But let's be practical here. Of those objects listed, The Bible is by far the most effective object to bludgeon someone's face with.

Meh, brain power used without a love of something or someone is just wasted energy propping up nothing but intellectual masturbation. The smartest man may sacrifice love for "brain power," but it is the wiser man that sacrifices some, "brain power," for the things that he loves.

Not that far of a stretch. Grecian pagan fundamentalists probably still believe Zeus manifests himself on Earth to rape people, though, He seems to prefer taking forms like rams and rain clouds rather than men. Ah well, if you're going for God-rape, why not throw in some beastiality with it as well, eh?

For what it's worth, I do know at least one person to calls themselves a Hellenistic Priestess and actually worships the ancient Greek pantheon of gods, so they do exist. :D

Which, incidentally, is also why we have so many laws on the books demanding that the government does stuff for us, but that nobody has to foot the bill for all that stuff. Yay direct democracy!

But you're correct, the referndum and petition powers are very sharp, double-edged swords.

In California we pick the Governor. Any half-decent civics class should pretty explicitly teach that the executive branch has one very strong check & balance power which is to appoint the judiciary. This is, in my opinion, the single most important responsibility an executive has. When you vote for Governor (or President, at the Federal level), ask yourself who you think they would appoint to be a judge. If you don't trust their judgement on that matter (history of cronyism, rubbing elbows with skeezy lawyers, whatever) then don't vote for that executive.

Of course, these days finding a half-decent civics class anywhere in this country seems like finding a needle in a haystack, but that's a separate issue.

Ak-47's are cheaper and easier to maintain.

I guess my point is that in an area not under the control of the Catholic church, science progressed at a higher rate. But, of course, as you pointed out you have to take into account the utter collapse of civilized (for Roman definitons of civilized) society in Europe. It is, however, a wonder that it took them a couple hundred years to get back to something resembling the civilized society they had before the collapse.

Well if the 'time' clock is defined by God, his version of, 'time' may be so drastically different in magnitude than ours that billions of millenia here is but a mere eye-blink to him, and, thus, peta-bytes of data generated may not be that large from his perspective. Again, mind you, I am not advocating this point of view, but it is an interesting thing to think about...

Fair enough. I typically just try to hammer on the inconsistencies of the points that Biblical advocates take for granted because, well, if they can't justify why they take something for granted...

Anyways, I get what you are saying about the pedantics of the whole Bible being a lot of, "he-said-she-said." Typically, however, Bible advocates tend to wave their hand and say that whatever versions of the Bible we have today are they way they are and say what they say because they are precisely how God meant them to be right now...or something along those lines.

It reminds me of the blind optimism Voltaire satirized in Candide.

Please don't. This is an interesting scientific topic and I would rather not have it threadjacked over some damn holy war, no matter what side of the science/debate/politics/religion/controversy you are on.

If there is a Mod listening, please flag this as off-topic, even if it is a joke.

Yeah, but at least we can give him credit for being poor but not going into debt. That's more sense than most poor folk have.

See, The Dunning-Kruger effect.

Claiming that parents taking an interest in their child's education will solve the education problems of the United States is pretty much the same kind of arguement that says the solution to increasing STD rates and teenage pregnancies is massive, self-imposed abstinence.

It's a great idea, but in the face of reality it fails. We have a few decades worth of evidence that suggests while people should be interested in their childen's education, the mass majority of them are not. We need to design a solution to account for this problem as well.

That kind of attitude, while militant and progressive (for very liberal definitions of progressive) is a very good way to convince religious folk that scientists are condescending, evangelistic assholes that are no better than the ancient Crusaders whom they choose to denounce.