Pangloss

You know what, I've just reviewed the thread, and I have to agree -- you're right. There's only one poster in this thread who has consistently maintained the point of view that religion must be stamped out and defeated, and nobody from EITHER side of the "teacher" debate seems to agree with him. I think some posters (like iNow) are selectively ignoring him, but I can understand that. People tend to ignore replies from people whom they largely agree with and focus on replies from people they largely disagree with. And I forgot that several pages back people took issue with him and agreed with what I was saying about common courtesy and respect in the classroom. At any rate, I apologize if my personal disagreement with that one poster has disrupted an otherwise pleasant conversation.

Casting this as a religious discussion is a way of pitting off one side against the other and requiring that one must win and the other must lose. It's not about that, and it never was. What if a Jew tried to learn the history of Christianity or Mormonism? Would he be forced to renounce his faith? Is it so hard to believe that he could learn everything there is to know about that subject, even to the extent of writing a dissertation on it, without actually converting? With that in mind, is it so hard to believe that someone could learn everything there is to know about physics, or chemistry, or even evolution, without renouncing their Christianity? Why is that so incomprehensible? Nor is it necessary for teachers to demolish religion in order to teach science. You teach the science and you let the students work out any religious contradictions on their own. That's what freedom of choice is all about. Anything else IS religious dictatorship. It's just in favor of the religion of atheism instead of the religion of christianity. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go say my ten "Hail Merck"'s so I can take my federally mandated, politically correct drugs and be a happy, cooperative and productive atheist. Don't worry, if you decide next week that these drugs aren't as "safe and effective" as your faith-based "scientific reasoning" (which was actually just a failed approach to statistical analysis) once thought they were, then I'll just take the new ones you prescribe, and I'm sure I'll understand once they kick in.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-gop2307oct23,0,5722391.story The Republican Party is following the lead of national Democrats in disenfranchising voters in several states that have tried to move their primaries ahead of those in Holy and Sacred Iowa and New Hampshire. The GOP approach is a bit different -- removing half the delegates of the offending states. But the effect is the same, returning control to the Holy and Sacred States of Iowa and New Hampshire. Meanwhile the story continues to go vastly under-reported in the press, which has a vested interest in the matter, benefitting tremendously from the drama of having these two states determine the candidates for everyone else.

Not if you ask about half the posters in this thread, swansont. They seem to think that it's exactly the same thing, and that it's exactly what we should be doing in the classroom, regardless of what this teacher may or may not have done.

This is a really good point that often gets overlooked in these discussions. Partisanship actually stands in the way of figuring out what actually went wrong and how to fix it. I can see how it might seem that way from an overseas perspective. Perhaps the roots of this that we saw during the Clinton administration were not as internationally obvious (for lack of a better term). But you may have a point there about the current administration contributing to it more directly, at least in so far as they took direct action on a number of very divisive issues, especially in the wake of 9/11. Ironically many of those actions enjoyed bipartisan support when they were taken and would probably have been undertaken by a Democratic president as well. But that doesn't invalidate the point. Hmm, that's a really interesting point as well. I think Americans have generally become more aware, over the last few years especially, of public opinion overseas of American foreign policy. Most of the focus is on "getting people to like us again". We don't talk about how we may be setting a bad example. Maybe we should.

I don't object to presenting scientific truth in the classroom. I object to parading individual students' personal beliefs before a classroom, ridiculing them, and demanding that they be changed on the spot. I realize that may not be what happened in this case, but it's what you and others in this thread are asking for. What you want isn't the presentation of objective scientific truth. What you want is the evangelism of atheism in the classroom. You want to shake the baby until it stops crying. Well I'm sorry, but that just isn't how education works.

I continue to find it objectionable the way you portray me as anti-science, Bascule. Just because I don't instantly adopt every politically correct statistical derivation theory that you leap to the defense of around here doesn't mean I want to live in a cave with stone knives and bearskins, howling at the moon. You're completely wrong in presenting me this false dilemma. I never said it was necessary to choose between religion and science -- that is entirely your own creation. The deal is that you lead the horse to water but you don't force it to drink. Not in a free society.

Because it keeps being said. And when it gets pointed out, like ParanoiA did with you above, you act like you never even asked the above question, responding instead that "it's silly to get so agitated when a teacher suggests something counter to your belief system". Um, hello, that's not the question you asked. Don't change the subject. Do you want to talk about what teachers are doing in the classroom, or do you want me to respond to the above question? I'm not going to respond with an answer if you're going to change the question after I reply.

