Intelligent Design: Coming To A State Legislature Near You

[Resident]

Easter Bunny wrote:

Hey, all, I've got to do a couple of days of work, so I hope you don't think I'm being disrespectful by ignoring your posts. I'd much rather you wait to feel disrespected when I come back and say something disrespectful.
Please save my place in line.

I'm too tired to continue, I'm old and my head is getting heavy.
Good nite Bunny!

[Steve]

Daughter of the King wrote:

<quoted text>Good Point!!! Hitler was an evolutionist,, your right!!! We see how he felt, humans were less than animals and had no value!! how sad !! I also see the same character in many evolutionists......

Actually, Hitler claimed to be a Christian. The same type of Christianity continues even now. www.biblestudysite.com

[falasha]

And Stalin's mother prayed over him every day. She wanted him to be a priest. So much prayer and so many millions murdered. Best evidence I have seen that prayer does not work.

[poster]

agree

[Darwins Stepchild]

poster wrote:

agree

Just a suggestion...

Hit the "Reply" button to the post you are commenting on. That way, we know who you are agreeing with.

Thanx

[John_S]

Tacky wrote:

"So let's see the evidence that supports your hypothesis, Crandall. Or how about an experiment to test it? No?"
This is the exact problem with either intelligent design or with evolution. The evidence is very questionable and there is no experiment to put the theory to the test. If evolution is as well documented as some believe, why are these supporters so opposed to any criticism of the theory? It is indeed a theory, not established fact.

Each and every aspect of any branch of scientific thought is open to questions. Valid criticism is welcomed.

Part of the beauty of science is that new and better information is welcomed and willingly incorporated into the whole body of knowledge.

Physics went through a major upheaval in the early 1900s. Colleges and universities did not close their doors and go out of business. The world of knowledge moved forward.

Religious thought can not stand up to questions. Religions cling to old ideas that may have seemed acceptable when most people believed the earth was flat, that the earth was the center of the universe, that demons caused diseases, etc,. etc.

Christians seem to fear that if they admit a single aspect of their religious claims is changed by new knowledge, their whole house of cards will collapse.

I believe it already has.

peace
micah
( a recovering "born again" christian )

[Columbia_MO]

shinningelectr0n wrote:

<quoted text>
That's what I thought! But I'm glad Doomer came up with Lore. Wasn't Kahn also the guy in the Chrysler commercials talking about "Rich, Corinthian leather" upholstery? And the same guy that ran Fantasy Island with his shortbread sidekick? Gee, most people couldn't cover all that territory but he sure Khan!

Yes the actors name is Ricardo Montoban.

[polymath257]

Carol McDonough wrote:

RELIGION has NOTHING to do with evolution...it is by the faith of GOD that gets us through! With a blink of your eye and the DNA in your body...that is by GOD's design, no evolution. Evolution has too many flaws in it. GOD has none. Evolution was started by the Elitists because they thought they could be above GOD. Hitler was an evolutionist and you see what he contributed to the world, death, horror and genocide. I don't think I want my grandchildren to learn about evoltion. Spread the world, GOD is in control. GOD Bless, Carol

Translation:

"I want to remain ignorant and let those who interpret an old book determine my actions. I will cling to my superstition in the face of all evidence, which I will ignore if it goes against what I've already decided. I will raise my children and grandchildren to be as ignorant as I am because that how it should be!"

[Clear Thinking]

Easter Bunny wrote:

<quoted text>
Not really. An Atheist wouldn't have any reason to have so much self-loathing over their natural urges, so they wouldn't suffer the kind emmotional damage that we see in all these fundies who apparently don't know how to lash out in any normal healthy way, so they create victims instead.

Your comment was given in the context of child molestation. How telling that you say an atheist would have no self loathing over that.

[Zeke]

Clear Thinking: I cannot speak for the Easter Bunny, but that's not how I interpreted his remarks at all. I thought he was saying that some people victimize children because their ability to engage in normal, healthy , adult relations is impaired by inhibitions that are rooted in religion.

[Clear Thinking]

Zeke wrote:

Clear Thinking: I cannot speak for the Easter Bunny, but that's not how I interpreted his remarks at all. I thought he was saying that some people victimize children because their ability to engage in normal, healthy , adult relations is impaired by inhibitions that are rooted in religion.

OK. I see how you can take it that way. It will be interesting to hear from Easter Bunny to see if that is what he really meant.

