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POPSIt Beats Jesus on Toast! I'm astounded too. Not by the "Allah meat" but by the gullibility of people. And they even found a vet who gave credence by claiming it "defied scientific explanation". As far as no explanation this shows an astounding lack of imagination. I'm no vet but can readily come with an explanation as could any rational person. But then, who ever claimed that the Allah beef followers were rational? There is a name for this phenomenon: pareidolia: "The tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the viewer; such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals or seeing shapes in clouds." I'm off to McD now and fully expect to find a holy patty. Ha!
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POPSEducating evolution It is so amazing that after so many years and progress; educating youth about evolution is still considered revolutionary. this must be evolved :)
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POPSA Teacher On The Front Line For me there is no conflict between science and religion; I don't need scientific proof of the character of God. Perhaps the people who are arguing about all of this need to keep their minds occupied from avoiding justice, poverty, and war.
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POPSAdopting Desert Nomad's Science Christians who cling to the outdated belief that being gay is a sin are following the pre-scientific notions and social customs that were relevant 2000 years ago but are outdated and wrong today. Partly they adhere to these archaic beliefs because it gives them biblical authority to feel superior (if they are straight) and backs up their notion of persecution when others speak out against their homophobia.
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POPSTheistic Sanity It's not often that I agree with religious leaders but when I do it deserves to be pointed out. The point that Benedict makes of refuting the claim that evolution promotes atheism is of course correct. Although many, particularly in the States, believe otherwise. Unfortunately, the persons that fall into this category are also people that are the least informed on the subject.
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POPSEinstein on the Stupidity of Religion Contrast his words with the zebrafish specialist P.Z. Myers, "There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion. Who is right?
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POPSDesecration Science did not prevent me from doing any of this and the microscope and every other tool is just a construct of our immaterial intellects. So free yourself from scientism The scientific method is itself a being of reason and not provable by the scientific method. The empiro-metric method while quite useful for studying the intelligibility of the world comes short when it come to ontology. Ontological question are aided by these branches of science but the empiro-metric view can't be used to prove ontological questions. The three layers of abstraction Metaphysical, Mathematica, and Physica are not at odds to each other and we need to return to the view that theology is the queen of the sciences, though this does not change the importance of the other sciences. Faith vs. science is a silly debate when there is not a "versus" only an "and." By the way I do highly recommend The Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century
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POPSBaha’i shrines chosen as World Heritage sites The World Heritage List was established by UNESCO in 1972 to identify, protect, and preserve places of “cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value.” So far, 184 nations have signed the World Heritage Convention, which defines the general standards of selection for the list, and more than 850 sites have been recognized, including natural areas, such as East Africa’s Serengeti and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
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POPSJefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith "Like many other upper-class, educated citizens of the new republic, including George Washington, Jefferson was a deist. Deists differed from traditional Christians by rejecting miraculous occurrences and prophecies and embracing the notion of a well-ordered universe created by a God who withdrew into detached transcendence. Critics of the time regarded deism as an ill-conceived attempt to reconcile religion with scientific discoveries. For rationalists in the Age of Enlightenment, deism was one of many efforts to liberate humankind from what the deists viewed as superstitious beliefs."
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POPSOne More Time for the Learning Impaired It always helps to reiterate for the scientific challanged among us (and in the US that's a majority of the population) the difference between law, theory, guess and wishful thinking. Pay attention people, my patience is running out. And yes, you'll have to read the whole article to reap it's rewards. Learning does have it's costs so ante up! Don't let ignorance keep you sounding like a complete idiot.
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POPSChristian Zealot Faces Firing Once again we're witness to an attempt by a Christian fundamentalist to indoctrinate school children into his cult. The interesting point was made that 1) for eleven years people have complained about his classroom behavior and 2) other science teachers have testified that they had to reteach students that took this loon's class. Now the school board is finally looking into sacking this "teacher".
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POPSDevolution... The ability of mankind to cling to ancient myths when they can't fully grasp science is astounding...
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POPSCan Scientists Be Faithful? As someone who's both scientifically- and spiritually-minded, I know the answer to this question. And in fact I found most of this article boring, except for these parts I clipped.
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POPSAtheists aren't skeptical enough and... ...the best skeptics are actually theists. The agnostics ski down the mountain into the woods, searching for hard evidence on the basis of which to decide whether God exists—which is very odd, given that a moment ago they were standing here with us, ready to climb as declared skeptics. Agnostics, plainly, are wafflers in their skepticism: As the team gets going, they U-turn back to the foothills, where every true skeptic says there is nothing to find. They do not care about the truth. But even more astonishing than that, the atheists have just gone home. They are not down in the valley looking for evidence; they are not looking at all. They have packed in the science without lifting a boot, as if the summit were already taken, the question answered.
