1. No credit for creationism

Comment #232865 by JHJEFFERY on August 18, 2008 at 7:25 pm

AfraidToDie

Thanks for the sentiment. Evolution is only a part of the Florida curriculum. IDists succeeded in stretching the public school curriculum enough to allow the teaching of the "controversy" even there. In the non-public schools, anything goes.

While Laurie and Goldy and the like are batting about inane theories and matching their egos, the education system in America is going to hell in a hadnbasket. What we need here is a little more action and a lot less less blather.

Again, anyone up for the fight?

Jerry

2. No credit for creationism

Comment #232781 by JHJEFFERY on August 18, 2008 at 3:17 pm

After watching Eric Hovind convince a Sunday School that dinosaurs and people walked the earth at the same time and got on the ark together, I began to look into this matter.

It turns out that here in Florida, there are NO substantive curriculum standards for religious or other private schools. That's right, no accreditation organization looks at WHAT the school is teaching. The Florida Association of Christian Schools looks at other things (teacher certification, financial accountability, etc.) and pronounces the school acceptable. I spoke with the FACS leader, Howard Burke, who immediately informed me there were too many holes in the theory of evolution for it to be taught.

The Associate Dean of Science here at the University of Central Florida was surprised to hear about the lack of standards. So was Eugenie Scott.

As an attorney and writer, I think it may be my responsibility to try to get this situation changed. I have a good start, but I will need some help. Any volunteers, especially in Florida?

Just as an aside, it seems to me smart to go on the offensive against the IDs. When they try to insert ID into schools they never really lose--they just don't win, but they try to find a new way in. Wouldn't it be more fun trying to get evolution into their schools? If we can keep they busy defending their ID curricula, maybe they will leave us alone.

Contact me at Sam1027j@aol.com if you want to be part of the crusade (PTP).

Jerry H. Jeffery

3. Unintelligent Design

Comment #232539 by JHJEFFERY on August 18, 2008 at 10:16 am

#43

"Female pelvis too small for the human baby's head making birth difficult and prone to perinatal injuries to the baby and the mother."

It's not just the pelvis, but the vagina that is too small. God did not produce the head/vagina ratio properly.

It does have a vagina, doesn't it?

4. Gerin Oil

Comment #227050 by JHJEFFERY on August 9, 2008 at 8:40 am

Bonzai

"I may be wrong, but I think the central theme of Foucault is "power", if that is the case may S&M be actually an enactment of his philosophy? Again, not claiming any expertise on Foucault, it seems that at some level his philosophy can be summarized as "history and society are one big S&M orgy."

A very interesting thought. Believe it or not, I don't think anyone in my class ever looked at it like that. You are correct that Foucault focused on power, as I mentioned in first post. But once you get past the obviously strained vocabulary, he has nothing of substance to say.

I think if you misunderstood me, it was my doing and not yours. I grew up in a small, southern town where everyone knew being gay (then "queer")was wrong. I grew up with all sorts of prejudices and getting rid of them completely is more difficult than you might think. I am looking at the AIDS comment and wondering why I added it. . . Yet I have a wonderful cousin who suffers from that horrible afffliction. I will dwell on this today.

But certainly I think the S/M comment appropriate. Even though I think DSM IV still defines S/M as deviant, that was not the gist of my comment. I don't care if Foucault did barnyard animals, it is his hubris to which I object. (I was tempted to compare his teaching others with Ted Haggard but I restrained myself. Yet now I find I have done it.)

Foucault never succeeded in grounding himself. He searching did not begin with S/M--the search for meaning was a lifetime obsession. One cannot imagine Epicurus so loosely woven in the grey matter yet opining on the meaning of life. Yet Foucault gleefully preached doctrines that assisted the pms in establishing their fantasy world where all things are equal.

I just reviewed Sam Harris' speech from 2005 at Idea City and find I can add nothing to his ideas on the subject of the relativism of truth. I think that speech and RD's piece on Postmodernism Disrobed pretty much say all there is to say about pm.

Cheers

Jerry

5. Gerin Oil

Comment #226992 by JHJEFFERY on August 9, 2008 at 6:32 am

So, since I have drawn fire, albeit gently, from the respected Bonzai, I see I should have not let my fingers get so lazy.

