The status of the science of evolution is settled. It is valid in every way from every angle of all the sciences.

What isn't settled is society's acceptance of it. Incredibly 50% of Americans support the ideology called ID.

This reflects a remarkable human characteristic and well worth pondering because it is central to the human condition. We have the capacity to live in an imagined rather than perceived world. Stated another way, we can choose to create "reality" rather than choose to discovered reality. This means we are capable of transcending facts, evidence, logic and even direct experience in order to maintain a cherished imagined world as real, rather than accept knowledge that contradicts, or seems to contradict, our preferred version of the way things are.

One interesting consideration is how to respond to the 50% who are living in an imagined world as if it were reality. I think rational argument is limited in its power to change such a condition. It is necessary to recognize that false but cherished beliefs are part of a person's identity and to let those beliefs go is equivalent to becoming someone else, or the correlate, the equivalent of transforming the world they live in into an unrecognizable one.

Considering the appeal of our willfulness, in America, it will be a slow process over generations before knowledge, as expressed in the science of evolution, replaces the willed and imagined world created by those who choose to live in it.

Such sloppy thinking by Wilder. I don't see how this sophistry of equating atheists with fundamentalists would fool many people.

Wright is not a threat. He is an opportunity. Obama can demonstrate in this concrete instance how to overcome conflicts that arise in the hurly-burly of everyone's life, showing by example how he will implement his goal of bringing Americans together.

Wright's agenda, whatever it is, if not that of an insatiable child, will yield to compromise, open or discreet. It requires a creative and understanding response from Obama, not a total rejecting and bitter criticism regardless of whether or not Wright's claims are unacceptable, inconsistent, or outrageous. (As an outsider to that kind of preaching, I find Wright to be fairly obnoxious but I see that some people adore him!) Does he deserve this attention and effort? Of course not, but that is not the question. He is there! Like us, he and Obama, are members of the human family who must learn to seek cooperation and develop the skills of resolving conflict.

OK, what should Obama do/say to start? "Wright has a right to his views. I disagree with some of them. If what he is doing is designed to hurt me, he should stop. If he doing this to benefit me he might explain how. More important than these event is the need to address issues vital to the American people which I will do as I continue toward the goal of the Office of the President of the United States." And then see what develops.

Response to Chaoswhisperer Monday, April 28, 2008 12:27 AM

Introspection:

Language as a means of accessing consciousness is introspection. Introspection is unreliable precisely because of the gap between an objective observable network of electro-chemical matter of the brain and the subjective nature of consciousness. The efforts of Titchner whose lab found 45,000 discriminately different sensations, while Kulpe's lab found only 12,000 indicates the difficulty of constructing reliable categories for objective knowledge claims about the characteristics of subjective reality by introspection. The failure of introspection prepared the way for behaviorism and the removal of consciousness as a legitimate target of inquiry which lasted until the cognitive revolution. However, the present acceptance of verbal reports in cognitive studies of consciousness involves the same difficulty of ignoring issues of introspection.

Consciousness is scientifically nothing and this is legitimate.Scientists can even ignore the reality of their own consciousness, that is take it for granted, and still practice good science. But this doesn't mean consciousness is nothing, that it is an empty word. But we won't be able to have a science of consciousness. We can still study it, and talk about it, and come to have an agreed on understanding of it, but it won't be in the reliable terms of objective science. Language itself should be the primary focus in this effort because it is in language symbols that the objective and subjective unite. A word is the lived experience of the objective and subjective as one. My thoughts, Bill

It's about money. The tension between providing quality programs and having enough money to provide them easily leads to corrupt compromises. Who are the decision makers and how did they justify choosing this program of misleading pseudo-information.

"As others noted during his 2003 and 2007 gubernatorial campaigns (see update), in an essay Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a serious right-wing Catholic journal, Jindal narrated a bizarre story of a personal encounter with a demon, in which he participated in an exorcism with a group of college friends. And not only did they cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer."

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/bobby_jindals_dance_with_the_d.php

Ancient primitive thoughtforms survive and infect our society especially through Republicans and Catholics.

St John

"...evolution is an effect of intelligence and not the cause of it!"

This shows that E Holmes had a fundamental misunderstnding of evolution and of science because he couldn't get over a teleological bias and the narcissism that often infects human belief formation.

Obama the real, destroyed "Obama" the ideal by his FISA vote. He is a pragmatic politician and not the courageous man of integrity that his words made us (naive)citizens believe. He will win the election but the changes we hoped/wished for will not happen.