Slashdot Mirror
Creationists Demand Equal Airtime With 'Cosmos'
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Travis Gettys reports that creationist Danny Falkner appeared Thursday on "The Janet Mefford Show" to complain that the Fox television series and its host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, had marginalized those with dissenting views on accepted scientific truths. "I don't recall seeing any interviews with people – that may yet come – but it's based upon the narration from the host and then various types of little video clips of various things, cartoons and things like that," said Falkner of Answers In Genesis who also complained that Tyson showed life arose from simple organic compounds without mentioning that some believe that's not possible. "I was struck in the first episode where he talked about science and how, you know, all ideas are discussed, you know, everything is up for discussion – it's all on the table – and I thought to myself, 'No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem." To be fair, there aren't a ton of shows on TV specifically about creationism says William Hamby. "However, there are entire networks devoted to Christianity, and legions of preachers with all the airtime they need to denounce evolution. Oh, and there was that major movie from a few years back. And there's a giant tax-payer subsidized theme park in Kentucky. And the movie about Noah. And entire catalogs of creationist movies and textbooks you can own for the low low price of $13.92.""
TV is not a government entity, you want equal time, pay up. You have no rights of speech with a privately owned business. You want your time in the spotlight during prime time, go out and make a show that doesn't suck, then pay for its spot to air. Its quite simple. Quit with the 'entitlement' mentality already.
Yes, i do realize the FCC says you have to give SOME time away to public interest to get a broadcast license, but not equal time.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Equal time to creationists on Cosmos, equal time for actual knowledge (read: science) on all televangelist broadcasts. That sounds like a fair compromise.
not a debate you would have anywhere in europe, not even in Rome....
the vast majority in europe would just start crying in laughter at the idea of creationism, because it's just so incredibly infantile...
Gee, I wonder what that 3 minutes about intelligent design part about and the 8 minutes about the eye that talks directly at the watchmaker argument that keeps getting trotted out by creationists.
Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to follow Sagan's old show and lines of reasoning. This means the worst is yet to come for "special creationists".
If they want to sell the fiction that 'flu strains don't change and pests can't get resistant to pesticides then they should pay for their own soapbox just like any other scam.
So should scientists demand equal time when TV stations air church services?
If we demanded equal time in church gatherings. I mean fair is fair right. So you creationists wouldn't object to that? In that case I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem.
Because Cosmos is a science show.
Creationists are wrong. End of. Just like the church was wrong about the earth being at the centre or the solar system. If creationists want to believe everything was created they must change their way of thinking about it. I don't believe in a deity but if there IS a God perhaps it created the universe?
Carl Sagan stated in the Original Cosmos in no uncertain terms that evolution was a fact, and not a theory.
Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to be staying true to the original and expanding on it a bit.
Yaknow, I used to think the Two Minutes Hate from Orwell's 1984 was the least realistic, most suspension-of-disbelief breaking part of the book. It just didn't make any sense and the idea of people getting up in front of others to show how much they hated Big Brother's enemies was just ridiculous. But now that I'm older, hell...what else is this story other than despising those who think differently than we do? We write something to show how much we support the prevailing point of view and then move on with the rest of our day. And keep an eye out for that bastard Emmanuel Goldstein, you never know where his agents are.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You got the wrong network, for made up stories you'd have to turn to Fox News.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The quickest way to discredit a moron is to hand him a microphone.
I hope this is a joke, otherwise I'm very sad.
What's the difference? Creationists don't demand government handout.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Not a joke, and also not in the Creationist camp either, is Nagel => http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception-ebook/dp/B008SQL6NS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395494879&sr=8-1&keywords=thomas+nagel
One views with some amusement that the magnitude of Evolutionist dogmatism roughly equals that of the Evolutionists.
For the record, I'm kind of disinterested in the topic.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Religion, magic, witchcraft, and other hocus pocus have no part in science.
I want to get up in front of people and tell them the truth. And I want to do it in your churches. And I want a cut of the money you collect as well.
Sound okay?
If they wanna be fair, then Cosmos should be given equal time in their church.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Do you really think everyone matches one of two camps?
FYI: Atheist and Libertarian-Republican-Conservative leaning. (I don't subscribe to any party, I THINK for myself and judge individually) and no, Obama-care is hurting everyone except welfare people... which I believe I may need before long as things go on as they are.
