NSR: "If you can't join them, beat them...literally."

Following in the footsteps of one of our worst presidents doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

 

lol which country are you from? please dont tell me from Europe because that would be ironic and funny

 

Keep defunding colleges to pay for tax breaks and those kids will never get to go to college in the first place.

 

It's already impossibly expensive to go to school, and the Republicans tried to raise student loan rates. Education would suffer immensely under their watch. Just look at all of the schools in places like Texas where creationism is taught in science classes. No wonder our kids are at the bottom of the heap when it comes to math and science. Almost all of the top engineering jobs are going to immigrants because our schools are just awful.

The republicans should stop worrying about how many shitty produce picking jobs the Mexican migrants are "stealing" and start worrying about the fact that our country can't seem to produce competitive skilled workers in engineering and science fields.

 

love the way you put it.
even now at medical school, quite a few of classmates believe in creationism..that is just simply mind blowing. Its impossible for me to even think of teaching religions as science. and then look at the number of children who don't suffer from any congenital problems that are home schooled with the stupidity that is in the bible.

 

guys, there is nothing wrong with believing what you want to believe..creationism, big bang, darwin, babies come from storks etc etc.. Thats for the people to decide... thats why we teach the kids "theories" on what MIGHT happened and for them to pick what they believe in. The education system however must not be impacted.

This goes to practicing your own religion and your own believe as far as you are not harming the community and the people around you.

 

I have no problem with people believing in the Bible, Koran, whatever. My problem is when those religions are taught in a science class. Those subjects are best taught in a comparative religion class, not science class.

 

I agree but the problem is there are many conflicts between religious views and what the science have to say and this were you see places like Texas teach that stuff because its actually part of their religion believe.
for example, its hard to teach Darwin or big bang theories in a science class when the next class is a religion class talk about "creationism" and dismiss Darwin. So if you are saying not to teach "creationism" because its a religions believe then we can say the same thing about darwin since its against their religion as well.. for some people, there is nothing "science-y" about Darwin or the big bang.

 

A big part of the problem is that K-12 science classes need to do a better job of explaining what science IS. Teaching that Science = facts about the physical world leads to pointless, opinion-based beauty contests like creation (metaphysics) vs. big bang (physics). As soon as you start to teach that Science = a methodology for analyzing and evaluating information about the physical world then it's clear which one belongs in the class and why. It's the truth claim that's the problem.

 

This right here is the big problem. Science is a method for analyzing information. Most people don't seem to understand that concept.

 

I'm no expert but what I'm wondering about is this one thing.

Why's there no candidate who represents liberal idea's in social issues while being a conservative in terms of economy and financial matters?

I fathom the citizens of the United States might have elected one of those. One of the big flaws of the two party system in my opinion. As a fat European who only knows proportional voting systems I'm really wondering about why the US still limit themselves with two conflictive poles of policy.

Seems stupid to me.

 

That seems disappointing ForeverRed. I believe a lot of US citizens are probably smarter than they are given credit for. Then again I only visited the US once and am an arrogant and fat European. German moreover.

While I'm at it. The German commentators state that the Latino votes were a major factor in the so called "swing states" which voted either Republican or for the Democrats in the past. The majority of Latinos voted for President Obama and that got me thinking.

I figure most Latinos are very catholic, conservative in terms of family and values and have a major interest in taking part in the American Dream. In other words rising up from the bottom of society into the middle class and some even higher. Therefore they have an interest in a very strong and growing US economy.

Then I take a look at what the Repulicans claim to stand for and surprisingly the Republican Party seems to have a lot in common with the Latinos' interests. Some would say even more than the Democrats...if it weren't for the immigration issue.

Something to think about little me figures. But well then again I'm neither American nor a politician.

 

Bazi - it's a byproduct of Duverger's Law. The First Past the Post electoral rules create a system with two big centrist, majoritarian parties. As long as the two major parties continue on the path they have historically taken (SC/FC Republican vs. SL/FL Democrat) the other positions get squeezed out by tactical voting as soon as either of the dominant parties adjust towards the center on the hot issue to track the shift in public opinion. The Dems tracked right on fiscal issues starting with Clinton and now that the electorate is starting to trend less socially conservative the Repubs are going to feel pressure to shift more towards the center on those issues.

You have to change the election rules to change the dynamic.

 

For some reason Catholics generally tend to vote democrat in this country. I think it has a lot to do with the belief in that religion that you have a duty to help those in need. We have only had 1 Catholic president ever.

 

Latinos (for lack of a better term) are starting to poll less socially conservative. They are still to the right of many other groups, but as more young Latinos are going to college and becoming professionals they are also becoming more moderate on social issues. It's going to be an interesting and complicated shift.

 

There's this and also Catholics were discriminated against for much of US history and were held out of white collar professions and pushed into manufacturing and civil service jobs. As a result there was a strong Pro-labor association. This association is fading, but it left a lot of institutional history in place.

 

Wow. I didn't know that there was discrimination against Catholics in the past.

However it makes sense when you consider that a lot of Protestants immigrated into the US very early to flee from the influence of the Catholic church in Europe.

 

Discrimination is a weird thing, sometimes. 100 years ago Southern Italians were considered non-white. About the only 'white Catholics' were the Irish, and they had their own set of racist stereotypes to overcome.

 

wait, what? said who? have you left the US? remember the US is full of immigrants with multiple believes and backgrounds and for you to come and say this is not a "grey area" shows that you have no idea what you are talking about or pure ignorance.

THIS IS grey a area and i can see both arguments here. Yes science should be separated from religion but there are lots of religion believes that conflict of what the science says. Growing up, i have seen multiple way of trying to educate the people the difference between science and religion, for example, in out science book we had a chapter that talks about the beginning of life and it listed THEORIES on what might happened. Science still cant prove how the world was initially created (and please don't post me an episode from the history channel) so the best way is to explain all the theories that people believe in and let the students decide what ever they want to believe. if you force the students to believe one theory but not the others then you are not doing any better job than what religions is doing to them..

 

Sorry, but you are missing part of the argument for why there is no scientific gray area. Science never 'proves' anything. To argue that it does is to misunderstand what science is. The claim being put forward here is simple: only one of the explanations qualifies as science. You can choose to believe that religion explains the way the world works better than science does and no one can prove that you are wrong, but you are not doing science when you make that choice. Science classes should concentrate on doing science.

I know plenty of scientist who are religious and who believe that there are non-scientific reasons for living their lives in ways they think are pleasing to their god(s). But they are still scientists because they continue to press for rational, materialistic answers to their questions about the physical world.

Believe what you want, but don't call your belief science if you did not arrive at your belief through scientific means.

 

I really think we are talking about the same thing here but i am not explaining my point thru for lack of my vocabulary.


i don't think i called "believes" are science (but i am also thinking you didnt mean me) but in any case i can SEE why people will want to teach religious believe and put them into science.

Again, the term science doesn't have to be on doing things only, science does also include theories and an explained one for that.

 

Let alone a job period.

 

Making theories and models are both things that can be considered doing science, but not all explanations, theories and models are scientific. To be scientific they have to be empirical (arising from evidence or logical consequences of evidence that can be observed by the senses) and they must be both rational and consistent. Religious explanations are idealistic (in the philosophical sense) rather than empirical.