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Why not just accept what I say about my meaning to be the truth, since you have nothing but your own fear & hatred to suggest it is anything but, and have a calm civilized disussion?
Why not just accept what I say about my meaning to be the truth, since you have nothing but your own fear & hatred to suggest it is anything but, and have a calm civilized disussion?
Because, as you just did in this post again - you are trying to define my stance and my personal feelings.
I don't hate.
Sometimes, we see in others what bothers us about ourselves.
Anyway Bill, I have indicated more than once, that I don't wish to continue being a lens through which you beam your anti-liberal agenda.
Please honor my request to end the conversation. If not, I'll eliminate the irritant with the tools C-D has provided.
Oh yes! I am going to devour that article which is written with an obvious agenda.
You are wrong. You are talking to someone who has spent a good deal of his life at dig sites in the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana. Someone who went to college for this selfsame subject and related subjects.
So you can take your activist science report and do whatever you would like with it. The people I have worked with aren't out to try and disprove God - and that reveals something VERY important about YOUR approach. I hope someday you will realize this error.
Now, you've wasted too much of my time, so you get to go to never-never land with the rest of the mediocrities.
Ciao!
One again you post things and don't back them up. I'd like for you to give some scientific evidence of the fossil record supporting evolution. For all I know you could have been digging in you backyard sandbox!
1) Pretty much, neither the Unitarians nor the Liberal Quakers are all that much into indoctrination into their belief systems. With the UUs, in particular, the children are told that they can believe whatever they want.
2) There is a difference between teaching your children to believe what you (and/or your church) believe and teaching them that those who believe otherwise will not go to heaven.
Heaven is a particularly Christian creation. One of the major aspects of Islam and Christianity that differentiate them from Judaism is the notion that those who violate the rules established by their deity, be it God or Allah, have sinned against that God.
In Judaism, if a Jew breaks one of the ~613 Commandments, then s/he has sinned. But if a non-Jew breaks one of those Commandments, it is not a sin. There is no expectation that a non-Jew should heed the religious laws of the Jews.
This is a stark difference.
******
Other than this bit of Talmudic hairsplitting, I agree with the sense of what you are saying.
Good Point. I knew about the Unitarians but didn't make the distinction. Sorry... I didn't know about the other two. Interesting. I'll have to satisfy my curosity and do some reading.
However, don't the Jews try to keep their children in the fold so to speak? Wouldn't they see a person who "converts" as being a sinner and therefore teach (indoctrinate) their children in order to keep them from sinning?
Because, as you just did in this post again - you are trying to define my stance and my personal feelings.
I don't hate.
Sometimes, we see in others what bothers us about ourselves.
Anyway Bill, I have indicated more than once, that I don't wish to continue being a lens through which you beam your anti-liberal agenda.
Please honor my request to end the conversation. If not, I'll eliminate the irritant with the tools C-D has provided.
This all started with a simple question. You said the schools in your area need more money. I asked, while acknowledging that I am not familiar the area in question, whether that was wholly accurate, or whether the people who would be asked to pay that money might not feel they are entitled to be sure the current expenditure is being used properly. I've said nothing "anti liberal" and have done nothing in any way against the terms I agreed to when I joined the forum. It's a public discussion, in a thread that many people have joined. You can continue it or not, but that doesn't impact what I might say on the issue. You can do whatever you like with the tools C-D has provided.
I agree with you and enjoyed reading your post; however, I'd like to continue by stating that the results aren't always as compelling as those of your spouse's research. For example, despite an abundance of published research in the field of economics, there are economists--professors and otherwise--who, after careful study, research and analysis, disagree with one another on whether or not the Federal Reserve should influence lending rates.
Another point I'd like to make is that professors often speak to their students (in the classroom) about topics outside of their areas of expertise or deliver lectures that are clearly biased politically. I've often wondered if this factor contributes to why so many college students and graduates lean to the left. I'll never forget the day my freshman literature professor shared her political beliefs with us. She started by asking us if we'd like to hold class outside since it was such a beautiful day. Of course everyone agreed to it at once. After congregating outside, we sat on the grass like pupils at the feet of a Greek philosopher while she delivered a lecture applauding...communism. I'll never forget the slight smile on her face and the confidence with which she conducted herself during the lecture. Communism sounded like the answer to all of society's woes the way she put it. Anyway, I simply wanted to point out that there's a line between respecting expertise (i.e. appreciating the results of quality research) and blindly agreeing with everything that exits the mouth of authority.
That being said, I'd love to see our country applaud science. I think Morgan Spurlock summed up my own feelings well when he said:
We've started to make science and empirical evidence not nearly as important as punditry--people using p.r.-speak to push a corporate or political agenda. I think we need to turn scientists back into the rock stars they are.
Thanks for the well-written and thought-provoking response Ghost! I totally agree that some subjects lead themselves to more objectivity and soem to more subjectivity than others. Science tends to be pretty cut and dried and the research leads generally to one conclusion. Not always, but generally. Other subjects, economics being one, aren't so clear cut.