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POPSThe Devil's Delusion More from the debates :) Better to read the whole review...i could only clip a lil bit. http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/dont-write-off-religion-just-yet/
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POPSScientific Framing - Do We Need It? Recently there's been a controversy in the scientific community concerning scientific framing. That's framing in the sense of presenting views and facts in such a way that they appeal to a larger percentage of the population. We hear this mostly in the political realm but it applies equally in the scientific realm particularly where science and politics intersect. Is it the right thing to do? Is it too Orwellian?
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POPSThe Enlightenment and dogmatism of the mediaeval and the awakening of modernity. Medieval philosophy combined Christian beliefs with the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. In the medieval world philosophers respected their predecessors and accepted their methods. If a new discovery about nature contradicted one of Aristotle's principles, for example, it would probably have been assumed that it was the discovery that was in error. Enlightenment thinkers were not content to accept appeals to Aristotle's authority. It could be seen that using experimental methods science was progressing and increasing our understanding of nature, which could not have been done without rejecting some of Aristotle's assumptions. It was not only Aristotle that was being questioned, using reason and logic philosophers criticised political and religious ideas. What rational answer is there for the justification of monarchy or that you should choose one type of religion over another?
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POPS Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear
Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel's second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God's favoured people. "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them." In his later years he referred to a "cosmic religious feeling" that permeated and sustained his scientific work. In 1954, a year before his death, he spoke of wishing to "experience the universe as a single cosmic whole". He was also fond of using religious flourishes, in 1926 declaring that "He does not throw dice" when referring to randomness thrown up by quantum theory. His
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POPSSex Education From Austin Cline's blog, an illuminating exposé of Christian's attempts to sneak religious dogma into public schools.
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POPSExpelled the movie Expelled from public debate? Could it be true that proponents of Darwinism are militant in their views? Could it be any opposition to this THEORY is being met with violence and censure? Who is more vocal about their religion anyway, the Darwinists or the Christian? Makes one scratch their head in wonderment.
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POPSCracker Jacks and Crackpots I've already clipped about this "documentary". I've offered this additional clip because of the wonderful analogy the author used between the faith healer and medical school. Sums it up perfectly I though.
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POPSscience/theology coming together I have only clipped a very short piece but this article goes deeply into the subject. I find my religion needs scientific confirmation or at least is basically rational
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POPSEinstein's Idea Of Religion A crucial point is that Einstein stated categorically that he did not believe in a personal God, of the kind assumed by most practising religious people. Einstein detested the idea of a personal God who rewarded or punished his creatures, or exercised his will by interfering in events. He felt such an idea was intrinsically connected with human selfishness, merely 'a reflection of human frailty' So what was Einstein's religion? He called it 'cosmic religion' and it was a sense of awe at 'the nobility and marvellous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought.. Einstein's view of traditional religion was somewhat ambivalent. He detested any idea of indoctrination or fundamentalism, but admitted that conventional religions had a role in setting ethical standards
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POPSThe Language of God Among Collins’s most controversial beliefs is that of “theistic evolution”, which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further. “Scientifically, the forces of evolution by natural selection have been profoundly affected for humankind by the changes in culture and environment and the expansion of the human species to 6 billion members. So what you see is pretty much what you get.” “If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion,” he says.
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POPSAnti-Evolution Film Stirs Controversy Many of the reader's comments are more interesting than the article. For instance, here's one: ALL those "scientists" who are persecuted for believing "out of the box"? You know what, where are you tests you've preformed to PROVE Intelligent design? What Experimets did you preform? What results did you find that support your hypthesis of their being a designer? huh? Where are they? .... Oh wait.. you don't have any? You just "believe" that what HASN"T been explained by science yet must be something else??? Hmm.... Sounds like your saying "Whatever hasn't be figured out (yet) MUST be God!! Or this: "Unfortunately I feel it's pretty hard to have an honest discussion on the topic of origin these days because it seems that so few people are capable of accurately representing or fairly treating the arguments of anyone who sees it differently."
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POPSHuman Genome Project "an occasion of worship" Geneticist Francis Collins speaks at Stanford about faith and science; new book on DNA achievement called "The Language of God." Author of clip compares world-views of Collins, Goodenough, and Einstein in an essay on a Psalm.
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