What's more likely to be further entrenched at this point: creationism in schools or SJW/feminist legislation? Anyone who reads these forums knows the answer to this.

And what President was it that appeared in that silly "it's on us" ad? What side was invoking the "war on women" boogeyman?

Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"? Do they base their view of reality on seeing news about the Westboro Baptists and then extrapolate? I've never had a religious person pose even the slightest threat to me doing whatever I want. I've never even been approached by religious people with their agenda aside from a tiny number of evangelicals and even these were in liberal cities, not the Bible belt. Compare this to government, schools and the corporate world where outward adherence to liberal ideology is required, training in proper opinion and avoidance of thoughtcrime is mandated and hirings, firings, promotions and evaluations are based on ideological purity and discrimination against white males is institutionalized.

(11-01-2014 01:25 PM)Lemmo Wrote:  Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"? Do they base their view of reality on seeing news about the Westboro Baptists and then extrapolate? I've never had a religious person pose even the slightest threat to me doing whatever I want. I've never even been approached by religious people with their agenda aside from a tiny number of evangelicals and even these were in liberal cities, not the Bible belt. Compare this to government, schools and the corporate world where outward adherence to liberal ideology is required, training in proper opinion and avoidance of thoughtcrime is mandated and hirings, firings, promotions and evaluations are based on ideological purity and discrimination against white males is institutionalized.

Good point I even see this in my own family. My grandfather is a Baptist preacher and while he's frowned on people in the family not going to church or supporting gay marriage, he knows how to leave well enough alone and goes on about his way. However, when I told some people in the family that I stopped voting Democrat, I was called an Uncle Tom, a self hater, a white asskisser, etc. When I tell women in the family that it's important for children to be raised by two parents, I've been called a sexist womanhater. I lived in the Bible Belt (North Carolina) and don't remember people telling me how evil and sinister I am for not going to church every Sunday.

I've met a lot of great people through church. I've met a lot of people who shared the same intetests, traveled to different countries, and even met girls there too. That's more than I can say about the lefty man hating coffee houses.

(11-01-2014 01:25 PM)Lemmo Wrote:  Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"?

Religion has been the cause of more hatred, killing, oppression, and suffering in this world than anything else. Feminism can't even begin to match the evil that has been wrought in the name of religion through out the history of mankind.

(11-01-2014 12:02 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 03:52 AM)Samseau Wrote:  Yeah you're out of your mind. The religious right haven't been able to push their Christian morality on the rest of us since the prohibition era. The boogeyman of the right-wing extremist is getting old, just like most democrat voters.

Sure, and who was responsible for impeaching Clinton for having an affair? Of course, they tried to make it out to be something else. He lied under oath, blah, blah.. If Clinton stuck his cigar in Monica Lewinsky and came all over her blue dress, who cares? Right wing moral hypocrites, that's who.

Funnily, most guys on this board would identify more with Clinton the player than Mitt Romney or George W, the family guys.

Every election the Republicans throw up a cast of neanderthal, anti science, creationist nut jobs. Who is pushing to have crazy theories like creationism taught in schools and wanting god in school prayers? No, it can't be right wing extremists.

Crazy theories like creationism? Why can't both evolution and creationism be taught?


Neanderthals, anti-science creationist nut jobs huh. If you want to talk about dense and anti factual look at the left. The modern progressives can't seem to do the simple arithmetic that shows the country is heading in a direction that can only lead down.

I'll take the backwards party that is realistic about economics and society over the party that can't add 2+2 or acknowledge that their policies fail in the face of human nature any day.

Give me the party that will leave me alone.

( Note, I am talking about real Republicans along the Ron Paul line, not Neo-cons)

(11-01-2014 01:58 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:25 PM)Lemmo Wrote:  Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"?

Religion has been the cause of more hatred, killing, oppression, and suffering in this world than anything else. Feminism can't even begin to match the evil that has been wrought in the name of religion through out the history of mankind.

No, mankind has been the cause of all of that, and used religion as their excuse. Anyone who reads the New Testament would know that Christianity is a true religion of peace.

During the religious wars only the upper levels of the church were actually able to read the Bible, they had a monopoly on information and were very easily able to pervert the Bible's message. It is interesting to note that the religious wars went out of style not long after the Protestant Revolution made the reading of the Bible by the common man a possibility.

(11-01-2014 03:26 PM)DChambers Wrote:  Crazy theories like creationism? Why can't both evolution and creationism be taught?

