Hopefully the following issues will go to the back burner during Obama’s presidency:
Prayer in public schools; teaching intelligent design or creationism as a science along with or in lieu of evolution; federal law against same sex marriage; ban against stem cell research or any other religious obstruction to advances in science.
Obama said affirmative action in the future should be about economic hardship, not race. He said his daughters will never need affirmative action.
I don't know why prayer in school is such a big issue if it's voluntary and not teacher led.
And if intelligent design IS offered along with (not in replacement of) evolution, so what?
I don;t see a need for a federal ban on same sex marriage, (everyone has a right to the relationship of their choice). Bans on stem cell research, while I don;t object to them, aren't necessarily "religious" in nature, anymore than being opposed to abortion is "religious".
prayer in school? what school? is it a private religious school run by carmelite nuns or Chassidic Rabbi's? Of COURSE there should be prayer in school, voluntary or teacher led. That's why Cathoic Seminaries, Jewish Yeshiva's, and other religious based schools exist. To teach their children about their belief system.
The parents send their kids there for a religious education, all the children pray to and probably bvwlieve in the same diety.
But prayer in public schools? Which god will be prayed to? Yahweh? Jehovah? Jesus? ELVIS???
Voluntary? When was the last time you saw a child NOT volunteer to do something when they see all the other kids doing it? No such thing as voluntary prayer when the decision is being made by an elementary school child. The fear of being ostracized by classmates will almost always weigh heavier on a childs mind than the name of the god he is supposed to be praying to.
Keep prayer out of public schools. PERIOD!
Intelligent design? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? There is nothing intelligent about teaching Intelligent Design, its just a different spin on GAWD!!!!!
Jeezuz H Fucking Keerist why won't people ever learn?
You want to talk intelligent design? Fine. Here's my take on intelligent design.
Gene splicing... stem cell research... genome mapping, DNA manipulation... cloning... we can manipulate the essence of life to whatever we choose. They can create microbic life forms in a laboratory. They are already creating chimeras by blending the dna of humans and animals.
Who is to say "God" who "Created the Earth" wasn't simply an Intergalactic Johnny Appleseed planting life on new worlds to perpetuate intelligence in the universe.
Teach THAT version alongside the Evangelical concept of Intelligent design (human sized riding saddles on the backs of dinosaurs... PUH-LEEEZE give me a fucking break!!! Blind Religious Dogmatic Zealotry at its most revolting.)
Ban same sex marriage? Fuck that. That's just more religious dogma creating yet another clusterfuck. If two people love each other and want to make a life together, why should they not enjoy the same legal priviledges afforded to other couples just because the plumbing is the same for both? There will always be a percentage of the human population who for whatever reasons will prefer the companionship of the same sex.
Always has been, always will be.
Homosexuality is a religious issue. Period. And ironically enough... the best argument I ever heard went like this:
If Homosexuality was an issue, why did God create them in the first place? Oh wait, that was the DEVIL'S doing! THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT!!!
(I know I know, I'm being "Flip")
Ban stem cell research? Ban abortion? Great. Go talk to the 14 year old who was gang raped by a gang of syphilitic Anne Coulter worshippers and got pregnant with their foul seed, and you can sing Kumbaya with her 64 cell blastocyte and we can then discuss its college plans.
ATlhunter, I have nothing but respect for you, and I want to make sure you do not interpret my diatribe rant as aimed at you personally. It isn't. But every issue you raised here, has its root cause in religious dogma, and those who would claim to be speaking "in the name of" or "interpreting the word of" "GOD". (Insert charlie445 comment here)
It is time for the Enlightened of this planet to finally say "ENOUGH!!" when it comes to the insidiousness of religious dogma.
You want to believe in God, Jesus, Elvis, Jerry Garcia or Travis Tritt? That's your prerogative as an individual, and I will defend to the death your right to practice as you believe. In the privacy of your home, within the walls and halls and gardens of the religious temple of your choice. But don't you dare tell me how to worship or try to force your beliefs onto me.
One can only "pray" (love the irony) that an Obama administration will be focused on more important issues than perpetuating religious folly and dogma.
I fail to see how kids who VOLUNTARILY pray in ANY school are harming you, or anyone else. When I was in highschool, we had a "Razorbacks for Jesus" club that took students who joined (gasp) of their own free will. Nobody made anyone take part, nobody was drug kicking anbd screaming, and nobody felt "pressured" to join.
