent Newsweek interview:
Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?
I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class.
[….]
Where are you personally?
Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution andcreationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.
David Frum replies that “Pawlenty is a model of sensible modern conservatism” and goes on to say that Pawlenty will have trouble with the religious right anyway because they don’t view him as a real Jesus person (since he converted from Catholicism to evangelicalism when he got married).
I find stories like this, especially when they’re told by two intelligent conservatives (even if I don’t always agree with them) to be quite chilling: we have here a Republican candidate who is an anti-science loon but still may be too sensible and non-Jesus freaky to satisfy the Khmer Rogue faction that may dominate the Republican primaries.
jeffreyw
Fuckin taliban
arguingwithsignposts
Sleeping kitteh is tired of the “sensible conservative” B.S. Frum is a jackass. Where’s AsiangrrlMN’s rusty pitchfork when you need it.
DougJ
Sleeping kitteh is tired of the “sensible conservative” B.S. Frum is a jackass.
He looks like he’s getting bigger already.
General Winfield Stuck
gawd did too create amoebas — Twitter me this Sarah
Robin G.
Up here we’ve known Pawlenty for awhile, and let me tell you, in spite of what he may say (and I believe it when he says he’s an evangelical Christian, mind), at the end of the day, he’ll spout anything to get elected. He’s like Norm Coleman in that regard, or for a national approach, a bit like Mitt Romney. His political beliefs boil down to, “I want to win.” End of story.
You should *see* what he’s done around here in the last two years, since he decided he’s going to run for president and needed to buff up his conservative credentials. Things were bad before, but now they’re worse. Local aid has been slashed to the bare bones; Minneapolis had their snow plowing budget cut by, what, 50%? Their snow plowing budget. In Minneapolis. My street’s been plowed once in the last few weeks, and every morning The Wookiee and I have to push our car into traffic, because every spot to park is three inches deep in snow sludge. This current storm’s going to be a nightmarish wreck. They weren’t even pre-treating the roads yesterday. And this is just a small example.
God, the man is a worm.
cleek
i think Frum’s proved that he’s not exactly representative of modern “conservative” thinking.
r€nato
I am still very concerned that the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory of intelligent design is not being taught side-by-side with the Christian theory of intelligent design.
Why do we allow one ‘alternative’ theory and not others?
SGEW
First, Andrew Sullivan turned on the right wing, and I thought “well, ok, fair enough.”
Then John Cole became the voice of reason, and I was dumbfounded. I mean, John Cole! Right? ;)
Then Charles Johnson (Charles “Islam Is Teh Scary” Johnson!) became all reasonable as well and broke with the right, and I knew that the wingnuts had become so monstrously delusional that there was no way that they could return to reality.
Who’s next? Who’s left on the right with any integrity or critical thinking whatsoever?
Warren Terra
“Khmer Rogue” indeed. An apt turn of phrase, which I don’t recall seeing before.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
While Charles is no raging liebrul like you John (; , it is nice to hear some sanity out of that corner of the intertoobs. I don’t mind it when politicians who might run for president are talking about creationism or their belief in god or jeebus. It serves to remind me why I will never vote for someone like that.
There is no god because if there was then he would have to take responsibility for creating Cheney.
Dave
Until something else replaces the Republican Party as the other member of our two-party system, the Republic is well and truly fucked.
DougJ
“Khmer Rogue” indeed. An apt turn of phrase, which I don’t recall seeing before.
I’m hoping it will catch on.
arguingwithsignposts
@DougJ: She, just for the record.
Zifnab
He’s a convert. Of course, he’s a convert from Catholicism, a religion that is just conservative enough to fill up half the Supreme Court. But it doesn’t matter what you say or how you vote, because Pawlenty wasn’t born a born-again true believer.
Nothing is going to be pure enough for these yokles. They’ve defined it out of the reach of any mere human. Only Her Holyness of Wasilla or the Late Saint Ronny Raygun will satisfy their fantasies.
The radical religious base of the conservative movement would probably vote Jesus for President if someone just put his name on the ballot. They aren’t interested in policy or even politicians.
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ:
DougJ, I am headed your way tomorrow, do you have any suggestions for a good restaurant in the greater Rochester area.
calipygian
@DougJ:
The Taliban Tea Bagger’s can’t be the Khmer Rouge faction. The Khmer Rouge killed people who wore glasses. Idiocracy’s Warrior Queen wears glasses with that slutty librarian look that very famously launched a thousand Bill Kristol hard ons.
So, as much as I like the turn of phrase, I don’t think its going to work.
arguingwithsignposts
TIME FOR SOME JESUS BUTTON!!
ETA: “Jesus button” is a link.
MikeJ
@calipygian: Note, not rouge, rogue, as in the title of Palin’s book.
DougJ
DougJ, I am headed your way tomorrow, do you have any suggestions for a good restaurant in the greater Rochester area.
The best restaurant I’ve been to in the area is Good Luck. It’s a modern, eclectic small plate place.
For ethnic food, I recommend two Indian places (Thali and Tandoor, both of which have fantastic lunch buffets), an Ethiopian place (Abyssinia), and a Koren bbq place (Seoul Garden).
The other high-end place I like is 2Vine (which is sort of the canonical, nice downtown restaurant people go to).
EDIT. There are also two very good bbq places — Dinosaur BBQ and Sticky Lips. Dinosaur can be real crowded.
Robin G.
@Zifnab:
The fucking scary thing is, if we had the Second Coming of the Resurrected Ronald Reagan, once they saw his platform, he wouldn’t be good enough for them either.
SGEW
However, speaking of reasonable: According to Gallup, 66% of Americans believe that it’s probably or definitely true that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.” (2007 poll, question B).
Chew on that.
Viva BrisVegas
@Zifnab:
Not if he was Jesus Garcia.
gbear
Don’t believe it for a second. Beneath the slick mask, Pawlenty is a dominionist who’d fit right in on C-street.
He would also turn the whole world into Eagan, MN. A fate worse than death.
danimal
Y’all did notice that he didn’t really answer the question, didn’t ya?
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ:
Thanks DougJ, for your suggestions. BTW are any of these places near Canandaigua, since that’s where I am headed.
cmorenc
@RobinG
THIS hits the nail squarely on the head. The key dynamic within the GOP over the past 15 years isn’t simply the rise of hard-core “movement” conservatives, including the coalition of secular economic, the hard-ass hawkish foreign policy wing, and the religious conservatives. Rather, equally important is that this hard-right faction has become so dominant that the (formerly) substantial moderate faction capable of reasonable pragmatic thinking and policies (and seeking reasonable pragmatic middle-ground accomodation with democrats) have been forced into a choice between becoming abandoned outcasts from their own party, or else morphing into a rigidly hard-right ideological turn.
I’m no fan of Rudy Giuliani or Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney et. al., but a dozen years ago, none of them felt forced to opportunistically kowtow so cravenly to the hard-right lunatics in their party, and all felt comfortable espousing some truly felt progressive instincts on some issues, even though none was anything close to a progressive across the board. All three were the kind of Republicans we democrats might not vote for or approve of many parts of their approach to governing and policy, but we could at least live with. Not so now.
schrodinger's cat
@SGEW:
That’s scary indeed.
RSA
Intelligent conservatives are in a tough spot. Some 60% of Republicans believe in something completely nonsensical: Pure, stupid Creationism. And it’s part of their core beliefs, with religious backing. What are the options for a Republican politician? Soft-pedal the issue or join in the stupidity, I guess.
Howlin Wolfe
@Robin G.: ABSOLUTELY! I’m so tired of his mug all over the St. Paul Pioneer Fishwrap, too.
Napoleon
@schrodinger’s cat:
You going skiing? I was actually looking on line and at maps to figure where I may stay etc if I want to do a trip to Bristol Mountain this winter (never gone there before).
ellaesther
Well, I for one am glad that I’m not a Christian, because if I were a Christian, this bit of news might well have put me off my Christmas cheer! Good gravy, people.
Tim fucking Pawlenty!
(Also: “I believe that God… is who he says he was”? Grrrrr, this sort of statement cheeses me the hell off! The believers [of any stripe] who think that God is so small, so itty-bitty, so teeny-tiny, so infintesimally minute that they and they alone know What and Who He is, that He can be contained in their books and cannot be found anywhere else — well, sir, I said good day! Also).
toujoursdan
What is it with American evangelicals?
The Vatican, the Church of England, the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Europe, the United Church in Canada, the Episcopal Church USA and other mainline Protestants all accepted evolution a long time ago.
Genesis in the original Hebrew isn’t prose. It’s poetry. It isn’t meant to be factual. It is meant to be mythical (a truth about ourselves and the universe conveyed in a non-literal form). Evolution doesn’t pose a problem for Jews or Christians who haven’t been touched by American fundamentalism.
I tend to put this in with the whole “War on Christmas” fauxrage. It isn’t about the Bible, evolution or even primarily about religion. It’s like a dog marking his territory and daring the “outsiders” to cross it. It’s a shot across the culture wars by people who want to return America to a white Protestant dominated country of the early 20th Century.
ellaesther
@arguingwithsignposts: Sleeping kitteh has the right attitude! She is wise, she is.
(Wait, Smudge is a she, right?)
Howlin Wolfe
@DougJ: I like that, too. I also refer to the people who hold the backward, anti-scientific beliefs as “Medieval-Americans.”
DougJ
DougJ, I am headed your way tomorrow, do you have any suggestions for a good restaurant in the greater Rochester area.
No, Canandaigua is about 30 minutes away. In Canandaigua, there is a the New York Wine and Culinary Center. It’s a little hit or miss but can be good for lunch especially if you want to try some interesting local wines by the glass. There is also supposed to be a top-notch German restaurant called Rheinblick. I haven’t been but people really like it.