The life of Foucault was filled with searching, both personally and professionally, and, like any philosopher (although he was trained in psychology), his personal life overlaps with the professional. Like the Greeks of old, I believe one must live a good life, not merely be able to talk one. Foucault's immersion into darker and darker worlds betrays a lack of judgment and discrimination which, in most, would be irrelevant. It is only when one takes upon himself the mantle of philosopher, undertakes to tell others how to live, that others may question the philosopher's own life. The darkness and disaffection of Fouault is therefore relevant to the inquiry of his philosophical regime.

As to the 'bad taste' of it, I care not a whit. (But I hasten to add that I am certainly not a homophobe, and my comment was not meant as anti-gay. I just think people who like to be tied up, beaten and raped might need a little focus in their own lives, and shouldn't be lecturing others.)

Best,

Jerry

6. Gerin Oil

Comment #226792 by JHJEFFERY on August 8, 2008 at 5:05 pm

"While I am glad you are putting your opinion forward how you feel about Foucault, I think perhaps you could refrain from Ad Hominem attacks to prove your point."

An ad hominem attack is one directed at the speaker--this was a sin I did not commit. I am sorry you did not understand the thrust of my comment. Foucault, and his brethren whom he often tried to deny, simply lacked connectivity to reality. Foucault spent his life searching for the same truth he wrote did not exist. His own life is a clear example of his inability to see life clearly. His writings, are, of course, another. After a master's level class on the subject, I realized there was a synonym for postmodernism--blather.

Your last sentence betrays your prediliction that all thoughts are equal--they are not. Anyone can criticize my thoughts at any time and I will listen--and I will critcize theirs (and yours), and this is how it should be--this is the free exchange of ideas that the postmodernists would shut down, prefering political correctness to truth (ask Larry Brown). You may do so if you wish (and you will be wrong) but I will not, so don't even ask.

Ciao

JHJ

7. Gerin Oil

Comment #226749 by JHJEFFERY on August 8, 2008 at 3:14 pm

dead:

The problem of postmodernism (a philophy in search of an idea), is that it wants to creat categorical imperatives (there is no ultimate truth) to contend that there are no categorical imperatives. I have never heard a postmodernist admit it, but I am convinced that they took hostage the language of Einsteinian relativism and made it into a philosopy (Einstein warned against it).

Postmodernists lack the sublety of mind to understand that, whether there is an ultimate truth does not inform on the question of whether some things approach truth more closely than others.

Foucault, Leotard and the others simply lacked the ability to discriminate between those things which might be truer than others and lumped them all together into some sort of dark matter.

Foucault invented the concept of "power relations", which is after one wades through the verbosity, the idea that between and among people and all entities, there is a power continuum that varies with location, wealth, size, desire, and other factors. He discovered this sometime in his thirties (memory only here). Most people get it by the time they are six. Foucault had a nice vocabulary (and used it to befuddle instead of illuminate) but understood almost nothing. Perhaps that's why he died of aids after engaging in years of sadomasochist behavior.

BTW: Technology has nothing to do with Chinese oppression--it's been going on for thousands of years.

Cheers

8. Richard Dawkins branded 'secularist bigot' by veteran philosopher

Comment #223387 by JHJEFFERY on August 2, 2008 at 6:32 am

A few years back I completed a master's level course on the life of Einstein. I have read most of his letters and three biographies of him. Despite some quotes, usually out of context, (see those from Pristine), Einstein was essentially an atheist, but he was an atheist at a time when atheism was regarded as somewhere below devil worship, and some of his more public quotes reflect some unease about the label.

This stuff from Flew looks like Ken Hamm's work. He is known to misrepresent Einstein without even the most casual regard for the truth.

9. Vicar supports Life of Brian ban

Comment #222585 by JHJEFFERY on July 31, 2008 at 2:54 pm

Jesus was a small very smelly man with bad teeth and a big nose. Hard to imagine the vicar loving him more than his wife, but then I've never seen his wife.

Just scratching on the surface today. . . .

