Comment Re:Yes! (Score 1) 1774
Evolution has nothing to do with the beginning of life. Nice try.
Technically true, but evasive none-the-less.
Evolution has nothing to do with the beginning of life. Nice try.
Technically true, but evasive none-the-less.
Young Earth creationists and Bill Nye represent the screwball ends of the spectrum.
Rants like Bill's only serve to strengthen my belief that Darwinists are in deep denial. The fact they can't face is that their ideas are speculative. Since they are speculative, intelligent, informed persons can disagree. In order to protect themselves from this uncomfortable fact, they erect elaborate sematic barriers.
Uhhhh... Evolution as a principle is not speculative. It's just the way things on this scale work.
No, I suppose it isn't. Gradual genetic change in a population certainly takes place. The speculation part is that all living things in all their variety were produced by long strings of such changes. (With the help of some selecting factors.)
This is what I meant when I said that evolutionists rely too heavily on semantic arguments. They call both the genetic changes and a bold theory about them "evolution". They then pretend that we must accept or reject them both together.
You're kidding, right? Since when has the progress of science been driving by non-conformists who throw out widely accepted notions for absolutely no reason?
Never. But your's is a loaded question. The progress of science gets over humps when someone is willing to question the dogma, to ask if they assumtions are valid. When they make great discoveries, those who have an investment in the dogma invariably claim that it is being thrown out for absolutely no reason. We don't need a heliocentric universe. We don't need germ theory.
I see nothing wrong with teaching children that scientists do not all practice science impartially. They need to understand that a scientist's views on contraversial issues such as politics and religion or simply a desire to protect his position may influence his judgement about what the evidence means.
This does not mean we should teach our children wacky creation myths just to be different. But it does mean that it is appropriate to discuss with one's children whether evolution is an atheist creation myth.
Bill is a clueless idiot. Evolution is not in conflict creationism; only the "young earth theory" idiots.
Young Earth creationists and Bill Nye represent the screwball ends of the spectrum.
Rants like Bill's only serve to strengthen my belief that Darwinists are in deep denial. The fact they can't face is that their ideas are speculative. Since they are speculative, intelligent, informed persons can disagree. In order to protect themselves from this uncomfortable fact, they erect elaborate sematic barriers.
There are two possible origins of the Earth. Either it is the product of mindless natural processes or it was terraformed. (The Bible says it was terraformed by someone called "God".) They both sound pretty unlikely, but there don't seem to be any other possibilities. One of them must be true and the other false. The problem is that neither side can produce evidence which makes sense outside of their world view.
In their frustration with this situation, evolutionists plow ahead with ineffective philisophical and semantic arguments. Mostly they just attach labels to things. Evolution is scientific. Belief in a creator is religious. Belief in evolution is rational. Each of these statements is true in a way. But, scientific does not mean true. Religious does not mean false. Rationalism is a philosophical system which in some ways resembles a religion, so the rationalism of Evolution is not a strong argument in its favour.
Their opponents remain unimpressed by these specious arguments, so now they are resorting to hand wringing. If we don't shape up and start believing in Evolution right quick scientific and technical progress will halt as our minds are sapped by the illogic. We'll all have to go live in caves. Believe or the end is nigh!
The hand-ringing evolutionists say that it is illogical to reject evolution (a product of the scientific method) and reject modern medicine (another of its products). Just for fun and because turn-about is fair play I propose that evolutionists reject the work of scientists who held ideas contrary to evolutionary theory.
In otherwords, you're totally and completely incapable of understanding the concept that teaching children that it's a bad idea to teach children that any science is wrong? Doesn't matter if you're telling them that evolution or physics or geology is wrong. Teaching them that any science is wrong will screw up their ability to be engineers or scientists in the future.
You're kidding, right? Since when has the progress of science been driven by conformists who are afraid to question widely accepted notions? Does the status of "a science" magically elevate ideas beyond the realm where mere mortals are allowed to question them? Do we have to believe in phrenology and phychoanalysis in order to preserve out ability to work as engineers?
Presumably James Hamblin is an older white male. He seems to be missing the point here. The problem with the statement isn't that it's factually / scientifically inaccurate. The problem is the term "legitimate rape." The senator's statements (if taken with any bit of truth) imply that if a women were to get pregnant in the case of rape it was not a "legitimate" or "real" rape.
The qualifier "legitimate" is necessary because the speaker is aware of evidence that his assertion is false. Adding an arbitrary qualifying circumstance the presense of which is difficult to establish is a standard rationalizing technique to allay one's own doubts.
When this kind of reasoning gets completely out of hand, it becomes circular. Then it becomes impossible to disprove the assertion because pregnancy is taken as sufficient evidence that the incident leading to it was not a rape. Presto! There are no contrary examples!
One can disagree with the decision all one wants, but it was his to make.
No, it's not. Nowhere in the law did it say it was a tax. During the discussion of creating the law, the word tax was not used.
Think of it this way: what if it really is a tax and the supporters of the law were trying to fool all of is into thinking that it isn't?
What if a politicial condidate promised "no new taxes" but then supported a law which required the owner of a newly-purchased car to pay a 2% "fee" (over and above the sales tax) when registering it for the first time? Would he have kept his campaign promise?
