Originally posted by Doctor Robert The smell test is not an adequate method for any of the following things: 1) Writing Laws 2) Writing Constitutions 3) Forming Political Policy 4) Determing Federal, State, and Local Educational Standards The smell test has a bad reputation when it comes to these kinds of things. It is responsible for most of the horrible crimes that have been committed through history, and you should be ASHAMED for even admitting that in this thread. <b>I'll need some examples of those horrors first before I cop to such a thing. Our country functioned pretty damn well for a couple of hundred years before we institutionally marginalized or excluded the God of our Judeo-Christian tradition. Things have gone south since then in many ways-- especially in our eductional system and our popular culture. I think the Smell Test is sufficient for that. I am not saying that the restoration would be a panacea but there are probably not any more significant factors that have been thrown to the trash heap. I'm ashamed of nothing.</b> Our world has an ENORMOUS amount of information, research, and knowledge available to every free person in this country. You obviously have access to a very large portion of this knowledge because you have access to the internet. I would also assume that you have access to a public library, a bookstore, online book retailers, and the ability to attend any of the fine higher educational institutions that people from all over the world travel to the US to attend. - AND YOU DON'T CARE TO ACCESS ANY OF IT. <b>I access it all the time but I'm not sure what this has to do with anything I said....</b> Once again, you should be ASHAMED for arguing such an absurd point of view and admitting that you are using the SMELL TEST to support it. You might as well admit that you are also lazy and misinformed and would rather insult everyone on this BBS by wasting our time reading this thread while awaiting a reasonable or educated response from its' originator. <b>You can't deny history... unless it serves a nefarious purpose.</b> AND, for you information correlation does not involve a link with causality. <b>From Dictionary.com: "cor·re·la·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kôr-lshn, kr-) n. A causal, complementary, parallel, or reciprocal relationship, especially a structural, functional, or qualitative correspondence between two comparable entities: a correlation between drug abuse and crime." What was that again about correlation?</b>
are you freaking serious? where to begin? Salam Witch Trials Slavery Women having no voting rights Child labor explotation of mine workers explotation of immigrant workers jim crow laws & the lynching of blacks throughout the south THE EXTERMINATION OF NATIVE AMERICANS! and on..and on... such ignorance.....
a list like the one above is why i draw sharp distinctions between Jesus Christ and the United States of America.
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The lynchings weren't only in the south. In fact the largest number of black lynchings happened in NYC. I guess it depends on who you ask whether this country was doing well while we had prayer in schools. I think all of the folks on this list, didn't think things were going all that well, and many others who are concerned about such things didn't think everything was that peachy. But for some people who were part of the power, or at least benefitted from the power and weren't segregated, or discriminated against, they didn't have to worry about those things. Later the propblems were brought in close and couldn't be ignored, so for those folks they couldn't ignore the ugly anymore, and that might have made things seem worse.
1. It it's such an awful place, why don't you leave... 2. Are you preparing to make the argument that the removal of Judeo-Christian traditions has made this a better country? 3. Our nation managed to rid itself of those horrors. What/who gets credit for that? What horrors that have arisen in the last 40-50 years will this nation rid itself of in the years to come?
your argument was that way back in the day, we were a better nation, especially morally, back when your god was more involved in everyone's public life and policy had a more Christian flavor to it I say that is crap and gave you the reasons why it is - we are ridding ourselves of these awful actrocities BECAUSE we are shedding our religious chains causation, correlation - i don't really know - but in my view, the manner in which we treat each other in this country has improved at the same rate as the role of religion in America has declined over that last 200 years don't pray in my school and I won't think in your church, deal?
1. Your master list of American horrors only includes one horror which was primarily perpetrated by people of religion (Salem), but that's not really my point.... 2. The other horrors were eradicated over time. Why not give the religious ribs of our national skeleton credit rather than blame? Did the governmental institutions eradicate those problem or did they create them? As I scan the list, it would seem that government has a lot more to do with ridding our nation of those horrors than of creating them. Most of those horrors were created by men. What do you THINK about that? My challenge to you was for some prognostication of which of our late 20th century social failures will be corrected by an increasingly "secular" government?
Actually there have already been churches that have taken responsibility for the slaughter of American Indians. They purposefully gave the Indians diseased infested blankets. Missionaries were a huge part of the slaughter of those Indians. Staunch religious zealots fought on both sides of the slavery issue, and Jim Crow laws and segregation etc. I visited a Baptist church that was still preaching against race mixing in the 1980's. But that wasn't even the point. You claimed that the country got along better when there was prayer in public schools. His post pointed out that for those who Black, Indian, etc. the country was far worse then than it is now. I said it was only better for those who didn't want to look at the ugly that existed in our country because they could be seperated from it, and everything seemed hunky dory. But later they had to face the problems and injustices, so for them things did get worse.