It was a club that met once a week during school hrs (or after school...can't recall) along with all the other clubs, they had bible discussions and prayed. Nobody bitched, nobody whined, because nobody was being made to do anything. How is this forcing anyone to do a damned thing? I never belonged to this group, but I did join a few kids around the flag pole who VOLUNTARILY prayed for our nation each day. The world didn;t end over this, nobody was burned at the stake, and it was hardly an Inquisition. By the same token, if ID is taught ALONGSIDE ( I didn;t say in PLACE OF) evolution, and children voluntarily take the class, what's the big deal? While I would oppose bibles being handed out at school or bible study in place of academics, I feel like the left makes huge issues out of things that are nothing. It is NOT Unconstitutional to voluntarily pray at public schools, nor is a christmas program or other BS issues the ACLU wants to make a huge deal of.
As for same sex marriage, If you read carefully you would see I am NOT opposed to it. I am not opposed to abortion, within limits, or stem cell research. I simply said the opposition to either abortion or stem cell research doesn't not require a religious belief. (I know 2 atheists opposed to abortion)
But it seems you're taking it that way.
So be it.
And you make a further mistake, as have many others in this forum of assuming I am left wing just because of my viewpoint on Religion.
Read what I have to say about the Middle East and you will find the lefties on this board calling me a right wing nutjob.
So do us both a favor here ATL... if you want to engage in productive rational dialog with me, leave the partisan political grandstanding out of it. Please.
I did note, btw, that you completely ignored
MY version of Intelligent Design. So here's the gauntlet...
the day Oral Roberts University presents MY point of view on Intelligent Design alongside their claim the world was "Created" in 144 hours, THEN you can come back to me about teaching "ID" alongside "Evolution". Until then, as far as I am concerned there is nothing intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I just get passionate about my views.
I fail to see how creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive. (and in fact...not all scientists think they are, either)
We KNOW things evolve, it's not such a leap to believe that God (or whomever) created it all in some primitive form, and thru the ages, it evolved into what we have now.
That's the belief I have.
organize it or participate in it. If you want pray 15 times day go right ahead.
The problem is with parties telling people what they should and should not do or telling them how to do it and not do it.
Prayer has no business in school because even when its voluntary, you still have the poor little 5th grader getting the dog snot beat out of him at recess because he didn't join in the "voluntary" prayer. Children have ALWAYS sought out differences in their peers, and used those differences to ridicule, taunt, and bully other children. They don't need religious differences as an excuse to bully one another. If you want your child to be able to say a prayer before morning clases begin, there are tons of excellent parochial schools in this country for you to choose from. My tax dollars are NOT for the religious education of your child.
Regarding creationism in schools, if a school chooses to add a philosophical course to their curriculum, then creationism would be entirely appropriate as part of the subject matter. However, science classes are NOT the place for creationism. Creationism has NO basis whatosever in science. It cannot even properly be called a "soft science" as disciplines related to psychology are termed. Creationism is a philosophy, nothing more. You cannot measure, observe, hypothesize, and then test the conclusions drawn from creationism. You CAN observe, hypothesize, and most importantly TEST the conclusions drawn from the theory of evolution. That is how they radically differ from one another, and why evolution is appropriate in a science course while creationism is not.
by hypocrites who call themselves religious. I have great place for these nuts, it is called Afghanistan, the culture there has not changed in 200 years. Close second and third would be Burma and North Korea.
I wasn't aware that their were any schools left in which prayer was welcomed. That's nothing the ACLU and ADL can't take care of.
Gee I wonder what groups make up the majority of those who are in a constant state of "economic hardship"? I am tired of all of this the "meek shall inhereit the earth" bullcrap. Most of those who are always in a state of hardship are there because of their own actions or inaction. Sure the nation suffers because of the manipulations of a few but many people still pay the bills on time and support their families without assistance.
I didn't have any problem with the things you said except for schools teaching only evolution and not creationism.
I think that in order for kids to come to their own conclusions, they should have all the facts, and theories. To only teach evolutionism and not other aspects of our existence is unfair to them because it denies them of knowing all the possibilities.
For the life of me, I cannot understand how some segments of the public actually think Intelligent Design (ID) has something to do with science. It does not and has everything to do with introducing and entrenching religion into our public school systems.
ID Supporters have no one shred of testable or observable evidence to support their so called theory. In fact, the only thing they have are the gaps in the current theory of evolution, i.e. where is the fossil that shows the point at which animal became man.
The key difference between the two is that evolutions is observable whereas ID is not. ALL the ID folks have done have replace the word GOD with Designer.
The evangelicals have been fighting for years to reinsert religion, read that to be christianity, in our children's classrooms and they're trying to do it via pseudo-science.
