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Actually, you hit the nail almost dead center on the head. Many people take their Christian beliefs from translations of the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts. These translations are mostly bastardized, hacked-up rags written by "scholars" who had no formal training and were utterly unqualified to translate these languages into western languages. There are many examples of this, and you can find some of them here.

The true test for whether you should believe something or not is the question, "Is it useful?"
Does belief in the God hypothesis have an effect? Yes, it does - many people believe that it does, and feel better because of it. You may not, but that does not change what others feel.

So, you say that if something is useful, you are free to belive it? Well, I believe that injecting Heroin makes me happy, and therefore it is useful. I should tell my kids...

And yes, it does have an effect to believe in a god, it makes you rude:
Religious Doctors No More Likely To Care For Underserved Patients
Divorce rates among conservative Christians significantly higher

The US doesn't have religious radicals that go blow themselves up because someone made fun of Jesus.

Oh really... In particular, note the column "Bombing, Arson, Attempted Bombing or Arson".

Last week a Hong Kong-based human rights group reported that three Falun Gong practitioners had died in recent months after suffering mistreatment while in detention. The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said Liu Yufeng, 64, of eastern Shandong province, died July 23 of multiple injuries, four days after he was detained while participating in a mass Falun Gong exercise. Li Faming, 52, of northwestern Gansu province, died August 10 after a fall from a window in his apartment where police were conducting a search for Falun Gong leaflets. In northeastern Heilongjiang province, 29-year-old Zhang Tieyan died August 11 after fainting in a hot, poorly ventilated detention center. She had fainted before many times, the rights group said. According to the Hong Kong monitor, at least 30 Falun Gong followers have died of mistreatment while in custody since July 1999, when the movement was banned. Authorities have detained at least 35,000 practitioners, and 5,000 have been sent to labor camps without trial.http://www.religioustolerance.org/rt_china.h tm

I am a scientist as well, and am less convinced than you about the inevitability of our knowledge acquisition. More to the point, your 'later date' could last a *long, long* time and would put off stem cell treatments by a similarly long time. The maturity of this field is already a good ways off, and it seems asinine to delay longer out of an illogical concern for already established biological trash.

Well, yes, excepting the scientifically backwards Italian law you cited, everywhere else in the developed world, they are. You harvest 20-some odd eggs, and implant the healthiest three while eventually discarding the rest. As for Italy, that law also illegalizes donor insemination, access to reproductive techniques for single women (Single woman?, sorry no IVF for you!), and preimplantation genetic diagnosis...truly a wonderful law.

Anything to actually back up that statement? Not to mention the fact that we could just take all to-be-discarded embryos that exist right now and develop stem cell lines from those and would be in fine shape. As a scientist, I'm sure you know that ESC research doesn't depend on using a single embryo for an experiment, rather differentiatable cell lines are established from the initial cells. If Bush hadn't made his intellectually dishonest decree, we could've simply taken all IVF embryos available on that day, and likely never had to worry about it again.

You are either ignorant, or being intentionally deceptive by implying that treatments will require brand new embryos.

-Ted

Another poster pointed out this site:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/texas.htm
Which talks about a 1961 ruling by the Supreme court that seems to strike down any such religious tests. So, luckily the constitutionality has already been decided.

Here you go.

Don't blame me. I didn't create this situation. The only "shenanigans" you're going to find are in their Bill of Rights, Declaration of Rights, and their constitutions.

Yes, I accept your apology.

that would be Texas for 5,000, Alex


http://www.religioustolerance.org/texas.htm

Yes, I am. These states: AR, MA, MD, NC, PA, SC, TN and TX all have such provisions. See this page.

Amazing, isn't it?

About 44% of US adults say, when polled, that they go to church once a week. About 20% actually show up. People thus self-report much higher levels of religion than they actually practice. Polled numbers should be derated according.

The 2001 National Survey of Religious Identification, the largest study on this in the last decade (113,000 respondents) came up with the following self-identified stats, for religions with 0.1% or more market share:

1. Christianity: 76.5%
2. Nonreligious/Secular: 13.2%
3. Judaism: 1.3%
4. Islam: 0.5%
5. Buddhism: 0.5%
6. Agnostic: 0.5%
7. Atheist: 0.4%
8. Hinduism: 0.4%
9. Unitarian Universalist: 0.3%
10. Wiccan/Pagan/Druid: 0.1%

Major trends are that "Secular", "Islam", "Buddism" and "Hinduism" were all up over 100% since 1990.

