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Right On!
I wish your comment was available to me a few months ago when I was having a theological discussion with my family via email. I was commenting on the injection of religion into political debate, and had come to the same conclusion: That as a self-respecting Christian, it is best to avoid politics altogether. The goals of Christianity and the goals of politics are imcompatible (as are many of the tools and methods for accomplishing these goals), IMHO.
My family didn't get it at all. I got a whole bunch of "well, this nation was founded on Christian principles and the secularists are trying to take over" and "I don't want my grandchildren to grow up in a godless society", etc. Eventually my dad started worrying about my faith and tried to convert me! He seemed to think that it was impossible for a "real" Christian to have the views I have on the subject.
After reading through that link to the archbishop's statement you provided, the content comes across as a compromise rather than a condemnation, even if there's something kind of silly about his reference to ``neo-Darwinism''. Why are you so defensive? Do you really expect the Roman Catholic Church to say there's no Creator and therefore no God? For that matter, since the alternative is a godless universe where everything's an accident, why should you even care if that is the case?
Unborn children haven't committed crimes.
Typical Godless liberal.
A CHRISTIAN would know that unborn children are all guilty, according to the doctrine of original sin.
It is observable. Evolution is the accumulation of genetic changes that specializes species. It does not necesarily take a million years. If you want to observe huge changes like growing a 3rd arm, yes you'll probably need a million years to observe. But small adaptationary changes accumulate - these have been observed.
It is testable. I can make a statement that says, "if Evolution is true, then 1 Million years later, that and that will happen". 1 Million years later, an observer can read my statement and see if it is right or not.
It is also predictive. It says "Evolved species will fit their environment better". You just have to give it enough time and observe.
You surely can. If it is verified to be false (see "verifiable") then it is disproved. If you can observe a predicted evolution, then it is proved.
Evolution may have a few small holes, but Creationism has significantly more and bigger holes.
Due to the Creator being omniscient and omnipotent, it is *inherently* unverifiable, unobservable, unpredictable, unprovable and undisprovable - because anything can be attributed to, "Argh, the Creator made it this way".
For evolution, you can give it 9999999 years and you'll eventually be able to prove or disprove it with observations and tests.
For ID, no matter how much time you give it, it cannot be tested.
I'll accept ID being taught along with Evolution the day when the the theory of ID is corrected to say the Creator is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. I doubt that day will ever come, tho.
I too think they should be taught alongside, but in PHILOSOPHY classes NOT science classes. Science classes are reserved for teachings that are testable, provable and disprovable.
All theories are full of holes. Otherwise they'd be called "facts" not theories. Having holes or not is not a criteria whether a teaching should be included in a science class. But being verifiable and observable is. As far as I understand it, Evolution belongs to the science class but ID does not.
According to this reply you may think I'm a Godless athiest but in reality I'm a Christian and go to the Church on Sundays. I'm not saying one is correct and the other isn't - but merely trying to classify what belongs to the science class and what doesn't.
"Not all opinions are of equal value, and we need to teach science - not religion -- in our science classes. We wouldn't teach astrology in astronomy courses, or give flat-earth teachings 'equal time' in the geography class."
In this modern era of anti-intellectualism in the US, many would dismiss this statement out-of-hand as an arrogant, godless, know-it-all liberal who mocks the very foundation of our Christian nation. Rational debate with these types of people is a wasted effort.
These are the same people who thought that, given some extra time, Jesus would come riding down on his magical unicorn to shit a new brain into Terry Shivo's head. People will believe what they want to believe and nothing will change that.
God speaks to me personally and tells me that Freenet is used by Chinese dissidents to exchange Biblical child pornography.
No need for faith if you can read Chinese.
So basically we have to take it on faith that Freenet is being used by Dissidents then?
What we need is a bulldozer to run over the children of every republican congressmen (at the state and federal levels,) not enough to kill them.. just force them into a fucking wheelchair, permanently. Then we'll see some opinions change.. until then, these scum sucking bastards will keep on promising their hardcore religious base that they'll protect america from the insidious & godless liberal infiltrators, fuck science, fuck progress, and fuck you america -> I'm getting elected again!