You can’t argue with the religious folks because they believe the Bible is infallible even though it was written when people thought the world was flat. They believe the Bible is God’s word and nothing in the Bible can be questioned. You must accept the concept of God on faith. There are gaps in the theory of evolution because it’s a scientific theory. There will always be gaps in science because humans haven’t discovered everything and never will. I had surgery a couple of years ago and I am glad the surgeon wasn’t trained on medical procedures that were 2000 years old.
It's possible to believe that a higher power created the earth, and then everything evolved from there. Everything HAS to begin somewhere.
The idea that there was nothing, then a great POOF and all is here is more laughable to me than the idea of a God.
SOMETHING caused it all to be put in motion, things don't just occur out of nothing.
It has nothing to do with whether to two are mutually exclusive. It has to do with subject matter. A science class is for science, and philosophy is for philosophy.
Creationism is simply re-packaged and modernized St. Aquinas along wtih a few other well known philosophers, updated to modern day language and given a pseudo scientific patina to make it look like science. When I was a freshman in college, I took Philosophy 101. Great class. I loved it. Got an A. We had a grand old time studying Thomas Aquinas and I forget who all else. We studied the philosophical arguments for and against a creator/god/deity of your choice. That is what a philosophy class is for. No one ever dared suggest that what we were studying had any basis in science though.
The scientific method relies on hard cold facts. You begin with observation, from which you develop a hypothesis which can then be tested. How do you "test" the existence of God? Do you look to the heavens and say "GOD! If you exist make a rosebush grow at my feet", and then observe the results? You can do that, but most likely you will be forced to conclude that there is no God, which I do not believe to be the case. (God really doesn't like to be tested that way, so I doubt if He will be inclined to spout a rosebush merely for your edification)
The theory of evolution however, was developed using the very guidelines I just described. Beginning with Darwin, changes within a species were noted. From those observation, hypothesese were formed which eventually lead to the theory of evolution. As for testing the hypothesis, look at our own species. Fifty years ago the average height for a man was about 5'4". Today it is about 5'10", and soon 6' will be considered an average height for a man. This is evidence of microevolution, evolution wihtin a species, which can easily be observed in every species on earth. Macro evolution, the wholesale emergence of new species is simply micro evolution carried out over hundreds, thousands, even millions of years. Let one species make a few tiny adjustments over time, and eventually the species will no longer bear any resemeblence to its ancestors. That is evolution in a nutshell. The THEORY of Evolution, seeks to explain how current species evolved from our ancestors, and that is a story we will probably never have all the details of. Hence, evolution will likely always remain a theory, not a law.
The point though, is that evolution is based in science. Creationism is simply not a science. It has no relationship to the scientific method whatsoever. For that reason, it plain and simply has no place being taught in a science class. Leave questions about man's origins to the philosophers.
I'll offer one small but important correction, though.
Evolution is a fact. It has been observed and tested hundreds of thousands of times since Darwin posited his theory. It's factual just as gravity or electromagnetism is factual.
What the theory of evolution is concerned with is explaining the facts that have been observed and tested. So far, it's one of the most widely tested theories underpinning modern biology and has not been falsified.
People who claim that evolution is 'just a theory' don't know what they are talking about.
-- Modified on 11/13/2008 3:09:39 PM
intelligent to manipulate dimwits!
It takes more faith to say something is NOT there, than think it may be there.
The God of the Bible is a fallacy.
Higher Power? Yeah... Klaatu Barada Nicto
Intelligent Design? Go play SPORE(tm)
There is no proof of god. Faith is an assumption of probability.
There is proof everywhere.
YOu think all that is here on earth just appeared in one poof? If so, what caused the poof? What caused the actions and such that caused the poof to poof?
It ALL began somewhere and NOTHING appears from NOTHING.
EVERYTHING has a creator.
EVERYTHING.
It takes alot more faith to say absolutely that something DOES NOT exist than to say it does.
It's childish to claim because "I can;t see it, it's not there".
There is scientific proof for most things. When there is no proof, humans look for proof. As far as I know humans have not proven that god exists. I don't know about poofs or creation. I employ scientific methods to solve problems. In my opinion questions about god are political issues that have nothing to do with where the universe or anything in it came from. So, god exists in a political sense and can only be dealt with intelligently in a political context.
And oh so grown up to have an imaginary friend.
Big Bang and chemical reaction. Heard of it?
What caused the big bang?
Who or what put the chemicals in motion to cause a bang?
It all began somewhere...
Humans with lots of spare time and money are searching for answers to this question.
An invisible man living way up in the sky. Yeah, that's it. My invisible man can do ANYTHING. He knows EVERYTHING. If I don't kiss my invisible man's ass on a regular basis, he'll fuck up my life in interesting ways. In fact, if YOU don't suck up to my invisible man and tell him how HUUUGE he is he'll fuck you up too. Or he'll tell me to fuck you up for him. There are other people who think that but THEIR invisible man is different from mine. I have to kill anyone who doesn't suck up to my invisible man.
