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RE: Learn Anything Yet?
May 22, 2013 at 9:01 pm
I'm not really sure what I've learned, though I have little doubt that I've learned a number of things in my short time here. Probably a whole lot of things.
"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
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RE: Learn Anything Yet?
May 22, 2013 at 10:03 pm
I've learned that there really are people out there who think The Flintstones is a documentary, that science is a Satanic conspiracy (but only when it conflicts with something apparently mentioned in a holy book), and that I actually hate "God" because I enjoy sinning too much (opportunity notwithstanding). But principally I've learned I can reduce my blood pressure by not posting every five minutes simply in order to point all that out.
(May 22, 2013 at 7:21 pm)apophenia Wrote: We will make a Jedi of you yet, Padawan. Walk this way.
If she could walk that way, she wouldn't need the talcum powder.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Learn Anything Yet?
May 22, 2013 at 10:37 pm
I have also learned that it is nigh impossible to convince deluded people they are deluded.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
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RE: Learn Anything Yet?
May 22, 2013 at 11:54 pm
I learned to stop caring what other people believed or didn't believe. Only what I can learn from them.
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RE: Learn Anything Yet?
May 23, 2013 at 1:43 am
I have learned how to drop out of a class due to not turning in homework because of so much time spent here.
Pointing around: "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you, I'm out!"
Half Baked
"Let the atheists come to me, and stop keeping them away, because the kingdom of heathens belongs to people like these." -Saint Bacon
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RE: Learn Anything Yet?
May 23, 2013 at 4:51 am
(This post was last modified: May 23, 2013 at 4:52 am by Fidel_Castronaut.)
I have learnt a lot about political and religious views from around the world, in places I'll never be able to afford to visit.
I don't often meet religious folk in my day to day life (I do research a Sikh organisation for my PhD though but I'll exclude that), so I've learnt a lot about how some theists think, or don't.
But I'll echo what many others have said, the people with religious beliefs that I do know (from school through University through to work) tend not be as off the rails as some of the folk on here.
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RE: Learn Anything Yet?
May 23, 2013 at 2:53 pm
(This post was last modified: May 23, 2013 at 2:54 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
If possible could future posts indicate something positive that you have learned and NOT use the thread to opine how believers are more stupid than you imagined?