Either you have an infinite recursion of first causes or the recursion terminates. The point is that in either case they are *causal*, thereby leading to what we see today as the Universe. Absent something like this, how would explain that anything exists at all?
-snip-
Public schools are prelcuded from picking a particular religious leaning since all the kids may not espouse that leaning. EVen within the broad swath of those defined as "Chrisitan" there are sufficient differences, and that's before adding in the various other flavors of religion that exist on earth. Therefore, they chose a non-religious agenda.
What the folks hollering for the introduction of religion to public schools assume is that it will be their brand of religion that will prevail.
You want religion in school, there are private, religious institutions available, many of whom have a better overall education program than the public schools. Morals and such should be taught in the home.
Hardly individual belief. One has evidence, the other has none. ID, at the moment (and probably forever - you remember this thing called "faith") is indeed a presonal belief. Zero evidence and no way to prove any of it's concepts.
I take your point, but that wasn't quite what I was asking. I realize that the meaning of words change. But my question had more to do with the *discipline* called "Science" today. You say that discipline will likely exist in the at least as an intellectual contruct. I agree. But do you think that this discipline's essential starting points (whatever it ends up being called in the future) are immutable? In short, can "Science" as a construct ever evolve its starting axioms or does doing so inevitably make it "not Science" in your view?
This question is at the heart of the ID v. Science debate today. The orthodox Science community insists that you cannot change the predicates of Science and still have Science. The IDers claim that without their additions, Science is incomplete. This is an argument of axioms and thus neither side can "prove" their positions, merely show consqences for taking or not taking a particular axiom as true. Without respect to the IDers particular proposals (about which I do not yet have a fully formed view) I am sympathetic to their basic notion. I find it had to believe that the philosophy of Science is so well-formed that there can be no improvement therein while still maintaining the essential discipline we call "Science". I also acknowledge that I may well be wrong...
A little perjorative, don't you think. "Christian Science" pretty much has nothing to do with Christianity or Science. Scientology has nothing to do with Science. Both are Orwellian uses of words. To me the essential issue is not the name we give things (though I certainly object to the concious obfuscation of meaning a' la Orwell). The essential question is one of foundational axioms of a system, whether they are mutable, and, if so, whether the mutation of these axioms materially changes the discipline in question. Christianity embraced Science (however grudgingly and slowly) as a legitimate source of knowledge but managed to still remain, well, Christianity. One wonders if the inverse situtation is possible ...
On a related note, how 'bout garlic from China?
How can it be more efficient to buy garlic from a place more than twice the distance as Watson(?), CA (if you're on the East coast)?
Renata
Absolutely true. Why do you fail to acknowledge that choosing a secular agenda has the *exact* same problem - not all children "espouse" secularism. Secularism is not a "netural" body of teaching. It has a distinct moral point of view with attendant values. I repeat - you cannot make *any* choice about curricula without choosing *somebody's* values system. This means that inevitably, some student's beliefs are violated. Public schools need to be abolished pure and simple.
There is no "evidence" whatsoever that the matter/mechanical/naturalist view of knowledge is a) More correct than any other or b) Exclusively correct. The most you can say about it, is that it provides many practical/useful results. Go back to the top of this particular subthread and you'll see why I hold this view - you cannot prove "axioms", only examine outcomes from them.
And you cannot "prove" the efficacy of Science, only show that it does useful work. I repeat - all knowledge systems begin with "belief" or "faith" which is simply taken as true - there is neither proof nor refutation for these starting points. This is true for religion, science, and any other human constract that claims to provide us knowledge. If you're going to defend Science, do so on its utilitarian merits, not by trying to attack religion as being evidence-free...
I'm sure you have ideas on how and why abolishing public schools would be beneficial, but can you think of reasons why it might be a bad idea or do more harm than good?
Joe Barta
Because any cost increase due to distance is offset by an even BIGGER cost DECREASE in another area (labor costs, production costs, land costs, taxes, enviromental regulations... take your pick)
Joe Barta
Nope. Public Schools are a madrassas for secular ideology that pretends it is "netural". They are propped up by a teacher's union that takes one of the most critical professions in our society and turns it into factory work. They are funded at a point of a gun, and people who object to their values are then forced to pay *again* to have their children educated within a values context they affirm. Because the schools are funded by public monies, no one can be excluded, not even the violent, the disruptive, or the dangerous student. (The Columbine massacre would likely not happened in a private school because the perpetrators had a record of misbehavior that would have gotten then kicked out long before they had the opportunity to kill their peers.) Because the schools are publicly funded, every 3rd-rate politican and political bottomfeeder gets a voice in what the content, quality, and mission of education ought to be. That's how you get both the vile belching of Political Correctness AND the pressure of the Religious Right all in the same system. In short, the system is broken, dishonest, and dysfunctional.
