1. Creationism call divides Royal Society

Comment #249013 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on September 17, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Are Science teachers generally aware of the arguments involved? or is this to open teachers to orchestrated attacks from the fundie students, running rings around the teachers and wasting entire lessons?

Seems to me how to respond depends on what the students ask (and whether you have the time for students to ask questions that may be off topic).

So, if a student asks -- how do we know how old the earth is, you could (time permitting) say something about radiometric dating.

If a student then asks something about why what science has to say disagrees with what he believes as some sort of young earth creationist, then I think that it would be better to deflect her/him by stating that that particular question was a better question for an RE lesson, not a science lesson.

Of course, if some fundie student insists on asking about rubbish they have found on AIG, then you'd have a similar problem to the one you'd have if a student insisted on asking questions about UFOs or homeopathy, or whatever other pseudoscience nonsense they could come up with.

2. Richard Dawkins replies to Libby Purves

Comment #248536 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on September 16, 2008 at 11:59 am

Darwin though, if I remember correctly, preferred (wisely) not to comment about belief in the supernatural.

Au contraire, he had quite a lot to say about it!

How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the minds of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.

Darwin, The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex.

I think that his writings are pretty much all online now, letters as well as books.

http://darwin-online.org.uk/

3. Creationism call divides Royal Society

Comment #248529 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on September 16, 2008 at 11:44 am

Well, glad to see that he took the honourable course.

It should have been obvious to anyone that this was a contentious topic, that he was liable to be misunderstood (or just plain mis-quoted) unless he phrased what he said very carefully. He obviously did not do this.

And because of what he said, the Royal Society got embroiled in something that looked a bit embarrassing. No surprise that he should then be asked to resign. It's not an issue of free-speech, he was speaking as director of education at the RS, not as a private individual.

One comment -- at least the furore shows that a reasonable number of people do still care about the issue!

As regards Polkinghorne and the Templeton foundation -- all I recall of him is that he spoke at a particle physics summer school when I was a post-grad, where he managed to get right up my nose by referring to particle theory as a young mans game (note, I'm female). The other women in the audience looked a tad uncomfortable at that as well.

4. A third of adults believe God watches over them

Comment #88214 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 15, 2007 at 11:16 am

Geez, it's like these stories were constructed by child-minded primitives from the bronze age or something.

This does our ancestors a disservice -- they were just as smart as us. Mind you, there was probably just as much social stigma back then as there used to be recently if you didn't pay correct attention to whatever the local religion was.

Someone had to get those megaliths erected you know! And any group that could construct Silbury Hill, Avebury and Stonehenge were far from primitive. Mind you, geezers back then probably used the same arguments as now -- look at these lovely monuments, how can you doubt (insert name here) when we have constructed such beautiful monuments in (his/her/their) name.

5. Holy communion

Comment #88185 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 15, 2007 at 5:14 am

I was being parodic with that one by the way. I don't normally speak like that. You might have noticed. Honestly... [flusters about in purple dressing gown and changes the Abba record]

Tee-Hee! Excuse me for not spotting it.

Anyway, I still stand by effeminate as not a word to be used.

So, is the cartoon of RD camp?

And what is the significance of the red trousies?

who knows -- although if the cartoonist intervened , having to explain what was meant would be admitting it was not a great cartoon.

6. Holy communion

Comment #88052 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 14, 2007 at 11:51 am

Well, that cartoon still doesn't say 'gay man' to me!

And just to stick my oar in again:

Right, I'm off to wave my wrists around in a girly fashion and simper at passers by...

Isn't this usage of girly a teeny bit sexist......

We all know what camp means, we all know someone who swishes a bit, but why are these words linked to gender (in terms like effeminate and girly as above), and usually in a way that is derogatory to us girls (even those of us who were tomboys......)

According to the OED:

Effeminate: To make into a woman; to represent as a woman. To make womanish or unmanly; to enervate. To become womanish; to grow weak, languish.

All of which leads me to conclude that usage of effeminate should be avoided, as too loaded with sexist connotations.

My conclusion now is I have no idea what was meant in that cartoon (which also was the front cover BTW). So, whether its offensive or not, it certainly seems to be a bad cartoon, in that none of us can quite agree what the heck it is going on about!

7. Holy communion

Comment #88022 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 14, 2007 at 7:11 am

Just look at those limp wrists :)

Except they're the wrong way round -- not approved John Inman style at all!

Even if it was some stereotypical gay figure, is that itself offensive? If it was a gay man being mocked for being gay itself, that would be different. If it is RD being mocked for hijacking phrases more closely associated with the gay rights movement, the link being made using a gay sterotype, is that necessarily offensive?

And even if it is offensive, do we have a right not to be offended?

Lets face it, there's a difference between saying that the OUT thing is stupid, that the gay rights movement was daft, or that gay people should be beaten up in parks by thugs.

Perhaps part of the path to full acceptance is being insulted just like everyone else!

(Of course, part of my particular problem could be that I'm a fat, shaven-headed butch dyke, so feel quite at home with some sterotypes!)

8. Holy communion

Comment #88001 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 14, 2007 at 4:24 am

I have to admit, I can't quite see the gay link in the cartoon -- more a sandal-wearing hippy look at the pretty birds type thing rather than an effeminate gay man is what it says to me.

But then maybe us dykes have a slightly different perspective than gay men.

9. The truth in religion

Comment #86087 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 8, 2007 at 5:20 am

Ah, but if you were a female version of Speaker to Animals you wouldn't be sentient anyway, would you ;-)

Tee Hee! Except archaic kzinreti were sapient.........

10. The hitch in Hitchens' thinking

Comment #85555 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 6, 2007 at 6:36 am

To highlight the absurdity of this idea, Scott Atran challenged Sam Harris to put it to the test by going about his romantic life in a "scientific" fashion, bringing along his Darwinian fitness calculator and a bunch of questionaires whenever he goes on a date.

Except of course our assessments of the attractiveness or otherwise of our date are based on all sorts of stuff that our brain is assessing without our being conscious of it -- such as the symmetry of otherwise of their face, how they smell etc etc. Just because the inner workings of our darwinian fitness calculator aren't accessible doesn't mean it isn't there! All we get instead is "hmmm, nice!". We FEEL attracted, and that's it.

Anything else is just the old argument about qualia...................

11. The truth in religion

Comment #85542 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 6, 2007 at 6:08 am

That laws of cause and effect have to hold when talking about the Universe and its origin even when considering purely natural phenomena. Below the Planck time, they just don't work any more, and according to some models of the origin of the Universe, causality as we understand it..

Causality goes out of the window, according to simple interpretations of quantum theory, in that events happen on the quantum scale which are uncaused in the sense that there is not anything that causes an radioactive atom to decay NOW, as opposed to a year later. Usually referred to as non-deterministic.

As regards the universe itself, we are getting into the realms of quantum cosmology, which sees the entire universe as the result of a quantum fluctuation:

Universe creation is not something that takes place inside some bigger spacetime arena - the instanton describes the spontaneous appearance of a universe from literally nothing. Once the universe exists, quantum cosmology can be approximated by general relativity so time appears.

Try the DAMTP website at Cambridge, and Stephen Hawkings website for some useful stuff.

12. The truth in religion

Comment #85541 by SpeakerToAnimals2 on November 6, 2007 at 5:59 am

I met John Polkinghorne many years ago at a summer school for particle theorists. He got right up my left nostril then by referring to particle physics as a young mans game -- and I was one of the admittedly few young women graduate students at that meeting.

He doesn't seem to have improved in the intervening years, given this supposed review.