Because it's not science. It's some person's fantasy and has no place being taught in public classrooms funded by tax payer money. If you want to learn about creationism, do it at sunday school. Don't force it on everybody else. Funny how conservatives are all up in arms about the misuse of public funds, except when it suits them.

(11-01-2014 03:31 PM)DChambers Wrote:  Christianity is a true religion of peace.

LOL. Yeah man, just like Islam.

(11-01-2014 04:23 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 03:26 PM)DChambers Wrote:  Crazy theories like creationism? Why can't both evolution and creationism be taught?

Because it's not science. It's some person's fantasy and has no place being taught in public classrooms funded by tax payer money. If you want to learn about creationism, do it at sunday school. Don't force it on everybody else. Funny how conservatives are all up in arms about the misuse of public funds, except when it suits them.

(11-01-2014 03:31 PM)DChambers Wrote:  Christianity is a true religion of peace.

LOL. Yeah man, just like Islam.

Sounds more like you're letting your personal malice towards religion color your opinion of the rest of the party's ideas.

Islam is not an inherently peaceful religion. Quite easy to gather if you read the Koran or compare the teachings of Mohammed to Jesus.

That feel when one day ManAbout looks in the mirror and realizes he is more zealous, hateful and close-minded with his anti-religious beliefs than most religious people are with theirs.

(11-01-2014 04:23 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 03:26 PM)DChambers Wrote:  Crazy theories like creationism? Why can't both evolution and creationism be taught?

Because it's not science. It's some person's fantasy and has no place being taught in public classrooms funded by tax payer money. If you want to learn about creationism, do it at sunday school. Don't force it on everybody else. Funny how conservatives are all up in arms about the misuse of public funds, except when it suits them.

(11-01-2014 03:31 PM)DChambers Wrote:  Christianity is a true religion of peace.

LOL. Yeah man, just like Islam.

Oh ok. I understand what's going on now.

   

Just another militant atheist trying to shame our opinions out of us. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

(10-30-2014 08:42 AM)TheWastelander Wrote:  

Just hit the report button because of the emotional distress your post caused. Add Elizabeth Warren's name to the poster.

religion thread or political thread?

@ManAbout
I've heard this statement before and it always issues from the individual who, seeing evil in the world, seeks to detach themselves from it by blaming it on the religious. They also have expressed the belief that evolution bequeathed no free will to mankind. Therefore: these individuals live in a world where they are not responsible for their actions and have no higher power to answer to.

Though they are disparaging religious people, they are espousing the values they claim to despise.

Side note: I'm agnostic and fully accept the scientific fact of evolution.

(11-01-2014 04:23 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 03:26 PM)DChambers Wrote:  Crazy theories like creationism? Why can't both evolution and creationism be taught?

Because it's not science. It's some person's fantasy and has no place being taught in public classrooms funded by tax payer money. If you want to learn about creationism, do it at sunday school. Don't force it on everybody else. Funny how conservatives are all up in arms about the misuse of public funds, except when it suits them.

(11-01-2014 03:31 PM)DChambers Wrote:  Christianity is a true religion of peace.

LOL. Yeah man, just like Islam.

Oh yeah. So you believe in evolution, huh? What do you think about HBD (Human Biodiversity), i.e. that there are significant differences, including regarding intelligence, between races? This is the one that always catches liberals out because they won't go the whole way and be consistent in their beliefs. They will apply the theory of evolution to every species except humans, which proves that they don't really believe in evolution. Rather, they're just trying to grandstand and score points off the religious right.

As for religion being the cause of so much bloodshed. Yes, but then there are also lots of non-religious examples. In fact, looking at this list of wars by death toll, of the top ten, only two (the Taiping Rebellion and the Conquests of Tamerlane) feature religion as a major factor.

(11-01-2014 10:38 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  Oh yeah. So you believe in evolution, huh? What do you think about HBD (Human Biodiversity), i.e. that there are significant differences, including regarding intelligence, between races? This is the one that always catches liberals out because they won't go the whole way and be consistent in their beliefs. They will apply the theory of evolution to every species except humans, which proves that they don't really believe in evolution. Rather, they're just trying to grandstand and score points off the religious right.

Do you understand the difference between species and races?

Species are affected by evolution and all living humans are the same species, homo sapien. Race is a social construct and has no real taxonomic purpose.

