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If the concept of Hypocrisy didn’t already exist, Xhristianity would have invented it.
Amen, moss!
This concept has been put forth before. I think it’s one of many great arguments against teaching ID as if it were a theory in school. Unfortunately, I doubt it convinces many fanatics. And, yes, absolutely everyone that wants any flavor of creationism taught in school is a fanatic, by definition.
Oops, sorry, taught in public school. I don’t care what gets taught in parochial schools. I’m OK with giving people that as a choice for avoiding a science education. I’m not, however, OK with giving them money to do it, i.e. school vouchers. I pay for schools that my non-existent kids don’t use. They can do the same.
Yes, you see the Freedom of Religion that the wingnuts desire is not simply to be left alone to moan and groan as they wish in their churches and homes as they wish===no!!!!!!!!
they are OPPRESSED if they can’t force YOU to also moan and groan in public, at work, in school, and in government meetings.
You do see how fair and balanced that is right?
>>they are OPPRESSED if they can’t force YOU to also moan and
>>groan in public, at work, in school, and in government meetings.
However you got that conclusion from this cartoon is beyond me, bobbo.
While I disagree strongly with the notion that ID (née Creationism) should be taught in public schools (and particularly as part of the science curriculum), I’m coming up with a total blank in why you think evolution should be “taught” in church. And even more obscure is your seemingly senseless rant about “groan[ing] in public, at work, in school, and in government meetings”.
Maybe you should take a little time off for R&R. I think all the stress here may have impaired your ability to think clearly.
#6 – MM,
The idea, as a humorous counter, that evolution should be taught in church is a deliberate attempt to draw the parallel between evolution in church and ID in public school. The parallel should be obvious. However, in case it isn’t obvious to you, the situations are analogous in that IF AND ONLY IF creationism is to be taught in school and evolution labeled “only a theory”, then evolution should be taught in church with the bible labeled “only a theory”.
Personally, I have strong reservations about calling the bible a theory.
(rant)
Scientific theories are often as close to fact as anything the human mind is capable of comprehending. The bible is as far from fact as it is possible to be. It is self-contradictory both in facts and in its assertion of teaching good morals. It is instead a book not suitable for children and, possibly not for adults as well. The violence it causes directly and has caused throughout its entire history make it a message of hate, divisiveness, and xenophobia equaled only by other similar writings of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion (deliberately singular).
(/rant)
can we cut the crap, please? the only people pushing for intelligent design to be taught in schools are christian creationists
can the creationists at least have the balls to admit they want religion taught in schools? please? i’m so sick of this politically correct “intelligent design” crap — what you mean to say is that the book of genesis is a matter of historical record — so PLEASE just say so and spare us all the cowardly PC code words.
#8 – grog,
I agree with your take on ID (creationism). Unfortunately however, you are no longer correct about it being a purely Christian thing. How about if we call it what it really is a Zoroastrian thing.
http://tinyurl.com/2fgk5s
#8 You are missing the point — the goal of proponents of “intelligent design” is to establish a single judicial or school board ruling allowing the teaching of a single religious concept in a publicly funded school system, by representing it as a scientific concept.
Then their lawyers and sympathetic judges placed by our openly religious president can then sally forth and carry the predictable ACLU legal challenge through the court system up to the Supreme Court with its conservative majority with the hope of establishing a long-lasting precedent which will give them the leverage they need to inject Christian indoctrination on a wide scale into the school system.
There some who actually come out and publicly acknowledge this strategy, but most will not for fear of jeopardizing it — its success completely hinges on not mentioning the biblical story on which “intelligent design” is based.
I went to Catholic school for 9 years and while the creation as stated by the bible was taught in religion classes it was kept out of the science classes where evolution was taught. You can’t condemn an entire type of school based on some of the backwards ones.
IMHO: Science is the study of how God does it. If you go back through the history of science you will see that that what they believed to be true at the time we now know as false, such as the world is flat and the sun and the stars revolve around the earth. The Bible is a snap shot of the wisdom of their time. It is easy to see where the science of their day was wrong, but the message still is true. You may not believe that God personally handed Moses stone tablets with the 10 Commandments cut into them, but thousands of years later is is still true that your life will be better if you follow those ancient commandments. Putting it in computer terms I am remeinded of some Mac users today. There are cult members that have a belief based strictly on faith that only a Mac is capable of doing what they want to do. Evidence of other successful operating systems is not even to be considered. They live happy lives based on this dogma. What difference does it make to me. Let them enjoy their way, I say. I know I will never be able to convince a Mac cult member that other computers do the exact same tasks. I will never be able to get the members of some religious cults to accept the facts of life.