I also remember professors discussing political matters, particularly when I was in the School of Natural Resources at U of Michigan. I don't think there was a single right-leaner in the entire building , particularly among the professors and those getting higher degrees. Most of us going there for a degree beyond a bachelors were pretty firm in our own political leanings, so it was no surprise to me how the professors felt about Clinton being elected (I was in grad school in 1992.) For a lefty like me, it was a very comfortable place to be. But those professors were pretty transparent and discussed politics often, it being an election year.
I don't think my spouse gets off topic often, much to his students' dismay, and I know he doesn't discuss politics. He has made it an unwritten rule not to discuss things of a sensitive nature in class. However, I know his students, particularly his many foreign students, ask him about American politics and he will talk then, but he doesn't usually let people know his leanings (he leans like I do.) It's a decision he made not to discuss these things because it doesn't have a place in what he teaches. Coming from an elementary education background, I did convince him to bring some fun, specifically NASCAR, into his teaching of a dry topic, specifically, the correct placement of suppositories. He has a powerpoint slide that shows a suppository-shaped racecar (with sound effects) racing too far and too fast into where suppositories go, then one traveling not far enough, then one arriving at the pitstop exactly at the right place. [Please note that I did not teach suppository placement in elementary school!] So, as dry as his topic can be, he does attempt to inject humor where he can. But he doesn't inject politics.
Good Point. I knew about the Unitarians but didn't make the distinction. Sorry... I didn't know about the other two. Interesting. I'll have to satisfy my curosity and do some reading.
However, don't the Jews try to keep their children in the fold so to speak? Wouldn't they see a person who "converts" as being a sinner and therefore teach (indoctrinate) their children in order to keep them from sinning?
Yes, they try to keep them in the fold, which is why they were not grouped with the UUs and Quakers.
They were highlighted, instead, to try to explore the difference between those who insist all people must adhere to one people's religious beliefs and those people who insist only the believers must adhere to their beliefs.
Christianity teaches that for two men of any religion to sleep together is a sin.
Judaism teaches that for two men of the Jewish religion to sleep together is a sin, but that what two non-Jews do has nothing to do with Judaism. (I am not a big fan even of the first, but it is a major distinction - and it is why the Jews in the U.S. would not seek to impose their religion on the public.
No one ever talks about how the fossil record does not support evolution.
Give an example of how republicans ignored science.
Ryneone,
I gave a list of links earlier in this thread with articles discussing just that issue - please feel free to have a look. If those are not enough, let me know, as there are more where those are from.
Further, look into the practice of the Department of Education under this administration, which took off-line the extensive ERIC library to review it and then make sure that only those articles which were consistent with current administration policy were available - a practice unique in the time that ERIC existed.
This issue is not Democrat/Republican or Liberal/Conservative. It is Science/Anti-Science and Knowledge/Ignorance.
It's the liberals who blame the failures of public education on funding when they fail to realize that it's the dumbing down of the standards that are leading us behind other nations.
Ms. Connie -
While I agree with some of the other responses to you, in part, I have some separate responses to make, as well.
The "liberals" and the "conservatives" both have their fair share of kneejerk reactions on the issue of education (with emphasis on the 2nd syllable).
But, speaking as a flaming liberal professional and former amateur educator, I "blame" the problems on issues far deeper than funding, even though I grant that funding and the allocation thereof are factors.
The first factor is that the average teacher and administrator in the schools today, while perhaps more highly degreed on average, is less intelligent than the average teacher in the 50's and 60's. This is a huge drag on our schools, especially for our brightest students.
Nor will increasing the pay to our teachers magically solve that one - for the most part, our schools are not places smart people want to go to work.
But the "dumbing down" of our standards is a myth, at least in any modern context. The standards have been abysmal for a couple decades, at least. The fiction of NCLB is that it raised (or set) standards, while, instead, codifying in most states that in order to graduate from 12th grade, you must be able to pass a 10th grade test.
Oh boy.
NCLB was bi-partisan, not liberal. And it was based on a lie, from the outset.
Nor, unfortunately, can I agree with my fellow liberal on the apparent cause of that gap between the U.S. and other industrial countries, because our high school attainment rate is actually slipping behind other countries, now, and when only comparing top students to top students, ours are sometimes even and sometimes behind - but not ahead. (Not that I think that's a particularly good objective, but it is at least an interesting datum.)
So... funding? Maybe,in part. But I don't think the folks in charge of our schools would know what to do with unlimited funding if we gave it to them.
Yes, only in America is being a Professor a bad thing. The World over if you are a professor, you are highly respected.
That's how bad it is here. ( And sign of a society/nation on the decline)
AM radio right wing hate talk provides the "thinking" for Millions of right wing lemmings.
lol- frightening thought, they take advice from Rush Oxycontin Limbaugh....
I dont see elitist as a bad thing in D.C....I really dont want Joe(or Sarah Palin) the Plumber making decisions on national security......
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. [Please note that I did not teach suppository placement in elementary school!] So, as dry as his topic can be, he does attempt to inject humor where he can. But he doesn't inject politics.