At the lower end, I really like McGregor’s Tap and Grille.
gbear
@Robin G.:
Plus what Robin G. said. He is a worm.
Notorious P.A.T.
We can mock the ignorant because we never practice such idiocy ourselves.
ellaesther
@toujoursdan: Many, possibly most, evangelicals would tell you that those people aren’t actually Christians, and they are just as much going to hell as the rest of us.
They would say it with genuine love and concern and would be praying for their salvation, but… yeah. Not Christians.
Just Some Fuckhead
I thought Pawlenty’s answer was quite sensible from within the framework of his belief system. Ya can’t generally push people off their beliefs so ya gotta hope they don’t feel compelled to apply them to everyone.
Notorious P.A.T.
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Jesus Christ.
schrodinger's cat
@Napoleon:
Visiting friends, so it depends on what they want to do.
Inkadu
@SGEW: We are all trying to placate ourselves with the idea that pawlentys appeal is to a small minority on the far right when in fact most of the country agrees with him. Religion makes for stupid. There’s no good way to include it politics.
Also: any advice on blogging with a jailbroken itouch? Rss is nice for bj but doesn’t include comments.
Hunter Gathers
Answer of the year.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@cmorenc:
__
Well, yeah, me too, especially for looking at fluorescently-tagged stuff in cells in vivo. But what does that have to do with Pawlenty?
feebog
T-Paw knows which wing of the party is key to nomination in 2012, and it ain’t the moderates. The entire bunch is tilting hard right. The problem for them is the same problem they had in 2008, which can be described as “thin bench syndrome”. Romney won’t pass the religious test, the Huckster is not going to run, ditto Palin, so who is left? Two of their bright lights, Sanford and Ensign have gone down in the flames of sexual impropriety. Bobby Jindal is never going to get the support of the racists, and Crist is self-imolating in Florida. Not a lot of survivors to pull out of the wreakage.
Notorious P.A.T.
@SGEW:
Thank you. Mote in the other’s eye, beam in your own. One thing’s for sure: the only way to stop this kind of thing is to keep going to church and putting money in the collection plate. After all, here and there is a religious leader who accepts rationality, so maybe some of that support will trickle down to him or her. Maybe.
Robin G.
@gbear:
AAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH. Even their Byerley’s sucks.
@Howlin Wolfe: The frightening thing is, the PiPress has been less sucky than the Strib as of late. Seemed to happen sometime in the midst of ownership flipping. One day I opened to the Strib editorial page and it was like stepping into Bizarro World.
Howlin Wolfe
@SGEW: SGEW, I looked at the poll at the link, and I didn’t see %66 – it was 46% (not especially encouraging, but not as bad). Was there a further link?
Napoleon
@schrodinger’s cat:
Have fun. I wish I had friends in the Finger Lakes region.
arguingwithsignposts
@ellaesther:
She.
Notorious P.A.T.
Who cares what scientists think? After all, they go around with crazy ideas like we can build a worldwide communications system by putting relay stations in orbit! And they claim that by using quantum mechanics we can design computers small enough to fit on a desktop!
Notorious P.A.T.
@Howlin Wolfe:
That is horrible.
I like that )
schrodinger's cat
@Napoleon:
Thanks! I will. The finger lakes are wonderful in summer too.
Love the small vineyards around the Watkins Glen area
liberal
God, I hate that crap. Scientific facts don’t vary with geographic location.
pbg
There is a Catholic brand of Conservatism, of whom William F. Buckley was the icon, that is just plain being squeezed out of the movement, which is this Southern Strategy chimera of old country-club Republicans, evangelistas and Randivikii–who are only held together by hatred of libruls.
I have a friend–well-read, Catholic, Obama-hater, culturally old-fogey. But he listens to Rush and reads TownHall, and was spouting all the it-warmed-in-the-Middle-Ages and sunspot-activity talking points on global warming, and after trying to make the point that you can’t make scientific arguments without using actual numbers, I just said, “Tell me, Don, when did Scientific American become a disreputable liberal rag for you?”
That brought him up short. We ended up talking about Christmas plans.
Maybe he’s going to discover that there’s no place for him in the current Conservative movement. Maybe not.
Khmer Rogue. I like that.
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ:
Thanks DougJ for all your suggestions, it really depends on the weather where we go out to eat, if it is snowing we will stick to Canandaigua if we have good weather then we will head to Rochester, so all the suggestions are helpful!
Robin G.
@Notorious P.A.T.: I’m not sure I believe those numbers. The “Definitely True”s, maybe, though I’d imagine they would be closer to 30%; but the “Probably true”s? That’s got to be too high. Creationists tend to be hardliners. I just have trouble believing there are so many of them who are wishy-washy on the subject. But this might just be desperate hope on my part, I admit. Who did the polling?
Rock
Honestly? I sometimes think I’d like to see evolution dropped from the public school curriculum. It’s certainly true that, the vast majority of the American public does not believe in it and their tax dollars pay the bills. Obviously, tyranny of the majority is in general a stupid way to run a country, but if people want to teach their kids evolution they could still home-school.
While I personally absolutely think the theory of evolution describes the development of life on Earth, dropping it from the curriculum would have the benefit of me never having to hear people complain about it being taught anymore.
Notorious P.A.T.
Well, God never lies. Just ask God!
Brick Oven Bill
Most thinking people agree that ‘man’ emerged in central Africa around 30,000 years ago. This was a successful organism and would have multiplied until it competed with itself for resources. This competition would have pushed some of the Species north.
This is where the modern Left (evolutionists interruptists) argue that human evolution stopped.
I disagree with the evolutionists interruptists and believe than man had to adapt to his changing environments in order to survive outside of the cradle of his emergence.
The first challenge would have been the cold. To counteract the cold, men migrating north would have had to learn to create structures to provide shelter from the elements. Those lacking the ability to learn would have been killed off. There still would have been a steady supply of food at these middle latitudes.
Then, at higher latitudes, a source of food during the winter months would have needed to be developed, requiring more biochemical changes in the human brain. And then came the metals.
Metals allowed energy to be more effectively directed. Whereas before, a club or a primitive spear would have been a blunt tool used to direct energy, the point of a blade made ‘accuracy’ and ‘discipline’ valued traits of those who would be able to successfully rape, pillage, and propagate.
The emergence of gunpower in the northern latitudes placed before unimaginable powers in the hands of men. Muscle power was replaced with chemical power as the decider of conflicts. From this chemical power, emerged the defining traits of the successful man: Talent and Virtue.
This Virtue is the weakness that Cloward and Pivens taught the Alinskyites (those lacking evolution-based Virtue, because of no exposure to gunpowder) to target:
“Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules.”
This is kind of a shame, because without Virtue, you only have Talent, and then bad things happen. Both the modern Left and the modern Right should just acknowledge evolution-based HBD and celebrate our diversity. This is the best way for everybody to get along in the long run.
DougJ
BTW, for wine tasting in the Finger Lakes, this NYT piece on the tasting on Lake Seneca is terrific. You wouldn’t think so, but it recommends lots of great out of the way places. Overall, I prefer the east side to the west side but you can do a loop. The one winery I like they left out is Bloomer Creek.
But it’s really a good travel guide.
SGEW
@Howlin Wolfe: That’s the first poll question, which was: “Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?” In 2008, a total of 44% chose the “within 10,000 years” answer (14% chose “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process”).
The second question (which I cited) was “Do you think — [Evolution or Creationism] — is — [ROTATED: definitely true, probably true, probably false, (or) definitely false]? That one got the 66% probably or definitely true.
[N.B.: Yes, 66% believe that humans were created within the last 10,000 years, while simultaneously 53% believe we evolved (beep! does not compute!), but that’s cognitive dissonance for you. It’s a hell of a drug.]
[ETA: @Robin G.: Gallup]
Just Some Fuckhead
@Robin G.: I think there’s a good chunk of people that were raised on fairly fundamental religious “principles” who may have rejected it as a lifestyle for themselves but still hold onto much of the indoctrination, even if perhaps unknowingly. I think that’s where these kinda numbers come from.
Janet
At this point, the party is pretty evenly split. There’s the Khmer Rouge faction–which hate cities, hate intellectuals, etc. A lot of them are pretty angry they worked hard and played by the rules yet they are living pretty lousy lives, fraught with anxiety both economic and cultural.
The other faction are what I call the Banana Republicans. These are really the dominant bunch of politicians in the Republican Party today–George Bush was a classic example. Their goal is to roll back the New Deal. Their core policy objective is to lower the tax burden on rich people, and to make it possible for people who are powerful now to get more powerful. All other economic and political theories flow from this. These guys like trickle-down economics, not because it generates real growth, but because income inequality is really nice when you’re at the top. They like deregulation in general, because regulation has served to weaken people who have access to big piles of money. But it’s not consistent–they like more laws when it comes to private actions like torts because hey, torts are bad for people who currently have big piles of money.
These guys are literally trying to turn this country into a Banana Republic, with minimal investments in public infrastructure, (education, roads, etc) with no safety net, with minimal and regressive taxation, with a small and weak middle class, and with a very large poor population. Income inequality is a feature, not a bug.
What’s most concerning about these guys is their embrace of Trotskyite fiscal planning. The actual plan is to cut taxes and throw the federal balance sheet so completely out of whack that we have no other choice but to cut programs that the vast majority of Americans want and value. This “let’s create a fiscal disaster to fix the system” thinking is radical, and it is horrifying. It reminds me of
Between the Khmer Rhouge faction of dissatisfied cultural conservatives who have been given a really raw deal, and the Banana Republicans who want to blow up this country fiscally so that it stagnates and ultimately devolves into a Banana Republic, I don’t know which I fear more. Probably the Banana Republicans.