10. Antony Flew reviews the Index of The God Delusion

Comment #214588 by JHJEFFERY on July 20, 2008 at 4:29 pm

I write only to comment on the Einstein portion of Professor Flew's letter (if it indeed is his own). I could comment on D'Souza, since, in my discourse with him I have found his scholarship less than reliable (he cited a 'historian" who turned out to be a rhetorician--didn't you think Cicero was the last of that breed--who had also written an article asserting that the diagram of the Christian fish with legs and "Darwin" in the figure was "aggressive".

Without bothering to provide mined quotes, I have completed a master's level course on the life of Einstein (A), read three biographies of the man, along with countless of his own writings. To say that Einstein was religious, as Ken Ham has recently also alleged, is simply and absolutely ridiculous.

JHJ

11. The Return of Religion

Comment #212566 by JHJEFFERY on July 17, 2008 at 10:55 am

"There are two reasons why people start shouting at their opponents: one is that they think the opponent is so strong that every weapon must be used against him; the other is that they think their own case so weak that it has to be fortified by noise."

Well, no. This man is supposed to be a philosopher? In any argument, the strengths of one side are only relative to oppositional weaknesses of the other, and vice versa. This comment is redundant nonsense. And people, (unfortunately for his argument, not the people he names) shout for all manner of reasons, including absolute frustration with reading this kind of drivel.


He is also dead wrong about animals (non-human animals) not being "persuaded or dissuaded by dialogue with others." All pack animals have a leader. This is just wish-thinking nonsense driven by an insecure mind who desperately wants to feel inherently superior within his own tribe.

I was unable to find this man's god. Apparently he is related to the leader of K. Vonnegut's Church of God The Utterly Indifferent, who set the universe in motion and wished us all well.

And the precisely correct word for this article, my little sunbeams, is not "poppycock", but "piffle."

12. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #208710 by JHJEFFERY on July 11, 2008 at 7:02 am

I am sending this not just by snail mail, but certified. I live in Orlando, where Eric Hovind came to speak to Sunday school kids about the dinosaurs with Noah on the ark. I'm beyond tired of this crap.

Dear President Bruininks:
As an attorney with, modestly I say, an expertise in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, I write to you to support the actions of Professor P.Z. Myers relative to the "cracker incident".
As near as I can tell, the young man who sequestered the cracker did not break any law. The cracker was given him to keep. Failure to swallow is not, under most nonerotic circumstances, inoffensive, much less a crime. For Professor Myers, therefore, to express outrage that the student was harassed and threatened, simply and certainly places him within the reasoned and correct majority. That persons of questionable contact with reality, such as the self-aggrandizing Mr. Donahue, have taken it upon themselves to complain about the free speech rights of Professor Myers, does not inform as to the right of Professor Myers to condemn the actions of superstitious individuals who seek to silence, by threat, all opposition to their odd beliefs.
Please accept this letter as a plea for more than just academic freedom, but as a plea for the very nature of free speech. I urge you not only not to follow the dictates of Mr. Donahue, but to openly and emphatically reject him, along with his methods of intimidation, and his twisted, medieval and useless theology.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my sincere concerns for our freedoms and for standing up for these freedom Americans have held so dear all these many years.
I know that your institution has massive resources at its disposal. However, if I can be of any assistance in this struggle against the dark world of Mr. Donahue in this matter, my efforts will be provided, humbly, and without charge.
Peace be with you.

13. PZ Myers - Science and Atheism in the Blogosphere

Comment #208186 by JHJEFFERY on July 10, 2008 at 5:18 pm

Well, I happen to live in Orlando, where Eric Hovind recently came to teach children that dinosaurs and people lived happily together before the flood when they all got on the ark. I have sent his letter not by regular mail, as suggested by PZ, but certified. I used my own name which I post here as well, and will post on PZ's site too. I am pretty much over this nonsense and I want it to stop. Anyone with me?




