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Pics have come out of Kate topless. - - The queen is said to be beside herself!

Well, a fairly trivial example would be some fundamentalist Christians' religiously inspired belief that Earth is only 5700 years old, and the rest of the points made in the Doonesbury cartoon. All last week I listened to a daily Bible radio show where the preacher went through all that in exhausting detail -- why the fossil record is really due to Noah's flood rather than slow deposits over eons, etc., etc. All that, I would say, is subject to objective disproof. Another, maybe better example is the pretty convincing body of empirical evidence that sexual orientation is not a willed choice. That evidence, taken together with secular moral reasoning following any of the various schools of secular ethical philosophy that I know of, leads to the conclusion that religious (or any other) condemnation of homosexuality, or efforts to suppress its expression are immoral, unethical and inhumane. Now, if you want to return yet again to quibbling about scientific method, and the impossibility of absolute certainty as undermining the usefulness of trying to know the world on the hard-won insights of Ockham and Bacon, then we just may not have enough common ground to have any meaningful discourse.

Today's Doonesbury Flashback may be relevant... http://assets.amuniv...605001dd8b71c47 (Sorry, that image format is not postable here as an image, thus the link instead.)

So Netanyahu pops up on NBC's "Meet The Press" and lobbies America to elect a president who will "draw a bright red line" on Iran (meaning move 3 or 4 more carrier groups to the Persian Gulf and give 'em an ultimatum). OK, now if Obama were to plop his ass down on a news program in Tel Aviv during the home stretch of a national election and announce that any Israeli who cared about the US Alliance better hot foot it down to polls and dump Netanyahu, the howls of outrage over America trying to infringe on Israeli sovereignty would wake Helen Keller. Reports are that Bibi can't muster enough support in Israel to pull a unilateral attack but damned if I can see how this gives him licence to subvert our electoral system to extract a politically motivated commitment to act against the national interest of the United States. If we come to the conclusion that making pre-emptive war against Iran is what we have to do, well then so be it and we'll just have to live with the consequences. But I'll be damned if that's the kind of decision I want made under the pressures of a hotly contested presidential race with the prime minister of Israel saddling up and publically putting the spurs to the candidates. NETANYAHU DELENDA EST!

If they are shutting down reasonable, informed discussion of how it works, people trying to get their heads around natural selection + time becoming so much, they are wrong. "Science" is generally consensus-driven but there are always outliers and people with differing ideas, once in a while they manage to prove something that improves our understanding of their field greatly. But people saying that this process (continual application of the scientific method) somehow brings the foundation of these theories into doubt makes no sense whatsoever. Of course there are people calling themselves scientists or teachers who are just wrong or misinformed--though that is but a drop in the ocean of people calling themselves religious leaders who are absolutely speaking out of their ass on the matter! I make no apologizes for anybody who goes somewhat frothing at the mouth because somebody is idiotically contradicting millions of hours of research and study with "no, my personal invisible magic friend did it"! Especially an average American Christian--because what they are really saying is: "I haven't read it myself, but I was told by somebody (with a room-temperature IQ and a divinity diploma anybody could get for $25 + postage) that a book of muddied origin with documented mistranslations and edits for political reasons says that the earth is only 4000-some years old and the fossil record is just one of Satan's attempts to lead people astray!" That same "faith" also rules out genetics (Noah's Ark) and astronomy (universe created in a day), but never mind that... Further, the ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE of the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA states, VERY FUCKING CLEARLY that the govt. has no business supporting one religion over another. So that's another thing deeply wrong with teaching creationism in schools: religions differ greatly (even within Christianity) on the topic--and have changed over time. Maybe you've known some bad scientists and teachers. I've known some great teachers who did treat evolution as a theory, subject to improvement, explained it's intricacies and even stated that others have different beliefs on the matter. It deeply offends me that children today in many southern states are not being taught that way--and that my tax dollars are paying for it!