Notorious P.A.T.
Most every American who is religious is wishy-washy about it. “Oh, pay no attention to the part of the Bible that says to punish homosexuals!” “Sure, my church doesn’t want me to use birth control, but I really want to!” etc etc etc.
Anyway, “probably true” is a perfectly reasonable answer to a question if someone doesn’t think we can know for sure 100%.
Notorious P.A.T.
ever hear of Neanderthal Man?
Please stop embarrassing yourself. I feel bad for you.
Leelee for Obama
@Rock: And what’s next-they already revise the curricula in states to suit their political ideology. Science is science-history is history-math is math, spelling is spelling. Enough with letting the people who like fairy tales decide what really happened. That’s for religion and philosophy. Hard sciences should be taught as is, no BS. And the home-schoolers who teach creationism as science should have to let their kids learn real science to get a diploma. Sorry, but minds are terrible things to cheat.
Napoleon
@DougJ:
I am leaving the office in a minute but the NYT did a piece a few years ago on winter wines in the region (I am not sure what they are really called, but they leave the grapes on into the winter then pick them).
Seanly
@toujoursdan:
Heresy!
It’s the Tinkerbell Syndrome – if enough of us believe something with enough conviction then it has to be true. Facts don’t matter against the believes of the majority.
Everybody clap louder & harder to drown out the facts!
See also Atrios response – http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009/12/important-thing-to-remember.html – the anti-science talk and dropping Xtian buzzwords are just ways to further the scamming of the rubes & hicks that pay and vote for them.
inkadu
@pbg: Randivikii??
@Robin G.: “Probably trues” includes all those people who want to believe God created everything and who have no concept of the geological time line. That number doesn’t seem too high to me.
If people had to pick between “God created everything in 1963,” and “God didn’t create anything,” people would be trying to sell their Beatles albums to the Museum of Natural History.
Napoleon
@Napoleon:
Here, winter wine story.
Brick Oven Bill
The theory is that the successful Homo Sapien Species, coming out of Africa, completely exterminated the Neanderthals Notorious P.A.T.
schrodinger's cat
@Napoleon:
I have tasted them, they are a bit too sweet for my liking. I think they are called ice wines, but I am not sure. I hope you have a great Holiday and Happy New Year!
@DougJ:
That’s what we did. We also did some beer tasting, and am not much of a beer drinker, but the beer was good. I think the place was Wagner Wineries, if remember it correctly.
Notorious P.A.T.
Amen. Calculus and algebra were created after the Bible was written. Who could say that some nut wouldn’t claim that teaching those in school goes against their religion?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Just Some Fuckhead:
From a practical standpoint, what exactly is the point of breaking with something you were taught as a kid, if it has no impact on your life? These polls might produce different results if people understood that the answer to the question “is mankind older than 10,000 years” has a direct impact on their lives (e.g. what sort of medications and treatments can be developed to help them when they are sick). The PR problem that evolutionary theory (and other similar areas of historical science, bearing on things like the age of the earth, the origins of the solar system, etc.) has is that most folks can’t connect it to their daily lives. It is a Discovery Channel TV special issue for them, not a practical issue.
SGEW
[Insert standard formal request to preemptively ban B.O.B. for racism and/or sexism from any thread dealing with evolution here.]
El Cid
@Brick Oven Bill:
And yet the gigantopithecines are still around and commenting on this very blog.
Comrade Mary
@schrodinger’s cat: Ice wines are pretty sweet for straight drinking, but try a little poured over vanilla ice cream, or a tiny amount poured into a chocolate cup, which you eat once it’s empty. Yum!
Notorious P.A.T.
@Brick Oven Bill:
Right. And Neanderthals evolved from human ancestors to survive in ice age Europe. In Europe, I mean.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Mary:
That does sound delicious, I will have to try it.
DougJ
I am leaving the office in a minute but the NYT did a piece a few years ago on winter wines in the region
Yes, ice wines. Lamoreaux Landing, Heron Hill, and Casa Larga do excellent ones. A touch pricey, though.
DougJ
That’s what we did. We also did some beer tasting, and am not much of a beer drinker, but the beer was good. I think the place was Wagner Wineries, if remember it correctly.
Yes, Wagner does beer tastings too. It’s a good region for beer as well — Custom Brewers, Southern Tier, Rohrbach, Ommegang (not really that close by, it’s in Cooperstown).
inkadu
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: It would help, certainly, if people saw the impact of evolution in their daily lives, but, alas, most of what we’ve learned as a species is unnecessary for any one individual to get by. This is about religion. People are afraid of to say anything against God or religion, so they softpedal it at best. Nobody says Louis XIV was “probably” the president of the United States.
schrodinger's cat
Question for BJ dessert makers and bakers. I have some excellent whole vanilla beans that I got as a gift straight from an organic farm in Kerala, India. What do I do with it? Something that showcases their flavor. I have to warn you that my baking skills are rudimentary.
Laura W
@DougJ: This far into the thread and no one has called this the Best DougJ Post Title of December yet?
Allow me.
aimai
ThatLeftTurn in ABQ I’ve made that argument a gazillion times on right wing/natalist/mommyblogs. But I’ll tell you, they are very well defended against outsiders. Paranoia and a conviction that Satan is attacking them is such a huge part of their world view that it trumps everything else. I’ve brought up the role that “old earth” geology plays in everything in their lives from getting on the highway safely to oil exploration but they simply don’t bother to put the two things together. Or rather, they are determined not to put two incongrous things together. If you make the argument about modern medicine being entirely based on evolutionary princples, like pigeon and dog breeding, they will generally resort to the argument that they heard somewhere that “evolution is ok in little things” but what we are “really” talking about is did god create man??? huh??? did he?? Are you a monkey’s uncle? Because I’m not…and on and on and on.
You’d be amazed at the number of people who dismiss all science based arguments with “my uncle’s a doctor and he thinks evolution is a crock…” or “my uncle’s an engineer and he told me that the earth is only 6000 years old…” Most of the time they’ve forgotten that there was ever any actual argument for which proof was being adduced. What’s left is a series of bullet belief points that are arrayed against Satan.
Basically, most people don’t get up in the morning and think about anything consecutively, let alone things that would puzzle them if they did think about them.
aimai
Seanly
@Brick Oven Bill:
You are among the biggest idiots in the world.
Evolution is an ongoing process. No respectable scientist would assume that the natural processes responsible for our evolution have stopped.
There’s also a strong racist bent in your comments. Not all advances in civilization came from Europe, douchebag.
Zifnab
@Rock:
You can’t hide this shit from people. Evolution doesn’t just go away because you refuse to teach it. And as the backbone theory behind the better part of biology, you can’t learn about anything with a tailbone or a ribosome without bumping into it.
Try teaching the Krebes Cycle to a high school freshman while deftly dodging each and every “Why do we work like this?” question aimed your way. Hell, tackle photosynthesis – a process common to an entire Kingdom of life – without addressing it’s origins or it’s regional variations.
Try putting a kid through med school without any idea of how bacteria can mutate over time. Try putting a kid through god-damn farmer’s school without dealing with the exact same problems.
Genetic Engineering is becoming a cornerstone of agriculture in the American Economy. You’re going to have every grocery store in the nation sporting Franken-foods without addressing why they exist?
Good fucking luck.
Maybe in the Dark Ages you could get away with this kind of willful ignorance, but playing evolutionary denialist in an age where we’ve mapped the Human Genome is like playing flat earther after we’ve gone to the moon.
DougJ
This far into the thread and no one has called this the Best DougJ Post Title of December yet?
Thanks!
schrodinger's cat
What’s next, no teaching Newton’s Laws? because the God made the earth the center of the universe. I read an article, I think it was linked to by some one on BJ where some crackpot was arguing against the Theory of Relativity, because he thought it was some kind of liberal theory, since it had the word relative in it.
*Head desk*
cleek
@schrodinger’s cat:
i love Doc Hoa, it’s a scruffy little Vietnamese place on Monroe ave.
(though that’s downtown Roch…)
SGEW
@Seanly:
I see that you are not familiar with our resident self-admitted racist white supremacist. It’s not a bend, it’s the whole rod. As it were.
aimai
Oh, Schroedinger’s Cat. I highly recommend doing something with cream to “showcase the flavor” of those vanilla beans. You could make your own vanilla essence by marinating them in alcohol but why would you? The place that it will really be remarkable is in home made ice creams–like this recipe for Burnt Caramel Ice Cream from epicurious.com (you only need four egg yolks, btw.) It calls for scraping the vanilla seeds out of the bean with a sharp knife and steeping them in the cream. Then you can put the “used” bean into your sugar bowl to make it vanilla scented.
The cookbook “Spice” by Ana Sortun also has a killer recipe for shortribs with carrots cooked with a little vanilla. If you are daring you can throw the vanilla bean directly in with the short ribs.
aimai
Robin G.
@SGEW: Sooner or later, with proper education, we’ll get more people into the “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process” category. More effort has to be made to convince people that evolution and belief in God don’t have to be inherently contradictory.
I’m also intrigued to see that there’s been basically no movement in the percentage breakdown in almost 30 years. That seems odd, too.
ericblair
@Seanly: It’s the Tinkerbell Syndrome – if enough of us believe something with enough conviction then it has to be true. Facts don’t matter against the believes of the majority.
Either that, or if EEevilution or Global Warming is true, then the Dirty Fucking Hippies were right and we were wrong and that is intolerable. So, Creationism and no Global Warming it is. QED.
Once you define yourself by your enemies, you’re booked in business class on the next nonstop flight to Cloud Cuckoo Land.
danimal
It may be worthwhile to let the creationists triumph in some isolated locales as a social experiment.
