Trust me, I want those religious folks to stop too. Whenever religious folks try to get laws passed enforcing their religious beliefs, they invariably are NOT my religious beliefs. (I'm Jewish and they tend to be fundamentalist Christian.) Not that it would be ok if it was my religion being forced on others, but I can't see legislators forcing bacon companies to go out of business because they aren't kosher the way some religious groups, for example, keep wine stores from operating on Sunday because "it's the Sabbath." Why should a government rule be based on "this religion says so"?

Yup. I can't stand those stamp collectors either. If you like collecting stamps, more power to you. If collecting coins, seashells, or interesting rocks is your thing, go for it. If you don't collect anything at all and don't see the point in collecting objects, then by all means don't collect anything. But don't try to denigrate someone for collecting the wrong item/collecting anything/collecting nothing and definitely don't try to force everyone to collect your item of choice or force people to collect nothing at all.

The one by us is so big that they have an upstairs (clothing, electronics, toys, etc) and a downstairs (food, pharmacy, groceries, etc). They have an escalator you can take or an elevator to move between floors. We were walking into the elevator when an elderly couple came in. They mentioned something about celebrating an upcoming holiday (Christmas I think) when my oldest son said "We don't celebrate that. We're Jewish." At this point, the couple went into a shpiel about how you can still be Jewish and accept Jesus etc etc etc. I said thanks but no thanks, we're happy with our own religion, but they wouldn't let up. Never has a one floor elevator ride taken so long.

I think the key is when you have multiple independent sources double-checking the filtering. In the case of the Catholic Church of old, they were the ones holding all the keys to the filter. You couldn't double-check their filter and proclaim them wrong. Well, you could try, but it wouldn't end well for you.

Nowadays, someone can submit an article in a peer reviewed scientific journal declaring X. That's filtered information. However, other scientists will test X and will either declare that it holds up or will debunk it. They can double-check the filtered information without fear of reprisal.

As someone who is somewhat religious, I completely agree with your feelings about religion being tossed into politics, the legal system, day to day life, etc. In my case, I'm Jewish and the "let's toss religion into this" arguments usually come from fundamentalist Christians. Those folks tend to be perplexed about why I won't just "save my soul by accepting Jesus Christ." They say they want to put "Judeo-Christian" values here or there, but I'm not fooled. The "Judeo" part is only there until they get enough progress to force the Christian part on everyone.

I have no problem discussing religion with people, but I always make sure to note that my beliefs are my own. For everyone else, I take a "so long as your actions don't impact me, I'm fine with it" view. You want to believe in Jesus Christ? Go right ahead. You want to practice Islam? Be my guest. You want to say there's no God? No problem. You want to tell me that I can't practice my personal religious beliefs fit because you've declared that The Wrong Way? Sorry, but now we have a problem. (And the same would be true if they declared that someone else couldn't practice their views or declare their lack-of-religious-views. I take that "first they came for" poem very much to heart.)

The Internet is probably just an acceleration of something that has been happening for the past few centuries. Not so long ago, you lived in a small village all your life. Travelling to the next village over was a long and dangerous affair. Travelling to the closest city was almost unthinkable. Travelling to another country was a one-way trip to only be done as a last resort (i.e. your country was kicking you out). The only people who you ever interacted with were the people in your village and they likely all shared the same beliefs.

As transportation improved, people could travel quicker. Whereas you might get 20 - 30 miles a day by travelling on horseback (perhaps less if you were carrying anything), the railroads or boats could go much faster. Nowadays, cars can cover "one horse travel day" in under an hour. Planes can go even faster than that. As the speed and safety of travel improved, more people were able to interact with more people who lived further from them. Things that would have been unthinkable in the past - visiting a country hundreds of miles away for a week for fun - were now possible. This meant more interaction with even more people.

Then television allowed people to "virtually" expand their travel horizons. You could see how people in Japan lived by watching a show about Japan on the TV instead of actually travelling there. The Internet expands it even more because now you can both look up information AND talk to someone from that location. It essentially turns the entire world into a village.

So, yes, the Internet might be responsible for a few long-held beliefs disappearing. However, it's not unique to the Internet. The Internet is just the latest in a long line of advances which have been chipping away at these over the past century or two.

That's interesting. Judaism actually has a "Satan" but he has a much more minor role than in Christianity. In Judaism, he's "the accuser." Think of him as the prosecuting attorney in your post-life trial with God as the judge. (Yes, Satan is a lawyer. Is anyone surprised?) Satan tries to convince God that you were a horrible, terrible, no-good person - no matter how good of a person you were. Your goal in life is essentially to give Satan as little to work with as possible.