Interesting example. As you say, it doesn't work if everyone is a partisan, but I guess realistically there's not much chance of that happening on any one issue. Though I think there's a danger of creating a perception that everyone believes either one way or the other, the danger being that everyone becomes convinced that there's no room for compromise and we're just going to have to duke it out. You could be right. That's an intriguing expansion (or at least additional depth) to the usual "they point out the middle ground" argument. I keep hoping that all this partisanship and awakening dialog is going to lead us to Eisenhower's informed, intelligent electorate. The possibility seems to be there -- never before has virtually all information been available to absolutely everyone, regardless of means. But it's not just a matter of access to information, or even critical thinking skills. I think one of the things we're learning is that information quality and authority are important as well. It's hard for people to assess the accuracy and legitimacy of information when two sides spin it to suit. BUT that doesn't mean that it was better in the old days, when Walter Cronkite told us what it meant. Maybe this process will teach us how to REALLY determine the accuracy and legitimacy of information. It seems like a stretch of imagination (even to me, and I'm the one who said it), but look at how the Wikipedia has changed how we look at information, and with such a simple little idea. It's not authoritative, but it's so much better than the situation we had before (each web site with its own level of validity and ease-of-use). We didn't even realize there WAS a step in between "hobbyist" and "authoritative source", or that it might have value. But there turned out to be one, and it's completely revolutionized access to information. I don't really have any kind of response here, but I thought this was an interesting point. The idea that the answers are already out here, we're just not able to "access" (for lack of a better word) them, is intiguing. I think generally we look at answers to society's tough problems as distant, unreachable things that will only be accessible to a brilliant hero. Maybe the brilliant hero is just the person who points out what we knew all along. I'll bet there's precedent for that in history, too, if we stop to think about it. Was Martin Luther King really telling us something we didn't know? Or was his brilliance in his ability to make it stick?

Some apes, it seems, are more equal than others.

This thread is intended to talk about the larger issue of common ground in modern politics, but I thought I'd actually start things off with a small set of specific examples. These examples come from a new book released October 9th by Bob Beckel and Cal Thomas. Beckel is a Democratic strategist who's mostly known as the guy who first translated the term "where's the beef" into the political arena. Thomas is a conservative columnist in national syndication. Both have had done their fair share of polarization over the years, but they say they're tired of it and their new book proves the point (or so they say; I haven't read it yet). They also do a regular column on the same subject for USA Today. Here are a few examples of common ground that they raised in their column introducing the new book. The full article can be read here: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/10/common-ground-a.html#more Point #1: Revealing the Pork Point #2: A Plan for Iraq Point #3: Hillary, Newt and health care The article has some further points, but I'll stop there and let you read it. The point I want to get at in this thread is to try and answer the following questions: 1) Is partisanship helping or hurting? 2) Is it getting worse or no? 3) Can common ground be found in most issues? My opinion is: Hurting, yes and yes. What do you think?

Regarding DrDNA's post on the previous page about the story last week on screeners, I thought it was interesting that most of the stories ignored the fact that PRIVATE airport screeners failed to detect only 20% of the test bombs -- a whopper of a difference when compared with the 75% figure for TSA screeners. Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do. http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/Story?id=3747712&page=2

I agree with your sentiment about the firing, but there is a clear line between discussing the impact of religion on western civilization and requiring students to invalidate their beliefs to pass the course. The latter is simply not required in order to understand the history of western civilization. I don't know that that was the case here, and given the facts presented I would not have fired this teacher merely on the say-so of these clearly biased students. I would have made sure the teacher understood school policy and moved the kids to another class. The popularity of the positions that kids need to be taught that religion is always wrong, and/or that western history requires denouncement of religion (and variants thereof spread throughout this thread) continue to amaze me when presented by the kind of ostensibly logical, fair-minded people that this board typically attracts. I'm not trying to insult anyone in saying that, I'm just surprised and mystified by that position.

Well just speaking for myself, I'm a bit swamped at the moment, with some big deadlines coming up in my academic work, plus it's fall term so my students are driving me batty (not that it's a long trip, mind you). What drives Politics are new postings on current events, so please feel free to spark some new discussion here. The main thing to remember is to include your opinion and a link to a current story on the event or some other kind of reference, or just sufficient information so folks will know what you're talking about, etc.

