In the news
The Times was actually quite interesting yesterday. I wanted to comment on a couple of stories. I'm going to LJ cut these so that it's not unwieldy.
First there is this story about the United States and Israel trying to oust Hamas from the Palestinian Authority. I'm not really sure how I feel about this. On one hand, we have a government that's out there starting wars to install democracies in other nations thinking of doing the best it can to cause the reversal of what (to my knowledge) is a fair election. On the other hand, the article says that the United States requires that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist, forswear violence, and accept previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements or they'll isolate them and essentially force their collapse. At least the forswearing violence part doesn't sound that offensive to me. Now, as I've had experience, this is a very complicated set of issues, so I don't want to draw any rash conclusions. If the situation were something to the effect of Hamas the party renouncing the plan of violence, but not being able to control every single person in the country from resorting to said violence, then maybe a freeze out is wrong. But if Hamas the party still supports violent attacks on Israel, a freeze out appears to be a far better solution than another war.
Another interesting thing in the article is that the United States and Fatah believe that Hamas' victory is far less sweeping than the numbers make it out to be, because there were various districts where Fatah had numerous candidates running and they split their vote. Were this not to have happened, Fatah would've had about the same number of seats. But I mean, come on. Ok, Fatah ran a crappy campaign. If the democrats ran a couple of candidates in each district and republicans won overwhelmingly, we wouldn't run the election over again.
Ohio Expected to Rein in Class Linked to Intelligent Design
Now, intelligent design is an interesting problem. I do believe that intelligent design really just is creationism in sheep's clothing. Now apparently, Ohio has a policy to single out evolution for "critical analysis". Now an evolutionary biologist claims that this really is the same thing as intelligent design, which is the same thing as creationism. This may be true. However, no paradigm should be so set in stone that we never question it. That would pervert what science is supposed to mean (though, unchallengeable paradigms are not an uncommon problem in scientific history).
So, with this idea that science should always critically examine theories and data it relies upon, why can't we have "critical analysis". Now let's not try to pretend that this isn't a way to bring religion into the public schools. To my knowledge, there is no plausible alternative to evolution outside of "god did it". And this is to high school kids, not to evolutionary biologists that might use such a critical analysis to improve the theory of evolution or come up with a plausible alternative theory. So, is this just a way to get the church into schools?
Well, first, the separation of church and state is a difficult one. Originally, the Bill of Rights only applied to the Federal Government. And from everything I've read, it was merely meant so that the United States wouldn't have a "Church of England". It didn't mean that religion was supposed to be kept at arms length from anything remotely related to government. It didn't necessarily even mean that the states couldn't set up their own official religions. However, I am not an originalist, like Justice Scalia. I think the separation of church and state means more than that today, and could encompass this type of situation. A court in Pennsylvania ruled teaching intelligent design was unconstitutional. The supporters of "critical analysis" in Ohio insist that their plan would withstand constitutional scrutiny. I'm not here to say that it wouldn't.
So I guess what it comes down to is that should we indoctrinate our children one way (Evolution is an unquestionably right) to prevent them from being open to indoctrination the other way (God did it). Of course, I am oversimplifying here. But to me, it seems that the benefits of supporting critical analysis of any theory, even one that I buy into fully, outweighs the possibility that a little church will leak into the public school system. I think I would probably agree that actually teaching intelligent design would go too far, but I would like to hear the arguments further. But I feel that just teaching, this is the theory of evolution, and here is what people say against it, but the overwhelming majority of people agree that it is most probably true, isn't that offensive. Probably didn't think I'd come out that way, huh?
The Kiss of Life
I just thought this was an interesting article about whether kissing was a natural act or not. A quote in the article amused me. From 1990 , a Beijing based newspaper said "the invasive Europeans brought the kissing custom to China, but it is regarded as vulgar practice which is all too suggestive of cannibalism." Now, I think this newspaper watches too many Vin Deisel movies, myself. It really does look like he's trying to eat the girl's head when he kisses her.