(11-01-2014 11:23 PM)Americas Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 10:38 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  Oh yeah. So you believe in evolution, huh? What do you think about HBD (Human Biodiversity), i.e. that there are significant differences, including regarding intelligence, between races? This is the one that always catches liberals out because they won't go the whole way and be consistent in their beliefs. They will apply the theory of evolution to every species except humans, which proves that they don't really believe in evolution. Rather, they're just trying to grandstand and score points off the religious right.

Do you understand the difference between species and races?

Species are affected by evolution and all living humans are the same species, homo sapien. Race is a social construct and has no real taxonomic purpose.

There are variations within species that are genetically significant. Like skin color or beak shape, or fin style.
Race is taxonomically significant under the linnean system.

*However, I personally advocate the concept of social similarity and compatibility between human races. Most minor genetic differences are ignored in nature, like skin color should be.

(11-01-2014 01:58 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:25 PM)Lemmo Wrote:  Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"?

Religion has been the cause of more hatred, killing, oppression, and suffering in this world than anything else. Feminism can't even begin to match the evil that has been wrought in the name of religion through out the history of mankind.

We're talking about the here and now not the Moors or the Crusades hundereds of years ago. The only religion doing the killing these days seems to mostly be Islam which the left continually give a free pass. And being "Progressive" is pretty much a religion or at least a set of sacred beliefs now.

(11-02-2014 05:32 AM)Akula Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:58 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:25 PM)Lemmo Wrote:  Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"?

Religion has been the cause of more hatred, killing, oppression, and suffering in this world than anything else. Feminism can't even begin to match the evil that has been wrought in the name of religion through out the history of mankind.

We're talking about the here and now not the Moors or the Crusades hundereds of years ago. The only religion doing the killing these days seems to mostly be Islam which the left continually give a free pass. And being "Progressive" is pretty much a religion or at least a set of sacred beliefs now.

I don't like to get involved in religion discussions and don't know how this got onto that topic, but the prevailing Western narrative on Islam is mostly wrong. Yes, there are insanely violent extremists among Muslims, but the primary motivation for the conflict has been Western interference in Arab lands over the last 100 years. That is what Bin Laden complained about. In terms of human, family and tribal memory, 100 years is not a long time. In you fuck with someone enough, you can make them psychotic, yes. Westerners think history started with 9/11. It did not.

Just consider that in the last 100 years Western countries:

colonized the whole Islamic world from Mindanao to Morocco and extracted trillions of dollars worth of resources in oil, minerals, labor, agricultural products, timber, and rubber.

did things like "policing by bombing," i.e. indiscriminate bombing of rebellious Iraqi towns in the 1920s and 30s by the RAF, and committed massacres and atrocities in Mindanao and other places (Battle of Algiers) to enforce colonial rule;

tried to break Turkey up into pieces and colonize it after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Only Ataturk stopped it.

imposed a settler state (Israel) by Western fiat (Balfour) on holy lands of the Muslim and Christian Arabs, and condones expansionism (West Bank settlements) and brutal measures (Gaza)

installed and supported puppet regimes in many countries after colonization which enriched themselves while continuing to extract resources for the West (the Shah of Iran, Saddam for a time, Mubarak, Ben Ali, the Gulf monarchies)

right now and more recently, has waged war, bombing campaigns, and promoted insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria which have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims as "collateral damage" or murder (e.g. Blackwater) and of course destroyed the lives of millions through destruction and disorder.

Syria is a particular example. In that country, the West sought to disrupt a secular dictator not any worse than its own puppets (Mubarak, the Sauds) and created a monster which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Why?

I've been on the inside of a couple of the more recent conflicts, and I know there are two sides to all stories, but you have to look at the reality of the situation. A dead child is a dead child. Westerners, particularly Americans, thinking they are pure victims is a form of solipsism.

To say that only Muslims are killing is absurd - they are also being killed, in much greater numbers.

(11-02-2014 05:32 AM)Akula Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:58 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:25 PM)Lemmo Wrote:  Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"?

Religion has been the cause of more hatred, killing, oppression, and suffering in this world than anything else. Feminism can't even begin to match the evil that has been wrought in the name of religion through out the history of mankind.

We're talking about the here and now not the Moors or the Crusades hundereds of years ago. The only religion doing the killing these days seems to mostly be Islam which the left continually give a free pass. And being "Progressive" is pretty much a religion or at least a set of sacred beliefs now.

