A fine choice for the House Committee for Science, Space, and Technology

[Kralizec]

Everyone has a certain degree of religiosity, some more or much more than others. This will be present regardless of whether they are raised in a religion. Everyone is prone to dogmatism to a certain degree. Everyone has some amount of desire for a coherent world view, and will include false beliefs in it if they have to. There are saints who humbly avoided dogmatism and arrogance, and scientists who stay objective and are truly strict about limiting their conclusions. There are religious people who go by the book and atheists who go by popular science texts. Am I drawing equivalencies? No, I'm saying those atheists are worse.

Ridiculous.

(in reference to Bentham)
Is this science? Certainly not. Is it what you get when people try to use the intellectual tools of science to answer questions of morality? Very frequently. This shows up in congressmen too:

If you're going to quote Bentham from wikipedia, why did you leave out the rest?

Bentham did not object to medical experiments on animals, if the experiments had in mind a particular goal of benefit to humanity and had a reasonable chance of achieving that goal. He wrote that otherwise he had a "decided and insuperable objection" to causing pain to animals, in part because of the harmful effects such practices might have on human beings. In a letter to the editor of the Morning Chronicle in March 1825, he wrote:

I never have seen, nor ever can see, any objection to the putting of dogs and other inferior animals to pain, in the way of medical experiment, when that experiment has a determinate object, beneficial to mankind, accompanied with a fair prospect of the accomplishment of it. But I have a decided and insuperable objection to the putting of them to pain without any such view. To my apprehension, every act by which, without prospect of preponderant good, pain is knowingly and willingly produced in any being whatsoever, is an act of cruelty; and, like other bad habits, the more the correspondent habit is indulged in, the stronger it grows, and the more frequently productive of its bad fruit. I am unable to comprehend how it should be, that to him to whom it is a matter of amusement to see a dog or a horse suffer, it should not be matter of like amusement to see a man suffer; seeing, as I do, how much more morality as well as intelligence, an adult quadruped of those and many other species has in him, than any biped has for some months after he has been brought into existence; nor does it appear to me how it should be, that a person to whom the production of pain, either in the one or in the other instance, is a source of amusement, would scruple to give himself that amusement when he could do so under an assurance of impunity.

This kind of belief about animals is sick, disgusting, and much much more dangerous than believing in creationism. Considering animals the equal to people would be bad enough but these people often like animals more than they do people. Scientists (religious and atheist) who want to do animal testing to help create medicines are often stymied by animal rights protesters who have a sway in universities that religious people could only dream of. It's as bad as the prevention of stem cell research by people who have religious beliefs about the soul.

See above.

As for the actual loons who oppose experimentation on animals and feel they should be given equal rights, I'll quote you. Is this science? Certainly not. Then why bring it up?

What we lack is a similar understanding about science. Currently the mainstream of thought in universities and in the media is dangerously deluded regarding science. To many people "studies show..." puts them in the same accepting mindset that "the bible says..." does for certain religious people. When it comes to the hard sciences, people overestimate their worth and benefit and have dreams of progress to a utopia. And when it comes to the humanities, belief in the primacy of logic and rationalism leads to utilitarianism and other cesspools, while belief in the cumulative progress leads to the belief that we can read the latest research or listen to the "top thinkers" of the time and learn what we need to know (in the way that we can about physics or chemistry), when in fact we have to work very hard, as individuals, to reach the level of the ancients. Look at modern philosophy, for example, and you can easily find statements like "It is no more wrong to slap a baby than it is to slap a horse, assuming you slap the horse hard enough".

That people might not understand, not appreciate or misuse the knowledge of science doesn't detract from the validity of science itself. You can name as many people as you like who don't understand evolution yet refer to it discussions, or people who use evolution to justify social darwinism etc., but you still won't have an argument not to teach the theory of evolution in schools, much less against the theory itself.

There were also bad philosophers in ancient times, the sophists come to mind. The ancient philosophers that are now famours were a tiny minority amongst their peers.

Utilitarianism is not a cesspool just because you disagree with it.

I don't respect people treating belief in creationism as an intellectual scarlet letter, when their motivations for doing so are rooted in an ideology that is worse than christianity. Believe me, I would be happy if fundamentalist religion decreased in this country--but only if hardcore libertarianism and various left wing ideologies died out at the same time.

Are you a creationist?

If no, then why do you go to such lengths to defend it?

But essentially, you can't be very far to the left and not think the above is nonsense

Probably not.

However you don't have to be very far to the left, or left of the center at all, in order to think that it's nonsense.