First there is this story about the United States and Israel trying to oust Hamas from the Palestinian Authority. I'm not really sure how I feel about this. On one hand, we have a government that's out there starting wars to install democracies in other nations thinking of doing the best it can to cause the reversal of what (to my knowledge) is a fair election. On the other hand, the article says that the United States requires that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist, forswear violence, and accept previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements or they'll isolate them and essentially force their collapse. At least the forswearing violence part doesn't sound that offensive to me. Now, as I've had experience, this is a very complicated set of issues, so I don't want to draw any rash conclusions. If the situation were something to the effect of Hamas the party renouncing the plan of violence, but not being able to control every single person in the country from resorting to said violence, then maybe a freeze out is wrong. But if Hamas the party still supports violent attacks on Israel, a freeze out appears to be a far better solution than another war.
Another interesting thing in the article is that the United States and Fatah believe that Hamas' victory is far less sweeping than the numbers make it out to be, because there were various districts where Fatah had numerous candidates running and they split their vote. Were this not to have happened, Fatah would've had about the same number of seats. But I mean, come on. Ok, Fatah ran a crappy campaign. If the democrats ran a couple of candidates in each district and republicans won overwhelmingly, we wouldn't run the election over again.
Ohio Expected to Rein in Class Linked to Intelligent Design
Now, intelligent design is an interesting problem. I do believe that intelligent design really just is creationism in sheep's clothing. Now apparently, Ohio has a policy to single out evolution for "critical analysis". Now an evolutionary biologist claims that this really is the same thing as intelligent design, which is the same thing as creationism. This may be true. However, no paradigm should be so set in stone that we never question it. That would pervert what science is supposed to mean (though, unchallengeable paradigms are not an uncommon problem in scientific history).
So, with this idea that science should always critically examine theories and data it relies upon, why can't we have "critical analysis". Now let's not try to pretend that this isn't a way to bring religion into the public schools. To my knowledge, there is no plausible alternative to evolution outside of "god did it". And this is to high school kids, not to evolutionary biologists that might use such a critical analysis to improve the theory of evolution or come up with a plausible alternative theory. So, is this just a way to get the church into schools?
Well, first, the separation of church and state is a difficult one. Originally, the Bill of Rights only applied to the Federal Government. And from everything I've read, it was merely meant so that the United States wouldn't have a "Church of England". It didn't mean that religion was supposed to be kept at arms length from anything remotely related to government. It didn't necessarily even mean that the states couldn't set up their own official religions. However, I am not an originalist, like Justice Scalia. I think the separation of church and state means more than that today, and could encompass this type of situation. A court in Pennsylvania ruled teaching intelligent design was unconstitutional. The supporters of "critical analysis" in Ohio insist that their plan would withstand constitutional scrutiny. I'm not here to say that it wouldn't.
So I guess what it comes down to is that should we indoctrinate our children one way (Evolution is an unquestionably right) to prevent them from being open to indoctrination the other way (God did it). Of course, I am oversimplifying here. But to me, it seems that the benefits of supporting critical analysis of any theory, even one that I buy into fully, outweighs the possibility that a little church will leak into the public school system. I think I would probably agree that actually teaching intelligent design would go too far, but I would like to hear the arguments further. But I feel that just teaching, this is the theory of evolution, and here is what people say against it, but the overwhelming majority of people agree that it is most probably true, isn't that offensive. Probably didn't think I'd come out that way, huh?
The Kiss of Life
I just thought this was an interesting article about whether kissing was a natural act or not. A quote in the article amused me. From 1990 , a Beijing based newspaper said "the invasive Europeans brought the kissing custom to China, but it is regarded as vulgar practice which is all too suggestive of cannibalism." Now, I think this newspaper watches too many Vin Deisel movies, myself. It really does look like he's trying to eat the girl's head when he kisses her.