I read the whole thing. Despite the loss of brain neurons, I still managed a retort.
Should I apologize for getting irritated when rambling morons regularly make posts with idiotic titles like "Fundies scare me" or "Christians are dumb" or whatever at a forum I usually enjoy coming to on a semiregular basis? Whether I should or shouldn't, I'm not.
Okay, so you were just bitching about the political issue, not the religious one. Explain, if you would, the title, "Fundamentalist Christians scare me again". Then explain the point of "But we have this Republican congressman (once again proving how evil the Republicans have become) giving GOVERNMENT money to a CHRISTIAN group." I don't recall you shitting a brick over, say, public monies being allocated to install Muslim footwashing stations in Minnesota and Michigan universities. No, it seems that only Christian involvement gets you going off on one of your trips. The only political aspect that carries is the Republican being evil because he pandered to Christians in this case.
If it were about politics, and had you known what you were talking about, you would also know the first amendment has nothing to do with the concept of the separation of church and state, only the concept of not establishing a state faith. While the earmarking practice is BS through and through, that's not your point: it's all about who's getting it. And its the religious slant that elicits your comment of, "I say this requires revolution, anarchy, and massive amounts of bloodshed."
Whose panties were in a bunch, again? I was simply calling your hand.
Now that I've destroyed that premise, I shall move on to the rest of what you had to upchuck.
What really screws you over in the above entry is the line "Just as wrong as the monopolization of ideology in the public school system, for that matter." I assume you're talking about evolution. That line shows you have a lot of bias in this issue towards creationism or ID, which makes the rest of your argument hard to accept.
There are plenty of other things that fall under that assertion. These include but are not limited to the unchallenged teaching of evolution, sexual education that typically refuses to address abstinence, the doling of free condoms and the indirect encouragement to use them, obscene reading materials at junior high and senior high school levels, homosexual acclimation at early ages, social engineering from kindergarten up to diminish individuality, and other issues that parents are very often left out of the loop on when it comes to decisions in their children's education.
Bias? I somehow fail to remember at what point I said I was objectively addressing anything. But bias or the lack thereof should have no bearing on your acceptance or rejection...what matters are facts of the matter combined with the construction of the argument itself. If no one was biased against the other, they wouldn't be at odds in the first place, now would they? Rejecting one's argument out of hand simply because you disagree and refuse to listen is a hallmark of foolishness.
It is true that evolution of all species has not been proven fully (and almost no science has been proven beyond any doubt at all). We have macro-evolution (like the moths in England) which gives a lot of credit towards evolution. And at the moment, Evolution is the best theory we have.
As I said before, "most ID/creationist scientists don't dispute (micro)evolution itself". I'm assuming you meant that rather than macroevolution.
What these creationists are trying to push is the idea that the earth is a lot younger than science says, and was created in 6 days. There is no, NO, NO evidence to prove this or back it up besides some book that may or may not have been written by God through a human, or by a person on an LSD trip (I'm talking about Genesis only here). No scientific proof of creation in 6 days.
To be perfectly frank, I don't have a conviction either way as it pertains to the young Earth vs. old Earth. Geologic time periods are clearly evident, but once God is factored in, you have the potential for either a fully-realized Earth with an appearance of age while being in actuality much younger in existence or an Earth of epochal ages that are undefined within the Creation accounts. The first chapters of Genesis do not provide a concrete timeline from which to work when it comes down to what all happened between "In the beginning God..." and the call of Abraham. For ID people, it's a wild goose chase that is ultimately unproveable and something that I find to be a major time waster when it comes to the studying of such matters. I say it's immaterial.
Having said that, it is at least as worthwhile to give these people money to study and work on the subject as it is for artists to get endowments for jars of urine with crucifixes sealed inside. There's a political precedent for you to rail against in a future thread.
What does that leave us? The idea that there was once no life, and then life appeared somehow, gradually going from basic plants and animals and slowly creating more complex and larger lifeforms until it reached our modern world with it's diversity. Did it happen on it's own? It could have. Maybe on all the billions of planets out there, 99% of them, life tried to create itself and failed, and we just happen to be the 1% that actually spawned life, which would make us pretty damn lucky. Did God create our planet and slowly evolve our life towards what it is today? It's possible but there's no firm evidence to prove it and it's up to faith, not science.