You have no idea what humans can do to each other. I've seen it. That's why I'll always be the one to pick up a rifle to fight and go where the others can't. I respect Roosh, MikeCF, Fisto, Quintus Curtius, and others that commentate but can't stomach the fight. It sucks a huge dick and you never get over it, but our forefathers did it and so have I. Just don't let us that matter disappear into the ether.

(11-01-2014 11:23 PM)Americas Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 10:38 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  Oh yeah. So you believe in evolution, huh? What do you think about HBD (Human Biodiversity), i.e. that there are significant differences, including regarding intelligence, between races? This is the one that always catches liberals out because they won't go the whole way and be consistent in their beliefs. They will apply the theory of evolution to every species except humans, which proves that they don't really believe in evolution. Rather, they're just trying to grandstand and score points off the religious right.

Do you understand the difference between species and races?

Species are affected by evolution and all living humans are the same species, homo sapien. Race is a social construct and has no real taxonomic purpose.

Really? So a chihuahua and a Doberman are essentially the same? Or how about a border collie and a golden retriever on an intelligence test? Same species, right? Any population, even within a species, can obviously be affected by either natural or artificial selection in the same way that different species can.

Even then, the line between species is not always hard. In North America, for instance, wolves and coyotes have been known to interbreed.

Race amongst humans is also not just a social construct. There is a continuum between different races or certain mixtures, but if we consider certain physical features, we can broadly distinguish races. For instance, if you saw someone with pale skin, hair and eyes, which continent would you suppose his ancestors to have come from? (Don't be a clever clogs and say Africa.) Likewise, certain groups of people are far more likely to be susceptible to certain diseases, whilst such genetic predisposition is almost non-existent in other groups of people. Is that a social construct? Furthermore, when it comes to athletics, certain groups of people completely outperform others. Why are the top ten fastest times for marathons all held by East African men (not African in general, but specifically East African)? Is this merely a coincidence? Is it because of social conditions? Why do East Asians typically outperform those of European heritage on IQ tests, regardless of whether they grew up inside or outside the West, especially despite having lower levels of "privilege"? Why do Ashkenazi Jews outperform everybody else (including East Asians)? Why do men tend to outperform women on tests of spatial reasoning but women tend to outperform men on tests of verbal ability? Are all of these differences just social constructs?

Why would it be the case that evolution had an effect upon millions of other species and subgroups within them, and even upon human beings up until some arbitrary and politically correct point in the past, but not for humans, not recently enough to matter? What's this magic deus ex machina, if not a god of some form? I figure that if you're going to buy a theory, then you have to be consistent with it, even when that leads to uncomfortable places.

(11-02-2014 06:58 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

(11-02-2014 05:32 AM)Akula Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:58 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:25 PM)Lemmo Wrote:  Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"?

Religion has been the cause of more hatred, killing, oppression, and suffering in this world than anything else. Feminism can't even begin to match the evil that has been wrought in the name of religion through out the history of mankind.

We're talking about the here and now not the Moors or the Crusades hundereds of years ago. The only religion doing the killing these days seems to mostly be Islam which the left continually give a free pass. And being "Progressive" is pretty much a religion or at least a set of sacred beliefs now.

I don't like to get involved in religion discussions and don't know how this got onto that topic, but the prevailing Western narrative on Islam is mostly wrong. Yes, there are insanely violent extremists among Muslims, but the primary motivation for the conflict has been Western interference in Arab lands over the last 100 years. That is what Bin Laden complained about. In terms of human, family and tribal memory, 100 years is not a long time. In you fuck with someone enough, you can make them psychotic, yes. Westerners think history started with 9/11. It did not.

Just consider that in the last 100 years Western countries:

colonized the whole Islamic world from Mindanao to Morocco and extracted trillions of dollars worth of resources in oil, minerals, labor, agricultural products, timber, and rubber.

did things like "policing by bombing," i.e. indiscriminate bombing of rebellious Iraqi towns in the 1920s and 30s by the RAF, and committed massacres and atrocities in Mindanao and other places (Battle of Algiers) to enforce colonial rule;

tried to break Turkey up into pieces and colonize it after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Only Ataturk stopped it.

imposed a settler state (Israel) by Western fiat (Balfour) on holy lands of the Muslim and Christian Arabs, and condones expansionism (West Bank settlements) and brutal measures (Gaza)

installed and supported puppet regimes in many countries after colonization which enriched themselves while continuing to extract resources for the West (the Shah of Iran, Saddam for a time, Mubarak, Ben Ali, the Gulf monarchies)

right now and more recently, has waged war, bombing campaigns, and promoted insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria which have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims as "collateral damage" or murder (e.g. Blackwater) and of course destroyed the lives of millions through destruction and disorder.