Not wanting to be nasty or anything, but America is going through a bit of a religious experience at the moment, with people rejecting science by the million.

"Hi. My name is Evidence. I'm missing. Can you find me?"

See, for instance, this summary of many studies of Christianity in the United States. Here are a couple nice representative quotes:

"There does not seem to be revival taking place in America. Whether that is measured by church attendance, born again status, or theological purity, the statistics simply do not reflect a surge of any noticeable proportions." George Barna.

14.1% do not follow any organized religion. This is an unusually rapid increase -- almost a doubling -- from only 8% in 1990. There are more Americans who say they are not affiliated with any organized religion than there are Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans taken together.

For some reason, people have gotten the idea in their head that there's some kind of huge Christian uprising or takeover happening in the US, and it's simply not there at all. Sorry. Given that you don't bother to support your initial point, I'm going to just ignore the rest of the post. Hope you don't mind.

She said that she was struck by how intelligent and articulate he was, and that she found him to be extremely charming.

Hmm, that sounds just like someone else, but I can't quite remember who... hmm... could it be... oh, I don't know... maybe.... . . . .

Yeah, but try reading the Texan constitution. http://www.religioustolerance.org/texas.htm

.... and belief in a rosy afterlife will make you live longer and pass on that trait. I mean, what's the size of an average Catholic family compared to the lonely angry atheist?
 
You are implying religious folks have healthier families than atheists, but atheists actually have a lower divorce rate. Do some research -don't just rely on your gut and tired stereotypes.

Religion % have been divorced

Jews 30%

Born-again Christians 27%

Other Christians 24%

Atheists, Agnostics 21%

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm

Of course, it is true that christians will have more kids just because they have so many ass backwards beliefs about contraception and abortion. But this also means that those kids are more likely to be unwanted.

While we're on the topic of whether christian families are more healthy than atheists, let me also point out that scaring kids into your belief system with tales of eternal torture is tantamount to child abuse (and it should be punished as such). Some christian groups go so far as to set up "hell houses" where children can be terrorized by productions designed specifically to scare children into mental submission. For example:

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1099/hellhouse. html

wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_house

Christians have more happy families? yea right. do some research before running your mouth.

Actually, for every 2 people that becomes an atheist, there's about 1 that finds religion.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm

  And you can poke around on the site for more data, I can't find the specific number for religious change but it's on there somewhere.

  Point is, most of the people attending those megachurches are not former atheists. They're former "main-line" protestants.

You're probably right that "big scientific ideas have to be assimilated" over time. In fact there's some evidence that even the heliocentric theory of the solar system is still in doubt by enough people to make a stink. Other data about US religious beliefs claims that 47% of Americans agree with the statement, "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."

While in the strictest sense "evolution" refers only to changes in distribution of alleles in a population of living creatures, the concept of groups changing in response to selection pressures applies in some way to pretty much every field of science. It's needlessly limiting to say evolution is only what Darwin said it was.

that said, there are some say there are some dangers to be found in the "church" .. theres a good essay by Issac Bonewits (founder of the largest neo-druid orginization in america) at http://www.neopagan.net/SatanicAdventure.html

Anyway .. I'm not actually supporting Satanism .. just supporting knowledge

Namaste, Blessings from somewhere... Peace out,
~ Donald Guy

From 1989 to 2004 there were 24 deaths due to abortion clinic bombing. Let's compare that fifteen years of Christian bloodlust against one day in September of 2001. Close to 3,000 innocent deaths on one day compared to 24 over 15 years. Any "religious" group that uses violence to further it's cause is something to protest against. But, when you have radical Muslims killing thousands of people you yell at them the loudest, not the radical Christians killing a relative handful of people.

That's because Christians don't blow things up when you disagree with them.

Ummm... yes they do. Someone else pointed out some fine examples... but aborition clincs are a big issue among many "Christian" groups.

Any fundamental religious group scares me.

Though I agree with much of what you say, you do propagate the lie that 96% of Americans believe in God. The percentage is lower than this according to exactly how the question is phrased; see http://www.religioustolerance.org/godpoll.htm for a survey of some surveys. Also, a fairly recent Harris survey http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index .asp?PID=408 indicates why people might, in fact, say they believe in God when they have doubts. A more recent Harris survey supports the encouraging notion that un-belief may be on the rise: http://www.dentalplans.com/articles/5938/.

