"Curtis recently sat down with me to [talk about] many of the ideas in his book."

Lol. You TRULY can't grasp when your voice is unwanted and no one cares what you think! Racism is all about deception and distraction, so don't even try it. Mmmkay? Have a good one. = )

I just love that even though the world is still dealing the systematic deceit, fraud, and identity theft of other people's cultures caused by the white Romanticism of 200 years ago, some of you still have the audacity to angle for an open revival of it as though it's benign and didn't promote socially destructive antihuman behavior!

You mean, before 200 years ago, there was no socially destructive antihuman behavior, or a lot less of it?

Jesus was a Galilean. He is referred to as such in the Gospel.

"What do you think science is? There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?”

Believing that science is the best method we've found to learn about the world in which we live does not mean that one is not free to ponder deeper philosophical questions. It just means we have more data to reflect on when we DO ponder those questions.

Yes, italics would have helped! :) Thanks for the tip!
testing123
:)

Thank you, Dave. And I appreciate getting that extension of the Lumen Gentium. I guess I am a Pelagian heretic, because I have sincerely wrestled with these issues and I do not know there is a God at all, nor therefore can I believe in the fall nor redemption nor salvation nor, thus, the necessity of salvation through any church. Thus I follow my conscience and work to improve my moral wisdom and behavior and thus am open to deeper and greater truth -- even though I am convinced it would not be supernatural.

I think it important that each person strive to find their best way to get better at being good. But I'm more convinced by the Nietzschean ideas of 'good', including the flourishing of each person in all of their powers.

(btw, If you should ever want to use italics in your comments, you just add <i> before the text and </i> after the text. And I used html codes for the left and right angle brackets here so that these would 'appear' here instead of 'act'.)

People in general can be irrational, it would be amazing if they weren't. On any given question it is entirely plausible that I can analyze it correctly while another person makes a mistake that they can't see. This is particularly true for things in which people have a large emotional investment or a very fixed habit of how to approach a question. They don't choose to be wrong any more than I choose to think I am right.

A jury might simply fail to put the pieces of evidence together correctly, they might be (almost certainly are) pretty bad at estimating how likely or unlikely certain occurrences are, they might be unconsciously biased by the looks or background of the accused, or the lawyers, they might just have some 'gut feeling' that the defendant is innocent, they might be practicing jury nullification where they are reacting against the law instead of evaluating the case by itself, they might think they have to pick a verdict (legally they do) when the reality is that they just don't have evidence either way to decide the facts of the case.