Domain: butler.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to butler.edu.
Comments · 7
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Clergy letter.
I guess you've never heard of the Clergy Letter Project then. It's specific to evolution but a requirement for the theory of evolution is an ancient earth. The text also explicitly supports modern science in general, which would include geology anyway.
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Re:Creationism equals intelligent design?
Intelligent Design is a (very) little bit different. The Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that teaching of "Creation Science" is unconstitutional in part because teaching of Creation Science has no legitimate secular purpose. Or to put it another way, teaching Creation Science has no secular purpose because it has no scientific content. Intelligent Design began life immediately after this landmark case as a word processor find-and-replace term for creation science in "Of Pandas and People," which was intended to replace science textbooks in public schools and elsewhere. This fact was brought to light in 2005 in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District". Intelligent Design is exactly the same as creationism, except that in public it tries to "Ixnay on the Esusjay" but in the churches drops that facade.
Another thing: "creationism" is a fairly broad term encompassing Young-Earth Creationism, Old-Earth Creationism, and other assorted beliefs (again wikipedia's pages aren't too bad). And unless you want to advance the position that Christianity is anti-science (like perhaps Richard Dawkins) it is possible that a Christian's answer to evolution is, well, evolution. This view is supported by the 10,000 plus members of the clergy over at the Clergy Letter Project. -
Re:But there is some evidence!
You are partly right - I got the date wrong - but a census was conducted around that time: they WERE that stupid! Apparently it was ~6 A.D. when Quirinius became governor of Syria, although there are possible indications that there might have been something earlier see the discussion here.
In addition there is evidence from Chinese records that the star of Bethlehem was a particularly spectacular comet that was visible in 5BC. While it seems very clear that the gospels do not seem to get things quite correct. For example there was a 10 year gap between Herod's death and Quirinius becoming governor which suggests that if Jesus' birth did take place during the census Herod could not have still been king - although he would have been king at the time of the star of Bethlehem. But this is not really the point. The gospels were written several hundred years after the events surrounding Jesus' life so, as historical documents, it is not surprising that there may be some inconsistencies between them: just look at the myths surrounding the American revolution.
The point is that the background events mentioned in the Bible were real and did occur. Jesus is an historical figure: there is significant evidence that he did exist regardless of whether or not you believe he was the son of god. This is the same for most other religions e.g. you do not have to be a muslim to believe that Mohammed existed or a Jew to believe that Moses existed. However in the case of scientology their claims are completely contrary to known history i.e. the historical record can actually disprove them unlike other religions. -
Source of inspiration
Science fiction has a tradition of writing about religious themes. Since SF is a frequent subject in narrative games, it would be a good starting point for asking (and even answering) religious questions.
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Making Fake ID's, a novel way
About 13 years ago (~1991), there were a couple of Butler students who made fake ID's out of their dorm room. What they used was a large Illinois DL background with a hole to put your head through for the picture. One of the underage kids got caught with the fake DL at a bar and ended up ratting on the Butler students. The police raided the dorm room and then notified the Illinois Secretary of State (who administers motor vehicle functions) even though the crime has occured in Indiana. The IL SOS sent one of their police cars to Indiana to pickup those involved and took them back to IL to be prosecuted. The students were charged with felonies. They also faced charges in Indiana as well.
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Not a cyborg.
He's not a cyborg, unless some of this hardware actually involved surgery or the replacement of biological parts. He's a gargoyle.
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Have a look here...A ballet of the Lay of Luthien was going to be performed, but due to copyright issues, it's been yanked. A pity...
Here is a link to the description of the ballet before it was pulled from the website.