Right. Like I said -- you feel Bush is responsible and Congress should not be part of this discussion. Well gosh, I guess that explains the 1995 shutdown, huh? After all it was Newt Gingrich trying to cut spending that shut the government down when Clinton refused to go along, but it was Clinton who caved (though he ultimately, ironically took credit, declaring "the era of big govement is ovah"). So yup, that would certainly seem to support your position. Gotta be all Bush, for sure. And it MUST be true, after all if it weren't we'd be out of Iraq by now, huh? Yup, that would seem to support your assertion. Gotta be all Bush, for sure. (So... why did we elect the Dems, exactly? Obviously we can't have been thinking that it would stop the war, could we?) And yet... (scratches head)... somehow we still get saddled with bridges to nowhere, apparently solely because the president didn't veto them. I wonder who proposes those bridges? I guess the president must do that. Yeah, that must be it. Whew, thanks for clarifying all this stuff for me. I don't know what I was thinking, suggesting that pork barrel spending might involve congress! Go figure!

What! I am not a smoker!

I have no problem with the assertion (in fact I agree with it), I just question why you're leaving Congress out of the discussion (not to mention a host of other factors), as well as mislead people about the subject of this thread. I suggest that this is deliberate, and the reason why is a predisposition to hold Bush under a microscope for ideological reasons rather than rational ones. In short, you deliberately narrow the reasoning and focus the discussion, hoping that if you blow this trumpet long and loud enough, Bush will lose the bizarre and detrimental "Worst President Evah" sweepstakes that ideologues feel so strongly compelled to play. Good luck with that. It didn't seem to work for conservatives in the 1990s, and I don't think it will work for liberals in the 2000s.

Just as an amusing aside, something tells me that Dr. Watson won't be invited to speak at Columbia University any time soon. That just wouldn't be... you know. Um, Phil, I hate to break it to you, but Floridians ARE New Yorkers. "Yeah my parents just moved to Florida. They didn't want to, but, well, you know, they turned 65 and that's the law!" -- Jerry Seinfeld

LOL! That does sound like something Rush Limbaugh would say! Very funny -- thanks for mentioning that. Not exactly lighting intellectual fires these days, is he? (grin) I don't know enough about this either, but just glancing at the article I'm troubled by the fact that Watson's not just saying that black people are intellectually inferior (due to, say, bad upbringing, which I think we all understand can adversely affect ANY person, but which is reportedly something that the African American community is struggling with on average more than the white community these days (e.g. 70% born to single moms)), but because their genetic makeup doesn't ALLOW them to become equal. That's something that I'd have to see some pretty hard evidence for, and at first blush just sounds like Phrenology 2.0. (It also sounds pretty familiar, like something we've pondered and rejected on scientific grounds before.) Even more disconcerting is his "gloominess" over public policy not reflecting his conclusions. Gee, sorry doc, we'll get right on that. NOT.

No. We should have to compete, just like anybody else.

Those aren't questions, those are statements of opinion, and you're making them in objection to a condition you've already agreed has a degree of validity to it. You did that in your responses to Bascule about the Christmas Controversies, which YOU brought up as an example of political correctness. Why are you doing that? Does it really bother you THAT much when someone uses the term in a manner that you've already agreed is valid? Or are you just determined to straddle the fence? Could it be that you are feeling an urge to be perceived as politically correct? PCness doesn't just apply to society. It applies to all societal subgroups. It applies to my workplace in a very different way from how it applies here on these message boards or when speaking with my friends, or when speaking with my wife's friends, or when speaking with my parents' friends. When you feel that discomfort and need to cough after someone says something that you knew wouldn't sit well with the group but you also knew everyone was too polite to say anything about it, but you knew they'd all comment to each other about it later? Yeah. That. Dismissing that, by the way, is a politically correct position on this message board.

Anyone catch that Nova this week on epigenetics? Pretty fascinating stuff.

"Honoring the establishment clause" is your opinion on the "Christmas Controversy" issue. There are other opinions on the subject, but apparently you refuse to acknowledge that possibility, and toss out a straw man instead. You know what we call it when one group of people decides that another group of people can't have a different opinion about a subject? Political correctness.

HD Tivo 4tW.