112 Comments

ID is not a theory. It's not even a reasonable hypothesis.

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As I've described it, it's religion in a bad rented tuxedo with mismatched shoes.

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Leave it to a christer to dress worse than Harpo Marx.

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Yes, but, do the socks match?

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Carpets and drapes?

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bare wood floors.

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Waxed like a bowling alley.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

No foul line, though. Wouldn't matter if there was one. Christians would just keep crossing it.

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Yeah, but they're those tacky fuzzy socks with Jesus printed all over them.

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Well. If you use the word theory the way the theists define it, then ID is a theory. As in, it was some idea someone had at some point to explain a phenomenon. No actual observation required. See, conspiracy theories. The sad thing is, these shit gibbons assume the definition is the same for scientific theories and they refuse to hear otherwise.

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The most that might be said about ID is that it is an unsupported supposition ... and that's IT.

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Personally I'd call it "bonkers" but that's just me.

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Characteristics (such as design) within objects can only be recognized if there are things that do not possess these characteristics. If people claim that the universe is designed, then they are basically saying everything is designed since the universe encompasses all of existence. If everything has design, then nothing lacks design. How can we recognize design in the first place if there are no examples of things that lack it?

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

If everything is designed, then who designed the biblical god? Any being complex enough to be capable of creating life from nothing would need to have an even more complex creator, who in turn would have to have an even more complex creator and so on and so on and so on into infinity (think barbershop mirrors).

Christians who claim that everything needs a creator will employ special pleading by drawing the line at their own god needing a creator, thus negating their own argument.

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Hypotheses don't really need to be reasonable, just explanatory and possibly testable.

Well, unless you earn your living fantasizing about String Theory ...

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String bikinis maybe.

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I think they test a LOT of laws, one way or the other?

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"Intelligent design?" Then why do people need to wear corrective lenses?

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As I've commented in the past, the proponents of "intelligent design" NEVER include people born with birth defects, people (like myself) living with multiple disabilities, or older adults coping with the (numerous) debilitating conditions that come with old age. No, the ID crowd always seems to consist of fairly young, fairly fit types. Funny how that works out, huh?

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My own body tried to kill me within a month of my birth... which itself was pre-term, so I spent several weeks in an incubator- and, after all of that, I didn't even get the right body anyway (to say nothing of later developments).

If that's meant to convince me that I was designed by an intelligence, then I must conclude that the entity responsible must have designed- and personally tested- a wide variety of mind-altering substances 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 getting around to humans.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Have you seen the lineup for the ICR and other Creation Science folk who came up with this Stupid-in-Stupier-Clothing as a Rhetorical Ploy?

Philip Johnson, by hisself, was NEVER less than 90 years old, and Behe isn't far behind as his widdle Igor.

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Not all older people suffer the ravages of age at the same rate or to the same degree. When you see an ID flack limp across a stage due to crippling arthritis, then struggle to read his presentation due to macular degeneration, then explain that he is a product of intelligent design, be sure and get back to us.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

They were not young when in the late 1970s, they started to really push Creation Science.

They were no younger when McClean vs. Arkansas gutted Creation Science in 1984.

They were hardly any younger when they merely "Find and Replace"ed Creation Science as Intelligent Design for Kitzmiller vs. Dover in 2005.

Well, unless they used a Way-Back Machine or were all living a 'time-inversion" life.

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I'm not talking just about age, I'm talking about physical condition. Pay attention.

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"... the ID crowd always seems to consist of fairly young, fairly fit types."

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Original Sin, silly!

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By this time, I'd imagine there's really nothing 'original' about it, anymore?

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There's a meme out there is in there with that Australian guy saying something like "the eye is a perfect design by the perfect designer – says the guy wearing glasses." Found it, but you still can't post it.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fthedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F02%2F18%2Fbook-review-the-not-so-intelligent-designer%2F&psig=AOvVaw0M4qJ2lSzo7m-cLCtPaPd-&ust=1676679023642000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCOibrp-im_0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE

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That's OK. Pretty sure all of us have seen that meme about Hambone.