11,
That’s one thing the Catholics get. You have to separate education from indoctrination. At the Jesuit high school I attended not only did we study evolution but the religious studies class covered the religions of the world and their various messages. The Catholics truly separate church and state because they don’t want to dilute their power.
I see a strong problem…
the difference between…
THIS world,
OUR world,
Science is looking into our past, to find truths of this Planet.
Religion is only looking back as far, as they THINK, we began our current condition. And, they consider anything before that, Null. It might as well be the Big bang and alot of HOT air.
creationists want to believe that they are created in god’s image and therefore are better than the rest of god’s creatures and they believe that by strictly interpreting the bible they will have the same knowledge as god which is the very arrogance that caused eve to eat the apple in the first place.
oh the irony
#12 – Bob Erickson,
thousands of years later is is still true that your life will be better if you follow those ancient commandments
How so? By killing people for working on the sabbath? You may have only watched the headline news version of the commandments. You should read the full story about what happens when a rule is broken.
As for your other statement:
Science is the study of how God does it.
If god is confined to the laws of physics, then what use is s/he? If god can break the laws of physics, then your statement makes no sense. Certainly, if god has any constraints at all in what s/he can do, then s/he is not all powerful.
>>The Catholics truly separate church and state because they
>>don’t want to dilute their power.
Weeeeelllll, maybe in the classroom they do. I never went to Catholic school, so I can’t say (and a lot of the kids I grew up with who did are either dead or in prison, so I can’t ask them).
And while they’re not as wild-eyed and laughable as the right-wing Protestant evangelical kooks, do you imagine that the Catholic church doesn’t lobby for the criminalization of abortion, restricting (by legal means) access to birth control, and the legislation of many other of their religious beliefs?
>>Scientific theories are often as close to fact as anything the
>>human mind is capable of comprehending.
Gee, that was a nice rant, Scottie! However, did you ever take the time to think that maybe there are tings that the human mind is NOT capable of comprehending (ie, that you are not the highest order of intelligence in the universe)?
Open that closed mind, dude!
While I’m every bit as disgusted by holy-rolling hypocrites who seek to legislate their moralilty on me (while taking it up the Hershey Highway from a drug-addicted male prostitute, pre-“cure”), the idea that there may be things “out there” that we don’t understand yet is not as offensive to me as it appears to be to you.
Therefore, I have my own beliefs on the matter. If you don’t share them, that’s just dandy. But please don’t berate and belittle me just because I don’t have the same beliefs that you do.
we just fear one religion becoming state-sanctioned —
but since you brought it up — before we teased out what secrets we have about the atom, we used to not be able to understand why the sun was hot or what made it shine, so what’s your point? are you advocating that we stop using the minds god gave us and quit marveling at the wondrous universe he created for us?
as pertains to the bible — is it not simply good enough to know that god loves us and wants us to to share that love by being good people toward one another?
>>is it not simply good enough to know that god loves us
>>and wants us to to share that love by being good people
>>toward one another?
Sounds like a plan to me, grog. Take what you need, and leave the rest.
#19, 20,
The only issue you need to worry about with such an attitude is the fact that so much of the bible truly is violent. There will always be a small but very significant contingent or morans that read it literally. Since a literal reading of any of the texts of the Zoroastrian-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion is likely to result in some form of violence, we must always be vigilant against such use. Personally, I would feel much safer if we all just (VOLUNTARILY, OF COURSE) walked away from the whole mess and entered an age of reason. Instead, all evidence points to our coming entry into a new dark age.
>>Since a literal reading of any of the texts of the
>>Zoroastrian-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion is likely to
>>result in some form of violence, we must always be vigilant
>>against such use.
Scottie, eternal vigilance will ALWAYS be the price of liberty. We must be vigilant against violence perpertrated by Atheists also, lest we end up with another Pol Pot, Mao, or Stalin.
#22 – MM,
Fully agreed, of course. Humans are a violent species. The only difference I’m pointing out is that the religious texts were deliberately written to incite violence, divisiveness, xenophobia, and a host of other problems. There are no such texts for atheism. There are such texts for communism, another dangerous ideology. The difference with atheism is that it is a non-belief. People kill for a variety of reasons. Absence of belief is a complete absence of motive. Those atheists you mention had other motives, promotion of communism, communism, and a combination of communism and extreme paranoia, respectively.
I’m with you on all points, Scottie, except for
>>The difference with atheism is that it is a non-belief.