If he is talking instead about the celibate priesthood creating a problem I would just respond two ways. First, celibacy does not necessitate immorality or even pent up desires, though that often accompanies it. Secondly, it is hard to mandate a celibate priesthood from the sacred writings the church is supposed to be based on. The best you can get is Paul's desire that everybody was as unencumbered to serve as he was, yet Paul qualified that statement when he made the case that he had the right to carry along a believing wife, just as Peter and others did. So, to the degree that this is mandated by "religion," it is also contrary to the documents that religion is founded upon. I would see the mandate of an unmarried and celibate priesthood as a departure from Christian teaching rather than conformity to it. The proper Christian teaching taken from its source documents would be, if you are serving the church as a single person, be celibate, and if you are serving the church as a married person, be faithful and devoted to your spouse.

This helps to make your case, that religion can screw things up. But it also helps to make mine, that proper exercise of religion clears things up, and condemns the poor practices done in the name of religion.

It's a hard issue to resolve in a SCIENCE forum isn't it? But you just can't let virulent anti-religious claims go unchallenged... claims that Christianity has screwed everything up. There are other ways to look at it, and while I see the point that some of the atheists are trying to make, I disagree with them PROFOUNDLY. I don't think I have to change much to see the crux of their issue with religion; religious people can screw things up. OK, that point is agreed. But they would have to change a LOT to see my point, that religion is also a WONDERFUL thing that has brought so MUCH good to the world, and that it has a gyroscope that eventually self-corrects.

To say that religion has no voice at all in science issues because of past abuses, is equivalent to saying that Germans should have no voice in science issues because of the scientific experiments that were performed during the holocaust. That logic just doesn't hold. Maybe a case somewhere can be made to make religion and science mutually exclusive, but THIS assertion that the other side is attempting to make is not a winning hand for them.

[X-Doomer]

Clear Thinking wrote:

<quoted text>
Isn't that the wonderful thing about threads like this. You can have almost all the facts wrong, and you still get to post, as if you were intelligent.

Funny I was thinking the exact same thing!!

Can you not answer with yes or no? But let's complicate things, tell me why you think it was not intelligent. I just can't wait to here about that. But I am willing to suffer, maybe I have read them once too many times.

Any other brilliant ideas to save us all?

X-Doomer

[Clear Thinking]

Columbia_MO wrote:

<quoted text>
Yes the actors name is Ricardo Montoban.

Wasn't he also the good grandpa in one of the Spy Kids movies? I think he was pitted against Sylvester Stalone.

[Tinka]

Big Quake in China....

[John]

Clear Thinking wrote:

<quoted text>
OK. I see how you can take it that way. It will be interesting to hear from Easter Bunny to see if that is what he really meant.
If he is talking instead about the celibate priesthood creating a problem I would just respond two ways. First, celibacy does not necessitate immorality or even pent up desires, though that often accompanies it. Secondly, it is hard to mandate a celibate priesthood from the sacred writings the church is supposed to be based on. The best you can get is Paul's desire that everybody was as unencumbered to serve as he was, yet Paul qualified that statement when he made the case that he had the right to carry along a believing wife, just as Peter and others did. So, to the degree that this is mandated by "religion," it is also contrary to the documents that religion is founded upon. I would see the mandate of an unmarried and celibate priesthood as a departure from Christian teaching rather than conformity to it. The proper Christian teaching taken from its source documents would be, if you are serving the church as a single person, be celibate, and if you are serving the church as a married person, be faithful and devoted to your spouse.
This helps to make your case, that religion can screw things up. But it also helps to make mine, that proper exercise of religion clears things up, and condemns the poor practices done in the name of religion.
It's a hard issue to resolve in a SCIENCE forum isn't it? But you just can't let virulent anti-religious claims go unchallenged... claims that Christianity has screwed everything up. There are other ways to look at it, and while I see the point that some of the atheists are trying to make, I disagree with them PROFOUNDLY. I don't think I have to change much to see the crux of their issue with religion; religious people can screw things up. OK, that point is agreed. But they would have to change a LOT to see my point, that religion is also a WONDERFUL thing that has brought so MUCH good to the world, and that it has a gyroscope that eventually self-corrects.
To say that religion has no voice at all in science issues because of past abuses, is equivalent to saying that Germans should have no voice in science issues because of the scientific experiments that were performed during the holocaust. That logic just doesn't hold. Maybe a case somewhere can be made to make religion and science mutually exclusive, but THIS assertion that the other side is attempting to make is not a winning hand for them.

