16 March 2010 (pm)

They think that you aren’t paying attention:

Tom DeLay? Duke Cunningham?

Ok, the shots at Rangel and Massa were fine.

The President and CSPAN? Yes, the committee meetings were the various bills were hashed out WERE carried on CSPAN and the big give-aways will be fixed via reconciliation.

Much better.

Science and Religion Unseen and Unknowable..by Eric Michael Johnson:

Allow me to lay it out as simply as I can. It is my view that religion and science are incompatible in a very specific and important way. I say this as someone who previously drank the Kool-Aid and spent countless hours studying what was described to me as the Holy Spirit. I have been confirmed in the Lutheran tradition and have recited the Nicene Creed so often throughout my life that, as an adult, I no longer paid any attention to what the words were saying. They came out of me as rote, like a wind-up monkey who clapped his symbols at the turn of a crank.

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth.
of all that is, seen and unseen.

[...]

Faith, as Gary Whittenberger discusses in Skeptic magazine, has multiple common uses.

“Faith” may refer to a religion or worldview, as in “My faith is Islam.” It may refer to an attitude of trust or confidence, as in “I have faith in my physician.” Or it may refer to believing propositions without evidence or out of proportion to the available evidence.

It is this latter use of faith that is incompatible with science. His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (which has 140 Hare Krishna centers in Europe and North America alone), has been up front that he denies the evidence of evolution. Why? He didn’t argue that the methods employed may have biased the results and that he’ll reserve judgment until the studies are replicated. He didn’t dispute the sample size or suggest a separate interpretation of the observable facts. He completely disregarded the entire pursuit of such knowledge because it contradicted his faith in a prime mover. His faith told him that he is correct, regardless of what the facts may be. There is a word for that, when you prefer your own private fantasy to the real world. I think Richard Dawkins used it as part of the title to one of his more popular books.

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