If the court perceives that to render a judgement would effectively be legislating, they are not permitted to do that,
Tell that to John Roberts because that's exactly what he did when he decided that forcing people to pay for other people's medical bills is a tax even though the word tax was not used in the legislation and the President himself has said the bill is not a tax.
Roberts legislated from the bench when he decided to make a political rather than legal decision, effectively handing the presidency to Romney.
Whether we agree or disagree with Roberts' decision, he wasn't legislating from the bench. He didn't change the way the law worked. He simply determined that it didn't have to be struck down. Calling it a tax doesn't make the law suddenly operate differently.
As for whether it is a tax or not, does it really matter whether the word appears in the law or what the president says about the question? Judges are supposed to be able to see through the P.R. spin and figure out what the real facts are. This judges says that if it walks like a tax and quacks like a tax, it is a tax.
It is of course ironic that Roberts' rejected the not-a-tax claim of the law's supporters and then used this as a basis to uphold their law. But, this is a perfectly valid way for a court to solve a problem. One can disagree with the decision all one wants, but it was his to make.
I think the AC is taking offense at what appears to be a typo. You wrote "you think you are saying" (emphasis mine), when I guess you wanted to write "I think you are saying". If you actually meant "you think you are saying", then that is pretty rude.
Oh. Yes, I see it now. It is a typo. Sorry, AC.
I'm not the one trying to make that distinction, gender theorists do. I personally don't agree with much of what they say but they clearly distinguish gender and sex.
True, they do make that distinction. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender, the terminological distinction has been made in certain fields starting in 1955.
Since gender theory is quite recent, it cannot be asserted "gender" now means "sex".
Again, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender, it is becoming fairly common to use the work gender to refer to biological sex. I suspect this is because some people are embarassed to say sex.
Having thought about the above, you think you are saying that the problem is deciding who is female biologically as opposed to who can function as a female in society.
I don't think I am saying! It is extremely rude and dishonest to tell me I don't know what I am saying. I am saying that when it comes to decide which individuals can compete in the "women section", only their physiological sex matters. How they feel does not matter at all.
I never said you didn't know what you were saying. I said that I wasn't sure what you meant because the words "gender" and "sex" mean different things to people from different backgrounds and of different generations. How is that rude and dishonest?
It is quote obvious that you did not pay attention in college.
Sex is what a person is biologically capable of.
Gender is what a person identifies as.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender, this way of using the terms is common in certain fields, but gender is also a euphamism for sex (in its original meaning).
What in the world kind of justice is this? "We're going to tell you to do something, and then, if you don't, we're going to tell you tell us why!"
The court has to take this step-by-step. The TSA was told to do it, but not given a date. I year has gone by and they still haven't done it. EPIC says that this is too long. The judge has asked the TSA to try to explain why it is taking so long and when they intend to comply. Since he didn't give them a hard deadline, this is only fair.
Are there really that many people in the world with 'both sets physical features in various strengths'? And- more importantly- are there really that many Olympic athletes like that, that we need special rules??
Penis- male
Vagina- female
Anything else- disqualified.
The number of persons born with noticably ambiguous genitals is between 0.1% and 0.2% of the population. The 10,970 atheletes competing in the London games in 2012 are 0.00015% of the population. So there is approximately 1000 such persons in the world for every Olympic athelete.
I have a stupid question: Can't you just strip them down? If they got family jewels, they;re a guy.
The fear is that the women's category of sports requiring strength would soon be dominated by men whose genitals did not develope properly in the womb. Of course, this would only be a problem if they also displayed male muscular development. I don't know how many persons fit in this category, but the Olympics is a word-wide competition to which are sent the best atheletes.Under these conditions, they could be found.
Except categories in sports are defined by sex not gender so what they believe to be does not matter when it comes to decide in which category they can compete.
Not sure what distinction you are trying to draw between sex and gender. It can be confusing because "gender" now means what we used to call "sex". You have likely read books written before 1950 in which characters use expressions such as "a member of my sex", "the battle of the sexes". The statement "I want to talk about sex." would likely have been understood to mean "I want to talk about the social implications of being male and female."
I have here a dictionary written in 1955 which under "sex" gives the meaning of maleness or femaleness and "the attraction of one sex to the other". It doesn't even meantion that it could mean the sex act. This meaning appears to have become popular in the 1960's. With sex now being a word that made small boys titter, those who wanted to talk about the social implications of sex (maleness or famaleness) borrowed the term from grammar. It would be too embarrasing to say that one was taking "Sex Studies" in college, so they called it "Gender Studies".
Having thought about the above, you think you are saying that the problem is deciding who is female biologically as opposed to who can function as a female in society. The problem is that a small but significant part of the population displays testable physical characterisics of both sexes. For example, there are persons who are genetically male, but have female bodies. The IOC is thrashing around trying to find a definition of a female body.
I think the reason they have dropped testing of all athelets who claim to be female is that once you select women with strong, athletic bodies, you increase the likelihood that some measure of their bodies will be closer to that of male bodies. If you then disqualify them as "technically male", you create a scandal and humiliate them. If, when her picture appears in news stories, the public perceives her as being a member of the female sex, you then look ridiculous as well.
On the other hand, if you test no one, soon the women's division of sports requiring strength will be filled with men without beards and underdeveloped genitals.
Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They've just learned to hide in the trees.
