Dear Graham Y,

I am aware that the mainstream Christian denominations do not teach Creationism in their schools. I was wondering whether they were doing anything more to promote the view that the Bible is not a scientific textbook. In the US court cases have been brought forth arguing that teaching of Creationism in public schools violated the Constitutional separation of church and state as it was a promotion of religion using government funding. Mainline Protestant and liberal (in the US sense) Jewish groups have supported such suits as ‘friends of the court’. That is one example of what religious groups are doing in the US.

Are they doing anything in Australia?

Banjo,
Along with explaining away all religious beliefs, did these eminent cognitive neuroscience researchers also discover the location of genetic temporal lobe receptors which lead people to vote Labor or barrack for the Sydney Swans? Once we can explain the genetic reasons for why people write to the OLO Forum then we'll all be out of a job.

David f
Your last few posts are faltering under the illusion that it is the role of judges and courts to place stricture around what people are allowed to say and think. 

Unfortunately, evolutionary theory is what it always was: unpersuasive. You may find it a pity that in evolution there is no greater scientific theory championed more by academics while appearing more doubtful to everyone else. Yet the courts are not the way to decide any wide public issue, especially one of such controversy. You're never going to be able to legislate how people think.
 
Ultimately, we are stuck with this compelling issue of how life on earth came to be.  The philosophical starting point divides into two directions. Did life arise by purely undirected processes, or did it arise by some kind of intelligent guidance or design? There are currently those within educational or political circles believing it correct that pressure be applied to actually foreclose discussion of one of the two possible answers to that very fundamental and important question.

However, in scientific and philosophical disputes we must be free to follow evidence wherever it leads. Anything gained by any other means would be a hollow victory. To restrict open investigation and discussion of creationism or any other controversy would be short sighted  and counter-productive. 

Pericles,
I wonder if you have a bitter taste in your mouth; your pragmatism is cynicism transcendent.
<The evolutionary purpose of our having a sense of justice>
What makes you think you have an evolved sense of justice?
There is no justice in evolutionary terms; it's merely a foible, a human foible, a cultured lie, an affecttaion, best disposed of if you want to be truly evolved.
Nor does evolution, as we know it, have a purpose, it's just an accumulating accident, or mad logic, the ultimate rationale.

<It makes a great deal of sense to me that those of us with the finer feelings of wonder, and justice, and good-heartedness, and charity, are so endowed as a result of millennia of natural selection>.

Those chosen few, eh?
As though your distinguishable among your peers or from the rest--or you've crafted your own philosophy, or your special, or your finer feelings are objective, rather than privileged and deluded; an evolutionary accident. Nothing is erroneous in evolutionary terms.
What you've espoused above is the logical consummation of rational thought bent on validating itself, a dead end, vanity--from which all tyranny proceeds.
This is not a personal insult. How can there be personality, or finer things, in evolutionary terms?
Evolution is just bio/geological process. How can it reflect upon itself?

Wow, Squeers.

>>...your pragmatism is cynicism transcendent<<

I really wish I had the faintest idea what that means. Seriously.

>>What makes you think you have an evolved sense of justice?<<

Actually, I thought that was what this thread is all about. We, humans, seem to have a sense of justice. Some folk seem to think that God has something to do with this, others - such as myself - believe that it has come about through a process of evolution.

Those who think that it was God wot dunnit don't need to present any evidence for their belief. Nor, it would appear, any data on which God was actually responsible for this - whether the sense of justice is identically instilled by the Islamic God and the Christian one, for example.

The question was asked whether evolution has anything to do with these feelings, not whether I, personally, have an "evolved sense of justice".

>>Nor does evolution, as we know it, have a purpose<<

Oh, but it does. As I pointed out, its purpose is to weight the odds in favour of survival.

>>As though your distinguishable among your peers or from the rest<<

Not my peers, that would be silly. I'm talking about humans being distinguishable from slugs. Or rabbits. Or dung beetles. We have evolved along different paths, and are therefore most easily distinguishable in my opinion.

In the process, we have gathered ourselves into communities which require higher-order thinking that simply whacking lizards on the head for food. Evolution has ensured that those higher-order brain functions are the survivors (although I would accept that an examination of our current crop of politicians might be offered as refutation).

>>What you've espoused above is the logical consummation of rational thought bent on validating itself, a dead end, vanity--from which all tyranny proceeds.<<

What is it about logic that you find so threatening, that you have to redefine it as vanity? I personally find rational thought has a generally civilizing effect. Certainly more so than threatening to burn at the stake people who don't believe the same as you do.

Squeers, you need to apply yourself to the text and see what is written there. Paul's is not "hate speech". I'm not defending it for inciting violence, which it doesnt. Christianity does not licence the killing of enemies of the religion as Islam does. You won't find me defending Islam on those grounds, although I might on others.

I'm not sure you know what a formalist is, or why you think I am one, or why I should somehow be bound by your assessment of me in how I assess a work of art. You're right about one thing - I am eclectic - but my interpretation of Milton is not particularly eclectic. You don't need to walk outside the text to come to my view of it, and many have come to the same view.

For "trolling" a bit of research will help you there. Wikipedia has a useful entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet). Lavis meets the elements. His post referring to a "talking snake" was inflammatory, extraneous and off-topic, and I'm sure he meant to be disruptive. Respectful people don't do those sorts of things. The question is whether Craibe was saying homosexuals ought to be killed, and he wasn't. QED (that's Latin).