(June 1, 2014 at 4:10 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Really, asswipe? An "accident?"I have noticed that sometimes, when someone wants to minimize a crime, they refer to it as an "accident" or "mistake." It's particularly insulting when it's used to rationalize violent crimes like rape. There have been college football players who referred to acts like armed robbery or sexual assault as "a mistake." I'm sorry, son, but misspelling your name on a form is a mistake. Rape isn't something that happens as an accidental side-effect of trying to tie your shoe or buy an ice cream, you stupid fuck. It's an action you performed deliberately, and it's a crime.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould