As a member of the press, I'll have you know, not enough people come to us with story ideas. This would be one I'd pursue!

@LeftCoastgal you have confirmed the boundaries of closet Atheism.... most Atheists will NOT call you text you email you or even send a post card to your editor or confront obvious theocrats....many others enable theocrats by shaming Atheists like me calling us "evangelical" "dogmatic" or a "fundamentalist religionist" suggesting we all ignore theocrats and rapist priests and creationists ruining school biology classes

You @KKGator are a true patriot enemy of theocracy and the secular cure for the epidemic disease of religion in government funded agencies....good job keep fighting so other Atheists will join you seeing how easy it is to speak up take direct action to solve the PROBLEM

@Larry68Feminist I can speak up all day long, no one listens to me.
I'm just defiant as hell, and I don't back down from a fight.
Most people don't do that.

@KKGator 100% behind you....@redbai is another fighter....pick your battles and keep your powder dry as Hitchens said....fire away shoot to kill theocracy

@KKGator goes to show you "Agnostic" was invented by Huxley to retreat from supporting Darwin branded an Atheist in 1859....our Atheism is falsely defined by xian dictionaries...it is all about EVIDENCE and rational definition exactly what and where these alleged gawd things may be....since zero believers have met that burden of proof, "gods" is merely a gibberish sound NOT A REAL WORD

What a load of BS. Atheism Is the correct view without demonstrable evidence of a god. Teaching anything else is teaching that delusions are real.

@redbai Atheism might be the correct view for you, but you are only one person. Students are not there to be bombarded with someone’s petty opinions as though they were absolute truth

KIP THORNE:

"There are large numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God [...] There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God."[13]
(Wikipedia)

@WilliamFleming This might shock you but I couldn't care less what Kip Thorne says, IMO, he's wrong. There might be no incompatibility in believing in a god and being a scientist, but there is definitely incompatibility in applying religious principals to scientific methodology.

Allowing people to believe in imaginary beings that control what's going on in the world and that praying to said imaginary being is a competent method of solving problems is hazardous to humanity. Nothing you've said demonstrates that the damage that they cause in the human psyche of humanity is worth the meaningless ceremonies they perform or the outdated morals and ethics of their religious dogma.

@redbai “Allowing people to believe in imaginary beings...”

It is not your place to “allow” or not allow people to believe anything they want, and in fact no one can control what. another person believes or disbelieves. There is absolutely no justification for public schools to promote some ego ridden teacher’s pet opinions, whether those opinions be religious or secular.

What is truly harmful to humanity is the propagation of the scientism superstition. Deep questions about existence would best be discussed in a philosophy class where various ideas could be presented in a nonpartisan way.

Invisible beings? Have you stopped for one minute to consider what vision consists of?

@WilliamFleming Interesting how you cut half of that sentence away as if addressing the entire sentence, in context, would make your response moot.

Scientism is a fallacy created by theists to falsely bring the methodologies of science down to their level of "belief". It is the purposeful misuse of the concepts of science to attempt to justify absurdities. So you're right, scientism is superstition that should not be taught any more than religious dogma.

Since I haven't used the term "invisible beings" I have no idea what you are referencing there.

@redbai

“Since I haven't used the term "invisible beings" I have no idea what you are referencing there.”

Good point. Sorry about that.

Scientism though is the irrational belief that science holds all the answers to life’s questions, or that it potentially does. Typically those caught up in scientism think that reality consists only of the physical world of our senses. The physicalist or materialist view has been thoroughly debunked, yet that shallow perspective persists on and on. Scientism is a tool that its believers use to keep from looking directly at the overwhelming, staggering implications of the mysteries of existence as a consciously aware being. To pretend that science has a handle on universal truth, that existence is an accident of no value, and that no further inquiries need be made—that pretension leads to apathy, egoism, depression, poor health and no telling what else.

Real science is a great asset to humanity, but science does not even address, much less answer the deep questions of existence.

@WilliamFleming Well, yes, it does. Just not with 100% certainty yet, because....100% certainty would be a LIE. It's work in progress with answers coming on a regular basis.

It goes something like this:
Big Bang!
Rocks in space. Huge Rocks.
Amoeba gets a foothold on one of the rocks, called Earth. Overtime, Amoeba becomes fish, and then land mammal
Eventually one Land Mammal stands up right and walks on 2 legs.
Eventually that land mammal created gods and all kinds of stories..

Yes there a few blanks to fill in, because this took longer than 6,000 years and records are hard to come by. If this is hard to grasp, then there is always the LIE to fall back on.

@WilliamFleming Yeah, like I said, scientism is a fallacy created by theists. It's BS and as relevant as magic and sorcery. It's a word that people who want to continue to believe the unanswered questions have some mystical answer toss at those who never said the questions were answered.

@twill No lies needed. What led up to the Big Bang? Did it just sort of happen on accident? That is a totally meaningless belief—you might as well just say that God did it. You’d be saying just as much. And the establishment of life just a random accident? If you think you understand it all in those terms you are very deluded.

No, science does not address the deep questions of existence. No one, for example, knows what conscious awareness is or how it arises, yet that is what defines our very selves. It is utterly ridiculous to think that you understand reality when you don’t even understand your own self. Moreover, the physical reality that we experience with our senses is nothing but a dream-world of symbolic icons. Whatever is behind it all, ultimate reality, is totally beyond our perception or understanding.

Read some science. The model of objects moving in space and time is a mere illusion. There is no time, no place, no motion, no distance. The concept of causation is meaningless, as are the concepts of creation, immortality, etc.

It is troubling that so many people so loudly worship science but when it comes down to brass tacks they know only a little bit of science, and superficially at that.

@twill, @redbai See my answer to twill, and read some actual science. And read the opinions of history’s greatest physicists about the mystery of reality.

Here’s Albert Einstein:

“....everything is a miracle.

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.”

Sir Arthur Eddington:

“The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind... To put the conclusion crudely — the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.

“We are no longer tempted to condemn the spiritual aspects of our nature as illusory because of their lack of concreteness.

“The scientific answer is relevant so far as concerns the sense-impressions... For the rest the human spirit must turn to the unseen world to which it itself belongs.”

@WilliamFleming So you are impressed when someone coins a phrase that you find impressive enough to quote. So what? And don't tell me to "read some real science". You have no idea what I've read and you haven't demonstrated that I don't use or read "real science" and neither does your metaphysical babble. All you've demonstrated is that if you don't understand it you're willing to call it magic or some other made up phenomenon and I'm not.

@redbai Nowhere have I called anything magic or supernatural. I don’t know where you are getting that. All I’m doing is pointing out the limits of science and the fact that we humans are fundamentally ignorant about the ultimate nature of reality.

I would think that anyone with an open mind would be interested in the opinions of some of the world’s greatest physicists. Carlo Rovelli is a very pronounced atheist, but in his book Reality is not What it Seems he declared that time does not exist. You said above that people should not be permitted to believe certain things. Does that apply to Rovelli? Do you dismiss his work as metaphysical babble? Should his book be banned from schools?

Scientism is not real science.

@OldMetalHead Where have I proposed injecting a belief in God into schools? Nowhere. I firmly oppose such injection.

I also firmly oppose that a disbelief in God be taught in schools, as though that were the only correct opinion. Some of the most brilliant intellectuals down through history have entertained ideas about a higher power. It is a question for each person to decide, not something to be imposed by some small-minded high school teacher.

And equally important is that a physicalist/materialist/ reductionist philosophical opinion of some ego-ridden teacher be presented as though it were proven fact—it is nothing but superstition.

@OldMetalHead I agree.