IvanTheTerrible wrote: ↑Fri Jan 29, 2021 6:59 am
Pahonu wrote: ↑Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:07 am
IvanTheTerrible wrote: ↑Wed Jan 27, 2021 11:08 pm
Pahonu wrote: ↑Wed Jan 27, 2021 9:58 pm
Mad Kudu Buck wrote: ↑Wed Jan 27, 2021 8:28 pm
This is a technique that has been used with increasing frequency. If you are a tiny group of people trying to control a vastly larger population, the most efficient way is to get the people to police each other using peer pressure. You use controlled media to repeatedly drill the message - over and over again - regardless of logic or scientific merit, then censor any dissenting opinion. The brainwashed masses will then exert pressure over each other to conform to the accepted line. Anyone who deviates and questions any aspect of the accepted line will be labelled a "nutcase", "crackpot conspiracy theorist", "anti-whatever-ist" - without the point of the question being refuted logically.
Scientific reasoning is about ALWAYS accepting the facts, whatever they are - not just accepting facts that follow political objectives or accepted lines and ignoring everything else. It should be COMPLETELY VALID to question ANYTHING. If you can't question something, then you should question WHY you can't question it. Invariably, it is because there is an agenda and the people behind the agenda don't want dissenting opinions or delays to their plan.
I'm not saying that any moron with no qualifications can spout any nonsense and people must listen. I'm saying that actual qualified scientists who present logical well-researched scientific arguments
should at least be heard and their data discussed without banning them instantly from every public outlet available. (as has happened to
anyone questioning Covid responses recently)
(But... once again, this is the John Hillerman thread. All these non-John Hillerman posts should be put into another thread if we want to continue on this side topic.
)
You said you didn’t want to weigh in again and then you did.
I’m on board with a new thread also, in deference to John Hillerman.
My simple argument to your comments is your assumption that the masses of people haven’t given any consideration to their choices about this pandemic. If you see my argument above, I argue that it is a highly flawed assumption. There also seems to be an underlying sentiment in this argument used by many, that they see the truth and others are somehow blind to it. Certainly our society has a levels of intelligence and education level, but the assumption that most don’t have enough of either to have their own thoughts on this pandemics seems presumptuous at the very least.
Pahonu, as an educator yourself you must know that our education institutions are pushing an agenda that's almost always at odds with traditional values taught at home. This is why many choose to home school their children. What is taught in schools (unless it's a private/religious institution) is always secular and always progressive. This was the case when I was in school and is ESPECIALLY true today! So those in our society that have "levels of intelligence and education level" (as you put it) are always at the top making all the rules that the "unwashed" masses then follow. And yes the majority (no matter their own intelligence levels) will follow those at the very top because they perceive them to be even more intelligent than themselves. It's sad but true. Do you honestly think the majority do their own research after they hear it on the news? A minority maybe, certainly not the majority. Not with how busy most folks are. They won't bother to double check everything. I know I don't. Until things don't add up and then I'm like... wait a minute.
That’s a very broad statement that our education institutions are pushing an agenda. Some may feel that way but how is that proven? Is something one disagrees with an agenda? For one to say they know that there’s an agenda to be fact, they would need more than anecdotal evidence. I’ve seen no verifiable evidence to prove that statement and I certainly don’t know it to be true in my experience. On a personal level, I have discussions just like this with colleagues of mine who run the gamut of political views. I’m a full time social studies teacher and part time US History professor and this is something we do regularly, likely far more than in most departments. I don’t see a singular agenda in their various views.
If you consider that public education institutions are secular as an agenda, then you may not understand that is by law dating back to the Scopes Trial over a century ago. It was more recently upheld in the federal courts by a conservative judge in Dover PA. Public schools are not to espouse religious dogma in the classroom. One might say that it is NOT legal for us to push an agenda, in this case religious. It’s basic separation of church and state. On a more practical level, which religious views would be taught? I have had students and coworkers of many faiths. How would that even work? Secular simply means something is not religious in nature. Many feel the word means anti-religious but it simply means not religious. Holidays like Independence Day and Veterans Day are secular. They’re not anti-religious. They’re just not religious in origin. The only discussion of religion in my coursework is historical in nature, such as The Great Awakening or the above mentioned Scopes Trial. My coursework would therefore be secular as is math, science, foreign language, etc...
If being progressive is an agenda, then I ask how making progress in public education is bad? Progress means our public schools now educate all students of any gender, race, income, or need. That wasn’t always so and that progress is generally considered a good thing. The very nature of the advancement of knowledge is discovering new things and perhaps letting go of old ideas proven false or incorrect. As we learn more and incomplete knowledge is added to, that is intellectual progress. Most don’t consider that bad. I understand some view progress as bad for various reasons. The Amish, ultra-orthodox Jews, and various other religious groups are classic examples of groups that reject societal progress, but these are generally outliers in society as a whole. They are of course free to educate their children as they see fit religiously. The most recent numbers I’ve seen about homeschooling have indeed seen a rise in the last 20-30 years, but those numbers are tiny, from under under 2% to about 3%, so also outliers.
