Letters to the Editor
Serai1
Published Letters: 503 Editor's Choice: 32
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Religion doesn't conflict with science...
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...if you're careful to keep your head well out of your ass, that is.
I spent my childhood and teenage years in Catholic schools here in Los Angeles. That was back in the 60's and 70's, when California schools were actually something to brag about. People moved here from all over the country for two reasons - the weather and the schools. The ones I went to were excellent places that my parents scrimped, saved and worked extra to send us kids to.
My fondest memories of classes in those schools involved the drama classes and the science classes. The science courses were all taught by nuns (except for fifth-grade year, taught by a nice married Catholic lady), and guess what? I got my love of science from those nuns.
They were quite devout, of course, but had none of this bizarre predilection for literalism that started spreading like a cancer in the 80's. As far as the sisters went, God was the Great Architect, and science revealed all the amazing, intricate things He had hidden in His Creation. (The capital letters come from the way they talked about it.) That included such topics as geology, astronomy, biology and yes, that included evolution. Sister Lucida, who taught me in sixth grade, would practically go into raptures describing the workings of Evolution and Natural Selection. She stood out but others had the same attitude - namely, we believe in God and his guiding hand, and Science teaches us all the things we can never come up with on our own.
It's an excellent viewpoint. Religion is the way we humans account for the big philosophical questions, and Science accounts for all the physical aspects of our great and mysterious universe. You don't have to believe in Religion to make Science work, but you also don't have to jettison it either. The trick, from both sides, is to understand and admit that knowledge is of many kinds, and we don't know everything. In fact, we probably never will. That's why the work of both Science and Religion will never end - because we are small beings, and will never reach the end of what we can learn.
To quote Alec Bings, "It's all in how you look at things." In other words, humility before the universe. To say, "I KNOW" is to indulge in hubris, that terrible sin that quite a number of ancient Greek kings could tell you all about. Every religion warns against the dangers of humans assuming divine powers unto themselves, and whenever fundamentalists put up the I KNOW banner, they usurp the place of God, and He tends to get a little peeved about that.
And it holds true on the other side, as well. There are more than a few scientists who have fallen from a height because they assumed they were RIGHT about things, when the scientific method pretty much guarantees that eventually you're going to be WRONG. In this case, Science doesn't have to exclude the presence of God; it's just obligated by its own methods not to involve the Divine if there's no empirical reason to include it. (The Buddha had that attitude as well. He never claimed there were no gods, only that it's much, much better for humans not to get involved with them. An eminently sensible way of looking at it, I think.)
To sum up, the whole thing would be a non-issue if only everybody would just calm down and realize there are ways to get along on this issue. As other posters have commented, that's not likely to happen, as blind certainty is a pretty tough challenge, if not impossible. Oh well. Let the fundies live in a nutshell and count themselves kings of infinite space. I'll opt for being a student of infinite space, and leave the nutshell at home altogether.
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"I wouldn't care!!" - A classic playground ploy
[Read the article: More on why Rowling is wrong on the Potter lexicon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hhhhokay. So.
Farhad takes a look at a situation he's never been in, makes an uninformed decision that doesn't affect him in the least, and when he gets called on it by a half a thousand readers, scrabbles around and comes up with another situation that actually doesn't apply and says, "See? What's the big deal? MY stuff gets indexed on Google, and LALALALA I don't care! And OF COURSE this is COMPLETELY relevant to this discussion. So I'm right and you're all wrong! Nyahnyahnyah!" How utterly infantile. And yet, predictable!
The whole point of the situation just flies by your head, doesn't it?
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Do some research
[Read the article: A casualty of female hunters?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anyone know a ring-tailed lemur that's looking for a cause?
Actually, you only have to go a couple of steps away from Homo sapiens to find a female-dominated species. Ever heard of the Bonobos? Otherwise known as Pygmy chimpanzees? Matriarchal societies, inherently peaceful, using sex for resolution instead of violence...no? Imagine my surprise.
See what happens when you fall behind on the research? You could have had a much snappier punchline there.
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Frankenstein?
[Read the article: The six-pack abs of Shah Rukh Khan ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Funny, those abs don't look all that unusual to me. Plain ol' gym abs, as far as I can see, not even as pronounced as Brad Pitts' used to be. Is it unusual for a guy to show his torso in a Bollywood film? Is that the reason for the hyperbole?