. . . and from the sarcastic to the beautiful.
Christine at Quiet Paths regularly posts beautiful pictures. This time she outdid herself with a fractal pattern that is truly gorgeous, titled simply Blue Fractal. I recommend you go take a look.
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In my previous post The Danger of Teaching the Controversy, I suggested that one of the problems with teaching the controversy was just which controversies one should teach. There are always plenty of crackpot theories floating around not to mention sound attempts to modify existing theories. These need to be tested by scientists using scientific methods with accountability through peer review. In discussing this, I said the following: More importantly, however, let’s consider how this “teach the controversy” principle would work in public schools. Should science teachers be asked to teach the controvery on geocentrism? I know some people are just about to explode on that one. “Nobody believes that any more, or at least only a few kooks.” Well, that may be true, though I believe there’s even a kook with a PhD who tries to teach geocentrism. But this does illustrate the problem. We argue for teaching the controversy on creation and evolution or on intelligent design and evolution, but we are unwilling to invoke the same phrase for all controversial issues. And to prove my point, one Mark Wyatt posted this comment: “…Should science teachers be asked to teach the controvery on geocentrism? …” Yes. And Here are the recommended text books. Mark Well, well, well. Though I will often debate with people who probably should be ignored, even I will not bother debating geocentrism. But I think my point is made. Theories need to be tested scientifically before becoming part of the curriculum. No exceptions should be made, even for especially controversial ones, or we will dilute education. There really isn’t any idea so stupid that it can’t find advocates somewhere! For those who believe someone is being suppressed here, note that even a person so far out there as to advocate geocentrism has two books published and a web site. It’s getting very difficult to suppress ideas. The problem that creationists and others have is that it is also getting extremely difficult to blunt criticisms of dumb ideas. A friend e-mailed me the link to Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith. Although they use the singular “crisis,” that one crisis was one she lived with for a long time. I have to say that I have ample sympathy, not to mention empathy with people with doubts from time to time. I think God [...] Newsweek story here. I wish I was surprised at such racism, but I’m not. In many places it’s just below the surface. (HT: Pursuing Holiness.) It has become fairly well established in current law, as I understand it, that election financing can be regulated quite substantially without violating free speech. Some of the boundary areas are not so well defined, and regulation of those who are not connected organizationally to any candidate has been held unconstitutional in at least [...] As a writer and public speaker, albeit on a small scale, I found this story on the Panda’s Thumb amusing. Apparently Dr. Stuart Pivar, who appears to have no particular qualifications in the field, has written a book about giving “structuralist/developmental interpretation of evolution.” As authors will do from time to time, Pivar then [...] I’ve been trying to write a good response to Rev. Wiley Drake who is calling for imprecatory prayers against specific people at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I haven’t really managed to express my feelings yet. This is not about disagreements about church and state, it’s about a proper Christian response [...] It appears that WordPress.com has been banned in Turkey because of criticisms of Muslim creationist Adnan Oktar. Oktar appears to be an unusually warped version of creationist, and may well be using creationism to foster Muslim fundamentalism. The reason I’m linking to this is that it is a free speech issue. As a number [...] Bruce Alderman has written some very cogent comments on the earlier post by Joe Carter on this topic and my response. Bruce looks at this from a somewhat different angle. Carter has also written an additional post which Bruce calls a strategic retreat. Bruce’s posts are: if you were blind, you would have no [...] The Minutemen United web site provides the following purpose: Minutemen United is a group of men and women dedicated to creating an environment where Christian thoughts, ideals and leaders can get traction in the marketplace of ideas. We hail from New York to California and are headquartered in Ohio ” the heart of [...] |
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