There's an interesting interpretation that I heard about the story of Adam and Eve. Right after they ate the apple, realized they were naked, and hid, God come walking up (well, as much as God can) and asks them "Where are you?" Of course, God knows where they are, so why does he ask this? The point of his question wasn't for information about their physical location, but as a prompting for them to apologize for breaking the command. Had they simply admitted their wrong, they might have been forgiven. Instead, Adam claims that Eve tricked him into eating the fruit. (Even going so far as to blame God for giving him that woman - always the wrong move to blame the person in the position to punish you!) Eve, meanwhile, blames the snake for tempting her.

Of course, the way I see it, this story is to be taken as a moral lesson, not a literal telling of actual history. The lesson here is to always admit to the things you do wrong, pledge to improve, and then actually work hard at improving. Don't just pass the buck and try to blame other people so that they can take the fall for you.

No more so than the religious nut jobs. How many times have you browsed to a site thinking it to be a legitimate news site or scientific article only to find that it was a well disguised religious message.

Much fewer than the times I've browsed to a site I thought was a legitimate site and it wound up being a porn site. (It's the reason I shy away from typing in URLs and often just Google the URL. One mistype and you're looking at something nasty instead of something informative.... unless you need information on nastiness then type away.)

I did have someone try to convert me and my family in a Walmart elevator once, though. As if I'm going to change my entire religious belief system in a Walmart elevator! ("And thus didth he say: Thou shalt roll back thine prices. And, lo, He looked upon the savings and declared them good.")

Well, there's not collecting stamps, and then there's looking for any stamp collector you can find and telling them how stupid they are for collecting little pieces of glue-backed paper and how they are wasting their lives by trying to find more of those pieces of paper.

The former merely follows a personal preference over not collecting stamps. The latter intentionally tries to enforce their view of the hobby of stamp collecting on everyone they meet. (Ironically, winding up being just as annoying as the stamp collectors who insist on showing every person they meet their entire stamp collection and pestering them to start a stamp collection of their own because it's such a fun hobby they don't see why everyone wouldn't want to participate.)

I doubt that. Even in zealot communities, there's always someone who is more observant claiming that you aren't observant enough if you don't do X. To give a non-religious example, some people in the open source community look down upon having open source tools available for Windows. They see people who use those as "not being open source enough." Yes, someone who is running FireFox on Windows might not be using as many open source programs as someone using FireFox on Linux, but for some people Windows is what they are used to and will stick with. In this case, it's better that they use *some* open source tools than no open source tools. For other people, using open source Windows programs might eventually make them question why they can't use Linux instead of Windows. For these people, it's a pathway that they are travelling down.

I'm convinced that if the religious right got their way and everyone in America was forced to practice religion as deemed appropriate by the religious right, they (the religious right) would just splinter into the "right", "very right", and "holy cow right." Then there would be a battle over which "religious right" controlled America. Let the "holy cow right" control America and they, in turn, would splinter. In short, there will always be some zealot who is proclaiming that you aren't good enough because you aren't enough like they are. Take religion out of the picture and something else would be chosen as the reason Group A declares that they are better than Group B.

God was made of anti-matter, but then he came to Earth, tried to smite some dinosaurs, and wound up causing a matter-antimatter explosion that wiped out all of them! Fortunately for man, he left all of his teachings in a very special book. Unfortunately for man, that book is also made of anti-matter so the first person who tries to read it will be annihilated.

(I might be on to something here. Excuse me, I'm off to found the Church of the Anti-Matter God.)

Given that the kid is 5 and likely in Kindergarten, he could say "I've been finding bugs in software almost since before *I* was in school!"

Even with that, the nearest star is around 6,400 times as far from us as Pluto is. If you could shrink the travel time down to 2 months to go to Pluto, you'd still be talking hundreds of years to get to the nearest star.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." == Seems appropriate here.

My wife holds an educational degree with a specialization in reading. She is licensed to teach elementary and middle school and has in the past. (She's not in the classroom now because, when our second son was born, it actually would have cost us MORE for her to work and put our son into daycare than for her to be a stay at home mom.) She has looked all of this stuff over and agrees how horrible it is. I'm a web developer and a math geek. I can understand where they are going with some of the problems but scratch my head at WHY they choose methods that are hard for kids to understand and seem purposefully confusing. Some of the people opposing this include very educated folks like engineers. So don't think that the only people who oppose Common Core are people who are uneducated.