Syria is a particular example. In that country, the West sought to disrupt a secular dictator not any worse than its own puppets (Mubarak, the Sauds) and created a monster which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Why?

I've been on the inside of a couple of the more recent conflicts, and I know there are two sides to all stories, but you have to look at the reality of the situation. A dead child is a dead child. Westerners, particularly Americans, thinking they are pure victims is a form of solipsism.

To say that only Muslims are killing is absurd - they are also being killed, in much greater numbers.

So how does that explain all of the aggression towards non-Western targets both within the Middle East and within other countries from Nigeria to Thailand and the Philippines?

You also conveniently left out that many of those "Muslim" countries in the Middle East were once Christian lands. Also, within the past one hundred years, Muslim nations have been colonial forces in the West, taken Western slaves, etc.

I'm not with the neo-cons at all, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(11-01-2014 11:23 PM)Americas Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 10:38 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  Oh yeah. So you believe in evolution, huh? What do you think about HBD (Human Biodiversity), i.e. that there are significant differences, including regarding intelligence, between races? This is the one that always catches liberals out because they won't go the whole way and be consistent in their beliefs. They will apply the theory of evolution to every species except humans, which proves that they don't really believe in evolution. Rather, they're just trying to grandstand and score points off the religious right.

Do you understand the difference between species and races?

Species are affected by evolution and all living humans are the same species, homo sapien. Race is a social construct and has no real taxonomic purpose.

It's one thing to be skeptical of the validity of a given set of research. It's another thing however to believe outright that no such genetic differences could ever possibly exist. It's another thing also to be obsessed with IQ and think that scoring higher than somebody on a test somehow makes you a better person. If you're in either of the later two categories well...

Remember, it's the people with the highest IQ's, who are the biggest proponents of all the bullshit we talk about in the EE forum. Just saying.

(11-02-2014 07:32 AM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  

(11-02-2014 06:58 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

(11-02-2014 05:32 AM)Akula Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:58 PM)ManAbout Wrote:  

(11-01-2014 01:25 PM)Lemmo Wrote:  Where do these people live who have such a fear of religious people and "creationists"?

Religion has been the cause of more hatred, killing, oppression, and suffering in this world than anything else. Feminism can't even begin to match the evil that has been wrought in the name of religion through out the history of mankind.

We're talking about the here and now not the Moors or the Crusades hundereds of years ago. The only religion doing the killing these days seems to mostly be Islam which the left continually give a free pass. And being "Progressive" is pretty much a religion or at least a set of sacred beliefs now.

I don't like to get involved in religion discussions and don't know how this got onto that topic, but the prevailing Western narrative on Islam is mostly wrong. Yes, there are insanely violent extremists among Muslims, but the primary motivation for the conflict has been Western interference in Arab lands over the last 100 years. That is what Bin Laden complained about. In terms of human, family and tribal memory, 100 years is not a long time. In you fuck with someone enough, you can make them psychotic, yes. Westerners think history started with 9/11. It did not.

Just consider that in the last 100 years Western countries:

colonized the whole Islamic world from Mindanao to Morocco and extracted trillions of dollars worth of resources in oil, minerals, labor, agricultural products, timber, and rubber.

did things like "policing by bombing," i.e. indiscriminate bombing of rebellious Iraqi towns in the 1920s and 30s by the RAF, and committed massacres and atrocities in Mindanao and other places (Battle of Algiers) to enforce colonial rule;

tried to break Turkey up into pieces and colonize it after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Only Ataturk stopped it.

imposed a settler state (Israel) by Western fiat (Balfour) on holy lands of the Muslim and Christian Arabs, and condones expansionism (West Bank settlements) and brutal measures (Gaza)

installed and supported puppet regimes in many countries after colonization which enriched themselves while continuing to extract resources for the West (the Shah of Iran, Saddam for a time, Mubarak, Ben Ali, the Gulf monarchies)

right now and more recently, has waged war, bombing campaigns, and promoted insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria which have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims as "collateral damage" or murder (e.g. Blackwater) and of course destroyed the lives of millions through destruction and disorder.

Syria is a particular example. In that country, the West sought to disrupt a secular dictator not any worse than its own puppets (Mubarak, the Sauds) and created a monster which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Why?