These, ahem, "discrepancies" about belief in God may in fact be for the same reasons that more people say they attend church once a month (about 45%, when asked) than actually do (about 30%, based on church attendance).

Though, if you look at the survey by Baylor, the largest Baptist University in the US, this supports your number: http://washingtontimes.com/national/20060911-10333 8-8995r.htm. Wonder why that could be? I don't suppose religious people would lie, would they?

As a non-believer, I also take a little comfort in the statistic that, among the US prison population, un-belief is much lower than in the general population (though I can't find a reference for this one at the moment.)

on the other hand, I can't see the problem going away any time soon. Maybe we need to learn to work around it. Which presents some interesting problems in and of itself. We can't just set up an organisation to speak for the community: We already have the FSF, the OSI, the EFF, there are spokesmen for distros and for major projects all of whom get to put their oar in

Probably the single most interesting (and potentially effective) approach I've seen was reading about how some senators at one point were given iPods. Apparently it actually led to a few of them objecting to some of what the RIAA were trying to do, since it had created a scenario where they had a personal stake in it themselves.

That would tend to suggest that that is perhaps a viable strategy...if we can demonstrate to the people in government and other places how the various forms of technology (that Microsoft and various other entities are trying to destroy) can actually be enormously beneficial to them, a situation will arise where they will begin to want to oppose said entities themselves. Given the degree that Linux is being adopted in some places, there are indications that this strategy is already working. It's the reason why I'm not as afraid of DRM as a lot of people, I think...I see too many reasons for optimism to be truly scared of it.

I've never understood that, as regards BSD. I mean the BSD didn't get a penny (as far as I know) when MS slurped their TCP/IP stack, and I don't think they've had any real investment based on Apple's forking of BSD for OS/X.

Apple apparently ended up giving Jordan Hubbard a job. ;) OpenBSD also had a contract with the DOD for a little while, and NetBSD at least has Wasabi behind it, which AFAIK is responsible for most of the mirrors for pkgsrc and a few other bits and pieces. You're right in thinking that there aren't millions of dollars pouring in...but they get at least a few people paying the bills. I will admit that the BSDs tend to remind me of the Zoroastrians, or "keepers of the flame," in terms of them perhaps preserving a somewhat more concentrated form of the older UNIX philosophy than Linux, which seems to be primarily about replacing Windows for the most part. Zoroastrianism is only a very small religion, but to a large degree is actually the root of the Abrahamic religions in particular...I see it as an interesting analogy. ;)

Still balanced against that are his foresight, his skill in drafting the GPL and the fact that his intentions seem entirely honourable.

Contrary to how I sound most of the time, I do actually recognise Stallman's past achievements. However, I also agree with what Eric Raymond has written that although in many ways Stallman was responsible for getting the ball rolling, he's only really had a hand in how the story began...he can't determine how it will end, and he shouldn't try. Still, some of the stuff I see on the Free Software Magazine site at times gives me optimism; especially when I've seen the odd glimmer of the BSD license being advocated/used now and then. The FSF's tolerance of diversity (or lack of) has always been the single main thing about them that has worried me, but it seems that the rank and file are starting to think outside the doctrinal box, which is all I've ever wanted in that area.

This is great. You just made my argument, but you don't even realise it.

<me>Hardly. If the specifics of their religion contradict reality, then reality wins.
Failure to realise that is stupid. Don't blame me for that fact.</me>

This is my point! You are equating faith to stupidity. Let me quote Einstein.

Below you define faith: "faith (which means belief without evidence)".
I agree with that definition.

I didn't equate faith with stupidity. I equated belief in *contradiction* of evidence with stupidity.

Believing that some being put it all in motion does not contradict reality.

Believing that that same being has nothing better to do than screw with people about what they eat, who or how they fuck and sets them up against each other by having them kill each other in his name, does.

God the petulant 6 year old, great.

I think you'll find that your Einstein quotes actually back up my position as well.

You should read beyond the first chapter before you claim to speak from a position of authority. You really should not argue against things you know nothing about.

First chapter of what? The Iliad? Koran?
The point I made doesn't rely on the specifics of any particular religion.

All you have to do is look around.

Say, for the sake of argument, that there is a God.
Say, further, that he loves us and wants us all to be nice, happy, not blowing up buildings full of people sort of folks.

