I just wanted to write to say that you have a great site and a wonderful resource for all to share.

That’s the think aboutthw written word – so hard to convey tone. I knew you were kidding and an atheist. :)

How do you go about handling the more controversial topics? Do you explain what the hubbub is over Intelligent Design (which is neither), stem cell research, or other “hot button” topics, or do you try to stick to the less controversial stuff, like whether Xena and its moon Gabriella should be classified as planets or not?

Comment by Wayne A. Schneider — February 3, 2006 @ 3:50 pm

As much as I would love to be controversial, and as much as 95% of the kids would love it too (I’ve had some individual conversations with those kids), the 5% who avoid controversy at all costs, and their parents, make it impossible to fill the will of the majority. It’s a problem the school Districts avoid rather than confront, and as a result, I am bound by their decisions to be non-controversial.

But there’s a a bit of a loophole… if they bring it up and they talk about it, I am not liable. So, it’s always possible to invoke it in small doses to get them to think.

I’m not big on lecturing. I think it’s simply me telling them what’s right and what’s wrong, and not giving them an oppotunity to learn. One think that seems to work well is assigning them projects where they have to do research, present it to the clas, and then we talk about it. It becomes more about them willing to argue with their peers than with me. I’m simply there to guide and offer additional information.

But all the assinine No Child Left Behind standardized tests require me to make sure they can pass those tests so that the school doesn’t lose funding, and the kids advance. Because if it were up to me, we’d just have fun in learning and not have any tests. No one ’standardize tests’ you in the real world. And these kids are so unprepared for it. They’re taugt how to take tests and follow orders. Hardly a competent citizen.

But the part you might find the most amusing (at least I look at it that way) are the occasional busy-body teachers who don’t like the fact that I don’t act just like them (usually angry, screaming at the kids, very control freakish, and into many rules and regulations). A couple have gone to the vice principals to tattletale. Nothing comes out of it because the v.p.s know these people as constant whiners. But every time, every one of them has been a serious religion freak who believes in one right way – theirs. And they do what they can to make the rest of us be just like them. And ofcourse, you know the teachers the kids hate… yep, them :). Says a lot about our overly regimented, absolutist society, I do believe…

Do you have any teenage nieces or nephews or neighborhood kids to ask about school? For your own information, you should go ask them what they think about it. And why. It’s pretty eye-opening.

Until relatively recently, many societies believed that the heart was the center for intellect. It’s why the Egyptians were so careful in preserving it, while they scooped out the brain and tossed it away. In reality, Science has been able to derermine that the heart just pumps blood and has no rational or intellectual capacity at all. So if ‘morality’ is to be ‘written’ anywhere, it is in the brain, which, like a complex computer is the area in which people process ethical decisions.

That’s why you know when you’ve done wrong.

Actually, ethics is a product of social animals. In the process of evolution, the ability to survive as a species drastically improves if you unite with others of your kind to form packs, clans, etc. When we were smaller in stature, we were vegetarians, like other primates, who were prey. By forming societies, our ancestors were able to survive better. It’s why we wage wars with armies and not individuals. Strength in numbers.

So, in order to have this protection of numbers, an individual but be ethical. If you are a person who constantly steals other people’s food (not covetting your neighbors’ property), then you might find yourself out in teh wild, against savage preditors to fend for yourself.

As a result of this survival tool, ethics or morality is an innate characteristic possessed by all human beings (with sociopathic exceptions), and not only are people not raised with religion moral, but they actually tend to be more moral, because as we know, anything that is a choice of free will is more prolific than things that we are obligated to do. Sort of the forbidden fruit, if you will.

And, unlike religion, I know these things of my own accord, not because someone else told them to me. They are obvious and realistic and make a lot of sense when you are open to the world we live in rather than irrational fairytales.

Religion does not require you to grow up. It allows you to remain a permanent child, turning to it to find your road map for life. It’s fine if that’s the choice you make. But don’t subject those of us who want to grow up, and who have done so, to fabrications and expect us to believe them.

Incest wasn’t incest at that time, it was survival of the species and God allowed it.

So, just like he still allowsit now? Because youknow, incest still occurs. And as I have already pointed out, genetically, it’s not viable for a species to interbreed. Their offspring are weaker and as a result more suseptible to disease, preditors and the environment.

Plus, you’re forgetting the Flood, when the population was reduced down to 3 men and 3 women. And from what it said, it seems that Noah and his wife were past the age in which women can conceive. But even if we consider them viable, and you do the math, it turns out that 6 people in the approximate year of 2,000 b.c.e could not reproduce at a rate that would put 6.3 billion people on this planet today. I’ve searched the internet to see if anyone mathematically superior to me has worked it all out in detail, but was unable to find anything. So, in doing a quick and crude analysis of my own, I found that even by ignoring disease, miscarriage, murder, suicide, and similar variables, that we might have made it to two million by now, but no where near 6.3 billion. And teh 6.3 billion is very well proven. So the sheer volume of humans today is one of many aspects of proof that Noah’s Flood never happened. And if the flood didn’t occur, then the Bible is really just a book of parables meant to pass along lessons to people in a similar fashion to Greek and Roman mythology. It’s not a literal document.

Evidently the genetic problems we run into today were of none effect all those millennia ago. I’ve heard it suggested that our genes were so pure (whatever that means) that being inbred was not something that noticeably affected the physiology.

