Why? The Sec of Education is not responsible for local public schools (local Board of Educations are) The US Education department is mostly about administering Federal Student Loans for higher education as well as adult GED. What am I missing?
We both know that. But the people who would be stirred up to protest don’t know that. A lot of politics amounts to appeals to irrationality.
What is irrational is that the current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos DIDN’T know that the US Department of Education has little or no jurisdiction over local public and private schools as well as little or no funding to those schools. Even in the area of curriculum, it is the individual State Boards of Education which determine the curriculum for the public schools in that State. Funding for local public schools is 90% local in NJ with the remaining 10% from the State of NJ. Federal funding is minimal.
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Mike Gene proved Coyne opposed Collins’ appointment and called for him to step down, contrary to Coyne’s present claims. But it’s your blog, Swamidass. Do whatever you want.
Meanwhile, I really don’t want to keep getting notifications in my email from your blog. So do whatever it takes to make sure I don’t.
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Yes, and I agreed with him:
Maybe - but that suspicion is unevidenced in any way. What kind of evidence would “I don’t suppose a Gnu would have got the job” have been?
And if he was really calling for even-handedness, it would have been appropriate for him to have protested against Dawkins’ appointment to a scientific advocacy chair in a public UK university.
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It doesn’t have to be correct for it to be correctly described as his understanding at the time.
But it does need to be evidenced to fit the much-vaunted Gnu claim that only scientifically evidenced facts are admissable.
As for oppressed minorities - well, modern morality is all about completing to be the most oppressed. But there used to be a saying that it’s the cause that makes the martyr.
Slight difference: Only one of those positions is even remotely true. So there is a need for better understanding on only one side.
Unless by “more understanding” you mean atheists need to better understand how outright paranoid and out of touch with reality many Christians are.
This is your personal opinion and that’s fine. I have never seen you able to argue this case coherently.
The dismissiveness of each side is particularly striking. @jongarvey, I wonder if the cultural gap between the United States and England is important here too. Rather than just saying each side is wrong, understanding is the only way forward.