We can see how the local economy develops as the educated elite move their kids to better schools.
We can watch the health statistics as skeptical parents refuse immunizations because immunization is based on evolutionary assumptions.
We can observe how the churches react to the newfound control of the school curriculum.
It would be interesting, but I wouldn’t wish it on my kids.
calipygian
As usual, you need to check conservapedia for your daily dose of crackpottery.
Midnight Marauder
Who does this guy think he is? Dennis Green? At least he doesn’t have to worrying about crowning anyone this time, amirite?
+1 (Day off, bitchez!)
GregB
Holy moly.
Charles Johnson is becoming a voice of reason and Jane Hamsher is canoodling with Grover Norquist.
We’re in political wormhole territory here.
-G
Ruemara
You know even as Christian, I believed in evolution. Science has nothing to do with faith and faith doesn’t need to be backed up by science. What the hell is wrong with that? Why must you be an idiot to be an elected GOP?
JenJen
Whoa… looking around LGF, I hadn’t realized the nutters were all upset about the White House Christmas Ornaments. It appears that Breitbart spotted a piece of an Andy Warhol print of Mao on one of the ornaments, which means we should probably impeach Obama. Or just execute him as this commenter suggested:
“We can’t wait until 2012 to get rid of this comunist bastard of Hussain Obama. The people of the United States must revolt, and demand that this low life, President be impeached and tried for treason agaisnt this great nation of ours. Mao Tse Tung would have allready placed him before a firing squad. A fate he deserves, but that we are too civilized to impose upon this bastard.”
Unbelievable. Over a Christmas ornament.
Redshirt
What, do you gather, is the percentage of Tea-Baggers who are also Evangelicals? 50%? Higher?
I would posit there is a similar philosophy behind each: A dogmatic clinging to whatever belief system is supported, regardless of any facts or evidence.
So, you see these same folks involved in Creationism “debates”, and these same folks protesting the government to “get their hands of my medicare!”.
Fox news is the network, streaming cognitive dissonances all day to these precise people.
I ask: How do you reason with someone who rejects reason?
Brachiator
@toujoursdan:
Obviously wussy religions.
Maybe Pawlenty was trying for some middle ground. Unfortunately, intelligent design is intellectual fraud.
Frank West
I am tired of the term “evangelical”. When did it surface as the often-used term it is today? Did we not previously refer to believers of this ilk as “fundamentalists”? Did that term become so pejorative that its constituents decided to change it? “Oh, the word ‘evangelical’ has the word ‘angelic’ in it — that’s us!” I prefer calling them something more descriptively accurate, such as nut-jobs.
SGEW
[I’m serious. Revoke his posting privileges before it gets worse.]
geg6
Dinosaur BBQ is awesome. Worth the wait. That is all.
amk
B.O.B – you’re right. Reading your posts, I do suspect if evolution ever happened with your kind.
schrodinger's cat
@aimai:
I was thinking of custard!
Midnight Marauder
@Redshirt:
Just sayin’.
danimal
@Frank West: Evangelical and fundamentalist are two different strains of Christianity. There’s overlap, but Evangelicals don’t necessarily need to be anti-intellectual in the way that fundamentalists are. Evangelicals can be evolutionist or creationist.
freelancer
@calipygian:
headdesk.
Reading that on a website created by a computer. That wouldn’t exist. Save for extrapolations derived from quantum physics.
headdesk
Seriously, Science Deniers should be stripped at of all the things produced from the science they deny. Modern Medicine, the Internet, HDTVs, Xboxes, internal combustion engines, etc. Enjoy your own Middle-Ages.
Zifnab
@danimal:
Like in rural Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiania, and Texas. Fuck you very much.
It’s not much of a social experiment. Really more another trench line in the class warfare struggle.
Rich elites are allowed to get higher education and understand how the world actually works (within the buffers of religious allowance – you can go from being a bible thumping evangelical trooper to a post-modern Unitarian deist, so long as you keep feeding the collection plate).
The unwashed masses are denied access to the education needed to make it into the professional class, and are forced to treat their intellectual superiors with difference because damned if they know how a vaccine or a chemo treatment or a pair of aspirin work.
Have you seen all those ads for “Royal Jelly” and healing magnets and the power of prayer? We’ve been conducting this experiment for ages. It never ends well.
ellaesther
@arguingwithsignposts: Sorry, yes! I saw that you had written that to DougJ after I had already posted and even after I could no longer edit, so I hoped you would forgive me obtuseness.
She is wise! Was my point! Sleeping kitteh is wise!
Mo
I think part of the problem is the media talking about the fight over evolution and simplifying things down to “Christians” don’t believe in evolution. Putting it this way is basically saying that Catholics, the largest religious group in the US, aren’t Christians.
So the message that people get from the media is that if you believe in evolution, you aren’t a Christian. Which is working into the hands of the fundamentalists trying to make their bible-inerrant view of the world the norm.
Tlazolteotl
David Frum ‘intelligent’?
See, that’s your first mistake right there.
Makewi
Is there something in this particular quoted passage that points to Pawlenty being anti-Science? I realize this sort of post is important to keep the condescending disdain alive, but I’m not seeing it here.
Frum is an idiot. He knows nothing about Evangelicals and what they might or might not accept.
r€nato
@freelancer:
there is a strain of extreme fundamentalism which insists that the value of pi is 3.
a) because the Bible says so
b) because irrational numbers imply that their god is not, in fact, omnipotent.
(irrational numbers, for the innumerate, are those which cannot be expressed as a fraction. They are numbers which include an infinite, non-repeating, non-predictable number of digits to the right of the decimal point.)
DZ
@Schrodinger’s Cat:
Scrape out the seeds and use in Sabayon – the perfect custard for them
danimal
@Zifnab: Oh, I’d never actually consent to allowing the creationists a total victory, because it would harm to many innocent children, but it’s too bad the yahoos never have to live with the consequences of their anti-intellectual BS.
Many of them, especially the leaders (see Pawlenty, T.) use weasel words to imply they are strict creationists when they really aren’t. The whole facade disgusts me.
freelancer
@r€nato:
Jesus was a carpenter. He would’ve wept.
Mary Jane Leach
Glancing at the post, my eyes editorialized “belief in creationism” into “belief in cretinism.”
Max
@SGEW: I think it’s like Red Rover and we’re sending Jane Hamster over.
handy
@Makewi:
Quoth Pawlenty:
That is decidedly anti-science.
Midnight Marauder
@Makewi:
I know you’re dense and all, Makewank, but come on. This one is a no-brainer.
But then again, you probably rock one of these T-shirts with a straight face.
Teach The Controversy, right?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Redshirt:
You don’t.
Instead, you have to fight them.
The tricky part is how do you know for certain that you are dealing with someone who rejects reason, rather than just someone who is operating outside the circle of your own limited and fallible understanding of what you think is “reason”. Far too many people are far too confident in their own notions as to exactly where that boundary lies, and Nietzche’s abyss is always lurking and waiting, happy to have a conversation with them.
JD Rhoades
@r€nato:
They don’t seem to give God much credit for intelligence. I mean why coulsn’t an omnipotent God create irrational numbers?
Guess Zappa really nailed it:
Hey, Let’s get serious . . .
God knows what he’s doin’ . . .
He wrote this book here
An’ the book says:
“He made us all to be just like Him,” so . . .
If we’re dumb . . .
Then God is dumb . . .
(An’ maybe even a little ugly on the side)
Grace Nearing
@danimal: I did notice that Pawlenty believes God is who God says He is. Must have shown Pawlenty three different forms of ID, two with recent photos.
Makewi
Sure, if you define science as “the opposite of what the bible says”
He does say not necessarily in science class. That’s what smart people call a tell.
I do believe you may be confusing evolution with abiogenesis. You should understand that they are actually separate things, but then perhaps your time is spent finding clever t-shirts rather than seeking the truth of things.
schrodinger's cat
@r€nato:
In that case, where do complex numbers fit in?
ellaesther
@Mary Jane Leach: Well, you know. Same, same.
handy
@Midnight Marauder:
I don’t think it’s the ID stuff that shows Pawlenty to be anti-science. That is metaphysics, which is not science, but is still can be a worthwhile conversation to have. Rather it’s his personal beliefs about creation.
Makewi
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Does your definition of reason contain the word consensus?
handy
@Makewi:
No, science is defined by making observation and making frameworks around these observations. The bible is a story about man’s struggle to know God.
Makewi
@handy:
I agree.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
I dunno, this whole thing smacks of fearmongering.
The GOP wants to fear us up on terrorism, teh gay, Mexicans, and national debt sociaIism higher taxes, while the DEM wants to fear us up on the crazy in the GOP.
Those scary turrists! Those scary creationists!
I just can’t feel it. I am not afraid of terrorists, and I am not afraid of Tim Pawlenty. At all.
I need whole new things to be afraid of. The old ones have lost their luster. Since I got vaccinated, I can’t even be afraid of the Swine Flu now.
Alright, I have to admit, Blackleg is scary.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Makewi:
I don’t have the time to get into deep PoMo waters here, but I’d say that for me consensus is not the same as reason, but rather that if you find yourself well outside of common social consensus that is one of the warning signs to check and double-check your logic, because you may have a problem. Sort of like flying a plane by instruments in crappy weather.
Frank West
Thank you for the clarification, Danimal. (Were you a fan of the 80’s Bears?) Perhaps the rise in use of the term evangelical has just become more mainstream via the internet and hundreds of cable channels….
By the way, Mo (#113), having grown up Catholic and attending private school, I can vividly recall people outside my school asking me what religion I was. When I’d say Catholic I’d often hear in response, “Oh, well, I’m Christian,” (as though Catholics weren’t Christians, too). I guess pretty clearly that Catholics aren’t regarded as true Christians by some folk.