But what do you THINK? Not relying on prior rationalizations to explain something that does not make sense with a lot of twisting of reality?

Our genetic composition contains pseudogenes… genes that exist but do not work. This discredits ‘pureness’ of them in complex species. Pure in the original single celled organisms perhaps, but that was billions of years ago, long before humans were a possibility.

I don’t know but it makes a little sense coupled with the ideas that those people lived on average hundreds of years.

No, it makes zero sense, even if they lived a trillion years. And hasn’t Wayne already established that Hebrew was incorrectly translated? That years actually means months, which was how they tracked age?

The real problem I think for the humanist scientist is this theory flies in the face of evolution.

Au contraire… it flies in the face of reality, logic and common sense. It’s irrational and sounds like compete fiction to anyone who has grown up and is able to see the world we life in for what it is. A result of billions and billions of years. Nothing more.

If anything it goes to show that we are not evolving, we are devolving. I think the history of mankind bears that out.

If anything, we are not evolving. We as a species have removed ourselves from nature, and therefore are not evolving along with the changes in the planet (which is the cause and reason for evolution to begin with).

An example of human evolution in this regard would be how the Europeans evolved an immunity to small pox (as it killed all of those who weren’t immune and only those who were passed along their genes). Unexposed to the disease at all, Native Americans when they came into contact with diseased but immune Europeans suffered a wide spread plague in which a significant portion of their population was destroyed. Only those with a resistence survived, and still survive today.

The Bible was written by people with little to zero knowledge of the universe. Their book is the best they were capable of. But today, as we know so much more about our universe, it is evident to see that intelligence and design have absolutely nothing to do with our being here.

The lack of a purpose in our existence plagues people, who become desperate to make this folklore fit. Instead of finding the beauty of defining their purpose for themselves, they become afraid and look to magic and fantasy to fill their voids. Fine. Their choice. But, where I draw the line in when it affects my ability to choose my destiny for myself. And anyone who thinks that they aren’t invading my right to decide my fate is simply in serious denial.

**********************

Correction, Antagonist…most liberals that I know have no problem accepting the fact that there are indeed some absolutes in this world, such as the fact that it’s wrong to imprison a person when there is no evidence that said person committed or planned to commit any crime. However, where we differ from conservatives such as yourself is the fact that we refuse to accept the idea that everything must be absolute — a notion to which your own statement as quoted above appears to lend support! Your words seem to suggest that you believe it entirely impossible (or absolutely impossible, if you will) for a liberal to accept the idea of an absolute principle! Can you say, “hoist with your own petard”?

Comment by Bob Loblaw

And I’d spend more time on you if I had it but I gotta go. I’ll just say that God writes His laws on the hearts of men. That’s why you know when you’ve done wrong. Incest wasn’t incest at that time, it was survival of the species and God allowed it. Evidently the genetic problems we run into today were of none effect all those millennia ago. I’ve heard it suggested that our genes were so pure (whatever that means) that being inbred was not something that noticeably affected the physiology. I don’t know but it makes a little sense coupled with the ideas that those people lived on average hundreds of years.

The real problem I think for the humanist scientist is this theory flies in the face of evolution. If anything it goes to show that we are not evolving, we are devolving. I think the history of mankind bears that out. Just a thought. Have a great weekend.

“Don’t ax me about incest because there was no Law against marrying your brother in those days thus no incest.”

So you say there wasn’t incest because there was no law against it? That’s convienient! What other laws weren’t around at that time? Could you lie with impunity? Oh wait, that happens now – see Bush Administration Lies in google. So I guess we should have laws now that say you can’t lie. Oh wait, we do – “do you swear on this bible to tell the truth….”. Oh wait, that’s under oath. So you CAN lie with impunity today. That must be why Bush et al continue to lie.

Oh damn I just spent more time on IRI…

Comment by David

My guess is I know as much about it as you do.

WTF? Is Eirc Cartman trolling TP?

Someone is woefully ignorant about genetics…

Of course I was being silly (I’m an atheist; it’s what we do.)

How do you go about handling the more controversial topics? Do you explain what the hubbub is over Intelligent Design (which is neither), stem cell research, or other “hot button” topics, or do you try to stick to the less controversial stuff, like whether Xena and its moon Gabriella should be classified as planets or not?

Comment by Wayne A. Schneider — February 3, 2006 @ 2:13 pm

So many directions to run with that one…. :) Just thought it was interesting news that I ran across while planning their next assignment (I like to have them learn about real science in the news, and not make them memorize a bunch of words and defintions they will quickly forget).

Just calling it like I see it!

Thanks for your kind words and sentiments above.

Was joking… I’m not easily riled (grew up with brothers :)

This much is known: During times of social or economic stress, a woman’s liver tends produces more of a hormone called cortisol that proves so damaging to male fetuses they actually kick out in response to it.

Female fetuses, more vital on the whole, seem relatively unaffected by the cortisol.

One theory states that damage to male fetuses is a side effect of this hormonal stress response.

But in a new study, researchers provide evidence for the other theory, that the body is purposely culling the males by pumping out cortisol in an effort to get rid of a child-to-be that is less likely to survive the presumably difficult situation outside the womb.

The key to the research is this: Male embryos and fetuses are known to be weaker. So trying to bring a boy into this world under hardship would be disadvantageous, in terms of survival of the fittest, compared to having a girl.

http://www.livescience.com/ humanbiology/ 060124_male_fetus.html