Believing that something is not possible is not good enough grounds to warrant inclusion in anything. There are reasons why some things are not discussed on shows about science, and that is because they are either irrelevant to the subject at hand or proven to be untrue. I don't know where this idea of every point of view being equal has arisen from, but it's fucking terrible in its ignorance. The whole reason every moron and his puppet made of hair and excrement wants their claims discussed as an equal to scientific claims is because of science's epistemic integrity. If their ideas had epistemic integrity of their own, they wouldn't care about science as an authority.
"No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem."
Nice try, except scientists have considered creationism. For instance, Stephen Jay Gould has written screeds analyzing creationism scientifically. The issue isn't a lack of consideration, but rather that such scientists have thoroughly refuted creationism. I actually wouldn't mind a series scientifically analyzing creationism in principle, perhaps along the lines of some of Gould's work, but I somehow doubt that such a public flaying would satisfy the good folks at AiG.
Noah?
This Noah?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt19...
With Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, visual effects galore and explosions - that Noah?
Yeah it may have some connections to the story of Noah, but then '300' had some connections to the actual story of the Battle of Thermopylae.. I don't think either should be taken too particularly seriously as exemplary of the source material.
It's hard to get equal time considering the material.
"And now we will take some time to discussing the evidence that supports the theory of creation.
(long uncomfortable pause)
Well, that's done. Back to science!"
Oh sorry, is that the wrong kind of creationism?
>;k
He should allow other scientists to present the other half of the data he consistently omits. Until then, he's only a deceiver looking to make converts to his personal religion: "And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf" (Exodus 32:24.) No one believed Aaron when he said that, and no one believes Tyson when he says the same thing about the "Cosmos."
How come these creations never have any equations to explain what they're talking about? This is science --> http://physics.info/equations/
I'd *love* to see that.
The FCC could force religious broadcasting channels to give equal time to well founded scientific shows. Like, science without any sort of religion involved at all. Every television show with religious content can be forced to contain an equal part science, presented by a person with a scientific background and no theology is allowed in that part.
That would pretty much derail every religious show broadcast.
I know what they want though. They want half of the Cosmos show, so they can preach during it. I wouldn't watch it, if half the content is ancient mythology.
I wonder if we could extend this to everything on television (cable or broadcast). Then we could have a perfect clusterfuck.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Using the Christians as ones that deny evolution is a huge mistake. The Christian Church (since 1996 by Pope John Paul II) have already accepted the concept of evolution.
Maybe the time doesn't evolute for them either?
It should be mentioned on the show in the same breath as "People used to believe the sun went around the earth, and that some kind of supreme being created the universe", there, 5 seconds, really 5 more than it deserves.
Honestly, these people should not be allowed to use ANYTHING which came from science, no electricity, no 'magic' wagons which travel 100kph on the 'freeway'.
Obamacare doesn't hurt me at all and I'm far from on welfare. Hell, it makes it easier for me to start a business if I ever get tired of my day job. Providing insurance to employees is no longer a cost borne only by employers with a conscience. Obamacare leveled the playing field there.
Since the big proof that Galileo had that the Earth moved was his theory of the tides. Unfortunately it predicts there's one tide a day, it's at the same time every day, and it's the same height.(IE It gets pretty much every observable fact about tides wrong.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
There are quite a few cable channels devoted to religion, at least on the cable provider we have here. Why don't they use those.
Maybe Roger Ailes can give them some time of Fox News as well.
that the only reasonable explanation for the lack of equal time is that God doesn't want the creationists to have it. How could a just and righteous creator hang his PR department out to dry like this? One might make the mistake of thinking that it is all just bullshit and that we reasonable people won't gain anything by engaging with the creationists...
You know, for giving them attention with that "debate" earlier this year. But let's be honest, they're going to do this shit no matter what.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
and others, there's not much of a difference there :)
I might sound like a science 1% but more evidence should equal more airtime.
Sigh. I love when the morons try to use science to prop up there nonsense. The Earth is not a closed system. It constantly exposed to "outside forces." For one, there is this big, burning ball of gas just 93 million miles away from us.
Just go watch 'Vikings' on the history channel. Between the bleeding bible as an omen, and the 2nd wife making the prophecy about the eye, fair and impartial historical drama it seems not to be.
And they're representing it as *FACTUALLY ACCURATE*!
It's boring. The special effects are pathetic and have little to do with science. How do you make physics, astronomy and biology boring in the the year 2014? It can only be explained by a creator that makes stupid people as well as smart people. And thanks for taking us back to the 80's with the journey through the blood stream. Definitely a series that will die young due to artificial selection.
From a subspecies of H.Sapiens with a hig-sigma level of certainty to have difficulties in removing parentheses from an algebraic expression when there is a minus sign before the parenthesis? I do not think so.
