So, I've decided (cheers erupt world-wide) that not only are rants pointless, blogging into the 'net is pointless. I'm leaving a few juicy links here but otherwise consider this page dead electrons
Anyway, the big question is: should I continue to be a Pastafarian, or should I join the Church of Last Thursday?
If you can track it down, the TV documentary on the Pennsylvania lawsuit over teaching ID in school is just fantastic. (I think it was Frontline but maybe one of the others.) The plaintiffs' lawyers actually tracked down documents which had started out claiming Creationism was the truth, been partially edited to replace "Creationism" with "ID," and finally re-edited to remove all direct mention of gods or Creationism. You'd have thought that would put an end to things (the plaintiffs won, by the way, and the schools were instructed not to allow ID teaching in any science class), but sadly the ID proponents, aka liars, continue to push their tripe.
Here's Randi's take on science coexisting with religion. Much better written than I could do.
"SCIENCE & PSEUDOSCIENCE: THE DIFFERENCES. I'm often asked for my personal definition of "science," and I usually limit it to this: Science is an organized, disciplined, unbiased search for knowledge of the world around us. Given the opportunity, I hasten to add to this my observations that science does not discover "facts," but rather it finds statements (theories, formulae, descriptions) as a result of having examined the real world, statements that describe what may be expected to be found under stated conditions. And, just as importantly, science is always prepared to adjust, reverse, abandon, and/or add/subtract to/from its statements, in order to more closely approach "the truth." Obviously, we can always go on from there to define "truth," which I regard as an unreachable goal (truth, not the definition) — though in spite of Zeno's Paradox, we do eventually and essentially get there. But let's not examine that can of worms�.
Science and pseudoscience are exact opposites, as are rationality and religion. Science, as a working method, employs basic principles such as objectivity and accuracy to establish a finding. It often also uses certain admitted assumptions about reality, assumptions that must eventually support themselves and be proven, or the resulting finding fails verification. Pseudoscience, however, uses invented modes of analysis which it pretends or professes meet the requirements of scientific method, but which in fact violate its essential attributes. Many obvious examples of pseudoscience are easy to identify, but the more subtle and therefore more insidious and convincing cases, require better definitions of the attributes involved.
Religion is based on blind faith; it is not evidence-based. It rests on basic beliefs — dogma — that are not derived nor supported by observation or by performance, but by need. It is wishful thinking used to simplify everything; it requires no real thinking. It survives on the need for an uncomplicated and easily explained world, and prides itself on its rejection of rationality. Its mascot/saint is Pollyanna. Religion eschews reason, investigation, and logic, as disturbing and unwanted elements of life."
There really is no doubt that one can never prove or disprove something which is taken on faith. But whether or not God (or a collection of gods) exists is a moot question not only to scientists but to the real world. Here's why: science generates theories and then tests them. One of the absolute requirements is that a theory must be useful in predicting future events, e.g., sunrise & sunset, or reactions between acids and alkalies. It simply has never been the case that religion (including studying religious books and using prayer) has ever predicted anything or described the behavior of a system. Remember, it's not sufficient for event "A" to follow a prayer for "A." The experiment has to be repeatable, and contrapositives and inverses must hold. That is, praying against "A" should reduce the chance of "A" occurring. Scientific theories succeed here; religion does not.
15 May 2005
I liked Don Murray's recent column enough to reproduce it here. I would have just put a link but I know the Boston Globe's archives don't stay free forever. Keep in mind as you read this that Mr. Murray is a vet of the 101st Airborne and that he is very much a self-made man. Peace to all.
Update: In March of 2007, about a year after his wife chose to cease medication and nourishment and died peacefully, Don Murray died at home. He is missed by many who met him at UNH or read his columns in The Boston Globe. Would that all soldiers die at home and in peace.
By Donald M. Murray, Globe Correspondent | May 10, 2005
I will not march on Memorial Day.
I will not watch others march.
I will not stand at attention when the rifles volley a tribute to the dead.
I will not listen to taps.
Many others who served under fire will try not to remember, and we will fail. Every day is Memorial Day to us.
I sit across the table at the Bagelry with Daymond Steer, a reporter on the Milford Cabinet. He is one of the sons of a student of mine, Peter Steer, who died of effects from Agent Orange long after he left the battlefields of Vietnam.
I feel the guilt of the survivor. Peter will never see his grandchildren as I see mine. And he will never have to answer the question my grandsons ask, ''Did you ever kill anyone, Grandfather?"
Daymond, without a father, knows the price of war.
He shows me some letters mailed home from Vietnam. ''The land is uneasy, it quakes in the night, the sky flashes with explosive lightning and men are wary of silence. The darkness cloaks the fears that will not go away until morning to be exchanged for other fears."
I cannot read on but ask if I can get copies of the letters. Daymond's father and I did not talk with each other of our wars, but I am Peter's comrade in arms as well as his former teacher. The shells indeed make the earth quake; I rise up from the concussion and then I am slammed to earth again.
Peter writes, ''War is brutal but frank, it lies in flesh that is severed and shredded, in blood that has turned black and bellies that are bloated."
I look at his son, a fellow member of our craft. We do not say much because there is too much to say.
Peter and I would not have talked of our diarrhea under shell fire, of the sleep deprivation that makes us shoot at shadows and each other, of the hatred that is often not directed at the enemy but at our officers and the old men who make wars that young men and woman have to fight.
We sit quietly, and I make a list of all those I served with but were not killed. The amputees, those who carry shrapnel in their bodies, the maimed, those who gave themselves ''a good wound," those who sucked a thumb and wept, and those, like Peter, who died a slow death long after their wars.
There is no peace for most of us who live the nightmares and daymares of war for the rest of our lives.
As I walk with Daymond to copy the letters, I start to count the grandparents and parents and husbands and wives and brothers and sisters and children in the long line of those who never get their pictures in the paper and are never given the military PR title of ''heroes."
Since our wars, we have had other wars, and I see the long line extend to those who do not yet know they will fight in old men's wars. Each figure has behind them the foggy shapes of the sons and daughters and grandparents and parents and husbands and wives and children who will all pay the price of war.
I will not march on Memorial Day. No parades, no flags, no bands, no politicians, no volleys of rifle fire, no taps, but I do not forget.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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