What kind of fucking maniac are you? Your publically advocating the maiming of innocent children for what you preceve as the sins of the parents. You should have your spine severed somewhere between your brain and your body....no wait, it's already happened for you to make such a hateful comment. I'm all for progress, better life through science, and all that bull shit. But give it a rest. You wanna maim the people that are voting and deciding this bull shit on the government level, fine, I'm all for that. It's people like you that give the freaks in the religious faction all the ammo they need to push forward with this shit. Mod this down if you like, But the parent post needs to be modded down too.
Now all we need to make things really pick up steam... but it's not easy depending on the private sector to invest in unproven sciences and/or projects that won't guarantee a return on their investment. Should american voters turn to their governments and demand subsidy increases for industries involved in stem cell research ?
It won't matter what you say, what you write or how professional you sound on the telephone, your congressmen and representatives don't give a shit what you have to say. They have a guaranteed vote from their freakishly religious base.. They appease them first, then maybe, maybe, if you're really lucky, will listen to whats on your mind.
What we need is a bulldozer to run over the children of every republican congressmen (at the state and federal levels,) not enough to kill them.. just force them into a fucking wheelchair, permanently. Then we'll see some opinions change.. until then, these scum sucking bastards will keep on promising their hardcore religious base that they'll protect america from the insidious & godless liberal infiltrators, fuck science, fuck progress, and fuck you america -> I'm getting elected again!
Being created gives us as a race purpose. Being here as the process of billions of incredibly improbably mutations that happened to survive and compound upon each other does not. What is the meaning of life if we weren't placed here by a god? Your creed seems to be "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". If there's no purpose to life, there's no reason for you to defend your belief in a godless existence to me.
The fact that you defend that position means that you think there is a purpose to life. Please tell me what that purpose is, without any form of god being involved.
Huh, ever think like this?
* Identify a problem
* Identify the causes of said problem
* Decide which of those causes it is possible to correct, and do something about it.
I'll take your little rant and break it down for you: <i>"Oh, we can't blame the criminal for doing that, we should blame society/the gun/the judicial system/anybody but the bad guy"</i>
1. We already blame the criminal. Its called criminal justice and the penal system. We've had that solution in place since, oh, the dawn of time. Violence keeps happening, though, doesn't it?
2. Blame society. Of course! This godless, amoral society that doesn't even allow the ten commandments to be posted in our courthouses! Oh, wait, thats not a liberal thing.
3. Yes, guns kill people. People who fire those guns at people go to prison, but the guns remain. This is something legislation can actually DO SOMETHING about, specifically, don't let violent criminals buy guns. Any pragmatist (that is, someone who does not fanatically follow some ideology), right wing or left wing, can see and appreciate the value of gun control.
4. Ah, the judicial system. Yes, the lax bankrupcy laws and the ease of launching civil suits are direct contributors to the moral decay of our society. Oh, wait, thats not a liberal position either! In fact, I don't know *any time* that liberals have placed the 'blame' on the justice system. Usually, the government in power is acting in such a conservative manner that the courts are our only redress (as people, left or right). Like, oh, segregation, and abortion...
5. Anybody but the bad guy... who would already have been blamed and thrown in jail. If that were enough, however, would we not live in a perfect utopian, peaceful society? Is there no value in looking past the offender at the real causes? Is it Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's fault that they shot up their school? Yes, it sure is, but we can sit on our asses and pretend they were evil and close our eyes to all the peers, family members and law enforcement who failed them repeatedly over so many years that led up to it.
Hillary is on the wrong side of this issue, but I can't blame her completely. Thats the political climate in Washington. Oh I'm doing it again, aren't I? How stupid of me to see that there are deeper issues than a single politician with presidential ambition.
Orwell was obviously an anti-communist. He was a left-wing anti-communist.
Please note that I was responding to the grandparent poster's assertion that he was a "Godless anti-state commie." I never claimed anything more than the obvious fact that Orwell was decidedly anti-communist.