Equal airtime from a subgrup of human society as a whole who are intelligent enough to use that same "equal" sign/notion between the words "trust" and "faith"? I don't think so.
Equal airtime from followers of a certain moral-set that basically boils down to a freedom for them to yell all day long near your ear while dismissing your freedom to not listen to them? I don't think so.
Have these degenerate life-forms read books such as "A Brief History of Time"? Or "The Particle at the End of the Universe"? Or "The Genome"? Can they understand what does the results of BICEP2 mean for human knowledge? I don't think so.
I don't mind them barking all day long. I only want them to do it within their own fucking playground. I for one do not give a single hair of my armpit to teach how the world works to people who willingly refuse to do it. Let them rot within the gooey mind-masturbation they chose to live. Just keep them off my own grass!
Equal airtime for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
http://www.venganza.org/
Answers in Genesis is a serious website? I thought its just a troll or parody or something. People seriously believe this stuff??
Lets just stop pretending these guys are worth listening to, and stop giving them an illusion of credibility, shall we?
Let them fade into obscurity and talk to their own flock. We don't give flatearthers this kind of attention. They are just making noise to promote themself. Like their site, which is featured prominently in this article (and which I'm sure a lot of people clicked on).
THIS is the kind of attention they want.
morcego
"I want this world not to have meaning because a meaningless world frees me to my own erotic and political pursuits." Aldous Huxley
"my own erotic (homosexuality) and political (statism, tyranny) pursuits"
A worldview in which all that exist are space, time, matter, energy and chance allows people to pursue their own perverted and tyrannical ways.
The dissenters should just commission their own series, perhaps called Creation.
It opens with a bright blue eyed boy of about 4 years old, sitting on his knees on the carpet, toy rocket in hand, talking to what is presumably his great-grandfather who is seated in a comfortable chair, sipping from a cup of tea in his right hand, a copy of the Holy Bible on one of the armrests. "Grampy," the boy asks, "where did the world and all the stars come from?"
The man puts his other hand on the bible. "Boy," he says, "the answer to that and all other questions is right in here!" He puts the cup of tea on a side table and picks up the bible, thumbing through it, then closing it and holding it up in front of the boy. "It's all here because God wanted it to be here. He said: Let there be light! And there was light. And the next 5 days He spent building everything you see, including us. And on the 7th day He rested."
The boy ponders over this for a second, then frowns. "But Grampy... then where did God come from?" The man's face turns into an angry scowl, he lifts up the bible high into the air as if to strike down the young man with it... then screams "Blasphemy! How dare you ask such questions! Off you go, get out of my eyes!"
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
What about *equal* tax exemption status for Science organization that the Churches have been enjoying?
Creationists have all the air time and chance to express their views anyone could ever wish for. Equal time, what a bunch of crap.
As for the "our views aren't being considered", this is a SCIENCE SHOW, it deals with scientific evidence. The day creationists can show ANY EVIDENCE that the Earth is young, that life forms didn't progressively evolve from simpler to more complex, that there is no single unifying tree of life, etc then they can complain that they haven't gotten a proper scientific airing. Given that they have NOTHING, no contrary testable hypothesis, no evidence that stands up to any scrutiny, etc they've got no leg to stand on. Its too bad for them that their Flying Spaghetti Monster is not science, but it isn't our problem.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
An opinion is like an asshole. Everybody has one. That's why a mere opinion is not worth putting on TV, unless you can make a coherent argument for your opinion. Just "I disagree" is not enough. Just "I believe differently" isn't enough either. "Accepted scientific truths" are accepted because someone did the work and found evidence in support of these theories and no evidence disproving them. If you've done the work and found evidence (not "but the Bible says it was so and so), then write a paper about it, get it published and it will go on TV by way of becoming "accepted scientific truth".
They'd get less than that. There are roughly 18 different denominations. So an hour long broadcast (with no ads, intro or credits) would give 3.33 minutes/ea.
You can't just group "Christian" together, as there are many major denominations. It gets simpler if you combine them farther back in their history. I'm pretty sure if a block of time was given to "Abrahamic religions", that would cause a holy war, as that includes Judiasm, Christianity, Islam, and Bahai.
You can't just base it on major denominations. There are roughly 313 groups of religions, which would cut the 60 minute show down to about 11.5 seconds each.
But not every church of every sect agrees on everything. So we may have to break it down to the IRS recognized religious organizations. All 1.8 million of them. So each one would get a whopping 0.002 seconds. So not even a single frame.