Why do I feel compelled to say that I am no longer practicing Catholicism? I suppose I’m still distantly informed by the faith — its “kinder, gentler” aspects. But I can still recall hands being whacked by nuns with rulers and one little girl being bound to her desk with jump ropes (her mouth taped shut) by a nun who got tired of this girl’s constant tattle-tailing. (This was first grade….)
handy
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
I’m warming to the opinion that, with all the sniping going around the left blogosphere the last few weeks is that the only thing liberals have to fear–is themselves.
Makewi
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Perhaps, but then history is full of common social consensus that has not only been wrong, but has often led to the misery of the masses. Then again, we seemed to have purged ourselves of all those undesirable sorts through selective “trimming” of those evolutionary branches, so I’m sure a brighter future is right around the corner.
So then, how does one determine if the warning sign is really just a little gas and not a heart attack?
mk3872
Great. So we’re going to have ANOTHER election cycle where someone’s religious beliefs AND the level to which they subscribe to those beliefs, is considered an issue that deserves to be inspected and reported on. Fantastic.
Bubblegum Tate
@SGEW:
That, to me, is a very interesting question. As I scan the ranks of wingnut bloggers, I don’t see any good candidates for brain rediscovery, but then again, I never thought we’d see such a turnaround from Charles Johnson, and yet here we are. If I had my wish, I’d want it to be somebody like Allahpundit. Not that I think he will, mind you, because he’s stupid and crazy and therefore found a perfect fit with the wingnut set, but because it’d be hilarious. Just think of what kind of crazy dirt he has on Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage!
@Seanly:
This is sadly true. In our current political system, being right about something is pretty much worthless. Sure, it’s nice to be able to legitimately claim you’re right, but that doesn’t mean anything for your political future. It’s nothing but a numbers game, pure and simple, and if you get enough people to back up your position, no matter how batshit crazy it is, then your position is, politically speaking, “correct.” It’s an absolutely horrendous system by which to run a country.
Midnight Marauder
@handy:
That’s where I have to disagree with you, because ID is just creationism dressed up in fancy verbiage because they got their asses handed to them for years trying to force “creationism” through the door. They are a small yet merry band and their language is decidedly anti-science. While Makewank derides the funny t-shirts at Teach The Controversy (and really, they are all hilarious), that is literally their rallying cry. TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!, they scream.
They create a controversy where there is none–by declaring evolution to be a bunch of half-cooked gobbledygook that we can’t even prove is 100% true–and by poisoning the well so thoroughly, they can creep in from school board to school board across the country and get their anti-science filth to predominate one doomed classroom at a time.
So yes, you’re goddamn right it’s anti-science. The wiki article on the intelligent design movement is a very enlightening read on how this neo-creationist faction has emerged in such a short time.
@Makewi:
Right, because I’m sure T-Paw could be trusted to set up some ID Safe Zones around school so kids could get their “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” on.
freelancer
@mk3872:
This is so 2007.
Makewi
@Midnight Marauder:
I see. You’ve decided to be uninterested in the details. Who can blame you. Thinking is hard.
Makewi
@Midnight Marauder:
Have you ever considered opening a pitchfork and torch stand? I think you’ll find its a booming business.
Brachiator
@Makewi:
The only place you could teach intelligent design would be in a class devoted to fraud, junk science, stupidity. But this is old news. There was a court case in which an intelligent design “text” had failed to cover its traces and still had references to creationism that had not been re-edited.
Politicians who continue to push this crap are either as stupid as their constituents, or are cynics throwing bones to the dim-witted.
Midnight Marauder
@Makewi:
See, this is the version of you I enjoy. Not that silly person who almost sounded like a rational, logical human being yesterday, but the one who just casually glosses over thoughtfully-crafted, detailed responses with a snippy, half-assed non sequitur.
Good to have you back.
Bubblegum Tate
@Mo:
A fairly significant number of U.S. fundies believe just that. Remember John Hagee’s statements about Catholicism being a “false cult” and a “whore religion?” He wasn’t kidding, and neither are his followers.
Makewi
@Brachiator:
They teach Shintoism, Taoism and Buddism in many history classes. Are they frauds?
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Makewi:
Wow, that is a great question. Being a survivor myself, and having taken some interesting classes in cardio rehab, and having pondered that very question day and night for a long time now ….. let me say this about that.
First thing we learn is that very few heart attacks are the Hollywood type. Sudden, catastrophic, chest clutching. Most of them present with some form of mild to medium pain or discomfort.
Second thing is stable versus unstable pain. Best to let experts explain this:
—//
Angina is classified broadly as stable or unstable, depending on its pattern of occurrence and severity. Stable angina occurs when increased physical activity (e.g., hurrying across a street or climbing a long flight of stairs) creates a greater demand for oxygen-rich blood to reach heart tissue.
Unstable angina occurs with lesser degrees of exertion or while at rest. This type increases in frequency and duration and worsens in severity. Unstable angina is an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) that requires immediate medical attention.
Unstable angina that occurs at rest is the most serious form. This type usually is caused by the formation of a blood clot at the site of a ruptured plaque in a coronary artery. If left untreated, it can result in heart attack and irreversible damage to the heart.
Variant (or Prinzmetal’s) angina—an uncommon form of unstable angina—is characterized by recurring prolonged attacks of severe ischemia that usually occur at rest.
–//
So it’s unstable angina that is the most troubling. It does not tend to go away after time, nor respond to things like nitroglycerin tables. It just sits there and feels a little like somebody is drilling a hole in your chest with a fencepost.
After a while, if it’s typical and you are male, it starts to scare the crap out of you.
If you are female, the problem is much more complicated, because women have smaller coronary arteries and the range of symptoms is wider and more confusing. The symptoms can be anything from typical angina, to upset stomach, shortness of breath, or just fatigue.
Bottom line? Dyspnea, sweating and chest pain at rest, that is unstable and prolonged, in a person with risk factors, is a mandatory 911 call. Let the paramedics figure out what it is. The sooner you call, the better.
Makewi
@Midnight Marauder:
See, I think you response was merely a bundling of supposed bad acts coupled with an attempt to group others onto those acts and then calling it good. Which isn’t so much thinking, or particularly well crafted. But I bet it feels good. Which is what’s important.
The other good thing is that your method doesn’t require actually understanding what evolution means. Which is a real time saver.
Midnight Marauder
@Makewi:
Do you think Tim Pawlenty is talking about teaching Intelligent Design in history classes? Do you think that any wingnut would be satisfied with that? Because if you do, you are, somehow, even stupider and more dense than I imagined.
@Makewi:
Right. So you didn’t read it. Glad we settled that.
mcd410x
@Zifnab:
I’m pretty sure someone in Kansas is doing this AS WE SPEAK.
On another note, could Hamsher and the Teabaggers on the same team and Charles Johnson slapping down Pawlenty be Peak Wingnut? It would be irresponsible NOT to ask …
Makewi
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Now this is reason, logic and a particularly well crafted explanation. It also has not need to take sides or make an enemy. Thanks.
Glad you survived sir.
Did you know the guy who came up with the system used for determining and classifying heart attacks was derided and scorned initially? Now his system is used by every emergency room. I’m glad he was persistent and didn’t rely on the existing consensus. It ended up saving lives. I wish I could remember his name.
Makewi
@Midnight Marauder:
Well, maybe when he says not in science class he’s thinking of art. But being a smart guy, you can see through his words.
Midnight Marauder
@Makewi:
You’re right. That’s why I’m not the one saying ID is going to be taught in fucking history and art classes, you silly ponce.
Makewi
@Midnight Marauder:
Connections that normal people make easily seem to be beyond your capabilities. This makes me sad for you.
inkadu
@Makewi: I don’t make too much of the “abiogenesis” isn’t part of evolution argument. Abiogenesis is the only scientific explanation for life, and the best theory pretty much follows the same general idea of evolution with much simpler chemicals. Since its so far back, we’ll probably never be sure.
In general conversation, though, people want to see PROOF. Evolution has a lot of easily demonstrable evidence. All abiogenesis has is life and the sensical proposition that it had to necessarily start somewhere. For me, abiogenesis is a teaching moment — where the philosophy of science is science can be stressed over the “buncha facts” aspect of science.
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: I have two chest problems. One is an intercostal muscle that gets a little sore right over where my heart is (or, you know, where the artery that goes to my heart is). The other problem is pericarditis, an inflammation of the heart lining. They’re not easy to tell apart.
@handy: The Bible is about man’s struggle to know God? Really? It should be a lot shorter, then, since He shows up right at the beginning and has extended chats with the principals.
Martian Buddy
@Makewi:
Are “they” teaching about chi in science class as if it was a viable scientific theory?
Just Some Fuckhead
@freelancer:
I thought he was a fisherman.
Midnight Marauder
@Makewi:
Funny. I’ve felt the same about you for a while now. And I think that is just about as good as any place to end thing with you.
inkadu
@Zifnab: Try teaching the Krebes Cycle to a high school freshman while deftly dodging each and every “Why do we work like this?” question aimed your way.
Damn, where do you teach? The only question I’ve heard in freshmen classes is, “Will this be on the test?”
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@inkadu:
Good mention, when there are two overlapping conditions, things can be really confusing for the patient.
I have a similar situation but TMI makes me hold back the details.
And then there is the emotional component, and they really don’t teach you about this. After surviving an MI, there is an elation period. Whee, I dodged the big bullet!
This is followed some months later by, Oh Shit, I have CAD (coronary artery disease) which is the Number One Killer and Never Really Goes Away No Matter What You Do. It’s a roller coaster, elation followed by depression, and then a sort of acceptance phase. Quite a ride.