Lastly, I didn’t say that the majority of people went out and did research. I said they considered their decisions about when, where, and if to wear masks and did not follow like sheep as you stated. When you refer to the people at the top, what do you mean? I prefer to hear the people at the top of their profession explain what they know. I want my surgeon to be at the top in their knowledge or my mechanic to be at the top in their particular knowledge. I seriously question when someone feels they know better than an expert in their field. I have areas of expertise in my career, but I certainly wouldn’t assume to know more than my wife about human anatomy and physiology or more than epidemiologists about pandemics and infectious disease. When did expertise or elite levels of knowledge become bad? I still hold that the majority of the population takes in information from these sources and arrives at a personal decision. They don’t just follow like sheep. Your assertion assumes they gave zero thought to how they were going to respond to this pandemic. There’s a lot of space between doing personal research and following like sheep with no thought whatsoever. Most people fall somewhere in between those.
***The part you quoted above from my previous post was incorrectly written by me. It was to say “our society has all levels of intelligence” not “a levels of intelligence” as it read. Sorry about that.***
Pahonu, it's funny but they do teach religion in public schools. It's the religion of atheism. A wise man once said "
Don't ever let an atheist tell you that he's not religious. It takes more faith to be an atheist than to be a Christian". You say schools are supposed to advance our children's knowledge and help them discover new things. I agree. But these are things that should be fact-based, no? Not guess work, right? Yet the theory of evolution is nothing but guess work. In fact it's a fairy tale as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't make a lick of sense and is something that is simply impossible to prove. That's why the idea that a Creator or a Supreme Being created everything makes much more sense. You can't have a Big Bang without something causing that Bang to happen. Can't create something out of nothing. So even for the Big Bang to happen you would need something (or Someone) to cause that. That's why it takes more faith to believe in evolution than creation. I just don't see how teaching something in school that is pure guesswork and teaching it as if it's FACT is acceptable. Aren't facts things that you can prove? How does one prove evolution? Some fossils unearthed somewhere? What does that prove other than the FACT that you found some old fossils or relics? Anything else is just pure guesswork and speculation. And if you can accept and teach that then it seems to me you should be accepting and teaching just about any other theory (religious or otherwise) that's out there.
Ivan, I really hesitate to respond here because you have brought your own faith into the discussion and I don’t want to insult you or your faith. However, since you have chosen to do that I will respond and hope you are not insulted. I understand that faith is clearly a very personal thing and any challenge to that can be upsetting.
I’m not sure of your experience in teaching in public schools, if any, so I question how you are so certain of what we are being instructed to teach. Each state sets its own curriculum, so the idea that there is a nationwide agenda of some kind is inaccurate.
Atheism, by definition is NOT a religion. There is no dogma or liturgy or sacred text, etc... A-theism means not believing in a theistic being, or a god. That’s all it means. It doesn’t tell you what the person believes, only that they have no belief in a god. Most of my colleagues and friends at work are in fact religious. I don’t know the depth of their beliefs but they attend religious services or pray or other things associated with religion. Most importantly, they believe in a god or gods. I should point out that I come from a pretty diverse place here in Southern California so those religious beliefs are equally diverse.
What I can say with certainty is that majority of teachers across the nation are religious in some way, as is the nation as a whole. They are not atheist themselves and are not anti-religious or teaching about atheism or directed to do so. We are simply instructed as the law requires, not to teach or evangelize or proselytize, or whatever you want to call it, our own personal beliefs. We don’t teach not to have religious belief. We have student religious groups on campus with teachers as sponsors. They have meetings at lunch and discuss their faith. Another group does meditation at lunch, based on Buddhist belief, I think. I’ve seen one of these groups meet in the early morning and pray around our flagpole when I drove in. How is this possibly teaching atheism? I think you have been very much misinformed about what we teach in public education and what happens in public schools.
If your discontent is in not teaching a particular religion that you would prefer, then yes, we don’t teach or officially sanction that. The courts have repeatedly ruled it to be a violation of the Constitution’s establishment clause of the 1st Amendment, but any student is allowed to practice their own faith. Even if it wasn’t unconstitutional, what faith should be taught? There are Catholic and Jewish and other religious schools if parents prefer that. No laws are preventing that either. As a history wonk, the origins of these religious schools emerged in the late 19th century as a result of some public schools establishing a particular religious doctrine in their curriculum.
Again I hesitate to move forward with this. The applicable definition of faith according to Oxford is:
strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
Biblically, and I am making an assumption here that you are a Christian of some denomination. If I am wrong, I apologize:
Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen..."
To have faith then means to believe without proof. There is nothing wrong in that, but science specifically looks for evidence or proof. Scientific inquiry has discovered all the things that allow for the modern technologies of our world. Evolutionary theory like nuclear theory, or electromagnetic theory, or germ theory, uses this evidence to explain the natural world around us. As new evidence is found, that explanation becomes more complete. I’m assuming you don’t have doubts about germs or electricity existing. The same scientific process is involved for evolutionary theory. It is NOT guess work. It is though, disinterested in the supernatural, which means beyond the natural world. It is usually only here, when someone has faith in something with which evidence conflicts, that we have these arguments. Again, the scientific process of discovery is the same. To claim faith is proof and proof is faith is nonsensical.
It also doesn’t really matter if something makes sense to you or not. I don’t understand the complexity of subatomic particles in nuclear theory, perhaps you don’t as well, but I certainly don’t doubt that nuclear forces are strong enough to produce those mushroom clouds. I don’t need any faith in that. The evidence is there, even if I choose not to believe it because I have faith in some other explanation without evidence.
Indeed faith is the belief in something you can't prove. I can't prove that God created the universe because I didn't see Him do it. But it makes more sense to me than a Big Bang which also no one has seen. That's gonna take a whooole lotta faith from me!! 
