--- On Thu, 3/3/11, Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote:
> What raised my ire here (and since I've got a bad cold, I
> am perhaps a little less tolerant than usual)
Please consider taking a herbal remedy before taking it out on me again.
> seeing someone (whoever wrote the line that
> Chris quoted) hide a political or religious agenda behind a
> plea for tolerance, using the old canard "How can students
> be taught to challenge popular ideas when they are only
> presented a one-sided view?"
I would be interested to learn what his political/religious agenda might be.
Maybe you would care to enlighten us?
> Those theories may get tweaked, but I am willing to bet a large sum
> that they will never be discarded.
you seem to be back pedaling here. Especially when you earlier said that
"Theory does not mean in doubt or tentative."
I bet Galileo would have been relieved to hear that you were not judging his
trial.
I was also intrigued to see you say "Lipton's ideas on the biology of belief
are not well accepted--yet"
So which is more important to you, a paradigm that is based on fact, or one
that is widely accepted?
I am surprised that nobody has mentioned Rupert Sheldrake in relation to
Darwinism. Perhaps you think that he too is "trying to hoodwink the
ignorant."
>I was quite polite to Chris, yes? But I've never cared much about >getting
>along with, or being polite to people who are doing >destructive work or
>trying to hoodwink the ignorant. I welcome >differences of opinion, but I
>don't welcome ideas from people who >haven't made the slightest effort to
>know what they are talking >about or who are trying to deceive.
If you really think that this paragraph is polite, then I think that you need
to go back and read Dale Carnegie before you read anymore science. If
however these comments are not aimed at me, then I am quite happy to start
afresh, once your cold has gone and you are a bit more affable.