[Nexus 4 Original Android Development] hartleyshc:
Ok...

Actually it was not science or biology that this was taught. It was world history. I probably should have been more clear on that.

See my other comment. My church embraced science with open arms. As I said they would use science to try to prove their faith. But we were not a bunch of literalist.

Catholic seminary's do teach biology, and teach theistic evolution.

As far as the missing link term. Its antiquated and was ignorant of me to use it.

An modern day argument would be:

"Transitional fossils serve as a reminder that taxonomic divisions are human constructs that have been imposed in hindsight on a continuum of variation. Because of the incompleteness of the fossil record, there is usually no way to know exactly how close a transitional fossil is to the point of divergence. Therefore, transitional fossils cannot be assumed to be direct ancestors of more recent groups, though they are frequently used as models for such ancestors."

Read

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

And

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution

Again, I am simply playing devil's advocate as I don't believe in any of this. You are talking to a guy who has, in his teenage years stole baby Jesus from a nativity scene and replaced him later with multiple marks of the beast on Christmas Eve. Also spray painted a police vehicle with pentagrams and 666 simply for shock value in small religious town. (The local media blamed it on some "gang" on the other side of the county. It was all me. I did this kind of stuff for years.) I don't believe in God nor do I fear him. But I have no problem with compatibilist who attempt to use science to prove their faith. Its an on going discussion that won't be proven on a phone technology board.

I do agree with the comments about the educational system in this country. As someone who was tested at an early age and put into gifted classes due to my IQ (138, State of Florida, 1987/88 -- the number doesn't matter since tests vary due to time and area. A 138 when I was tested is different than say a 138 tested currently in NY or CA. The only thing that is almost standard is the percentage, due to the idea that IQ is rated on a bell curve. I was in the top 1% that was required to be put into those gifted classes). I contribute much of my juvenile delinquency and poor grades to not being stimulated in my educational environment. The poor grades were not due to test scores but due to my refusal of what I saw as mindless busy work.

Because of the poor education system in this country my wife and I decided that our daughter will not step one foot in a public school. We will send her to private school or home school depending on our financial situation when she becomes of age.

Edit: let's see if I can start another ****storm.

Your mention of Holocaust deniers. Its not the denying of the holocaust. Its the 6 million number. Their argument is that there weren't even 6 million Jews in Europe at the time. They don't deny it didn't happen, they just contest the number was more around 2 million.

This is one I feel is just a starting point to open someone's mind to more antisemitic ideas. "Well if the Jews lied about that, what else have they done?" Of course all the "facts" I see on this are census records that can easily be shopped. I've never seen these records linked on an official government site. Its always a scanned image and some random jpg hosted on like imgur.

I often see the antisemitic attitudes as simply more than jealousy. The Jews have always been prosecuted against, and because of this, they are socially taught to have a desirable skill. If you have Mom and Pop Goldberg's general store the government can come in and take that away from you. If you have a desirable skill (doctor, lawyer, jeweler, etc) no matter what the government does, they can not take that skill away from you. Since you see a higher percentage of Jews in these fields than in others, it lead to what the others thought was some sort of conspiracy.

This has just been my observation. Maybe a Jewish person can chime in and say if they were raised this way or not.

gplus.to/hartley add me, let's play some games.