Then the simple fact that he told a bunch of different people so many contradictory things about himself isn't really the best way to go about that.

Or, if you're of the mind that your team got it right and all the rest got fake revelations, well that's a pretty piss poor way to achieve those goals as well, don't you think?

So, that's a pretty simple message, delivered ineffectively as was my claim.
You want to add in even more specifics than just that simple of a message and yet there are plenty of people still worshipping "false" gods. And killing and getting killed for largely trivial differences.

Heck, the only way God doesn't come off looking incompetent is if you conclude he's just a dick. He's pretty good at that.


and how's that? By putting a Christmas tree on the town square?

I've never had a problem with Christmas trees. That tradition goes way back before your religion. It could well predate your god even, but I don't know that there's any evidence on that one way or the other.

And if the "extremist Christians" are taking over America and destroying the Constitution, then they are doing a really crappy job because I see the number of Mosques increasing and number of churches declining. I think your fears are unfounded, or at least pointed in the wrong direction.

I'm talking about folks like these:

ID Loons trying to cram their religion into science classes to dumb down our future.

Universities dedicated to gettig religious extremists i positios of power.

And other groups driven by their hatred for American values

Plus the scumbag fag haters, the clinic bombers and other terrorists.

This country was founded, formed and populated by those trying to escape such persecution.

That describes some of those who first came here, although most of those are described as extremists who were thrown out of their home countries for their intolerance and savage ways to those who didn't buy ito the particular brand of crap they were peddling.

Our forefathers wanted to create a country where its citizens could worship free from prosecution.

This is so entirely typical of the deeply dishonest historical revisionism commonly practiced by Christian extremists.

They wanted a country where people were free from the persec

Crap, I forgot to include the casualty numbers. Well, we know that 3000 or so died in the WTC. We know that one has died in abortion clinic bombings since 2000 (source), 168 died in OK City (source) and 12 died at Columbine (source). This totals 181, but we'll skew the numbers in your favor and say 200.

If you want to factor these numbers in to further my case, that's fine with me. By my quick math, that means that Muzzie terrorists have killed 150 people to every person killed by a Whitie, while only having .01 the numbers of whities.

So until Whities kill a lot more Americans in terrorist acts, I think that profiling is a good idea based on simple probability.

this one
Sort of this one

this one

this one
this one
this one

there are a lot more. I'm not saying religion in totality is trying to spread FUD I'm sayign certain religious groups are stirring opposition for no other reason then to undermine certain scientific corner stones and theories they find inconvienant. Like parts of geology, astronomy, genetics, immunology, ect..

I am myself a moderate catholic. I find the exstremists and fundementalsist distasteful.

but them I'm guessing "soft atheism" is synonymous with "agnosticim", no? If not, how are they different? (And don't try defining "agnosticism" as not knowing what you believe, because unless you can show me an "agnostic community" that professes such beliefs, I'm not buying it.

I believe — and by all means, any self-professed agnostics should step in here with their understandings — that agnosticism is the declared position that one cannot know if there is a god or gods.

Here's a link that refers to Huxley; here's another with more detail.

I view the the statement "I don't know if I believe" as an evasion, or an admission of simple-mindedness. I certainly know if I believe, and I've found that both theists and atheists don't seem to have any problems with such knowledge. However, like the misunderstanding of atheism by theists, it may be the case that some people misunderstand agnosticism and declare into, or for, that misunderstanding.

You might have a point about going to the group, however, because I left off the 2nd defintion for atheism: "2. Godlessness; immorality." (I kid you not.)

Oh, I'm quite sure you're not kidding. This is simply gross evidence of what I alluded to earlier, that dictionary definitions have been put in place by the overwhelmingly Christian populace, and are as about as likely to be accurate as are a republican's description of the democratic platform, and for some of the same reasons. In defense of the more scholarly works out there, you will occasionally find a correct definition as well. For instance, Worldnet of Princeton university has "a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods" as definition #2, which is the correct definition.

You're so full of BS that its not funny.

"If the speech promoted hatred against an identifiable group, but was not likely to incite a listener to violence, then a person could still be convicted."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_hat6.htm

(I'm not addressing the grandparent's post in particular, just your continued mis characterizations of Canadian law)

Why do people say totally false things all the time about Canada's hate speech laws? Are you actually Canadian, or do you just pretend to be and correct people with erroneous information online?

