I have lost my faith in mankind, that's for sure but last year I started a debate club at my high school and now each month when I go to the tournaments, seeing, listening to these kids, well it's great and it gives me hope but what % of HS kids are into debate? <1?
Here's the current topics
Aloha and Hau'oli Makahiki Hou
Will
Policy Debate
2012-2013 Topic
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its transportation infrastructure investment in the United States.
Lincoln-Douglas Debate
November/December Topic
Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee universal health care for its citizens.
January/February Topic
Resolved: Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the United States criminal justice system.
Public Forum Debate
December Topic
Resolved: The United States should prioritize tax increases over spending cuts.
(480 schools voted for the December resolution.)
January Topic
Resolved: On balance, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission harms the election process.
(418 schools voted for the January resolution.)
People thought that rats were spontaneously created from trash
Mice from rotten grain
Leave meat out, and flys will be created
If you freeze water hard enough, it becomes a quartz crystal
Lynx piss forms into tourmaline crystals
Only science was able to prove these tales wrong
We spent 1200 years in the Dark ages because of Christian (right wing) mind control, with the belief that knowledge is evil
The right wingers want to keep us ignorant.
The rest of us want to learn, progress and evolve into the future
Worth reposting since it's one of the most liberal sounding things Ron has ever posted! Mexicans have feelings too!!!
lots of guessing on both sides isnt there...
Yup..
Do i believe MEN can relate a story accurately over such a length of time as to lend any point by point Factual reference of any religions book? No,, as stories cant even be related accurately over a week between 10 of em.
Not to say they al dont contain facts, but whimsy is an un-identifiable ting in the hearts of those that wrote them. So we get all manner of interpretations.
But even the natural people of this land , long ago, held dear their beliefs and their Gods before any Euro-or modern influence. Much of this was just acceptable societal rules. but they had those beliefs, and in many ways resemble some of the far eastern beliefs of a soul and its passage into the spirit world. Did my Choctaw relatives have contact with far eastern people LONG LONG ago?? Or did they come up with those similar conclusions exclusively ?
Theres as much mystery left in science as religion..
Personally, i just keep tailoring the factual evidence of evolution into a less strict interpretation of my own God..After all he is a personal choice..And i can live the best of both of those "worlds", while chucking the non sense and miss interpretation.
Nohea....I never had any faith in mankind because I don't have "faith" period. I would rather have my beliefs formed by a logical interpretation of the evidence at hand.
and only after giving up completely, have I been able to come back and try and do what ever I can do to try to at least change One person's mind to be on the right side of humanity.
Maybe I will be lucky, and help 2 people change course and steer away from being part of the problem, to not be the cancer that kills us all off
I never had any faith in mankind because I don't have "faith" period.
Only one speaking or thinking from inside the religious framework defines "faith" in this manner.
Food for thought: Do you really want to surrender the basic word "faith" that is so ingrained in our culture and language (e.g., our music, our literature even outside supernaturalisms) to the religions and religionists which are falling out of favor anyways?
Change the conversation. Take a page from Frank Luntz or George Lakoff. Anytime you want you can change it up, and define "faith" in proactive, progressive secular terms (meaning trust, for better or worse, good or bad, blind or empirical, whatever). Easy to do if (a) you're not in church, (b) you don't buy into religious framing to begin with.
Outside religion, do I have "faith" - an empirical, evidence-based "faith" - in my rope and sit harness? Yes.
Did I let go-B or Jerry Falwell or any supernaturalist define my definition or employment of "faith" in crazy religious or theological terms? Hell no.
Faith, like belief, is just too good a word to let loose. Or to surrender to any ol time supernaturalist, ol time dogma, or ol' time institution. To do so, in terms of strategy, if that's your interest at all (and I think it is), either in regard to communications or to social movements - currently underway to push beyond religions and theologies of old - would be counterproductive.
The bogey here is "blind faith" or "religious faith" - not "faith" in general. There. I said my piece.
All of the knowledge in the universe isn't going to help us if we keep breeding at current rates. Some of the natural resources such as oil are now so expensive that many third world countries totally missed the boat and will probably remain third world.
There are other things, such as copper. At one point, you could get a fairly close estimate of a country's GDP just by their copper consumption.
The U.S. has already gone through much of its natural resources. I can make a good argument that we became a dominating force in the world simply due to our abundant natural resources, such as oil. We have more oil than any other country on the planet other than Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, we have already used 190 billion barrels, which is most of it. We won WWII simply because we had oil and the Germans and Japanese didn't. They tried to get it, but barely failed.
Many nations have exceeded the carrying capacity and live in endless poverty. The planet actually has an expiration date as far as resources go.
Taken in this context, population growth vs. carrying capacity is a far worse problem than ignorance.
The wiki page is fascinating. Population growth rate is slowing:
I think these morons are skipping science classes to study ancient mythology (i.e., the bible).
Their idiocy is mind boggling. And these simpletons spew there religious propoganda to each other, and they all feed on the crap.
It's sad, because religion and science are not mutually exclusive. Though I take the bible with a monster grain of salt, it's amazing the similarity between the big bang theory and "let there be light."
The meek shall inherit the earth. What God means is the morons will breed like hampsters and the earth will become over-run with religious idiots. The second Dark Age is beginning.
I find it frustrating that the anti-evolution tact has gained so much ground.
I was trained by three of the great evolutionists of the last century, and consider myself very lucky to have encountered them. I recently reviewed some of the words of one of them, Francisco Ayala, who was an ordained Catholic Priest.
I find it odd that people who have very superficial understanding of things, who have not studied them in great depth, discard words of people who've spent their lives in study, simply out of hand.
He says:
With Catholics, I take out the Pope's address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in October 1996 where he endorses evolutionary teachings.
In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.......
.....It is important to set proper limits to the understanding of Scripture, excluding any unseasonable interpretations which would make it mean something which it is not intended to mean. In order to mark out the limits of their own proper fields, theologians and those working on the exegesis of the Scripture need to be well informed regarding the results of the latest scientific research.....
Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.* In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.
....The theory proves its validity by the measure to which it can be verified. It is constantly being tested against the facts; when it can no longer explain these facts, it shows its limits and its lack of usefulness, and it must be revised......................
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