Mathematically speaking, the probability of the required order in a single basic protein molecule arising purely from chance is estimated at one chance in ten to the 43rd powet (in case you need this put in numbers for you, it looks like this: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Since thousands of complex protein molecules are required to build a simple cell, probability moves outside the realm of possibility. Those odds are so extremely remote as to be impossible. Even accounting for billions of years, that's simply not enough time to get it done by chance and happenstance. And that doesn't even allow for the generation of specialized structures or failures of evolution. It's also why I reject theistic evolution...the time frame still doesn't work, and if God was supremely powerful enough to create it all to start with, why not create it in a ready-to-go state?
Faith is not the exclusive province of religion, even if the definition was as you claim it to be. More later.
Me? I personally don't care. I know that the earth was probably not created in 6 days, which is why I hate people who try to push that idea without any soild proof that the earth was created in 6 days. I believe in evolution. I don't care if that evolution happened by itself, or if it happened by God's will. Either one is possible.
You'd rather believe that everything was created instantaneously from nothing in a big bang, rather than in six days? What proof do you offer of that? And you believe in evolution! I'm glad you admit to believing in something.
The presence of God and His role in the state of the world are difficult to dismiss without a conscious (foolish) effort to ignore Him from logical and scientific, as well as supernatural, standpoints.
Now you're showing more religious bias. It's pretty easy to dismiss the idea of God existing, scientists do it all the time. There is no proof that God exists, and there is no proof he does not exist.
Again, of course I'm going to show bias. There's the scientific method, and there's the human mind. Scientists use the method to ignore what cannot be determined in order to simplify the process of experimentation through the elimination of variables and establishment of limits. To illustrate this concept, the method generally doesn't care if a lab rat is happy or sad, if the hypothesis is true or false, or if the scientist's motives are good or bad. You, however, don't have that luxury when the question arises, as understanding doesn't exclusively come from methodology. Otherwise, you'd stare blankly at a painting and not tell whether it was pretty or not. You'd never be able to hear a story and tell if it were funny or frightening.
What's hard about logically comprehending and accepting that a transcendent Being existing completely outside of space and time could create and still operate independently as the uncaused cause of both?
It's not hard. But because said being exists outside of the fabric of space and time, it's impossible to prove it's existance. Belief in such being(s) is up to faith, not science.
Sure. Just make sure, when science explains how nonphysical concepts such as truth, beauty, love, hate, and the like came to being, that you let me know so I'll know for sure that they exist.
And I'm still trying to figure out why he mentions the above two posts (the ones about Jack/Fred Thompson). I thought Jack Thompson was running for president which is scary, because if he became president, he'd probably ban all violent video games, including Squirrel's beloved Halo 3. That's also why I'm worried about Hillary becoming president, she hates violent video games as much as Jack. Has nothing to do about evolution.
Because your ignorance is more terrifying than all the Christians in this country put together. Fred Thompson is one of the front-runners for the Republican nominee for president. Jack Thompson is a nobody.
And I don't know where you get that I love Halo 3...I don't have an Xbox 360, and I've never even played the two previous Halo games. First-person shooters just never were my cup of tea.
Christians who believe themselves "persecuted" because people don't agree with their beliefs need to realize two things. First off, Christianity in various forms is the primary religion of the USA. Second, if you want persecution, go back to 1939 Germany and wear a Star of David on your shoulder, and you'll see what REAL religious persecution is.
and I end this with a definition for Squirrel in case he didn't get it the first time.
Faith - n. firm belief in something for which there is no proof.
I snipped your "summary"..."paraphrase" would have actually been more appropriate.
I don't give a flying squirrel shit if you agree with me or not. But that doesn't mean I have to listen to your limp-wristed bashing and let it slide without calling you on the carpet. If I wanted to experience real suffering for faith, I wouldn't need a time machine: I'd go somewhere like Darfur where Christians are being massacred by Muslims on a consistent basis. For what its worth, if anyone tried actively persecuting me like that here, they'd have a hard time of it with the disproportionate lead-to-blood ratio they'd be sporting.
But persecution isn't just beatings and killings. It starts with people who berate another group for some unfair reason. This country, being built on free speech, means that you're free to say anything you like about me, but that when you do I'm also free to fire back in like kind.
And, finally, here's a definition for you, since you're too obtuse to do anything save lean on science as your god.
"Faith is the evidence of what is expected and the proof of things as yet unseen."
