DISQUS

Bill Donohue is such an asshole.

Stories like these always leave me very sad. I don't know how to address problems like this.

Isaiah,

Here is a quote from the original post: "We are all born God hating and evil."

Let me rephrase then. When you repeatedly tell a child she's evil and shouldn't feel good about herself because of it, and there is no way she will be good, eventually they start to believe it.

Can you really blame some people for viewing this as evil when they have seen this practice lead to suicide? Because let me tell you, even though the word "worthless" isn't used, that's exactly how a child will feel. I've seen it personally, and I've seen it in others. So if you want to sit there and pretend to have the moral high ground, go ahead. That's not going save kids I've known from a death that came way too early.

This woman is teaching this child to hate herself. That is truly irresponsible and disgusting.

seriously?

When you tell a kid that they are worthless, after a while they start to believe it. No amount of belief in god will change that.

When you have friends kill themselves because of this, it doesn't seem so holy. As a matter of fact, it seems entirely evil.

You seem to imply that it was in danger of being dismissed as “a theory” before this. You're right about that, but you're wrong to think this is really going to change anything. The people who reject evolution won't be swayed by more evidence. They don't care about the evidence. If they did care, they would agree that evolution is 'true.'

But more than that, evolution *is* a theory, not a fact. It's a scientific theory, which is a step higher than facts. It takes a bunch of facts and combines them together into a single explanatory and predictive description.

Um, I loaded it up, but the gif wasn't displaying at all. Server issues?

I see that there is already a lot of discussion here, but I thought I would add my two cents. I don't care about the cursing. I actually like the idea. The whole idea of certain words being more offensive than others is pretty stupid.

But that isn't the main issue. I can definitely see the issue from the SvN guys. If you state something, state it with conviction and not this watered down s*** that seems to be common. If you are convinced about something, say that way, and don't say it any other.

However, I would add something to that which I think is missing in this situation. If you were wrong about something, then admit it and move on. There is nothing bad about being wrong. It might sting a bit, but to find what's right is well worth it. If you take the opinion that 'we're right and that's that' you have left the path of reason and entered the realm of dogma. I'm not saying the SvN guys have done that. Obviously, they are very opinionated about what they do, which works well for them.

The other point that you made in your original post, which I think is worth repeating is the making of assertions without data to back it up. It's extremely important that data be available. Common sense is neither common, and, as experience has taught us, it can be very wrong at times as well. One of the most important questions someone can ask is: "Yes, this makes sense, but does it reflect reality (is the data there)?"

I've not been able to get the people I work with to use basecamp, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily a problem of Basecamp, or that most people are not used to/ready to use an online application in that capacity. Sure, people use e-mail and other applications without really thinking about it, but to use it constantly takes real training, and unless you stick with it, it will seem unnatural. I work at a University and the faculty/staff here are definitely representative of that. They're simply not used to having the resources available that are now available, and they won't take the time to actually learn them. And many times they don't even need to.