The only question is just *how* to back out of the public school mess we have today. Clearly there are teachers (many/most) worth keeping and you cannot just pull the rug out from under the system as it is. My feeling is that the Federal government should get out of the education business, giving everyone involved, say, 5 years notice, and decreasing Federal educational funding (and taxation) 20% per year. This would give the local governments time to ramp up to accomodate it. This would put big pressure on the local governments to either outsource or privatize the schools. Would there be problems? Probably. But I cannot imagine a situation worse than what we have today: Expensive, Ineffective, and (in many cases) Dangerous schools.
Ok, I'm little confused. Let me see if I understand your point of view...
a) Public schools should be abolished.
b) The federal govt should get out of the education business.
c) It should be a local govt matter
d) Local governments should take responsibility for education but outsource it... OR... preferrably get out of the education business altogether.
e) Ideally all education should be done in the home by parents or in private schools and there should be no public involvement in education whatsoever. The government's role in educating our youth should be no bigger a priority than the government's role in doll collecting.
f) Since the government's (federal, state or local) role in education is ideally zero, the government should also not attempt to set any standards for educational proficiency. It's a purely market driven matter.
I may have taken a few liberties, but do I understand you correctly?
Joe Barta
Ideally, yes ... over time and in the best practical way so as not to create a tidal wave of problems for a society already addicted to public education.
The sooner the better. Even if the States and Municipalities staying the public education business, the simple act of getting the Feds out would be an enormous improvement to what we have today.
At *most* a local government matter.
Again, ideally the case.
Yup. The only exception to this is the exception that always exists: If the treatment of minor children constitutes child abuse, then the government has to interdict. Ideally, childrens' care is an issue entirely for parents and non of the Government's business. But when parents fail in that obligation, Government has the legitimate role of speaking on behalf of the minor citizen who is legally presumed to be unable to act in their own interest (at least not completely so). This should be a choice of last resort. Say a parent is conciously failing to educate a child and Government has to remove them from that home. The answer is not to place them in a public home and educate them publicly. The answer is to work with private-sector charities to find an appropriate accomodation. We've been doing some of this for years and it works. There used to be Government-run orphanages which were just horror shows. Now most States work to find private placement for children with people who will actually care for them. It is an imprefect solution but better than totally collectivizing the whole process.
If the government is out of the education business and the educational standards business, then who is determining if the parent is failing to educate the child and where are they getting their standards?
Further, the masses being as they are, using your method, I envision a scenario where there are great gulfs between a relatively small number of educated and large numbers of uneducated (a hundred fold what it is now), and that the limited government interdiction you propose above would be largely unable to control the deteriorating situation.
Can you at least get behind the idea that some sort of public involvement in education, despite all of its shortcomings, is the best way possible to raise the education level of the masses, and that the removal of public involvement would effectively "dumb us down"? That if we value the idea of and strength of a "middle class", your vision (in it's most strict form) would erode that middle class and we would gravitate more towards a small, affluent and educated elite and masses of poor and uneducated?
Joe Barta
It's a fair question just like "What constitutes abuse?" (Corporal punishment, not being able to stay up past 10pm, ...?). The most likely answer would be the one we have today - the courts would decide what constituted a reasonable level of education.
1) You underestimate "the masses" - they will do what is in their own self-interest sooner or later. The only reason you (and I) fear this scenario is that we've been so conditioned by the academic Elites to believe they are the sole instrument of success. Long before there was K-12, Undergrad, and Grad School, there were trade schools that taught people useful skills (rather than, say, degrees in Women's Studies). These would, no doubt, spring up again. 2) Big Eeeeeeeeeevill Corporations cannot afford an illiterate work force. They need capable people to carry forth their Eeeeeeeeevil agenda. No doubt, if there actually was a significant failure of the private sector to educate most people, corporations would start training them and treat it like a benefit of the job no different than, say, healthcare. 3) You underestimate the power of markets. If there is a need, someone pretty much always finds a way to fill it (at some price). Say there was the "great gulf" in the educational marketplace. Then some clever entreupeneur would find a way to bring education to the (presumably) economic underclass - or at least enough of it to make a dent in their needs. How do I know this? Because this takes place daily in areas like lending, insurance, and so on. There are companies that *specialize* in lending to high credit risk customers, for example. This became necessary when all the social do-gooders got laws passed that prevented redlining in poor neighborhoods. So, the mainstream banks left, and the high-credit-risk lenders came in. Credit is still available to these customers, but they have to pay a higher interest rate in reflection of their higher risk status. 4) But say you're right - that this idea leads to Haves and Have-Nots of education. How is this worse than what we have today? If you live in an affluent community, the schools are usually much better than in the inner city. A good many inner city schools manage to spend billions without ever educating almost any student because of the "must serve all" environment that prevents them from kicking out the obstacles to progress and the unions with their "No Teacher Left Behind" plan. The issue before us is not one of Good or Bad but Better or Worse. We have Worse now, I want Better.No. US culture (and I suspect most Western democracies) are a lot "dumber" already than you're acknowledging. Watch what passes for "entertainment", "news", and "information" on TV - the single most promiscuous vector of our culture. It's nauseating. For all the billions poured into education, look at the rate of graduation of US citizens from top-tier graduate programs. Listen to grammar, clarity, and general execution of language you hear everywhere - at work, the grocery store, at the pub. We've become a post-literate society, in part thanks to the fine job government education has done.
