freecounterpoint: Proselytism hiding its ugly head

Monday, March 16, 2009

Proselytism hiding its ugly head

23 comments:

Tecumseh said...: Yada, yada, yada. Pepe is scared of the Cross like Satan of incense. Vade retro.; 3/16/2009 10:24 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: it's not a matter of being scared of it. it just doesn't belong in the classroom. at least not any more than math belongs in the church.; 3/16/2009 10:27 PM
Tecumseh said...: There used to be a saying when I was a little kid. It roughly translates to "a man of few ideas, but fixed ones". As in, idée fixe. Don't you have anything else better to do, Pepe, than bothering little kids who want to have a moment a silence and pray to the Lord? Go back and read your dog-eared copy of Das Kapital, and leave the kids alone.; 3/16/2009 10:38 PM
Mr roT said...: Anything kids get in school they're sure to despise. Like I hate math. I'm with Pepe on this one.; 3/16/2009 10:41 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: schools are no place for the dissemination of superstition. on the contrary, their purpose is to allow children to become independent thinkers and to question idees recues. madrassas have no place in a civilized society.; 3/16/2009 10:42 PM
Mr roT said...: Pepe, that's silly. Of course schools are where kids learn basics and basics are mostly learnt, not analyzed. Kids are no good at deciding what's Right and Good like little Aristotles that shit their pants.

They need to be told that, preferably by someone with a belt in their hand. The reason we're so fucked up is that we've been sparing the rod for a couple generations.

Well, except in Catholic schools and boarding schools where rod is all there is.

Either way, school isn't for your ideal until about grad school. After quals.; 3/16/2009 10:48 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: Schools ought to teach things that are, at the very least, verifiable. Otherwise why not also use the schools to promote tarot reading, crystal healing, weegee boards and astrology?; 3/16/2009 10:58 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: It roughly translates to "a man of few ideas, but fixed ones".

Unable to argue the merits, why not resort to aa's (one and only) strategy of ad-hominem retort?; 3/16/2009 11:01 PM
Tecumseh said...: I'm not resorting to anything, just stating a fact: you are a man of few ideas, one of them being your blind hatred of religion, the other being your blind hatred of the US of KKK A. That's not an ad hominem attack, or a superstition, or something -- just an empirical, verifiable observation.; 3/16/2009 11:21 PM
Mr roT said...: Tecs, Pepe is not a man of few ideas, by any means.

Pepe, there is nothing verifiable in the social studies and history and languages that are taught in schools. Similarly, the way that a kid can be taught science is in no way similar to how science is done, in a conversation between the mind and nature.

In school, what is taught is the conventions that we as a culture mostly share. Since the left has adopted the blowjob as the ultimate expression of communion, it has fallen into collective disuse to believe that we are anything beyond the next time we blow our wads.

It may be a pleasurable way of dealing with the prospect of the nothingness of death, but it is no way to run a society that deserves to outlast a generation or two.; 3/17/2009 12:21 AM
Pepe le Pew said...: tec - you are mixing up multiplicity with conformity: were I to post endlessly on two topics: the greatness of america and the imminent muslim invasion, you'd be clapping like a monkey in front of a banana. every time.; 3/17/2009 7:21 AM
Pepe le Pew said...: Pepe, there is nothing verifiable in the social studies and history and languages that are taught in schools.

As far as language goes, vocabulary and grammar are verifiable: it is easy to verify that the Croatian you are taught conforms to the language used in Croatia.

As far as social studies, there are at the very least observables and you are invited to study the theories that explain these.

But when it comes to religion, there is no invitation to question the biblical interpretation of observables, many of which are questionable to begin with (virgin birth, resurrection, water walkin', bread multiplyin', infirms springin' out of their chairs, ...). I don't think asking students to suspend common sense to swallow
this nonsense makes for a quality education. Certainly, many popular superstitions (tarots, astrology,...) are no less factual than religion, have a huge audience, have been nagging around for centuries (aka have "withstood the test of time"), and still we probably all agree they don't belong in schools.; 3/17/2009 8:34 AM
Mr roT said...: As far as social studies, there are at the very least observables and you are invited to study the theories that explain these.

Pepe, you are cynical in dealing with everyone but the stupidest, the education lot.

Look, I just got through reviewing a Calculus book that has nonsense social studies 'applications' in it. Ones in which the stupidest post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies are exercised. Don't think I am cherry-picking data. The writer of the book is the best-selling in the US. He knows how to sell books at least.

There is no description of variables and there is no invitation to discuss anything but the going dogma in Sociology now. Someone says blacks are doing poorly and you say, duh, they have no families, and you'll get a boot in the face. You blame whitey and you get a gold star.

Where's the science in that? Sounds more like a religion, and one far more violent than what I got out of the Catholic school (which I detested).

There are also in this book a mess of 'applications' in the 'study' of global warming'. This is all indoctrination, not education and will be quietly deleted during the next cold spell--which may have already started.

Also, the virgin birth and other doctrine of the Church have nothing to do with what even the craziest of the crazies are proposing adding to curricula.

You constantly bring up the tarot and crystals in a kind of fun caricature of religion, but the Bible and thus religion have a lot of important history as well. In addition, it is more factual and better written than the history we get now, such as a feminist history of the civil war.

I am not picking an example at random just for the joy of poking fun at possibilities.

The president of ahem, Harvard was a prof of that very important field.; 3/17/2009 11:52 AM
Pepe le Pew said...: Rot - you are throwing the baby with the bath water: how fucked up your math text treats calculus has no bearing on whether or not mathematics as a topic is fundamentally suitable to be taught in schools.; 3/17/2009 1:45 PM
Mr roT said...: No, Pepe. You're not seeing the iceberg for the tip. In schools, the kids are being taught this warmism bullshit as if it were fact and that doesn't bother you.; 3/17/2009 2:15 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: I've never seen it and I don't think it's good. Back when I was in Berkeley, some textbook used to preface all of its math examples with shameless advertising: "Oreo is the best selling cookie in the world. Given that the radius of an Oreo is 3", calculate...". Fortunately some (no doubt anti-capitalist) activist sued and the textbook was pulled from the schools.
But this is not a problem inherent to the field of mathematics, whereas I don't know how you can teach religion without suspension of reason.

the Bible and thus religion have a lot of important history as well
you thinking Noah or Jonah ?; 3/17/2009 3:14 PM
Mr roT said...: Cherry-picking. You know what I am talking about.; 3/17/2009 4:31 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: important history ? no i don't. i would argue on the contrary that all historical components are distorted to the point of irrelevance.; 3/17/2009 5:51 PM
Mr roT said...: In that case, we can't read anything from that period as history or as even a document from which to analyze.

You think Homer was a historian in the modern sense?

How about Thucydides or Tacitus or Gibbon?

The writing of history has evolved and gotten to what we know it now to be but it has never been perfect, and if anything it's getting worse right now.; 3/17/2009 6:06 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: But the bible never even had historical pretentions as far as I know (unless you are some literal evangelical of course); 3/17/2009 9:17 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: you are crazy. what parts ?; 3/18/2009 8:39 AM
Mr roT said...: The Jews were in Babylon, you know...; 3/18/2009 1:04 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: Cherry-picking. You know what I am talking about.; 3/18/2009 2:29 PM

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