Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin — the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.The Darwin Day Celebration website provides resources and publicity for individuals and institutions across the world to celebrate science and humanity every year, on, or near, February 12, Darwin’s birthday. In addition to information about the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, this website provides practical examples, advice and templates for organizing and publicizing Darwin Day events. It also provides a directory of events where you can find celebrations taking place near you or register your own event for others to find.
yes.
and the scientific community should be free to reject said theories if they cannot hold up to scientific scrutiny without having every single deluded “true-beleiver” call it persecution.
yes, but that should not come at the expense of funding for the failing public schools you’re so fond of talking about. no one is keeping someone from homeschooling their kids or sending them to private school, but that should not come at the expense of funding for a comprehensive public education system.
Poor phreedm… too lazy to do any work on his own… hiding in his cloak of ignorance…We call it his brain.
We call it his brain.
Phreedum,
The prayer study had the statistical power to detect if prayer works or not (it was found not to work).
Of course Gawd probably knew this, so in his infinite wisdom, he skewed the results in order to test the true believers faith (kinda like fossils).
I’m starting to think you are an atheist having a bit of fun with us all…no one can be that willfully ignorant.
Come on Phreedum…fess up.
I just wanna know if Danger is your middle name
There’s dumb, and then there’s brain-dead. The above statement represents the latter.
Anyone want to give me a research grant to study Invisible Pink Unicorns in their natural habitat?
Comment from: phreedm [Member]
Comment from: (: tom
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Why can’t the religiously insane accept that their ‘beliefs’ have been scrutinized by science, and found lacking in any ability to be tested?
Such as…?
Um – such as the one we’re talking about in this comments thread, moran.
The one that is the underpinning of ID – the belief that there is an intelligent designer behind everything.
Got any proof? Or even some way of testing the potential scientific hypothesis ID proposes?
Maybe the religiously insane can start asking for alchemy courses to be re-introduced to the science curriculum next. Or the translation of those speaking in tongues into the literature curriculum. How about creative accounting for tax-free churches in the financial section?
Phreedm,
First, if you have something to say, say it. I can’t follow your insinuations and your unspoken thoughts. If you don’t communicate properly, you’ll never convince anyone.
Mentally, yes. Verbally, yes. Logically, yes. Experimentally, no.
If an experiment is unethical, then it shouldn’t be run. In all other cases, ideas and theories should be explained in detail, explored with the mind, and tested where appropriate.
I already explained this, but you seem to have missed that “explore” has many different definitions.
The only thing I know about Lubbock is that they see a lot of UFOs there. What exactly are you talking about?
If I run an experiment and the test doesn’t pan out, then I think about why it didn’t pan out. If I can come up with a better way of testing, then I run another test. If I cannot come up with a better test then I start thinking of ways to prove that my theory is wrong. I also explain my theory to anyone who will listen if it’s a good idea to do so (in the invention business sometimes it’s important to keep ideas to yourself). I do not jump to any conclusions without also recognizing that I may be wrong.
I don’t open my eyes, fail to see a ghost and immediately come to the conclusion that they don’t exist. It’s taken a long time to looking and a repeated, consistent lack of evidence to come to the conclusion that they probably don’t exist. But I cannot make the positive claim that they don’t exist.
There’s a nice joke here about there being more theists than atheists in the world, but I’ll let you figure it out on your own.
For the record, I wouldn’t really know what it’s like to be a failure. My approach to life has panned out quite well. Maybe I’m just lucky though.
Yes, and once Edison devised better ways of testing his theories he started to convince people.
Never again forget that it’s up to the one making the claim to come up with the evidence. You forget this all the time.
Why are you so quick to make judgments about me? I’ve already explained my conclusion making progress up above, your description of it does not fit. You would have done well to ask me about it first.
There are plenty of prayer experiments that have shown it to have no statistical effect. I am not basing my skepticism on a jump to conclusions. If you can provide some studies that show it’s effectiveness, then I would like to examine them.
For the record, I’m socially very liberal, fiscally slightly liberal.
My imagination is quite active (I’m a musician and toy inventor, remember?). Imagination is my well-being.
I, like every other developed human being on this planet, also have no lack of belief. It is you who has an abundance of irrational beliefs.
Everyone likely has irrational beliefs. We pick them up all our lives, but mostly when we’re young. It’s important to constantly explore one’s own beliefs and determine which of them are irrational. At that point, the right thing to do is to either justify the belief with evidence or accept some level of ignorance. The wrong thing to do is to continue to hold to it steadfastly.
If you want to point out any irrational beliefs I seem to hold, I’ll be glad to either defend them or denounce them.