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Pretty sure I didn't until now but I don't always click on the links.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

The link directs you to another link. When you click on that link, a book review of "The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains The Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not" by Abby Hafer appears, along with the meme of Ham making that asinine statement of his and being called on it.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

What escapes Ham is that corrective lenses correct his god's "perfect" design.

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*Put her glasses, look at her feet and smirks*

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What were the Functional Requirements God set up for his Design?

Unless it included Will Never Need Corrective Lenses, as in from book reading or even cataracts, then these issue is irrelevant.

To paraphrase Dr Tyrell, "You were made as well as I wanted to make you."

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All I know is that I started the "Heredity and Adaptation" unit with my 8th graders today and there will be NO talk of Jesus!

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

Interesting side-wise related news in the US is parents and students in FL are livid over their venal gubnor's intent to remove all AP/Advanced Placement courses from the state high school curriculum just because he was pants'ed by the news outlets over his spiteful, bigoted actions against the Black History AP course. The behind-the-scenes facts were released showing all the attempts to come to terms over a period of months before his outright attack on the Black History course. He and the GOP in general, always kick down AND there's no White Guy/Passes-for-White-Guy History Month to puff up his ego and that of his own minority voters.

Removing all the AP courses means students can't get college credit for high school courses, which puts FL higher-achievers at a disadvantage to even AL and MS students.

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FL vs. MS and AL? Truly the race to the bottom.

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You can add a module called Stupid Design where you talk about the business of denial of reality called Religion.

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Looks like the mail train from Dover PA hasn't reached West Virginia yet.

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It was derailed in Palestine.

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Train ? Why would they use a demonic invention when they have horses and coaches ? 🤔

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Coaches! Aren't we fancy. : )

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Sedan chairs are outdated.

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Yes, but the muscle hunks are so worth the ride.

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We definitely don't have the same taste in men 🙂

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Dang, this thread is rolling and now I have to log off to do grocery shopping, pick up some comics and other fancy stuff.

Be back when I can.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

I have to go and get an x-ray – $80! Back later. Turns out the x-ray was $55. It's the ultrasound that is $80. Although if I was pregnant it would be free.

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Pick up some groceries for me too. We're having a mini blizzard and I don't want to go out

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Can you bring me some somen ? Thank you.

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founding
Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Ah, the "breathtaking inanity" is back again.

If a witch doctor, complete with bones, rattles, face paint, and powdered bat guano dresses up in a white lab coat and glasses, that DOESN'T MAKE HIM A SCIENTIST.

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Witches need doctors, too. Calling Dr. Bombay, calling Dr. Bombay!

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I remember under Behe's definition of science Astrology would be included.

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A white lab coat doesn't even make a scientist a scientist, though.

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founding
Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

That's true. My parents worked in a major natural history museum that was adjacent to a major university. All their friends were scientists, so I've known many scientists since I was a little kid. I can't actually remember seeing even one in a white lab coat.

The paleontologists wore khakis with threadbare knees and long-sleeved shirts with threadbare elbows. The entomologists wore tropical shirts that they had picked up in the exotic countries they'd traveled to. The astronomers wore sweaters and looked like they needed more sleep. The astrophysicists seemed more rested, but they had chalk dust on their pants or dresses. One marine biologist had a t-shirt under a rubber apron, and smelled of formaldehyde. The one zoologist I knew had shaggy hair and a bushy beard, vaguely resembling a lion. If he sat very still in his cluttered office, you couldn't see him.

I guess I just didn't know any chemists or pathologists who would need to be squeaky clean while working.

