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Post 0

Sunday, February 6, 2005 - 4:22amSanction this postReply
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Cheers indeed!  This has always been among my favorites, and your remarking on that passage about ideas is the reason why - and, of course, the Tracy/March version, the original, is much the better...

Post 1

Sunday, February 6, 2005 - 5:57amSanction this postReply
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This is a favorite of mine, as well. I also recommend the 1999 version starring George C. Scott and Jack Lemmon.

Post 2

Monday, February 7, 2005 - 11:58amSanction this postReply
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It's a great movie, but mostly fiction. Most of the court dialogue was not in the trial transcripts, and Bryan was not nearly as dogmatic, irrational or crazed as he comes off in the film. In real life, Scopes wasn't a biology teacher, but, I think, a PE teacher, and the town only went along with a fabricated ACLU plan to sue the state over the law. It was in large part a public-relations campaign, and no one was as hysterical in their persecution of Scopes as was portrayed in the film. He only broke the law to test it, and they all knew he would have to pay the fine. This is not to say the law was good, nor that the movie is not a great piece of art, but we shouldn't mistake the fictional account in it with what really happened.

Post 3

Monday, February 7, 2005 - 2:39pmSanction this postReply
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This is one of my favorite movies and I've seen the play on stage! For follow-up, read H.L. Menchen's articles on the actual Scopes Trial and his pieces on evangelists. The reporter in the movie was modeled on Menchen.

Before I was an atheist, as a high school student when I still belonged to a church, I would argue with my co-religionists, offering mountains of scientific evidence, trying to show them that evolution was true and that God could create man any way he wanted to, including through evolution -- after all, he was God! It was through those arguments that I came face to face with people who actually didn't care what was true and what was not -- indeed, they seemed to know they were evading the truth as they were rejecting facts that I had placed right under their noses. That's why I still take the occassional wack at creationists when they rear their heads. See:
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/text/ehudgins_rff-grand-canyon-silliness.asp?mc
and
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/text/ehudgins_rff-assault-science.asp?mc


Post 4

Monday, February 7, 2005 - 3:19pmSanction this postReply
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Ed,

The habit of keeping bad company is not exactly a virtue.

Post 5

Monday, February 7, 2005 - 5:40pmSanction this postReply
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Adam, what in Ed's comment -- in which he spoke only of taking whacks at creationists whenever they raise their heads -- could prompt you to make a crack alleging his "keeping bad company"? Where is there evidence of THAT in the comment?

Or is your gratuitous remark just the continuation of some other agenda on your part?


Post 6

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 9:15amSanction this postReply
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Robert,

Ed's posting of essays at The Objectivist Center is "keeping bad company".  Apparently there's some sort of Butter Battle going on between a certain SOLO elite and The Objectivist Center.

I guess there's no such thing anywhere as a group of people who don't thrive on these sorts of Hatfield & McCoy feuds.

Yee haw.  *bang*

(Edited by Danny Silvera on 2/08, 11:30am)


Post 7

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 9:40amSanction this postReply
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Thanks, Danny, for clearing up for me the importance of these theological subtleties. For a moment, there, I was beginning to think the whole thing was stupid.

Post 8

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 11:28amSanction this postReply
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Robert,

(Shhhh...)  Don't say "stupid".  That's such an ugly word.  Try "infra-logical".  Or perhaps "hypo-maturational".

You get the idea. 

*LMAO*



Post 9

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 2:07pmSanction this postReply
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Robert and Danny,

To clarify further, Adam has a problem with TOC inviting two Republican Congressmen who have a socially conservative voting record to one of their functions.


Post 10

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 3:12pmSanction this postReply
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Byron,

"socially conservative" doesn't tell me much... I would need to know a bit more than that, to judge even remotely fairly.


Post 11

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 5:42pmSanction this postReply
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Danny,

You're right.  I'll be more specific then.  They voted for "the bill banning Lesbian couples from adopting children in the District of Columbia", to quote Adam, among other things.  For more information, you may peruse Adam Reed's article.


