meetsy says:

Jeff s….
the creation part of the bible smacks of Zorasterism. It’s a pagan style story with mud, and sky…and all that…. only it eliminates the pagan “she”, as part of the tale. It’s rather one-sided, don’t you think. It honors the creative being, while NOT honoring the creative earth. There’s no balance. Women are secondary players…even though THEY GIVE BIRTH. In pagan myth…it’s always the earth (she) who connects with the sky (he) and creates life born of her mud and his nuturing. There are MUCH BETTER creation myths than the bible’s version. In fact, to grade it on creativity alone..it would barely get a passing D-. It’s stilted and dull. But that’s the problem with the bible. It’s a book written by a few dozen people (or more), edited by untold hundreds, translated by unknown legions of translators — so, can’t be relied upon as “the word of god” only the words of man.
We all know that men twist, change, distort, have their own agendas, and slant to get a better position. How can you take the words literally?
It’s actions that matter, and the actions of people acting “christian” “muslim” “buddist” or “other” need to be looked at. But, beliefs are beliefs….and these are private matters, not something to be flaunted about or shoved down thy neighbors gullet.
I think that the Christians are just pushing more words around. This attack on science is, in part, to undermine our educational system. In fact, if we look at ACTIONS, I don’t see (other than a few odd-ball sects) Christians NOT becoming Doctors, not using the health benefits afforded by science, and, not using the things which SCIENCE has provided. I don’t see Christians getting all huffy about vaccinations, or cancer research, or even using plastic products and/or petrol products. In fact, I don’t see Christians avoiding eating shellfish, and stoning people who have done forbidden things — things which ARE in the bible. And, what about the Deuteronomy. That’s in there, or was that just some mistake?
In fact, seems to ME that the bible doesn’t talk about a lot of things, but it does talk about others that are IGNORED. Cite me some bible passages that say high-rise buildings are gods way, or that fertility technology is. Tell me how it’s fine for a Christian to spout on about how “god this” and “god that” when the bible constantly harps about how it’s wrong. See, Christians USE the bible to defend anything they want to defend, and to justify any horrid acts.
This assault is a pissing contest to see who Christians can push around….starting with the school systems. Bush is using Christianity just as the big tele-evangelicals do…to get his way, to promote it above common sense, and all other ways, and to be on the “right side”, sort of like the right side of the Crusades.
I’m just as sick of Christians pushing around their religion, as I am the gays pushing around their sexual preferences (and there is LITERALLY NO DIFFERENCE in the messages)….as a definition of “who they are”. Honestly, I do not care.
You are all people, first. Not better, not worse than any other person walking the earth. The religion doesn’t make anyone special. In fact, if Christ were alive today, he’d probably cry at the things done “in is name”.
Try and remember that. Let the educational system TEACH what is needed for us to compete in todays world market. Leave religion to be taught at home.

Anthony says:

Holy cow.

First of all I think everyone in these comments need to take a step back. Take a deep breath, and shut up until you don’t feel the need to fight.

First of all I love how you all try to blame Bush. This is nothing new (as you *should* all know from HS).

http://www.answers.com/topic/scopes-trial

So really in the end we are going back to something that has gone on for a very long time – But this time around instead of saying one of the two (both sides having a large amount of support) is right Bush wants to provide a choice.

I’m still asking what is wrong with choice? Oh wait… I know this one! Because it’s Bush’s idea! (No that wasn’t directed at you John, but rather Democrat’s in general)

JG says:

So, a bunch of folks arguing over religion again. Such a can of worms it is for sure, eh? But I’ve found it’s a complete waste of time to try to debate anything with those who really seem to have made up their minds as to how the universe works whether they’re Hobo Jesuit philosophers or Physisist Islamic Rastas. They’ll simply come up with reasons to justify it, that’s all. Pretzel logic? Damn the torpedoes! There’s even been recent speculation that there might be a “religious gene” in some people. Interesting idea, but who knows, given the complexity of actually understanding human behavior.

When I was a kid, I was taken to church, religious meetings, bible classes in school and whatnot, and I had always thought it was all some kind of strange mass fantasy, and a boring one, too (I still do). But some of us seem to have a kind of inate proclivity for jumping on board the faith bandwagon, and some do it in a drastic way, no matter how out-to-lunch their ideas might look to others. Although I agree that society needs moral codes to raise its children to be good and productive people, the kind of ideas that some of these folks trumpet makes one feel that the silly season has started again, hopefully not headed for just another rerun of the dark ages.

But Lo! I have a little ‘theory’ here that might explain a little bit why people such as the ‘Intelligent Design’ crowd try to trash obvious realities about paleontology and whatnot, and keep saying that it was all created by some Really Smart Character Up There just a few thousand years ago:

Human beings can’t get their minds around deep geologic time!

Now, think about it, the general maximum length of a human lifetime is considered to be 100 years or so. One can look back in one’s later years and “feel” the length of time it took to get there. Try 1,000 years then. Oh, you can kind of cob that together from dates of history lessons, etc. but one has to start multiplying one’s own lifetime to really grok it. Now try comprehending 10,000 years… not so easy. A million years is 10,000 human lifetimes. You can’t do it! 100,000,000 years? It’s just a number. Forget it.

Much, much easier just to accept from a dogma or whatever that it all happened in an interval closer to our own frame of reference.

I was once at at a natural history musem with a friend, and we were looking at an exquisite complete fossil skeleton of a pterosaur, and my friend said, “I don’t believe that just happened all by itself.” I replied, “I think given all that time, and the conditions here on Earth, just about anything could have happened.” I realized, though, that he wasn’t buying it, no matter how anyone might try to explain it to him. You can show them the ‘calendar’ of the Earth’s history compressed into a year, and point out that all of human history is just the last few seconds before midnight on Dec. 31… It doesn’t matter… They’ll just come out and say something like, “That was thought up by infidels who read the wrong scripture. My _____ told me so”. (fill in the blank with priest, rabbi, imam etc. etc.)

“If God didn’t exist, mankind would have had to invent Him” – Voltaire

“A camel is a horse designed by a committee”. – overheard on the radio

Pat says:

The problem with Behe’s probability theory is that he invented his own parameters. There is no agreed upon scientific basis for his work. His theory cannot be proved; therefore it is not a Scientific Theory. He has NO expertise or credibility in astronomy or the cosmos, physics, biology, physiology and anatomy, or genetics. He is a mathematician who can add one + one and get 1 ½. Even though he stated that the probability of evolution occurring is too astronomical to have occurred without divine intervention, he didn’t calculate the probability that divine intervention is also fictitious.

The difference between creationists and evolutionists is that one finds truth in their faith while the other finds faith in the truth.