The net effect is to make me really, really despise Joe Lieberman.
Martin
The proper scientific approach here would be to present *all* equally likely theories if you present one. If they’re going to put forward the ‘God made us out of Play-Doh’ theory, they need to teach that the following is equally likely:
I think the suspicious income tax inspectors would be particularly appealing to the fundies.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Even in Jesus’ day you needed two jobs to afford healthcare.
Makewi
@inkadu:
Regarding abiogenesis and the sensible notion that life had to start somewhere, I think that we can consider that matter settled, else this starts to get a little weird. We agree that this area must, for now at least, remain the responsibility of philosophy. We also agree on science being more than simply a “buncha facts”, and is instead a framework used to gain understanding via a well established method that has proven it’s usefullness.
I suppose we probably differ on the idea that it is a fair bet to allow evolution to borrow from a limited philosophy of the start of life and consider that science. I propose we cannot, and as such should not. Until we can.
If you wish to make an argument that a particular philosophy that can follow 2 vs 1 steps on the scientific method somehow makes it more “sciency”, then you are of course free to do so.
In the meantime, suggesting that some believe that the “spark” was random chance and some believe it the act of a higher being is not an unreasonable thing to do, as it happens to be the truth.
Makewi
@Martian Buddy:
I keep pointing out that the Pawlenty quotes actually mentions that this doesn’t need to happen in Science class, and yet people keep pretending that I didn’t. I guess it makes it easier to argue that way.
schrodinger's cat
@Martin:
Also don’t forget the ceiling cat bible. I have a sneaking suspicion that Tunch is ceiling cat.
Makewi
@Midnight Marauder:
Then I wish you a Merry Christmas and a good day sir.
inkadu
@Ruemara: Science has nothing to do with faith and faith doesn’t need to be backed up by science.
Some questions for you to consider vis-a-vis science and faith:
– Science has conclusively shown that our minds, memories and personalities are products of our brains. Alter the brain, and you alter the person. How does that square with the idea of a soul?
– If God is all-good, all-knowing, and all powerful, why is the Universe the way it is? There are short-circuiting answers to this question.
– Why doesn’t prayer work to heal people? (several studies)
– Why does God take such an interest in us if we are just accidental creation of the Universe? Why not snails, ants, or amoebas?
– As a Christian, if you don’t believe in Adam & Eve, what is original sin? Where did it come from? How does it square with evolutionary theory? Where in our evolutionary process did we develop it?
– If there is no original sin, what is the point of Christs redemption?
Anyway, those questions go a little afield of traditional science and start to getting into the field of things-making-sense. I totally get the whole “be kind to each other” thing in the context of a loving God. But the backstory just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
My problem is that the Higher Being most believers talk about is the one starring on the Trinity Broadcast Network (that Benny Hinn channel on your cable lineup).
If that is the higher being, then I am not able to believe that It has the intelligence to create anything useful at all, except maybe smallpox, which is one of Its greatest creations so far, in terms of profound effect.
I say fuck that higher being and the horse it ascended on. Very much, with prejudice.
Midnight Marauder
@Makewi:
Back atcha.
Makewi
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Given enough time mankind can fuck anything up. Mankind has had the concepts of God and religion for a long time. A lot longer than he has had burritos or internet porn. Which doesn’t bode well for burritos.
God created man in his image, eventually man would return the favor.
Or something.
Martin
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think there should be some kind of ultimate smackdown between lolcat Bible and the Conservative Bible for the title of ‘One True Unerring Bible’. I think Ceiling Cat can take it.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Exactly. Or something.
The older I get the more I like to use those two words.
As it says on my profile somewhere, the more I learn, the less I think I know. Eventually I will have learned everything and know absolutely nothing.
liberal
@Brick Oven Bill:
Wrong, as usual. Homo sapiens sapiens is about 100K years old.
Martin
@Ruemara: Because a large chunk of our society genuinely values idiocy over intelligence. Witness the rise of Sarah. They’re just appealing to their base.
That’s why we have a ‘Bring on the Brawndo’ tag here.
toujoursdan
– As a Christian, if you don’t believe in Adam & Eve, what is original sin? Where did it come from? How does it square with evolutionary theory? Where in our evolutionary process did we develop it?
– If there is no original sin, what is the point of Christs redemption?
This seems dependent on the Augustianian concept of Original sin whereby Adam and Eve were real people and original sin is transmitted through sex.
Most Christians reject that concept of original sin. It was never official teaching outside the Roman Catholic Church even when people believed in a real Adam and Eve. It was explicitly rejected by the Church of England’s 39 Articles of Faith.
For the Eastern Orthodox and Protestants, Original sin is merely the propensity of human beings to choose selfishness over selflessness and tribalism over inclusion. It’s part of the human condition, not dependent on a literal Adam and Eve. Jesus’ redemption is supposed to transform this.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@inkadu:
Rather oddly, that is one of the points of traditional Xtian theology that I’ve made my peace with. The doctrine of Original Sin strikes me as a useful and rather poetic metaphor for the behavioral and psychological consequences of sentient beings carrying around a bunch of Dawkins’ Selfish Genes inside them and being more than a little bit influenced by those genes while at the same time have enough self-awareness to realize that we are acting like no-good nasty shits when we act on some of our more selfish impulses.
inkadu
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
When I was in the hospital for my pericarditis before they had diagnosed it, I said a prayer to the sick Renaissance-era bastards who dug up corpses to dissect.
I’m still relatively young. My condition was treated with two weeks of advil. I take my blood pressure on occasion. It responds well to exercise, but is sensitive to weight, so it gets up there sometimes…
I don’t particularly want to die, but I know I’m going to at some point. Like you, I just want to be treated for what I have without losing my life savings to line Joe Liebermans insurance-toadying ass.
And with your name, I have to ask, how’s your diet been lately?
@Makewi: The word “philosophy” makes me itch. I feel like you’re proposing that Nietzsche, Heidegger and Plato all would have equal claim for discussing the origins of life.
If we are talking as science-as-philosophy instead of science-as-method, we are talking about metaphysical naturalism — the idea the the universe is composed of natural forces that can be studied. There is no God in the natural universe. Therefore any explanation including gods or supernatural beings can easily be excluded from any scientific explanation. I don’t think it’s a hard call.
This is an entirely semantic argument, but I think your definitions of “science” and “philosophy” both need some tightening up. If you have the time, try reading the Dover trial transcripts. They really get into it there.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill:
Not completely exterminated, as evidenced by the persistent existence of Brick Oven Bill.
PS, also, it was the Daleks. That is all.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@inkadu:
Heh. My preferred diet is one consisting entirely of red meat, cheese, bacon and anything containing lard.
Well, my diet is a little better than that now, but nowhere near ideal. If there is one thing that is going to kill me it will be my diet.
I take the latest and greatest maintenance meds and my cholesterol numbers are in the green, but really, I don’t trust that model very much.
I don’t smoke so that’s a plus. And I am cutting back on the stressful job thing as much as I can. I am much better at not letting them grind me into mincemeat than I used to be. Now I can say to my boss when at work, with a straight face, I love this job, it’s just being here that I hate.
Makewi
@inkadu:
Easily done. Philosophy is the examining of that which cannot yet be measured by the scientific method. All fields of science begin their life as philosophy, but not all philosophy will become science. I would put string theory in the philosophy camp and quantum mechanics among the sciences.
I would remind you that we use to think volcanoes were the work of gods, so be wary of labeling as it can have the effect of limiting attempts at understanding. If it helps, you can remove the phrase “higher being” and replace it with “a force we do not yet have the capability to measure”. The end result in terms of the philosophy of the “spark” is the same.
inkadu
@toujoursdan: @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I’m still left with a lot of questions. So people are just selfish, but how does Jesus dying on the cross really make up for it? We’re still selfish. But now God forgives us for it on account of us crucifying his son? And why did He wait so damn long to do it? And if redemption comes in the afterlife, what about my questions about the soul? We need a soul to get the reward, and we should be able to see evidence of it but we don’t. And what about other animals? My cat the mouse killer is more in need of redemption than I am.
Too many questions, usually glossed over with the word “mystery.”
I’m fine with Jesus the DFH, but Jesus the Christ doesn’t add up.
Martian Buddy
@Makewi: Is it your position, then, that it would be okay to teach chi as a valid alternative scientific theory so long as it wasn’t done in science class?
inkadu
@Makewi: Ah, I see. What you call philosophy I call hypothesis.
There are lots of crazy stuff you can believe without any evidence or good reason. Saying that “something we don’t know about or understand did it by some undetermined mechanism which we are not interested in because we would rather pursue this force we have no knowledge of or evidence for,” is much different than the parsimonious explanation of abiogenesis. I wouldn’t put them anywhere near on par. It would take quite a while to explain the differences between the two hypothesis, but I’ll just mumble about Occams Razor and probability and leave it at that.
bago
Oy Vey. I live on E street, a couple of blocks away from the C street tards. I so want to out-snark these people at breakfast.
Makewi
@Martian Buddy:
If I were to teach it, it would be in a class on modern philosophies or perhaps modern history in a section on current belief systems. Why? Because you lose something if you teach the history of ancient Japan and leave out the belief that everything has a spirit.
Why don’t you then teach ceiling cat or xenu? One is a joke, and the other is a fraud wherein the originator told everyone what he was going to do and then did it.
inkadu
BTW – On Intelligent Design in schools — it could be taught in a philosophy class. A senior honors philosophy class. If you can find one. And I bet Tim Pawlenty wouldn’t be happy with the result.