As you may be aware, I’ve pointed out many times that Atheism is not “non-belief”, it is a deeply-held BELIEF that God does not exist. Not an absence of belief that He does; rather an affirmatory statement that Atheists BELIEVE (and are willing to persecute those who disagree, in pursuit of forcing their BELIEF on others) that God does not exist.
There’s a world of difference.
1) The bible isn’t “theory,” its MYTHOLOGY! Plain and simple. There is no hard and fast scientific proof to ANYTHING in the old testament. There may be SOME evidence for some of the things that happened in the new testament, but only some.
2) Scientific theory relies on facts. Proven things that one can show someone concretely with math and visuals. It extrapolates on these facts, and then comes up with a theory, which is then posed to peers in the field, to review.
Gravity is still a theory, because we really don’t know how it works. I heard a while back that some christianists were saying that the theory of gravity is wrong. The earth just sucks.
Do I want to see kids taught only one religion’s mythology? Nope. I think that there should be mention of *ALL* religions’ mythologies regarding creation in a MYTHOLOGY class, and the concrete theories that scientists have reviewed amongst their peers should be taught in a SCIENCE class, with no mention of the christianist mythology, or any other mythology.
Mythology is for one thing, and science is for another. Don’t inflict your religion on me, and I won’t inflict mine on you.
#24
This recurring dream of yours, as it appears to me, must have been won through personal discovery, right? You are an atheist, correct? Otherwise, of course, no credence is lent to your idea that atheism is a “deeply-held BELIEF”
I could respect your personal experience of having a belief structure bases on intense nonbelief. However, if you have had no personal experience with the subject at hand, you need to work a lot harder with your explanations.
It is not enough to reference this great body of work which you have, apparently, written on this blog. I don’t know with what you are backing up your arguements.
On the other hand, if you could expect your opinions to be generally accepted, you needn’t go through the trouble of supporting your arguments. However, my exposure to this blog tells me there is a population of about 30%atheists, 20%believers, and the rest stay out of the mess. You need to back up your fervent polemics with real-world data.
For instance, we need to know about these atheists who persecute others for the reason of belief. We live in the real world so we are aware that politics often leads to genocide. When did atheism ever lead to murder?
Before I read any of the modern atheist apologies, Hitchens, Harris, Martin, Dawkins, I, too, thought about the relationship between fascism, communism, and atheism. I came to a conclusion that doesn’t conflate unrelated facts.
I will just say that smart men know the power of reaction. It is beneficial to power to curry favory with the people. Sometimes, the people don’t favor the church. enough said.
#24 – MM,
Yes, there is a world of difference. You fail to recognize it again and again,
Atheism is simply not as you say. It is a strong belief that in order to give credence to a hypothesis there must be evidence.
You don’t get to tell others what they believe; you only get to tell others what you believe. So please, one more time, stop deliberately trying to piss people off by creating your own straw person atheist and shooting him/her down.
>>It is a strong belief that in order to give credence to a
>>hypothesis there must be evidence.
Naw, that’s empiricism. When you hold a firm belief about God (whatever that belief, and in the absence of any objective evidence), that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. If I say “I don’t know if you live in Arkansas”, can you REALLY not see the difference between that and “I am absolutely certain that you don’t live in Arkansas, and I am willing to persecute anyone who says you DO live in Arkansas” (regardless of whether or not you actually live in Arkansas)?? Hmm? Or are you just deliberately trying to piss other people off?
>>You don’t get to tell others what they believe; you only get to
>>tell others what you believe.
Haw! Haw haw haw! Hardy fucking har har har! I guess you’re not a member of the Orthodox denomination of Atheism then.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told by an Atheist what a fucking moron I am for my beliefs, or how the naughty, dangerous, free-thinking, non-conformist intelligensia believes one way (and if I don’t, I’m a dimwitted sheeple), I’d be catching up to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
If you really have no more vested interest in whether or not God exists than you do in whether I live in California or Minnesota or Connecticut, then what the fuck’s it to ya? Why are your panties all in a twist? Is it really THAT painful to have it pointed out that the emperor has no clothes, or that you’re part of a dogmatic religion??
>>Fuck you very much and have a shitty day,
I love you too, Scottie. And God loves you as well.
>>And, on this blog, at least, there are others that are your equals
You might try hooking up with some of them.
-peace.
#30 – MM,
Aw … now the bully feels bad and wants to make nice … sort of. Still couldn’t leave out the godvertisement though … or actually apologize for repeatedly being deliberately offensive.
The great unicorn in the sky loves you too. Just watch the horn, it might join your sob story.