I can't comment on the rest of the thread because I haven't read it yet but I have to ask this: How did people in those times purposely infect blankets? I thought most of the natives died of diseases that were airborne-transmitted, and to a lesser extent sexually-transmitted. I'm not questioning you here, I'm just in total ignorance and would like to know. I don't even know what key words to put into Google about this. Maybe 'early biological weapons in blankets'?
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The Blankets were already infested, and they knew because they came from people with small pox. It wasn't that they purposefully infested the blankets. They purposefully gave already infested blankets to the indians. Here's a sample and In fairness to the other side there are those that contend the spread was not intentional. But a firsthand source such as the letter from Amherst seems to suggest that it was intentional.
You're not paying attention. My post had absolutely nothing to do with religion and everything to do with your "smell test" standard. I said that a "smell test" was responsible for some of the worst horrors seen in human history, and you said you would like to see a list of horrors. Here is a perfect example of the horrible crimes that can be perpetrated with the use of your "smell test". The slavery "smell test" of that age - "I've been to Africa, and their civilization is more primitive than the European civilization. Therefore, they are sub-European or sub-human." The result you get is the buying, selling, and enslaving of humans.
See previous post for example of the horrors I am talking about. Just to repeat the point. You are responding about religious topics, when my post had nothing to do with that. I skipped the actual subject matter of your thread, and was responding to the painful methods you are using to support your thesis. Until you actually take the arguments you are making seriously, there is no point in even discussing them. But here is a basic recap of what I said: The "smell test" is worthless unless it is checked with actual information. I am fine with people using their intuition to guide them, but you cannot make such dramatic conclusions with a "smell test". For example, you can't say I would like to start a war because it feels right. You can't say, we should pass laws that have heavy Constitutional implications because they smell right. On the flip side of the coin, I would be perfectly fine if you used a smell test to decide what you want to eat for dinner. That would be appropriate and effective. The fact that you are using the "smell test" for such purposes is offensive and immoral. I was also suggesting places you could go to get "information" on the subject so you could move past the "smell test". You seem to be misreading this... I don't see the word "cause" in there. I see correspond, correlation, comparable, but no "cause". Here is the definition of causation: the act or process of causing Cause: The producer of an effect, result, or consequence. Furthermore, here is an explanation from the A&M statistics department about the confusion between correlation and causation: http://stat.tamu.edu/stat30x/notes/node42.html Basically, just because two things have a relationship does not mean that one causes the other. A simple example of this would be the following: 6 of 10 people have at least one traffic violation. 9 of 10 people have a driver's license. There is a distinct correlation between people who have driver's licenses, and people who get traffic tickets, but one does not cause the other.
To respond to your original post in terms of methodolgy, or faulty methodology: Correlation and causation are not being confused in this particular instance, because no correlation is provided. We are provided a timeline of facts. Presenting things in a fictional chronological order provides us with no correlation. Afterwards, causation is assigned. It is impossible to evaluate causation when no correlation is shown.
This response was directed to chump, not you, who, for you, supplied a list of horrors and then attempted to tie them to the fanaticism of a government imbued with the love of God. My idea of a Smell Test is that it demonstrates a heckuva lot of common sense; yours seems to be that it only result in the worse kind of outcome. Those two are far apart. The Smell Test: if something kind of smells bad it is probably rotten. That would seem to be an unsurpassed way to judge human events. If something kind of seems brutal and inhumane (slavery) it probably is brutal and inhumane. The Smell Test does not allow for the concoction of some kind of rational justification for a decision or an action. I don't find you applying the Smell Test at all in the way that I think meets its practical application. You've made it too animalistic while I think of it as the King of Common Sense.
Truth is that I was suprised to find any inkling of "causation" in the definition of correlation. The other truth though is that I never asserted such. I never used the word correlated or caused. Someone else inserted the two words into the discussion to it describe the argument of the piece. THEY said it was a correlation not a causation. When I checked the definition, it used the word CAUSAL (you do know that that is related to "cause" don't you?!) as a possible explanation of the relationship of the two elements. Upon this discovery, I took up the argument that correlation can have something to do with causality. I would not have thought it did, but by God there it is in Dictionary.com. I would have been more inclined to go with some thesis like this: the decay of our schools is predicated on the removal of the religious fiber in the daily activities and values of our schools.
