Posted on 08/24/2009 1:41:52 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ignorami) who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. There never was a Roman Empire. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh: all these languages and their constituent dialects sprang spontaneously and separately into being, and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin.
Instead of devoting your full attention to the noble vocation of classical scholar and teacher, you are forced to divert your time and energy to a rearguard defence of the proposition that the Romans existed at all: a defence against an exhibition of ignorant prejudice that would make you weep if you weren’t too busy fighting it.
If my fantasy of the Latin teacher seems too wayward, here’s a more realistic example. Imagine you are a teacher of more recent history, and your lessons on 20th-century Europe are boycotted, heckled or otherwise disrupted by well-organised, well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers.
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk ...
Only one response to this article; you better believe we are after your children. Somebody has to tell them the truth, and it won’t be Richard Dawkins.
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I didn’t understand a single word of that.
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
– Richard Dawkins River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
I have argued that the discontinuous gap between humans and 'apes' that we erect in our minds is regrettable. I have also argued that, in any case, the present position of the hallowed gap is arbitrary, the result of evolutionary accident. If the contingencies of survival and extinction had been different, the gap would be in a different place. Ethical principles that are based upon accidental caprice should not be respected as if cast in stone.Dawkins signed a petition in the UK to “ make it illegal to indoctrinate or define children by religion before the age of 16”. .
- Dawkins
Galileo too was working for the church. His “persecution” has been greatly exaggerated and had more to do with his mocking the pope than science/religion.
http://www.catholic.com/library/Galileo_Controversy.asp
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”
If you turn your back on God and spurn His blessings, then yes, the universe does look a lot like that.
LMAO. Greatest “Awnold” movie ever.
For every Galileo...?
Galileo Galilei was put on trial by the Church for supporting Copernican astronomy. This was not all that long ago. It's scary when you give that much power to theocrats.
I’m pretty sure you have been exposed to more accurate history than that, right here on FR.
Writing from under Richard Darwkins bed...Ping!
“I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.” (ELLEN GOODMAN
No change in political climate
By Ellen Goodman | February 9, 2007 The Boston Globe)
The Holocaust Deniers, HD’ers to the uninitiated, are everywhere, disguised as creationists and global coolingists and people who wear brown shoes with blue suits.
Poor Richard. It's scary out there in the colonies.
You’ll find that, almost exclusively, biblical Christianity is the only religion that is attacked...
It’s the truth, and that’s why the father of lies focuses his attention on it.
Don’t forget about the HIV denialists...LOL! I know you take the other side of the debate over what causes AIDS, but wouldn’t it be funny if all three groups labeled as “denialists” by the evo-atheists turned out to be correct?!?!?
The only sense to make of his article is that he is shilling a new book.
“And the survey SAYS....!”
“Goofball.”
There was nothing nice about the Punic Wars. Ugly, nasty affairs.
that being said, if Dawkins thinks this is a serious or legitimate argument against creationism, then he's even more of a mouth-breathing, brain-dead cretin than I'd thought.
While it's true that Galileo was tried for his support of Copernicanism, "theocrats" had nothing to do with it. In fact, Galileo's prosecution was engineered by his fellow scientists who supported the Ptolemaic cosmology (i.e. geocentrism). The pope initially sided with Galileo, but was eventually convinced, through several underhanded means, that Galileo's advocacy represented a POLITICAL (not theological) threat to the Church.
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