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That reminds me. In Duane Gish's book "Dinosaurs By Design" (a revised version of his 1977 book "Dinosaurs: Those Terrible Lizards") there's an illustration of a woman helping a group of scientists dig up a dinosaur skeleton, wearing a actual dress while taking notes on her pad. Seriously, this is NOT how you dress to go on fossil expeditions in real life.

Apparently this is Gish's way to illustrate "modest women" who can't wear pants of any size or length lest they "tempt men" to sin while all the men were seemingly wearing appropriate clothing for the excavation.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

I hope she was wearing an appropriate Godly Bonnet and Sensible Shoes!

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Most the people I know who wear lab coats are technicians who are allowed to do it as a protective measure short of suits that require taping all the other openings shut, except for the one for the head.

Also, work around an official 'lab' and other than they have their own offices and dress a little more-expensive grade of casual, the official 'scientists' (of various grades) are mostly like the rest, until they have an answer you really have to listen to very attentively because usually all the words are important. Of course, that's generally true, and you need to grade who is and isn't a good source of guidance and information.

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Petition to ban evangelicals from public office in perpetuity

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A while back, I read the most convincing argument against ID. What kind of an intelligent designer would plan on running a sewer through a playground?

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Or external testicles or an immune system that can go haywire and kill you over peanut dust.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

The prostate, which I have personal experience. And apparently the eye is fucked up as well. If we had octopus eyes we would be a lot better off. Dammit, trying to do too much at once here.

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With the edit it makes sense.

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Got the x-ray this morning. Trying to book an ultrasound and one of my phones stopped working. Flapping around trying to find another one. And post here as well. Turns out they're flat out and I can't get in until the 17th. The doctor says it is urgent, I don't think so right tend not to argue with doctors. It's just – probably – a piece of rose thorn still inside my hand. But then I think about the poor bugger who got the first antibiotic, they didn't have enough, and he died of a rose thorn. 😁 Still, if I was going to die it probably would have happened weeks ago.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

The effects of his recent x-ray must be wearing off?

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

Except, the horizontal pupil is a mark of animals that scan for predators and the like, while our circular pupil is made for depth perception and hunting for prey.

Looked this up the other day in Wikipedia as part of what does a vertical slit pupil do, and the article includes all sorts of interesting info, even to the W shaped pupils. (For example: Cats are near the ground but need good depth perception for ambush hunting. A vertical pupil compensates for a given eye size and literally lower height of eye, while humans and BIG cats like lions have enough actual height of eye that the circular pupil is just as accurate).

Also learned to be careful how you search because searching pupil does not get you the same information as searching iris, even though the pupil is is merely 'Not the Iris', and thus is merely a privative of iris.

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The same kind that would use the same pipe for food and air.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Better is the Enemy of Good Enough

It keeps you from talking with your mouth full, which is UnGodly.

(That save the whole 11th Commandment for something more important, too!)

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How deep are the sandboxes 'round your way?!

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Let these folks first show hard, credible evidence that the supernatural exists. Then show that a god exists. Then show that it is their god that exists and that no other god exists. If they can't show that no other gods exist, let them show that their god is the correct one.

Good luck with all that. I won't be holding my breath waiting.

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I'm so glad that Hemant mentioned this site. It is so hard to comment on the OnlySky site with its slowness, innumerable pop-ups and failures to take you to the right comment to reply to. I've read about ID and it just doesn't make sense to me.

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This is where Hemant started before coverting to Only Sky. Turns out his conversion was ineffective. Kind of like converting to Christianity.

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OnlySky had a great premise but lousy execution. The site is slow and the commenting system obtuse. It censored some of the best commenters and then made it very hard to respond to comments in response to yours. I've had to post comments to the effect that if I didn't respond that it's not because I'm ignoring you but because I can't find your post.

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Christians foisting their theocracy upon us by hook or by crook.

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Who’s the groomer now!? Bitches!!!

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The ID "argument" is akin to "The Moon Is Made of Green Cheese: Views Differ."