The first anti-communists were on the left
No, the first anti-communists were on the right. In fact, by 1947, the only major liberal organization that had denounced Communism was the Union for Democratic Action. They figured out that reflexively fighting the right out of habit on this one wasn't going to fly, and in 1947 they renamed themselves to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and expanded their role towards recruiting other liberal organizations in opposing communism. Within 2 years, the ACLU and NAACP were on board, and the left managed to outpace the right on this front, but it took time.
The problem here is that you've been taught to associate liberalism, the left, communism, and socialism together as though they are all the same thing.
Huh? I made no such assertion. It was the person I was responding to who lumped communism in with liberalism. Look, my point was simple:
1. Orwell was not a communist.
2. Using quotes by Orwell to bash current U.S. foreign policy (in particular the war on terror) is dishonest. He clearly advocated the use of force against external threats.
Honestly, it sounds to me like you and I are in agreement on most of this. You are pointing out that Orwell's political ideals can't be so easily be claimed as right-wing, and I am saying that he wouldn't have held much esteem for today's left, either.
Don't you dare try and claim Orwell for the right. He's a Godless anti-state commie, thank you very much.
Yup, he was a card carrying lefty. Just like Christopher Hitchens and Paul Wolfowitz.
I call bullshit. You might consider picking up Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism."
He didn't much care for lefty peaceniks, it would seem. So using his quotes to bash current U.S. policy is somewhat disingenous. I'll buy that he was more populist than your average conservative, but you're going to tell me that the man who wrote Animal Farm was a communist? Get real.
Don't you dare try and claim Orwell for the right. He's a Godless anti-state commie, thank you very much.
God bless 'im.
KFG
Orwell wrote 1984 because he was afraid of the Left. Big Brother, Uncle Joe. IngSoc, English Socialism. The Party.
Have you read any Orwell? He was a libertarian Marxist who fought in the POUM in the Spanish Civil War.
Take, for instance, these excerpts from Homage to Catalonia:
- I have no particular love for the idealised 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
- It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle . . . There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.
- Human beings were behaving as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.
And more importantly, from "Why I Write":
- The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I know it.
Don't you dare try and claim Orwell for the right. He's a Godless anti-state commie, thank you very much.
"Because I don't believe that the majority of America, let alone 60% of us, want the government to be able to get search warrants without a judge's consent. To force us to keep quiet about a search. To invade the privacy of our medical and library records."
Let's be honest with ourselves. The majority of America has no idea what you're talking about.
Clearly, ethical abstractions like these are Un-American. Until the majority of us start experiencing a concrete impact on our "liberties," nobody will care about these general Constitutional principles and the minority (and minorities) they protect.
Records? Warrants? What, like Law And Order? I saw a great episode last week...
Practical, cosmetic freedoms -- the freedom to purchase, to be entertained, to write pointless and impotent screeds on Slashdot -- are the best technique ever yet invented to keep us in line and not really giving a damn. After all, everything else is just Godless intellectual hippie poetry or something. Give me NASCAR or give me Death!
So I can't call myself a godless liberal Deist? I see your point about slapping labels onto others BUT labels is what we have. Consider this list we hear about: welfare queens, godless liberals, libertarians, conservative/liberal Christians, communists, and it goes on. Most people don't consider others to be people. They're black, white Asian, libertarian, and so on. That is a major prolem in America that labels are more important (along with money and cheap Chinese crap) than people. Consider the problem of outsourcing. If someone is against it, they are isolationist, anti-American, anti-corporate, and those are the nicer names coming from libertarians and Republicans. As long as people ID with labels, we can't get around it. I am an Independant since I hate the idea of political parties. But neocons and libertarians are happy with giving America away to make the rich wealthier, reduce the middle class, and make America lose it's power just so they might get taxes reduced. Sorry but I prefer American made due to quality.
"Piss Christ" is just stupid. Urine and a cross is not art but waste material with a Christian symbol. You want religious art, I recommend Renainense artists.
As for neocons and libertarians, all of you can bite me. American military needs bodies for Iraq. Sign up or shut up.
Why do liberals hate Christians? Liberals are to blame for NAFTA, CAFTA, godless video games, and my bad back.