I've been on the inside of a couple of the more recent conflicts, and I know there are two sides to all stories, but you have to look at the reality of the situation. A dead child is a dead child. Westerners, particularly Americans, thinking they are pure victims is a form of solipsism.

To say that only Muslims are killing is absurd - they are also being killed, in much greater numbers.

So how does that explain all of the aggression towards non-Western targets both within the Middle East and within other countries from Nigeria to Thailand and the Philippines?

You also conveniently left out that many of those "Muslim" countries in the Middle East were once Christian lands. Also, within the past one hundred years, Muslim nations have been colonial forces in the West, taken Western slaves, etc.

I'm not with the neo-cons at all, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

1. Thailand, Philippines, Nigeria - Imperfect borders in "Northern Ireland" type situations with an ethnoreligious minority and colonial borders in the wrong place. The Muslim insurgency in Thailand is in the extreme south, with an ethnic Muslim Malay minority fighting. Same thing in Mindanao - historical Sultanate of Sulu, later suppressed by the Spanish and by the Philippine government with settler rule. If you gave any of these places self-determination, they'd do their own thing. Is that "aggression?" One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Nigeria is a patchwork within colonial borders, remember that two Christian groups, Yoruba and Ibo fought a very bloody civil war over secession of the Ibo Biafra state.

Sure, many Muslim countries were Christian 700 years ago. They were Roman pagan before that. But we were talking about violence recently.

Quote:Also, within the past one hundred years, Muslim nations have been colonial forces in the West, taken Western slaves, etc.

Not sure what you're talking about there, unless it's the Ottomans 100 years ago, but there's no doubt that the West is wayyy ahead in the body count score in the last 100, 50, 10, 1 years, even if you don't count Israel.

(11-02-2014 07:24 AM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  Really? So a chihuahua and a Doberman are essentially the same? Or how about a border collie and a golden retriever on an intelligence test? Same species, right? Any population, even within a species, can obviously be affected by either natural or artificial selection in the same way that different species can.

Even then, the line between species is not always hard. In North America, for instance, wolves and coyotes have been known to interbreed.

Race amongst humans is also not just a social construct. There is a continuum between different races or certain mixtures, but if we consider certain physical features, we can broadly distinguish races. For instance, if you saw someone with pale skin, hair and eyes, which continent would you suppose his ancestors to have come from? (Don't be a clever clogs and say Africa.) Likewise, certain groups of people are far more likely to be susceptible to certain diseases, whilst such genetic predisposition is almost non-existent in other groups of people. Is that a social construct? Furthermore, when it comes to athletics, certain groups of people completely outperform others. Why are the top ten fastest times for marathons all held by East African men (not African in general, but specifically East African)? Is this merely a coincidence? Is it because of social conditions? Why do East Asians typically outperform those of European heritage on IQ tests, regardless of whether they grew up inside or outside the West, especially despite having lower levels of "privilege"? Why do Ashkenazi Jews outperform everybody else (including East Asians)? Why do men tend to outperform women on tests of spatial reasoning but women tend to outperform men on tests of verbal ability? Are all of these differences just social constructs?

Why would it be the case that evolution had an effect upon millions of other species and subgroups within them, and even upon human beings up until some arbitrary and politically correct point in the past, but not for humans, not recently enough to matter? What's this magic deus ex machina, if not a god of some form? I figure that if you're going to buy a theory, then you have to be consistent with it, even when that leads to uncomfortable places.

The actual genetic differences between humans today, no matter how differentiated they are from region, is remarkably small. We are talking about a genetic difference of 1-2% here. In fact, the genetic differences within populations is almost as likely to occur as genetic different between populations. What this means that if you sample different populations (ie. races) 5 times, you will see 20% of that time the genetic differences to be greater within populations.

Race is a social construct. It was created by some crock pot anthropologists a few centuries ago to rank certain types of people, often in ridiculously racist and completely arbitrary ways. And it stuck because it was a social construct that aided in the justification of colonization of "weaker groups of humans" by Europeans.

Now, environment and culture does affect certain genetic dispositions of humans, but the lines are so blurry that making any certain inferences is kind of a waste of time. Yes, people have different physical characteristics, but the actual amount of genetic change for this to occur is remarkably small.

So from politics, to religion, to race. Boy we're sure hitting all the stops here.

To bring us back on point somewhat, I am curious to know if there are any members here who vote Democrat and why? Do you believe in their economics, their social polices, or do you vote for the lesser of two evils?