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_hat6.htm

"Sexual orientation has now joined four other groups protected against hate speech on the basis of their "color, race, religion or ethnic origin." "

"In particular, citizens are not allowed to incite or promote hatred, advocate genocide or actually commit genocide against certain specified groups."

I can also cite the numerous people who have been persecuted for there mere opinions of other racial and ethnic groups, also.

I wont blame you for not even thinking to consider other alternatives, you've probably been fed the 'one truth' since a very early age at school and taught not to question it. interesting how things self perpetuate so quickly that way isn't it... ;op

(I was brought up a Christian, I'm not sure what I truly beleive now other than people are stupid and easily lead (comment on most organised religion and not actually meant as an attack on any), and the more 'made a fool of' they may feel when questioned intelligently, sadly the more violently they are likely to react. I intend to teach my children to question all things and seek to learn enough from all sides until they are happy in their *own* decision, above all I beleive people should be good to other (yes event the stupid ones ;o) ) people, and not force their opinions on others)

another interesting read would be http://www.thercg.org/books/ttooe.html on the one mention of 'easter' by name in the bible,

Huh? Christianity got the brutality out of its system in the crusades? Oh no no no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
http://www.religioustolerance.org/wic_burn.htm (witch burning)
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/northireland1.html (northern Ireland)
http://www.americancatholic.org/News/ClergySexAbus e/

For example.

Biggest recent incident of domestic terrorism? This is nothing!

Check out this link here for domestic religious fundamentalist terrorist incidents: Violence at US Abortion Clinics

or these ones here for domestic ecoterrorists and general antiscience terrorism:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/292/ 5522/1622

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/313/ 5793/1541

Are you saying that the U.S. has forced abortions, political executions (with the executee's family being billed for the fucking bullet), wholesale cultural genocide (Do you know the chinese are hauling ethnic chinese by the trainload into tibet to overrun the place? Look up "tibetan spaniel" sometime to see how the fucking chinese have clubbed to death the entire population of tibet's beautiful native dogs), wholesale censorship of the press and Internet, massive "reeducation" (read: concentration) camps, support for mass-murderer dictators (Pol Pot, "Our Dear Leader", etc.).

Yeah, America is so much better.

A literal liberal does not oppose prostitution because liberals do not believe in criminalizing victimless crimes, or legislating morality

There is, of course, dispute over whether or not prositution is in fact a victimless crime and whether or not it should be outlawed simply because it opens up women to exploitation. Counter arguments usually hold that legalizing prostitution allows for laws to protect the women that cannot exist in a black market. Feminists usually oppose prostitution because it demeans women and enhances male power, but some modern feminists reject the argument.

Anyway, I'll stand by my statment, which is intended to mean that the mainstream majority of people who call themselves liberals would be opposed to legalized prostitution, and Christian liberals almost unanimously reject it. I have never seen a Democratic candidate advance legalization, though Green and Liberatarians often do. It's a bit of a fringe issue.

I don't know what the Septuagint says, but the english translation I'm familiar with says that a man shall not lie with a man as if he were a woman. What the hell does that mean?

Yes, the Bible is extremely ambiguous about homosexuality in terms of definitions. More about that here. Because of such ambiguity, I say he'd probably oppose it. The Bible seems pretty negative about male-male relationships (though mostly silent on female-female relationships). The latter, like abortion and cloning, are probably because it wasn't a prevalent feature of society back in the day when women did not have as much freedom.

However, while that's not the direction I really wanted to take this discussion in, it is kind of relevant. The Christian Right loves to focus on cultural issues that the Bible is ambiguous about (gay relationships, abortion, etc.) and ignore the ones that it's much more explicit about (a desire for brotherhood and peace, non-judgmental attitudes, how we treat the least among us, etc.). That's one of those things that burns me. Much what Jesus says is ignored in favor of conjectures about things he never talked about. While I can't dispute the general thrust of where they go on such issues, it seems a strange inversion of priorities, and it's often tackled with an attitude that's very much opposed to how Jesus taught us to live -- with hate, anger, and prideful derision.

I think you have forgotten an important event in the bible: Jesus throwing out the money changers.

