Yabby,

Poirot,

I think it is reasonable to talk use the term "evolution denier" in the same sense we use the term "Holocaust denier."

I'm not suggesting a moral equivalence between the two. But I don't know how else to describe them. Like Holocaust deniers, evolution deniers use all kinds of rhetorical tricks, outright lies and pseudo-science in order to mislead people.

Viruses evolve
and become stronger than the measures used to treat them last time. Hence the everchanging flu vaccine.

Didn't they find a treatment at one point for Aids based on the fact that viruses can mutate and evolve?

They trick the virus into mutating by changing the body's defences with some kind of medicine or medical procedure and then when the Aids virus mutates, they let the body's defence system change back to the way it was again.

Although it doesn't cure the virus it keeps it in a form of limbo where it can't become completely dominant over the body's defences. Don't ask me the details, it was just an interesting program I watched on Television a couple of years ago.

There certainly exists a form of survival of the fittest on the planet but I still wonder about the presence of the more intelligent apes and orangatans and why they never evolved into humans.

stevenlmeyer

your conclusion is foolish. The holocaust happened. Humans were created. Only indoctrination blinds you of the obvious.

All ideologies and that includes religion should be open to scrutiny and debate. Even more so, light should be thrown on any fundamentalism, where-ever found. This is not racism.

csteele has an avuncular affection towards Islam and Middle Eastern peoples (except Israel, of course). Islamic peoples, all 1.6b of them are victimised by the 13m Jews worldwide, but especially by Israelis (7m - of whom some 70% are Jewish).

csteele, ol' bean,

You write of the ills of censorship ... I agree.

You will be delighted to know that the PC crowd have been overtaken by the initiative of Muslims in Britain. Wondering why the news, especially of the BBC and other media, was so skewed, these facts emerged.

In Britain media is self-censoring itself when is comes to criticising Islam and by extension the Middle East.

Fear is actually shaping media policies; and Islamist violence underpins BBC self-censorship.

In an interview with BBC Director General, Mark Thompson, during the University Oxford project, Free Speech Debate, admitted that the Salman Rushdie was “an absolute watershed,” ... then there was 9/11.

Furthermore, confessed: "A threat to murder … massively raises the stakes."

Adding: "'I complain in the strongest possible terms'

is different from ...

'I complain in the strongest possible terms and I'm loading my AK47 as I write.'"

freespeechdebate.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Mark-Thompson-on-the-BBC-religion2.pdf#page=6

Freedom of Speech is wonderful ... It just depends on whom is yelling the loudest

Poirot,

My mother defined the word 'chivalry'.

She said it was a word to describe the male instinct to protect women from all other men, but themselves.

Hi Poirot,

I have a warped admiration for your ability to divert discussion away from the main topic. I'm sort of making a study of how you do it so often. Brilliant.

Now back to the topic: should people, of whatever background, be allowed to throw a tanty and break the law ? No, I don't think so.

Should people be allowed to shout out "Feck Australia !" and stay in Australia ? I'm not so sure. They always have choices - to stay here and submit to the laws associated, more or less, with equality and democratic society - or to go back to some ancestral homeland, perhaps Lebanon or Syria, and face the current slings and arrows of such vibrant and active communities.

I recommend that they immerse themselves in Australian society, polity and mores, good and bad, and join the rest of us in keeping 'church' and state separate.

Cheers,

Joe

:)