JERRY H. JEFFERY, P.A.
Attorney at Law
P.O. Box 947537
Maitland, Fl 32794-7537

Telephone Facsimile
(407) 645- 5558 (407) 645-0009

July 10, 2008

President Robert H. Bruininks
202 Morrill Hall
100 Church Street S.E.
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Re: P.Z. Myers and the voices of darkness

Dear President Bruininks:
As an attorney with, modestly I say, an expertise in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, I write to you to support the actions of Professor P.Z. Myers relative to the "cracker incident".
As near as I can tell, the young man who sequestered the cracker did not break any law. The cracker was given him to keep. Failure to swallow is not, under most nonerotic circumstances, inoffensive, much less a crime. For Professor Myers, therefore, to express outrage that the student was harassed and threatened, simply and certainly places him within the reasoned majority. That persons of questionable contact with reality, such as the self-aggrandizing Mr. Donovan, have taken it upon themselves to complain about the free speech rights of Professor Myers, does not inform as to the right of Professor Myers to condemn the actions of superstitious individuals who seek to silence, by threat, all opposition to their odd beliefs.
Please accept this letter as a plea for more than just academic freedom, but a plea for the very foudation of free speech. I urge you not only not to follow the dictates of Mr. Donovan, but to openly and emphatically reject him, his methods of intimidation, and his twisted, medeival and useless theology.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my sincere concerns for our freedoms and for standing up for the freedom Americans have held so dear all these many years.
I know that your institution has massive resources at its disposal. However, if I can be of any assistance in this struggle against the darkness of Mr. Donovan in this matter, my efforts will be provided, humbly, and without charge.
Peace be with you.




Very truly yours,



Jerry H. Jeffery

14. The Emptiness of Theology

Comment #204331 by JHJEFFERY on July 4, 2008 at 7:36 pm

Epeist

I have (often) heard that argument: where would art and music be without religion. Better off, I would say. Art and especially music do not come from religion but from humans. It just so happened that during the emergence of reproducible music, the Catholic Church was in complete control of everything, including the subsidies neede by the artists. In other words, the artists were required, both by peer pressure and economic reality, to creat in the name of the master--the church.

If you want absolute proof that religion does not have a positive influence on music, listen to some modern Christian music--if you can.

Caio.

15. New Zealand man sells his soul to 'Hell'

Comment #203766 by JHJEFFERY on July 3, 2008 at 2:18 pm

I sold my soul for a pretty good price. Unfortunately, I invested the proceeds in the U.S. stock market.

16. Former state science director sues over intelligent design e-mail

Comment #203765 by JHJEFFERY on July 3, 2008 at 2:16 pm

Rod,

There is no jury trial for the issue of constitutionality--that is a matter of law for the court. If there is a fact question (there will be) about whether the email or her beliefs were the reason for the firing, a jury would be available if asked by either party.

17. Aliens need Christ's redemption, too

Comment #201466 by JHJEFFERY on June 29, 2008 at 5:27 pm

". . . the cosmos is large . . ."

I always find this sentiment interesting. Is the cosmos large? How would we know? It is one of the hallmarks of the religious mind to see "god's creation" as stupendous in scope. But we have no way of knowing if the cosmos is large--for all we know we are in the smallest of a billion universes.

I think it is this solipsistic anthorpocentric reading of the available evidence that creates religion in the first place.

18. Should Strident British Atheist Richard Dawkins Dictate Education Policy to US States? Barbara Forrest Apparently Thinks So

Comment #197212 by JHJEFFERY on June 21, 2008 at 11:20 am

"Barbara Forrest has been scare-mongering all over the country that the LSEA is a secret ploy to get religion or creationism into science classes."

I have to agree with stereoroid, the funny part is that Discovery thinks that it's a big secret where this came from. That's hysterical! If it didn't come from them, and it's purpose was truly benign and they were being truthful about it, why would they be interested at all?

I do think we must forgive them for the confusion about Barbara Forrest's comments emanating from RDF. The internet is a strange and mysterious thing and not everyone is capable of understanding it--it's sort of like science.

That having been said, the lack of subtlety in the appeal to xenophobia is somewhat disconcerting. I guess you have to know your audience.

19. We Urgently Need Your Help Now!!

Comment #196720 by JHJEFFERY on June 20, 2008 at 11:22 am

My letter:
To Gov. Jindal:

Unlike many, I support your signing of the bill SB 733. I am originally from Arkansas, and now live in Florida. I am tired of being accused in the most ignorant, knuckle-dragging state in the nation and I welcome, I applaud, the courage of the legislature of the great state of Louisiana to take charge of this issue as it did in Edwards v. Aguillard. One hopes that even if you do the same thing now as was done then, the result will be different. But wait, isn't that a definition of insanity?

On second thought, just forget I wrote.

Jerry H. Jeffery