Anglicans exclude the US Episcopalians over gay bishops

[Outrider]

That's a chemistry given to us by the uncaused cause.

'Given'? That suggests a deliberate act, so I'd have to say no.

I'd say the chemisty that was an emergent property of the universe, and that the universe could be a part of an infinite reality which negates the concept of an initial cause.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hope,

ncidentally, just to set your mind at rest, and as I've said on a number of occasions over the years, I originally qualified as an English teacher, studying RE and Drama as additional subjects at teaching college.  About 10 years after I first qualified I added Teaching English as a Foreign Language to my portfolio.  In the latter capacity, I have often been involved in teaching science in secondary schools - either as support teacher in mainstream classrooms, or on a one2one basis when I've been asked to extract a pupil and give them intensive support work following the syllabus that the class they should have been in were following (usually, this involved an intensive 2-4 week process whereby I would teach the student or a small group of them a limited number of subjects in order that they learned the vocab and language of those subjects and got somewhat closer to the level that the mainstream group were already at.)

This from someone who (apparently with a straight facts) also said:

That is why science is very little different from religion - it depends, as you like to accuse religion, on someone's faith in it as the source of all answers.

That doesn't set my mind at rest at all - rather I find it genuinely disturbing that someone who thinks as you do was allowed to teach science at all, let alone to children. If it was up to me I'd have had you and that irresponsible idiocy out of the classroom so fast your plimsolls wouldn't have touched the lino.   

[Hope]

Hope,

This from someone who (apparently with a straight facts) also said:

That doesn't set my mind at rest at all - rather I find it genuinely disturbing that someone who thinks as you do was allowed to teach science at all, let alone to children. If it was up to me I'd have had you and that irresponsible idiocy out of the classroom so fast your plimsolls wouldn't have touched the lino.   

And therein lies the problem; a good teacher doesn't allow their personal opinions to interfere with their teaching - whatever that subject might be.  As I said in my earlier post, one of the best RE teachers I've come across was an atheist.

It is why this place is rather different to a school.

Furthermore, teaching the concepts and vocabulary of a subject, as I was, tends not to involve opinion.  I begin to think that some here can't tell a good teacher from a bad one.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hope,

And therein lies the problem; a good teacher doesn't allow their personal opinions to interfere with their teaching - whatever that subject might be.  As I said in my earlier post, one of the best RE teachers I've come across was an atheist.

It is why this place is rather different to a school.

Furthermore, teaching the concepts and vocabulary of a subject, as I was, tends not to involve opinion.  I begin to think that some here can't tell a good teacher from a bad one.

If asked the question about science facts and religious facts a teacher replied, "That is why science is very little different from religion - it depends, as you like to accuse religion, on someone's faith in it as the source of all answers" he'd be a bad teacher.

No ifs, no buts.

How would you have answered? 

[Hope]

How would you have answered?

Have never been asked that queston before, even in debates like this, but I'd probably say that both are based on ideas and experiences that people have had, and ideas and experiences of boths sorts have been shown to be wrong at various times over history.

[Nearly Sane]

Have never been asked that queston before, even in debates like this, but I'd probably say that both are based on ideas and experiences that people have had, and ideas and experiences of boths sorts have been shown to be wrong at various times over history.

So the method for showing religious ideas to be wrong is?

[Hope]

So the method for showing religious ideas to be wrong is?

Whether they fit the original teaching of that faith, is one way.  Another is to see whether those original teachings match anything within reality - and I and many others do.  I'm not saying that scientific ideas don't - but we know that there are historical examples of sceintific ideas that have been shown to be wrong - without even having to do complex experiments.  A flat earth, for instance.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hope.

Have never been asked that queston before, even in debates like this, but I'd probably say that both are based on ideas and experiences that people have had, and ideas and experiences of boths sorts have been shown to be wrong at various times over history.

So you'd have been a bad teacher then.

Fair enough.

[Shaker]

Whether they fit the original teaching of that faith, is one way.

This is an ill-concealed argument from antiquity, and gives rise to the question as to what is the methodology for determining whether the original teaching is true, since if the foundation is false, everything else piled upon it is undermined.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Hope.

So you'd have been a bad teacher then.

Fair enough.

A Teacher's life is one of inevitable sacrifice Hope therefore has that.
He will have moved the life of many on other wise he would not have survived in teaching....he has that too.

I understand you have a collection of motorcycles.

[Shaker]

A Teacher's life is one of inevitable sacrifice Hope therefore has that.
He will have moved the life of many on other wise he would not have survived in teaching....he has that too.

Sentimental bollocks, as you would have said if an "anti-theist" had written it.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Sentimental bollocks, as you would have said if an "anti-theist" had written it.

As one of life's spectators...........how would you know?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlunderer,

A Teacher's life is one of inevitable sacrifice Hope therefore has that.

He will have moved the life of many on other wise he would not have survived in teaching....he has that too.

He may or may not have had those things. Depressingly, he may also though have produced pupils who actually believed that
"...science is very little different from religion - it depends, as you like to accuse religion, on someone's faith in it as the source of all answers".

And that's a hideous thought.

[Nearly Sane]

Whether they fit the original teaching of that faith, is one way.  Another is to see whether those original teachings match anything within reality - and I and many others do.  I'm not saying that scientific ideas don't - but we know that there are historical examples of sceintific ideas that have been shown to be wrong - without even having to do complex experiments.  A flat earth, for instance.

you have already declared reality to be opinion, it's not mediated through anything else other than human experience, same for the concept of original teaching. Your position on science means you have destroyed any validation as mere opinion.