The failure to defend one’s beliefs effectively against another potential belief is the core of closed mindedness. Since you’ve blindly accused me of having a closed mind (once of the few things that I’ll actually take offense to), prove it. Provide evidence that your beliefs explain the world around us better than mine and I’ll listen to what you have to say.
To answer your other question, if anything were possible in our world, I would believe in the power of prayer as explained in the Bible. Since nobody can move mountains with only the power of prayer, or give amputees their limbs back, or any number of other things, it’s pretty clear that the Bible is wrong as far as prayer is concerned.
I’ll ask again, what myth?
No child is stuck in failing public schools. They always have the option to either be home schooled or go to a private school. But you are asking about funding for private schools.
Private schools should be run like private businesses. If they can’t get enough grants to make their tuition low enough then that’s their own fault.
The other option is to take money away from public schools and give it to private schools. If you do that, the whole system will fail and then the private schools will become the new public schools. But the new public schools will be able to teach whatever they want with no oversight.
I am not willing to accept that as a viable option unless you can convince me that the following idea is wrong: A quality of a school is determined by it’s students.
If you shift uncaring students to new schools they’ll still be just as uninterested. I have no doubt that there are flaws in the public school system, but I believe that the factor with the most weight is the student body. Even if I’m wrong, it would still be much easier to fix the flaws in the public school system than it would be to start an entirely new system from scratch.
Also, why do you persist in attacking AA for their stated stance against religion intermingling with government? It should be obvious that AA doesn’t want the government paying for people to push their religious beliefs on people. To the best of my knowledge they have nothing to say about vouchers for private secular schools (not coincidentally the highest rated schools in the country).
From where I stand, you give the impression of being more interested in pushing religious dogma on children than giving them the education they need to survive in an increasingly secular world. I hope I’m wrong.
Great, I managed to bold my grammar error.
That should read: The quality of a school is determined by it’s students.
Actually, that should read: The quality of a school is determined by its students (its, not it’s)
Sorry, that’s one of my pet peeves, and I just couldn’t help myself
alatham,
I truly admire your dedication and patience in dealing with the phreekster’s inane arguments. More power to you.
Thanks Tarma. You’re totally right about the apostrophe. Replacing “it’s” with “it is” points that out perfectly. So that’s two bolded grammar errors. Eep.
I wish I didn’t have to write so much when I respond to him, but I feel like I’m forced into being long-winded in order to explain every little detail. In the past I’ve suffered from him harping on about tiny details that weren’t fully explained (like my original explanation for why all ideas are worthy of exploration that he either missed or misunderstood).
I’m a lot more patient than the average person, but if this weren’t a public forum even I would have stopped responding to Phreedm months ago. Since it’s public though, I don’t want people who stumble onto these topics to think we don’t have any answers to his bizarre complaints. If a person who was already prone to jumping to conclusions were to come here, it would only take a few of his unanswered posts to convince them that we have no counter arguments.
Unfortunately for we atheists, it seems to take 10 times as much effort to come up with a decent argument as it does to come up with a poor one.
It’s much easier to rely on logical fallacies and unspoken arguments, but I’ve never been afraid of critical thinking or unambiguous communication.
alatham,
Twee!
2 (original) + 1 (correction time) = Twee
And:
Sure they are out to convice people, it is the necessary evil they do to get the money, that is, the people won’t generally give the money if they are not conviced.
I’m just saying
Oops, that last part should be in the pissy Pope topic.
One of my favorite bands: Danger is My Middle Name. Take a listen at: http://tinyurl.com/yuqsq6
AND your public school education. I went to public schools, and they were great. Students and teachers were kind, caring people. I learned a lot there, good old Ambridge High.
phreedm, your comment about public education misses the point. We have lots of well-working models of public education in other countries we can turn too if we want to improve our system. There is no need to turn it over to the religions. Hammas and other religious-based charity groups also do good work in various fields, from education to health care. The Soviets had great schools too. In other words, even though religious schools typically outperform public schools in the USA, the side effects are worse than the cure.
Besides, who would get the extra cash to go to religious schools? Everyone? In the long run, only the religions (a lucky subset which would likely include primarily Christian schools) would profit. If Uncle Sam gives out the money for everyone to attend private schools, he will have just transformed public education from a secular to non-secular system.
Instead of giving extra money to the small Catholic school in the ghetto right across from the crumbling public school, why not just give it to the crumbling school?
Voucher programs are like ID, gay issues and abortion. They do not exist for their own sake, but merely as back-alley methods to spread Christianity into secular realms and mix politics with religion in sneaky ways.