And I’d love a good, honest comparative religion class taught in every school. That was how they tried to smuggle religion into high school in the 70’s, after Supreme Court rulings. But not only are comparative religion classes a legal landmine for school, critically examining all religions equally is about the best thing you can do to wreck allegiance to a religious belief system.
asiangrrlMN
@Robin G.: Ditto this. He crows about balancing the budget–and he did it on the backs of the poorest people. HCMC, the ‘urban’ hospital (so to speak) is in dire straits because of the budget cuts. He is an evil man who will say anything to be elected. I loathe Ratface Pawlenty with all my bitter heart. He gets the double-fisted rusty pitchfork/Garden Weasel Roto’-Rootin’ special for sure.
@inkadu: Ditto this. I would love to see comparative religions in taught in high school. I think it would be eye-opening, and not in a way that Ratface Pawlenty would like.
Makewi
@inkadu:
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. Hypothesis is the first step in the scientific method. Philosophy can have hypothesis, but at the present time has no hope of progressing through the next steps. When it does, then it becomes science.
Religion is philosophy. So is abiogenesis, at least so far.
inkadu
@Makewi: Actually, Makewi, intelligent design is a fraud, purposely devised to skirt supreme court rulings on creationism.
I agree that religious paranoia does detract from teaching history or literature in high school. The concern is understandable. People don’t want their children being proselytized too. But Hamlet makes much more sense when you understand the religious context.
JD Rhoades
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
See, this is the reason I part ways with Christianity, even though I do believe in a Creator. Look around at the amazing complexity and intricate functioning of the universe. It’s it’s impossible for me to reconcile the idea of a Creator who could put all that together with the idea of a vengeful God who demands blood sacrifices to settle some cosmic balance.
Corner Stone
@SGEW:
Who ever was? All the people you’ve listed lack the ability to critically analyze any set of data, info or anything.
Makewi
@inkadu:
I’ll take your word for it re: Intelligent Design. I don’t believe I would want it or creationism in science class. OTOH, I don’t want it said that life began as a random act either. Best to admit that how it all started for life is still something that is being sought after, since that has the good fortune of being the truth. I am cool with teaching how people are attempting to create life in the lab, as that also has the good fortune of being provably true.
inkadu
@Makewi: You were clear, Makewi. We’re just getting a bit into the weeds on the fine details of science, including some semantic bickering.
But, essentially, I object to labeling abiogenesis “philosophy” and throwing it in the same hopper with a bunch of unjustified and unprovable crap. All unproven hypotheses are not created equal.
Martian Buddy
@Makewi: Which doesn’t answer the question. ID is positioned as being a competing scientific theory–Pawlenty even describes it as a “competing theory” in this segment from an interview with Tom Brokaw (he also uses the term interchangeably with creationism.) In the Newsweek article, he talks about ID specifically in the context of a “comparative theory.” Bearing in mind that ID has zero credibility in the scientific community and has been established as being a form of “stealth” creationism in a court of law, do you believe it’s acceptable to teach it as a competing scientific theory, regardless of whether it’s being taught as such in a science class or elsewhere?
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Well I do, especially if that is the truth. Whatever the truth is, that’s what I want.
Also, your blurb contains a problem. An “act” requires an actor. A truly random event does not require an actor.
I have no reason to believe that any of it involved an actor. And I have no desire to believe it either. I am more awestruck by a true random event than I am by the idea of an actor creating something.
But that’s just me.
Makewi
@inkadu:
Not understanding the role of religion in peoples lives or the simple power the Church had takes something away from the wonder that is the enlightenment. You lose the idea that truth wants to be free, that at best you can only delay it’s arrival.
It’s one thing to understand the reformation as a movement, but you miss something if you don’t understand Luther’s intent was not to liberalize the church, but to strip the power of evil men from ruining it.
inkadu
@Makewi: Don’t take my word for it.
The most theories of abiogenesis aren’t that life began “by accident,” but that the chemicals and environment of the early earth gave rise to self-replicating structures which eventually became the more complex self-replication structures that we feel comfortable calling life. There is no accident involved; if you had the same starting conditions you would eventually get the same result.
Midnight Marauder
@inkadu:
This made me put my LOLlerskates on.
Makewi
@inkadu:
Oh, I see. I wouldn’t throw abiogenesis into the hopper with a bunch of crap. I’d put it in with Economics and Law and a bunch of other stuff worthy of consideration but as of yet lacking in scientific falsifiability.
I guess then the question is what are the benchmarks a school of thought must meet to qualify as a philosophy. That one’s a tough question.
inkadu
@Makewi: I went to Lutheran elementary school, so was exposed to a lot of European religious history, and quite a bit of comparative religion as well — even if I was only comparing two religions, Lutheran and Catholic; I did my own reading for the Greeks.
Usually the Church is taught as the “keeper of the flame” throughout the Middle Ages — keeping the Arab and Greek texts alive. The Enlightenment is the “flowering” of classical philosophies that had been preserved by the Church. That religious dogma had to get out of the way first is never emphasized.
I used to see Luther as a reformist hero. Now he just seems like a radical nutjob with whom I share a common enemy.
Makewi
@inkadu:
I’m aware of the thinking regarding abiogenesis, and if I said accident I meant random chance. To be fair, the difference is a very fine splitting of hairs. In theory life may well be a certainty given the right set of circumstances, but to get that set of circumstances you need either a guiding hand or random chance. I am also aware that there are attempts being made to replicate it, but that so far there has been no success.
Makewi
@inkadu:
I don’t see why Luther couldn’t be a hero and a nutjob. I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church. These days I’d consider myself a free floating independent evangelical.
inkadu
@Makewi:
Makewi, man, your thinking is a total mess. So now any unproven hypothesis is a school of thought?
Instead of giving me a semantic handjob, check out the Dover transcripts. If you don’t have a lot of time, Barbara Forrest (Day 6) is the yolk in the egg.
Makewi
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
I guess the brain has limitations. Mine clearly lacks and understanding that a rock can always have been rolling down hill. Since Aquinas had the same problem, I guess I can consider myself in good company.
OTOH, turtles all the way down has a certain elegance to it.
Like you and Socrates the more I know, the less I understand.
inkadu
@Makewi: I was confirmed Catholic but my parents sent me to Lutheran school and evangelical summer camp. It sure gave me a lot to think about!
inkadu
Someone is ALMOST wrong on the internet is a lot worse than SIWOTI.
Makewi
@Martian Buddy:
I did initially ask if there was something outside the quote provided by DougJ. I do not believe I have ever said I find ID to be considered good science, because I don’t think that. That said, anyone that wants to study it, as it were, should feel free to do so. Credibility in the scientific community can and does contain it’s own set of problems, not the least of which is that scientists are still men.
Makewi
@inkadu:
It’s rude to try to put words in my mouth, especially when they do not match what I said. Here I thought we were having a civil conversation.
Makewi
Merry Christmas to you all, and if you aren’t Christian, Merry Christmas.
I’ll check out the Dover transcripts inkadu, they’ve been on my reading list for a while.
inkadu
@Makewi: We are having a civil conversation. How else could it end: good day to you, sir, good day!
Matthew Hooper
While there are always many, many questions about faith and science, what it finally boiled down to for me was this:
Yes, there are detailed questions which throw the concept of divinity onto rocky shores. Yes, I know the concept of an all-knowing, all-loving Creator flies in the face of all the evidence.
I’m going to flat out ignore all of that and believe anyways. Yes, it’s a contradiction, yes, it makes no sense at all. As an Internet philosopher once said, the mark of intelligence is being able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time – having “tea” and “no tea” at the same time, for example. (Merry Christmas, by the way.) Or to quote another philosopher, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Why make such a fool of yourself? Why believe in a Goddess despite the evidence? Because it permits all sorts of things in your life. Joy. Faith. Wonder. Hope. They all get a lot easier when you bend just this much, permit this one true lie, into your world. If you concede the possibility of miracles, despite all the evidence to the contrary, miracles do happen.
Yes, there any number of inanities in the Bible, or any other holy text you choose to believe in. Ignore them. Believe in spite of the truth. It’s amazing to see the results.
Martin
That’s a big difference from presenting it to kids who are learning what science is and how it works, unless it’s being presented as evidence of what science is not.
Context matters. If they want to introduce ID in a religion class, that’s no problem. The issue isn’t to censor ID, but to make sure it is presented in the correct context. Science class is simply not the right context, and its impossible to introduce ID without violating the establishment clause. I don’t care how fuzzy you want to make ‘God’ you’re inevitably going to run over someone else’s equally valid creation myths and you’re certainly going to run over the atheists.
inkadu
@Matthew Hooper: Thanks you, Matthew, for honestly presenting religion’s arguments.
I would offer that science itself presents a spiritually grim picture, but that there are ways of building on those foundations to have a spiritual life without the nonsense. That the Universe is so large can sometimes make me depressed. But it sometimes fills me with wonder — the world is such a big place, and even is such a big place, I’m one of the few self-aware collection of molecules to be able to actually experience it.
And religion, to me, it actually soul deadening. The Universe is a place made for Me to inhabit and I have to follow the codes made up by some guy so that he’ll let me frolic in the afterlife… it seems so claustrophobic next to the unimaginably large and unimaginably bizarre picture of reality that science offers.
inkadu
@Martin: You can teach creation myths in school as long as you teach a bunch of them and teach them as myth.
diane
He did not answer the question. And to leave it up to the school districts is not an answer.
Either you believe in science or you do not.
Evolution is science, ID and creationism is not science it is religion.
Gov. Pawlenty is entitled to his beliefs, but fact are facts.
The Catholic church supports Evolution theory.
Since when have we accepted religion as a litmus test of a person’s political ideology? Why are we allowing this?
I prefer the Evangelical Taliban.
Merry Christmas Every One!!!!!