The moon is NOT made of green cheese. There is no argument. An argument needs to have two sides roughly carry equal weight. Evolution is an established scientific fact. There is no controversy over it. All the relevant scientific disciplines agree with it. ID is magical thinking; worthless.

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Oh yeah? Says you! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0qagA4_eVQ

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Aardman can do no wrong.

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I've always loved this comment from Roger Ebert: "Stop-motion looks fake but feels real. CGI looks real but feels fake."

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Wemsleydale.

Cracking Good!

(BTW, didn't know that W&G was not an Aardman original, the creator was brought into the group after he had already started the work, according to documentaries. US prolly has rarely seen the originals that made Aardman famous)

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Oh what I would give to be a teacher ever so briefly so I could teach that Satan, or Odin, or a Giant Cat, or any pantheon other than You Know Who was the Designer. I would make it really elaborate and go on and on about it. And if kids told me I was wrong and and it was their god, I would have a pleasant critical thinking discussi9n about it.

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Did Jesus take an AP course to come up with Intelligent Design, or did he learn it from the Bible which never mentions it?

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The ID BS aside, the rest of the section sounds like carte blance to harass a student the teacher doesn't like. If the teacher decides to give you a low score on an assignment just because ze doesn't like you, no one can force zir to change it. If ze doesn't like you, they can recommend that you not be promoted to the next grade and again it's hard to impossible to override. It's one of those well-meant laws that have embedded assumptions that do not comport with reality. In this case, that teachers always grade fairly and have each student's best interest at heart, which may mostly be true, but it makes no provisions for when it's not.

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Apparently, these idiots have no idea about Kitzmiller v Dover or the decision in New Mexico about Creation Science (which I can't remember). [sigh] They also have no idea about what's going to happen if some local resident decides they aren't down with teaching nonsense to kids and contact the ACLU or the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

West Virginia is about to be VERY stupid ... and many times, there's a price to be paid for being stupid.

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As long the money for the trial doesn't come from their pockets they won't care.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

That's the thing I've been advocating for years now – make them pay at least a proportion of the cost when they make a stupid decision that gets them sued. And remind them that – at least in NZ – it would come out of the school budget, and the kids would suffer. Though I suspect they don't care about the letter.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

Several Kitzmiller school board members committed OBVIOUS and BLATANT PERJURY in their discovery depositions and their court testimony. It was so plainly obvious that the Judge was visibly enraged and recommend they be prosecuted for perjury after the Kitzmiller trial concluded.

That never happened, cuz Legal System.

If such a blatant criminality is not prosecuted, what are the chances in the US that any actions for "$$$$ for Stupid" will become statutory?

The routine granting of far to generous immunity to people like school board members is an indication that there is no intention of holding ELECTED official responsible, I'd say partially because the DA probably ALSO needs those votes to keep his job, if not also the judges involved.

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Yes, but far too often, in real life, (as opposed to Sunnydale, CA) the stupid aren't the ones that pay it.

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True enough. Entirely too often, it's the taxpayers who ante up for the state's mistakes. I would give a LOT to correct that oversight. I think it would make some government officials a LOT more thoughtful about pulling such faux pas in the first place!

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About to be?

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They have an idea about Kitzmiller. But they also have an idea about Alito and Thomas.

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They'll soon find out that West Virginia isn't almost heaven.

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Any state that has to INSIST it is 'Almost Heaven' as an opinion to puff up the chests of the inmates obviously isn't.

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Wonder if WV realizes that the guy who wrote "Take Me Home, Country Roads" wasn't a Christian.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

WVA was normally considered to be the place the Greater Northeast sent the stupid children of The Rich and Powerful to die. The Rockefellers did it and so did another local, powerful family from my childhood.

Sorta filled the same traditional role that The Church served for the 3rd son, after the 1st Inherited and the 2nd had a Military Commission bought for him.

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"intelligent" design isn't intelligent at all and only passes the smell test if you don't sniff too deeply.

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