Oh no, I didn't forget. That's why I said he'd probably oppose economic sabotage. After all, Jesus objection was to people defiling the house of the Lord with materialistic greed. I'm not so sure that he'd consider whale hunting and GMO farming to be issues meant to be fought back with such force. Conjecturing Jesus's views on species preservation and the preservation of natural biodiversity is as intellectually perilous as doing the same for abortion and gay marriage. The issue isn't spoken of, and while we can guess his viewpoints, to elevate it to the same level as the issues he was passionate about puts one on uncertain footing.

No, most Americans don't believe these things although I admit it's a too damned close. Hopefully that slight downward trend has continued in more recent years.

More to the point, we don't let popular pseudoscience or religious belief direct the agenda for a part of our space program.

However, the basic point that if China really does become a technological leader, the US will find itself in decline, is very much true. The US needs to get off it's fat collective ass and stop being so anti-intellectual. We can do it -- we've done it before, but it takes a good hard scare to push us into it.

Excellent, feel free to stay in Canada where your freedoms are protected. Well, except your freedom of speech, eh?

The literal truth of whichversion of the Bible, of which translation? In many cases, originals are lost, and all we can go by are later translations, which may be faithful to the original, or which might not be. And if original texts do turn up at a later date, translations are often not corrected out of fear of shocking the readership with a more accurate (but unexpected) rendering. And that's even without counting deliberate forgeries.

In other cases, original texts are still present, but the words that they use are so rare that the exact meaning is hard to find out (especially if almost the only usage of such words is in the Bible itself, and such usage is in "lists of sins" which provide no context).

One needs to examine not how many scientists and professors believe something, but what their conviction is based upon ... evidence, not personal authority, is what objective conclusions should be based on.

One needs to examine not how many scientists and professors believe something, but what their conviction is based upon ... evidence, not personal authority, is what objective conclusions should be based on.

No sorry, we'll all miss it by at least one year. Personally, I'm betting Newton was right.

And that name is there to stay at the top. Islam's often cited as the fastest growing religion in the world. http://www.religioustolerance.org/growth_isl_chr.h tm/
Monotheists are upgrading slowly but surely.

Has your country already signed this treaty??

* ban
* landmines
* in the US!

Europeans practice Confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church. Which in turn was adapted from the cultures it supplanted. There are other rituals in other Western cultures. What does "pop psychology" have to do with this documented history?

When I read the New Testament, one thing that really stands out to me is the emphasis Jesus placed on always asking questions. He never told his followers to obey him obediently. He wanted them to question his actions and words.

You must be reading a different New Testament from the rest of us. For example, Christ's pronouncements on divorce look nothing like your description above.

Mark 10:2-12: "And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery."

There is no questioning nor observation nor experiment here. There is a bald pronouncement: divorce is forbidden (there is a hotly contested description of the same exchange in Matthew that may permit divorce on some grounds if we could only figure out how to translate the Greek word "pornei" unambiguously.)

The key to this passage is the question of scriptural authority vs the authority of Christ. Jesus is saying that even though the scriptures permit divorce, God doesn't approve of it and the time has come to end it. Jesus is claiming arbitrarily and without a shred of empirical evidence that God wants married people to stay that way. Period. He does not mention social ills or practical problems. He simply invokes what God wants. This why Christianity is religion, not science.

There is no practical way within the Christian framework to challenge Jesus' flat-out prohibition on divorce. To do so you either have to avail yourself of Matthew's ambiguous loophole, or you have to deny the validity of Christ's words in this instance, possibly invoking the fact that we know prohibiting divorce can lead to various social ills, the exploitation and/or battering of spouses, etc, and Jesus was clearly against that kind of thing.

But once you have done that you are well on your way down the interpretive slippery slope that leads to secular humanism. You'll find lots of friendly people ready to greet you with open arms when you reach the bottom!

No, we live in a nation where people can make shit up and get modded insightful.

Since I was simply curious, I did a quick search, and came up with this: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm/

One of the highlights is that, when asked if they believed "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" 47% of those polled (in 1991, it was 44 in '97) said YES.

"Making shit up" indeed.

You say "When our country lost its collective faith in God..."

When, exactly, did that happen? Poll after poll shows that something like 95% of Americans believe in God. http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_poll3.htm This is almost EVERYBODY ... and 95% is a lot of people out of more than 300 million.

Oh, we're a pluralistic country, yes, with Muslims and Buddhists and Jews and God knows what else, yes.

And oh, many of us vehemently reject the hateful un-American religion called "Christianity," or even all religions in their entirety, yes.