Mike G
Khmer Rouge. I love it. This could be a new meme for the science-hating Repig theocrat fantasists.
Khmer Rouge State
Khmer Rouge Etat (nah, too French)
Khmer Rougepublicans
Talibaptist
Talibagger
Talibirther
If they want to introduce ID in a religion class, that’s no problem.
I’m sure they’d be equally amenable to teaching the creation myths of other religions, like the Hindu circle of life. Not. Freedom of religion means freedom of their religion and repression of any others.
Mayken
@Zifnab: Kansas. Don’t forget Kansas.
And don’t get me started on anti-vaccine nutters. Sadly this brand of crazy is not just for fundamentalists anymore.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=194
Matthew Hooper
@inkadu: Not at all; it’s a definition I forgot a long time ago and had to return to. Religion has this habit of getting hung up on itself as a reason for life, as opposed to a reason for living.
I would suggest that you’re getting a bit too much hung up on Christianity when you’re speaking of religion. Not all faiths hinge on the concepts you’re having trouble with. Buddhism works pretty well; it proposes rules for living a happy life here and now, not in an afterlife. (“Happy” may or may not be the right word; happiness, desire, and suffering are tricky concepts in the Bhuddist mindset.) I’m partial to a some dashes of wiccan ritual to bring my daughter to a spiritual frame of mind and to inspire myself; there’s nothing so beautiful as experiencing a sunny day as a mark of benevolence.
Religion is, first and foremost, a personal experience. Organized religion often forgets this. It’s your job as a human being capable of faith not to believe the folks that tell you that a given political point is necessary for salvation.
james Guglielmino
Actually, this may be good. The American people are not going to vote in numbers more than a minority for a wacko theocrat. That has been tested in places like Kansas, even, and been proved. I would predict that if Palin, for example, should somehow be nominated, Obama would win by the largest majority in history.
Mayken
@inkadu: Why some people of a Christian persuasion feel the need to “prove” the validity of their faith via pseudo-scientific clap trap has always escaped me, but so, too, has the need for some people of an atheistic bent to “prove” the invalidity of a person’s faith.
Can’t we agree to keep our faith out of science and our science out of faith?
RSA
@Mayken:
I don’t generally do the latter, but it’s more for temperamental reasons than anything else. I think one core reason is distrust, and it works on both sides. Theists tend to wonder how someone without religion can have any moral sense, while atheists (like me, at least) wonder whether someone might be making choices based on completely irrational beliefs.
Matthew Hooper
Morality relies on some fairly irrational beliefs to function. Science as a foundation for ethics has had a fairly wretched track record – Social Darwinism and eugenics immediately come to mind. I’m with mayken; keep religion and science separate and cheerfully permit yourself the incongruity of holding both to be true in entirely different ways.
celticdragon
@aimai:
That was pretty frakking depressing. Good luck on trying to explain the geology to them, aimai. Those of us in that field appreciate it.
On a happier note, I did well in structural geology this term :)
Paleontology this spring…
celticdragon
@jenniebee:
I could really use B.O.B’s skull in my paleo class, you know…
You wouldn’t happen to done with it, would you Bill?
matoko_chan
@Mike G: dude.
talibangelicals
William
@Makewi:
Your repeated insistence on “god of the gaps” theology is weak sauce.
When we don’t know how something works, that doesn’t mean that gods or space aliens or invisible pink unicorns did it. It doesn’t even make space god answers more plausible. It just means that we don’t know.
If Christians want to say that their particular god made everything, then that’s fine by me. Heck, maybe their three-in-one god is responsible for the whole ball of wax. In which case, He/They are behind every bit of evolution that ever happened, starting with the first molecular replicators. There is no necessary conflict between religion and science. But a religion that you only use to fill in gaps in understanding is just the intellectual version of a toddler’s nightlight: illuminating nothing, its only purpose is to make the dark less scary.
Saying that unproven abiogenesis means we have to talk about baby Jesus doing it makes no more sense than saying that questions about JFK’s assassination means we have to teach the theory that Satan shot him. Unknowns, until we fill them in, are just unknowns.
handy
@inkadu:
You cheeky fellow. I said it is about man’s struggle to know God, a full chronicle of which I imagine would take up a whole library.
Anyhow, Merry Christmas. May you libs not forget, in the midst of the disappointments and the struggles this year, the victories and the fruit of the fight.
Altoid
Mayken @221: Essentially it’s because– at least on the evangelical side– the beliefs are not only based on historical events that are understood to carry supernatural meaning. A lot of religions have that. And it isn’t only about what happens in the afterlife, the pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by. It’s at least as much about future events in our real world.
We can see it in those Left Behind books, which apparently have a huge cult following. The future events are the vengeance, just desserts, whatever you want to call it, that’s supposed to happen here on earth at some point down the road. Apocalypse, millennium, eschaton. They believe that’s a literal promise that they’re on the right side of. In order for that to be true, the earlier stuff also has to be literally actually true. What they say about the events of, say, Genesis, isn’t about Genesis itself; it’s about the other end of the book happening in the real world– that there will be an end times like Apocalypse and its elaborations lay out.
In order for the future to be true, nothing leading up to it can be a parable or a myth or an allegory or anything less than the actual, factual truth. If you question its factual truth, you remove their chance to be saved from the lake of fire.
It puts them in a (to me) strange place where they simply can’t live only in their faith. It’s simply not possible for them to have a realm of faith and a separate realm of science. Their faith is about what will happen in the real world. If they accept scientific method, the only way they can prove their beliefs for sure is to experience the Apocalypse themselves. That’ll confirm it all for them. So they’re fascinated by it.
But until it comes they can’t know for sure, so they can get vicious about anything that might say their beliefs aren’t actual true statements about the actual phenomenal world we all live in. In order to preserve their own faith, in other words, they have to insist that their account of how the world happened (and their own sectarian interpretation of what is, after all, a widely-read and widely-shared text) can be the only true one.
Eventually what probably happens is that they get disillusioned by political efforts to bring about the apocalypse, or internecine squabbles eventually absorb their energy. It’ll take time, whatever it is.
PartyLikeIts1990
As usual I am way late to the party, but DougJ I am calling you out.
Someone said they were going to Rochester _to eat_. Rochester is known for how many culinary delights? One. Did you recommend it? Hell no you did not.
You know what it is, DougJ. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Give these people the truth.
Nick Tahou’s at about 2am, that’s all I’m saying.
spurious
@Janet:
Very good.
Keep in mind these fools gave themselves that really raw deal they’re so pissed about.
Boo-fuckin’-hoo for them, sez I. I hope it hurts them like a bitch because getting left out in the cold is exactly what they were trying to do to everyone who wasn’t like them.
They were so damn pleased thinking they were sticking it to people who weren’t ‘Real Americans’ like them, so intent on wanting to jam a ‘Fuck you’ in dusky skinned people and liberals’ faces every chance they got, that they didn’t realize they hadn’t really got theirs yet nor were they ever going to, and that what they were really going to get was an ugly fucking along with the rest of us.
So fuck ’em. They insisted on it.
The Tim Channel
Did the Khmer Rouge engage in torturing toddlers testicles* like the Bush admin and all their quasi-Christian cohorts**? I’ve no problem forwarding the Khmer Rouge meme if you will help me move the “torturing toddlers testicles” meme. Folks don’t seem to think waterboarding is torture, so we need to move the argument forward in a way that means something. Jesus loves the little children….all the children of the world. War crimes….for the sake of the children.
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1GT-BZvhrw
**http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z3sT7d4s_c
Enjoy.
Steaming Pile
@Dave: Or, enough people take exception to their strategy of fucking the nation up deliberately with this “no on cloture just because” bullshit, and take them to the woodshed at the ballot box. Again. Some lessons need to be learned two or three times before they sink in.
The Democrats aren’t helping themselves, though, with their insistence that the Republicans can be reasoned with, giving them concession after concession on bills that they, SURPRISE!, all vote no on. Suckers.
There is no logical reason it should take eleven months to write up and pass a health care bill. Then the finance bill will take another eleven months, the climate bill…eleven months, and you see where I’m going with this – the same place Senate Democrats are going, which is exactly nowhere.
Matthew Hooper
@Altoid: Again, you’re getting way too hung up on Christianity when you’re taking religion to task. Buddhism has no apocalypse per se. Neither does Hinduism (or at least it’s not an ending per se). Nor does Taoism, or Wicca. Not all religions involve Jesus, or literalism.
Altoid
@Matthew Hooper: I was responding to Mayken who asked about “some people of a Christian persuasion” and (to quote myself) referred explicitly to some “on the evangelical side” right at the start. You coulda looked upthread; I gave you the number. It should be pretty clear that I’m referring explicitly and only to a narrow slice of self-professed “Christians” who focus on Apocalypse, which is a Christian text (nobody else cares about it, as far as I know). I’m not talking about all religions or religion in general, or even all self-professed “Christians.”
The ones I am referring to seem to be very vocal and organized and determined to tell the rest of us what to do and what to think and what the world is about, and want to use the Republican party to control the government so they can enforce all that. I don’t know that there’s anything like a Taliban (or Khmer Rouge) wing of Buddhists, and I’m not saying there is.
If you think I’m getting “way too hung up on Christianity” because I replied to a question about some Christians, you might think about figuring out the context of the entry. And if I am way too hung up on Christianity to please you, it might be because this group of them are the ones trying to hang me.
The Reality-based Dave
Timmy knows he would be lynched if he tried mandating any of that nonsense to MN schools.
Any discussion of intelligent design is NOT in the science class. It is only in the churches, where it belongs.
Don’t bring your religion to my science class & I won’t bring my science to your Sunday school!
ps: I live in MN…