I submit to you and Zeke that the faults of religion that are obvious at this time are also in science and politics. Example, the eugenics experiments in the early/mid 20th Century in the southern US. The most famous is the Tuskegee experiment where African American syphilis patients were allowed to die; however, others involved sterilization of Afro-Americans and other "undesirables." Curiously of the major religions in the region, only the Catholic church condemned the experiment.

Then we must decide which religion to pick on. I would submit that Catholics are not better or worse, only that its influence is broad enough to make its faults obvious.

[Tinka]

I don't believe in organized Relegion...
They are all taking it too far... many in their congregations, try to play god...and do not live up to the law of the land...
A lot of stuff gets swept under the rug...
Really sick...

[Clear Thinking]

Zeke wrote:

Clear Thinking: I cannot speak for the Easter Bunny, but that's not how I interpreted his remarks at all. I thought he was saying that some people victimize children because their ability to engage in normal, healthy , adult relations is impaired by inhibitions that are rooted in religion.

Rereading and reconsidering your post and the Easter Bunny's, he might also be discussing the Christian concept of sexual morality altogether. I don't know what he's saying, but I would assert that the Christian concept of sexual fulfillment set forth in the NT is pretty comprehensive in the depths of sexual, emotional, and intellectual fulfillment it provides. People tend to forget that the Bible doesn't say, "hey, just as long as you actually get married, you are allowed to put no significant effort into that relationship, and have divine permission to have a lousy relationship as long as you don't divorce." The bible makes the case that you should be careful in the choice of a spouse, then spend your life loving and serving that spouse with the same kind of sacrificial love that Jesus demonstrated. The bible condemns bad marriages as much as it condemns relationships outside of marriages, and it also encourages those engaged in bad marriages to make positive change, just as it encourages those who engage in promiscuity to make the change.

The Christian case to be made here is that it is not Christianity's fault that people are screwed up sexually.(sorry about the pun) Christianity presents a pretty good ideal, and a pretty good plan for human fulfillment.

OK, I'm going to duck my head now. I hear the bullets coming from EVERY conceivable side. HIT THE DECK! INCOMING!

[John]

Zeke wrote:

Clear Thinking: I cannot speak for the Easter Bunny, but that's not how I interpreted his remarks at all. I thought he was saying that some people victimize children because their ability to engage in normal, healthy , adult relations is impaired by inhibitions that are rooted in religion.

Zeke, you said that you disapprove of my moral relativism.

If I can explain, I don't think I am a relativist.

There are things that we know enough about to intervene. There are other areas (genital mutilation) where we know the wrong but lack the scope of power to end it. That doesn't make it right. I submit that some traffic infractions are less obvious examples of the same principle.

I disagree however about freedom of speech. I think that some speech is criminal, and we generally lack the case law or legislation to address it.

You will recall I left one board because I believed one participant's hate speech was deliberate and he refused to listen to reason or morality. I think his speech is as criminal as if he were pulling a trigger. I wouldn't participate because some loon will take his crap as a pretext to do exactly that.

[Zeke]

Clear Thinking wrote:

I would see the mandate of an unmarried and celibate priesthood as a departure from Christian teaching rather than conformity to it.

I agree. Priests (and even Bishops and Popes) were permitted to marry during the first millennia of the church after all. It's my understanding that the Vatican put a stop to the practice because of the "problem" that donations made by wealthy parishioners to local priests were being treated as the personal property of the priests and therefor passing to their heirs upon their deaths.

The sequence of events surrounding the introduction of the celibacy requirement supports this view, inasmuch as Pope Benedict VIII first passed an edict that the children of priests could not inherit their property (which was to go to the church instead). And it was only when that failed to have the desired effect, that the full blown prohibition on clergy marrying was introduced in 1139.

It seems likely that all of the other justifications for the celibacy requirement were just rationalizations for a policy that had preservation of "church" assets as its primary goal.

I think I recall Easter Bunny mentioning in another thread that he will be away for a few days, so he may not have a chance to respond to your post himself. Again I can't speak for him, but I'm not sure his last comments were limited to just the issue of priestly celibacy. From my own experience of working as an orderly in a mental hospital during my undergraduate years, I noticed that a significant percentage of patients with criminal sexual histories also had obsessions involving religious themes. This is purely anecdotal of course and I'm not blaming religion for their crimes (correlation is not causation), but I'd be interested in seeing more data on the subject if it is available.

[John]

Tinka wrote:

Big Quake in China....

What is your next verse about the quake?

Is religion our wish to roll back the mountains,
or to raise the dead?

or to wipe their foreheads and calm their fear
while their last breath passes, desperate and dear?