I taught grad school briefly and had this reinforced over and over again. My foreign students were not "smarter" they just worked *much* harder than most of my US-born students. You know why? Because the US students took it all for granted - getting an "education" was assumed and it was assumed to be relatively pain free (boy did some of them squeal when they ran into me ;) My foreign students knew better; they knew education was a privilege earned. It is exactly this sense of entitlement that gets built with government money and it is exactly that sense of entitlement that corrupts the academic process
First of all, the middle class is declining because it is moving *up*. There are (inflation adjusted) more wealthy people per capita then ever. Second of all, census by census, the per capita rate of poverty is declining. Just one example. In the early 1960s, a staggering percentage of Black Americans were considered impoverished. Today, a significant majority (well over 50% IIRC) are middle class or better. The point is that the vector here is North, not South *even in the face of crappy schools*. If our dysfunctional education system (which more-or-less-fails the impoverished anyway) still manages to make us a successful culture, imagine what a *Better* (not perfect) system could do.
As always, (All) Collectivism Kills, (Honest) Markets Bring Good Things.
Doing so inevitable makes it nonScience because those starting points are precisely what differentiates Science from nonScience.
Were it not so, there would be not even a pretense of an objective basis with which to differentiate Science from nonScience.
Hence my 'ditto'.
Quite a bit of successful Science fiction is written simply by taking a traditional story and presenting it in a futuristic scenario. E.g. the movie _Forbidden Planet_ based on Shakespeare's _The Tempest_ or one of the all-time favorite Star Trek episodes _Balance of Terror_ based on the movie _The Enemy Below_.
Hubbard simply took tradional religious concepts like demonic posession, restated them in the parlance of Science Fiction but then made the result into a Religion instead of a literary work.
Let me ask you further, what would you hope to achieve by implementing a "better" system? What is better? How would we know it was better? What are the benefits of better?
Joe Barta
I'd hardly call a decision to trust in my faith in God a Creationst conspiracy.
That's not a valid conceren unless you hold to a faith that does not promise a future.
Science has proven true now what will someday become a "they use to believe..." just as the past historians and philosophers theories and testable facts are dismissed today. The study of this subject would serve well our current students.
Nope. We still have too many variables to solve.
What motive? All ID'ers want is that the whole process is discussed and from that discussion, an individual can make an informed decision. The evolutionists of today are as bad as the Spanish Inquisitionists. Think my way or suffer the consequences. Absolutely no tolerance for other points of view.
As to the creation of everything, there is no real hard science, verifability or logic. All there is, is conjecture. Modern science has yet to determine, without doubt, an answer to the simplest of questions. Why is there life?
The incorporeal ream of evolutionists and some of the ID'rs troubles me a little. However, my faith is cemented in my understanding that the work of science has nothing to do with the current consensus. Consensus is strictly political. True science is not. In science consensus is meaningless. The only truth and relevancy provable and reproducible facts. "The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus." Michael Crichton, 2003 CalTech lecture.
I love science. I trust in God. I'm promised an answer. This not a non sequitur.
Dave
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DAGS "Wedge Document".
Ignoring all other points FF replied:
So what? Do you think that the DI speaks for all the people that believe in God? Its hard to imagine that the entire body of academia trusts solely modern science without dissent? There must be a balance. After all, what frightens the evolutionists so much that they are un-willing to have all of the information available discussed without healthy debate?
Dave An old solid oak tree is just a nut that refused to give up. Back to woodworking.
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If people buy local, then imports will decline.
I choose to participate in the market economy by making informed, concious decisions about who gets my money.
djb
I'm with ya'!
My brother in law owns a local CSA organic farm. One of his products is some terrific garlic!
Barry
Can't argue with that.
Or maybe I can ;-) You can only do that in a VERY limited way. And even then it's probably more huff and puff than anything else. I could probably go through your house and find tons of stuff that 1) are made in or have parts made in what you might consider an undesirable country, and 2) find tons of stuff that you really don't know where it's been made and 3) it's made somewhere you don't approve of, but doing without it is not something you'd "choose".
Joe Barta
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