[SusanDoris]

Vlunderer,

He may or may not have had those things. Depressingly, he may also though have produced pupils who actually believed that
"...science is very little different from religion - it depends, as you like to accuse religion, on someone's faith in it as the source of all answers".

And that's a hideous thought.

It certainly is.

[Hope]

Hope.

So you'd have been a bad teacher then.

Fair enough.

Not really, unless by 'bad teacher' you mean someone who doesn't express personal opinions and doesn't claim more for something than it can support.

[Hope]

This is an ill-concealed argument from antiquity, and gives rise to the question as to what is the methodology for determining whether the original teaching is true, since if the foundation is false, everything else piled upon it is undermined.

No it isn't Shaker.  It's equivalent exists in science whereby a discovery that i so far outside the norms that are understood by scientists, doubt is cast on it until such time as a repeat experiment concurs with the findings.  Similarly, if the historical foundation of scientific understanding is flawed, so are many other things in the field of science.

[Shaker]

No it isn't Shaker.

Yes it is.

It's equivalent exists in science whereby a discovery that i so far outside the norms that are understood by scientists, doubt is cast on it until such time as a repeat experiment concurs with the findings.

That's right - that's science for you; provisional results based on testable, shareable phenomena, repeatable experiments, a well thought out methodology demonstrated to work and empirical evidence. Where's the equivalent in religion?

[Hope]

That's right - that's science for you; provisional results based on testable, shareable phenomena, repeatable experiments, a well thought out methodology demonstrated to work and empirical evidence. Where's the equivalent in religion?

Of course, you then have scientists who look at the same evidence as others but come to different conclusions. 

[Shaker]

Of course, you then have scientists who look at the same evidence as others but come to different conclusions.

True. They're in a minority usually because they have a conflict of interests, a conflict between the scientific method and some other, prior ideological commitment - it could be a political one, as with Trofim Lysenko for example, or a religious one, as in the tiny number of accredited scientists who are creationists or evolution-deniers of some other stripe, who prostitute hard science because of their religious beliefs.

[Hope]

True. They're in a minority usually because they have a conflict of interests, a conflict between the scientific method and some other, prior ideological commitment - it could be a political one, as with Trofim Lysenko for example, or a religious one, as in the tiny number of accredited scientists who are creationists or evolution-deniers of some other stripe, who prostitute hard science because of their religious beliefs.

History has seen plenty of scientists who have held conflicting opinions based on very different reasons than those listed above.  In some cases it has been to do with the fact that the new discovery has contradicted existing scientific knowledge, in other cases it has occurred because other, similar experiments have produced different results thus casting doubt on both sets of results.  It happens, Shakes.  Science isn't as simplistic as you seem to want everyone to understand.

[Gordon]

History has seen plenty of scientists who have held conflicting opinions based on very different reasons than those listed above.  In some cases it has been to do with the fact that the new discovery has contradicted existing scientific knowledge, in other cases it has occurred because other, similar experiments have produced different results thus casting doubt on both sets of results.

Which is a strength in the scientific method, where new evidence, underpinned by sound methodology, may contradict earlier assumptions and force their revision. Religion has nothing comparable, especially since it is dependent on fallacious arguments from tradition and authority, such as we often see played out in posts in this Forum.

It happens, Shakes.  Science isn't as simplistic as you seem to want everyone to understand.

Who has said that that science is simplistic? So, apart from this being a straw man it seems like another attempt of yours to falsely portray science as being as vacuous as religious dogma.

[Gonnagle]

Dear me,

It's that "ist" bit, atheist, religionist, scientist, teacherist ( what! ) the human bit.

Gonnagle.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hope,

History has seen plenty of scientists who have held conflicting opinions based on very different reasons than those listed above.

If there have been such "scientists", then their opinions were not scientific ones.

In some cases it has been to do with the fact that the new discovery has contradicted existing scientific knowledge, in other cases it has occurred because other, similar experiments have produced different results thus casting doubt on both sets of results.  It happens, Shakes.  Science isn't as simplistic as you seem to want everyone to understand.

No-one says it is "simplistic", but we do say that science is a method as well as a collection of facts. If new findings contradict previous ones or similar experiments produce different results then the people involved can go back to the scientific method to figure out which has the model that best fits the available data. Of course new and different findings occur all the time - that's why people do science rather than pack up and go home on the basis that it's all sewn up already. 

Now compare that with the "facts" of religion - no evidence, no logic, no method for verification, no anything except for opinions (and often certain and unchangeable opinions at that). And when two opinions conflict, as there's no method to arbitrate then the protagonists have schisms, and often go to war after that.

However much you want to go nuclear - "ok, I'm guessing but so are you" - to cover the poverty of support for religious "facts", you're still flat wrong to claim equivalence because science has a method to support it but religion does not. That is, they are fundamentally and qualitatively different things and not in any respect in the same epistemic category.

And if you failed to make that difference clear to your pupils, then you were a bad teacher.   
   

   

[wigginhall]

Reminds me of that old saying, how would you know that you're wrong?   Scientists establish that via observations, which don't match predictions.  Obvious example: the idea of phlogiston (a fire-like element), became suspect when experiments demonstrated that some metals gained mass, when burned, whereas phlogiston theory predicts a loss.  This led to the discovery of oxygen (Lavoisier).