How can people be such morons?
Not enough science is being taught, and the thought of bringing creationism or intelligent design into the equation simply makes the task that much harder.
Teach science in school, and if you want to learn about creationism then go to church or Sunday school. Don't waste our children's school time with YOUR particular Religions beliefs. You can teach them that if that is what you believe in.
To rule out any one of the possible causes for the Big Bang and it’s pre-cursors without contraindicative evidence it not science as well.
I’m a firm believer in evolution. I think the Earth is roughly 5 billion years old and the universe (at least the one we can observe) is approximately 15 billion years old.
I also am spiritual but have little use for organized religion. I do not think that ID should be taught as science along side evolution (especially K-12). The evangelicals abuse ID as an excuse to teach creationism, so when they do so the two are the same thing.
Having established all that, I DO believe that scientists that have an open mind towards various forms of ID are given very undeserved short shrift by the Darwinian crowd. When on a scientific quest in a search for the unknown (e.g. the origin of the Big Bang or the origin of Life), to label any one thing (that’s not disprovable) beforehand as impossible is NOT science.
-- Modified on 11/13/2008 8:32:11 PM
To dismiss the impossible is not science?
My dog thinks that I am a dog or is it the other way around?
How did the big bang come to be?
Who made the big bang happen?
Who was in charge of the big bang?
Why Did they do it?
The ID guy has the answers to this and more?
Lets pray and see if the ID guy will answer these questions for us.
I never said anything close to "Dismissing the impossible is not science".
It was your mind that made that leap, proving that you have a preconceived notion as to what's possible and what's not.
As I said , it was a tricky post. Nothing close huh? Perhaps your spiritualism has something to do with your perception of what science is.
-- Modified on 11/14/2008 8:56:12 PM
My definition of science is very mainstream. Spirituality has nothing to do with science. But it's clear that your definition can't include anything that you care to dismiss.
"To rule out any one of the possible causes for the Big Bang and it’s pre-cursors without contraindicative evidence it not science as well."
That is true - but 'possible causes' gets into tricky areas. A well thought out theory derived by working backwards from actual scientific facts is different from some quasi-sci fi writer saying "What If?"
Otherwise we'd have to teach Scientology too.
I do NOT advocate teaching ID as any kind of science nor theory competing with evolution or other related maters in cosmology.
My point and approach is simple. Anyone who rules out ID, with absolutely no proof that it's not possible (other than their belief that there is no God) is really nothing more than a demagogue themselves (e.g. Charlie).
True ID scientists do not proclaim that ID is the answer. They simply are able to keep their mind open to the possibility.
And their are many in Science (those in control acutally) that will attempt to banish collegues that even dare mention ID.
-- Modified on 11/14/2008 9:09:08 AM
So in other words science has to prove that there is no god in order to say ID is not possible? Anything is possible is it not? My dog thinks that I am a dog and sometimes he thinks that cars are dogs.
Can cars be dogs? Can dogs be cars? Science has to have proof. ID and god are political issues. God exists as a social construct, an entity that fulfills the needs of humans who believe without having proof.
"So in other words science has to prove that there is no god in order to say ID is not possible?"
That would be one possibility. It's clear that's your starting and ending point so why do you bother?
"Anything is possible is it not?"
Now your're talking, but of course I know you don't believe that statement.
"My dog thinks that I am a dog and sometimes he thinks that cars are dogs.
Can cars be dogs? Can dogs be cars?"
Not by the definitons and laws that govern our existence.
"Not in Science has to have proof."
I don't understand this statement, sorry.
"ID and god are political issues."
Most often yes (including social and philosophical aspects as well), this is true, but their definition or existence wouldn't need to be retricted strictly to political, social or philosophical constructs.
"God exists as a social construct, an entity that fulfills the needs of humans who believe without having proof."
Most certainly and most often this is true.
You see, I don't say or claim that ID is true. I have absolutely ZERO proof that it exists. I don't know whether it exists or not. I've already stated that ID should not be taught. What more do you want from me except to change my mind? So why is it important to you that I not keep an open mind to something? If you want to live inside a black box with no lights and no windows except for those pre-approved by you then that is your right. If you don't want to have an open mind beyond what you already know is true, so be it.
What truly separates us on this issue is the fact that I know that I might be wrong (actually, any concepts I've envisioned thus far almost certainly are wrong); you on the other hand could not possibly admit as much about yourself and your concepts.
-- Modified on 11/15/2008 9:14:06 AM