But we still believe in God. The good kindhearted kind of God who smiles when he watches a "Girls Gone Wild" DVD, instead of shooting lightning bolts at people or shoving airplanes into buildings.

If, in fact, we are simply observing what "God has set into motion," then there is no dichotomy, false or otherwise, between creation and science. To suggest that the God of the Bible, however, has brought us to where we are via molecules-to-man evolution is to blatantly contradict His Word, the Bible.
Maybe, then, I think that I consider you to be you are narrowly imagining Genesis. I can read Gensis as a story about our relationship to God, not about the physical history of our species. I'm sure for you and many others, that makes God or the Bible seem untruthful. I can sympathize with that. But I believe in a God who can be simultaneously fully human and fully God, who I trust loves us and is benevolent despite all the horror in the world, and who gave us a world with the subtleties of modern physics. I can believe in a God who did not intend me to read Genesis as a scientific paper. The Jews wanted a warlike messiah who would take back the physical Israel. This obviously isn't what they got. Sometimes, what we need from God isn't what we want.

I'm speaking of what would have to take place for molecules-to-man evolution to be true. An addition of genetic information.
I'm still not sure what you mean by information in this paragraph. My question, though, is how would you expect just information to behave? You write as if you believe its creation to be a problem. Why is this? And in what way does speciation "cause" a loss of such information. It would seem to me that such information may be lost as part of the process of speciation, but can't we just as easily say that gaining such information is part of the process of speciation?

But what about Creationist biologists?
I don't know how many biologists are creationists of the sort that believe Genesis should be interpreted in part as a scientific document. According to this website, http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm, only 5% of "scientists" (whatever that means) believe in it. My own guess is that if this were only biologists, this number would be lower (certainly, in my experience, biologists seem to be more likely to be atheists than physicists and physical chemists). If you were to talk about only those who do research on things directly related to evolution, I would think it would be lower still. If there were any sort of real movement against evolution in biologist circles, there would be a bunch of peer reviewed papers that said so. I've been told, incidentally, that most of the "Doctors" of the discovery institute are MDs, or PhDs in nonbiological sciences, although I haven't personally verified this.

It's not that I don't "trust them." It's that I disagree with their presupposition on the origins of life and how we got here.
I should have written "trust their judgement." Belief in evolution is supposed to be like any other scientific belief: motivated by empirical observation, not simply an assumption. If there is no good evidence for evolution as you describe, and it is simply an assumption then the biologists must be incompetent. But for drugs, food safety, etc, they don't seem to be competent. So I don't understand how this could be.

We all have the same evidence. The neo-Darwinist and the Creationist just interpret that evidence differently. I think this is understating yoru differences. The creationists think that the neo-Darwinists, and I consider that to be more or less identical to saying "the biologists", are completely, terribly wrong in their interpretation of the evidence, about as wrong as can be. Again, they would seem to have to be completely incompetent for this to be the case.

The last country to abolish slavery was Saudi Arabi, which is, as you know, in the Middle East. Saudi-held slaves were not emancipated until one year shy of a century after US slaves were freed. Nigeria, a nation that sold many slaves to the Americas, continued domestic slavery nearly four decades into the 20th century. Even among Western nations, Brazil didn't abolish slavery until 25 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in the US.

Slavery was an abomination, and an embarrassing part of the United States' history, but we were neither alone in this abomination, nor the last to abolish it.

Romans 1:26-27: "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence [sic] of their error which was meet."

"Paul didn't write it as a condemnation of homosexuality, but as a criticism of Greek behavior in temple worship. Greeks often incorporated sexual behavior in temple worship."

"This is the tough one. I think one doesn't get around this. It's the only place in the New Testament where there's any extensive discussion of homosexual relations. In Romans, there's no question that Paul thinks certain kinds of homosexual behavior are a result of the idolatry of the pagan world."

If you're a Muslim you believe that Adam & Eve were Muslim. In my limited time, I found this reference: http://www.religioustolerance.org/isl_intr.htm "The Messengers of God, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad -- the last prophet; (peace be upon them). Muhammad's message is considered the final, universal message for all of humanity." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophets_of_Islam#Ada m_.D8.A2.D8.AF.D9.85 "The first prophet is Adam, while the last prophet is Muhammad..." but I will try and dig up something more concrete. The Wikipedia article is especially useful though

Read here,
Clicky

It basically follows the British example.