Post 12

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 7:18pmSanction this postReply
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Byron, let me see if I understand... The topic here is titled "Inherit the Wind." Ed Hudgins' comments, related to the film's theme, told us how he challenges creationists. According to your explanation, Adam's response was meant to take a sarcastic shot at Ed for inviting two congressmen -- both Rand fans -- to a TOC function because, in Adam's view, they had voted wrong on a gay rights issue.

I understand now! We are to have a new argumentative policy at SOLO: Anytime someone writes on one particular topic, respondents may switch the subject entirely at whim, and criticize the writer for anything else he has ever done or said on other occasions and issues.

Before that becomes a precedent, let's all get back to "Inherit the Wind," shall we?

It's a great film, one that I listed in my own list of "Top Ten Films for Objectivists" (http://www.objectivistcenter.org/navigator/articles/nav+rbidinotto_ten-best-films.asp). I couldn't recommend it more highly -- despite a few flaws I mention in the article. 


Post 13

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 7:40pmSanction this postReply
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Robert,

Thread hijacking is not new in SOLO.  I'm guilty of hijacking threads myself, and I'm partially guilty of it here by responding to it.  What would be new would be sticking to the topic.

So, to make this post not as hypocritical as it already is, I want to add that "Inherit the Wind" was the first step in my long road away from Christianity to atheism (albeit I have only seen the Jack Lemmon and George Scott version).  The only reason is was not my last step was the ending, where it implied "Origin of the Species" and the Bible were somehow morally equivalent.  It was only later, after I embraced Objectivism, that I realized that it was a flaw.  "Contact", book the movie and the book, has that flaw too.  Nonetheless, they are my two favorite movies that has the conflict between reason and faith as a central theme.


Post 14

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 7:46pmSanction this postReply
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I agree entirely, Bryan, on both "Inherit the Wind" and "Contact" -- and said so in my review. Both had a failure of nerve when it came to challenging mysticism to the end. Still, I enjoy both for the issues they raised.

Post 15

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - 9:30pmSanction this postReply
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Byron,

With regard to lesbian couples raising children, while I do not necessarily buy into the notion of population control, I DO very much buy into what I call the "humanization rate":  (the rate at which children are born) divided by (the rate at which they are being taught logic and objective reasoning). 

Ideally, the quotient for this number should be one or lower.  When it's one or higher, what you have is a growing population of malignant savages out there wreaking sheer havok, and grunting out wet, screaming babies as if they were Pez.  And then these babies do the same thing, and you get the idea.

And I think that the sociological record clearly shows that a society of fully humanized people does not become the psychopathic kudzu that we so often see in the world today. 

I suppose then, in a sense, that I DO support population control, but only through what is typically a nontraditional means:  humanization. 

And so, if lesbian couples want to raise children instead of having children of their own, I think that two birds are killed with one stone, here... and therefore, I support it from a rationally strategic standpoint alone.  What other standpoint is there, really? 

(Edited by Danny Silvera on 2/08, 9:41pm)


Post 16

Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - 12:54amSanction this postReply
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Robert,

Ed Hudgins related in this thread an experience from which any reasonable person would have drawn the conclusion, that people who derive their ideas and justify their actions from faith are not worthy company for a man of reason. Before he related this experience here, I thought that he simply did not understand how ineffective, and even counterproductive to our shared goals, his continuing, habitual association with such people had become. But still he persists, in what he already experienced then as impotent and senseless. As I wrote, that is not a virtue.

Post 17

Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - 1:13amSanction this postReply
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Let me just chime in here.  I don't mind threads going on tangents, but I do dislike these vendettas where people follow others around bringing up topics that have been discussed elsewhere and are not pertinent to the new thread.  It makes for a very hostile environment, and ruins new conversations.  Please refrain from doing this in the future. 

Post 18

Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - 1:47amSanction this postReply
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Joe:

OK - I understand, will comply, and consider compliance worth the enormous benefit of SOLO.
(Edited by Adam Reed on 2/09, 1:49am)


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