The author of the article may want his church included, but so will the Westborough Baptist Church, Church of Scientology, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Church of Euthenasia, and Church of the Subgenius. (I think those last two are still recognized as religious organizations for tax purposes) .
As an ordained minister of the First Church of Smythe, the Universal Life Church, and others I printed out online, I will need multiple timeslots to represent the beliefs of my followers, which may or may not be consistent with any other organization.
Or, they can all just go do their own thing on their own dime.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Creationism was discussed extensively by scientists, 100 years ago. I guess he missed those debates, and their conclusion.
If creationists can show scientific evidence for their ideas and want to pay for the air time then why not? Just because scientists interpret fact X in a certain way does not mean that it is the only interpretation or that it is even valid. There are many serious unanswered questions which are current commercialized science machine does not want to address.
I'd mod the cartoons -1 flamebait.
I don't care what people believe. If they leave the rest of us alone, then go for it. There is great misery on it's way because we have become a society of busybodies, always up in each others shit. This WILL NOT end well.
whaaaaaa whaaaaa whaaaa!!!!
Religion has done no better by turning brother against brother throughout its existence. War, death, and suffering are synonymous with religion and history is the proof, there is no denying it.
An anthropology instructor from back in my college days came up with a good response to the same question. Which creation myth? There's the Hindu myth, several beautiful creation stories from indigenous people, etc.
This is what we have become. Intolerance will never die, it changes sides from time to time. What I find most laughable is how many people have convinced themselves they are above the fray. Narcissism and meanness, this is your hour!
... just as long as every creationist church allows competing sermons each week to be conducted by devotees to the great and powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I agree; we have to avoid this deep indoctrination of children without choice; every christian church gathering as should share time equally between their own brand of Christianity, Kibology, Eventualism and the Pastafarians. Other religions such as Hinduism, Islam and The Cult of the Earth Godess should be added as and when representatives are available.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
John
...41 minutes of his time. You can watch it here
As usual, the AIG folk seem to think that all ideas must be equal. They're not. There is nothing scientific about ID; it throws out one of the axioms of the philosophy of science, that there are natural causes for all phenomena we observe in the universe, in order to shoehorn in it's 'uncaused cause'. Which I find hilarious, because they'll insist on the axiom that all that exists has a cause, then immediately throw that philosophical axiom out, as soon as they get to their designer. They will then not only call that logical, they'll call it scientific evidence for the creator, when there's not one shred of observational evidence offered in the argument. They'll cite the Big Bang, but what they like to gloss over is that there's no evidence in the theory of the Big Bang that says the primordial singularity came out of 'philosophical nothing'.
Never mind that, even if there was a shred of credibility to ID, you don't start educating people about the fundamentals of something by teaching the parts we aren't sure of. The *only* intellectually honest way to approach an imagined controversy between ID and evolution, is to not teach either until the students in question are looking at the cutting edge of the subject. You don't teach possible interpretations of quantum gravity to high school students, you teach them Newton's laws.
But there is no controversy. AIG and Discovery Institute know this. They don't care. It's all about ensuring that their belief system remains predominant culturally by way of insinuating itself into a public education system we've already indicated will not and should not advocate for any religion. It speaks volumes of their intellectual honesty and ethical centre that they continue to press this agenda behind the guise of 'open discussion', when the discussion has already happened, both in scientific and legal domains.
They want time, they can bloody well go buy it themselves.
Yeah... I have a feeling that if the guy actually got what he wanted,... equal time for religious and science views on a topic, he would get the exact opposite of what he hoped and we would see a massive uptick in educational programming.
You know, from an economic policy and growth perspective, that might not actually be such a bad idea..... research organizations that are non-profit can already claim tax exempt status, but giving them the same range as religious organizations could really encourage some movement forward.
creationists ===> so, a cretin-ist (hint - anagram)
redneck geek
Living creatures are not at rest.
Oops. There goes that scientific-sounding theory.
Congratulations on being lucky enough to never really get sick.
Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to follow Sagan's old show and lines of reasoning. This means the worst is yet to come for "special creationists".
Sadly he also follow the old show with regards to historical accuracy. Hypatia and Giordano Bruno are trotted out once again; I'm sure if the show is re-made again they'll make a hash of Galileo.
A good chronological overview of Hypatia from Michael Flynn:
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-mean-streets-of-old-alexandria.html
And Galileo:
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html
I'm hoping he'll write up a similar series for Bruno. If "Cosmos" mentions Bruno they should also mention Deepak Chopra, since he has as much to do with modern astronomy as Bruno did in the late 1500s, i.e., not much.
From the Cosmos show, the key ingredient of all life is the DNA factory in the cell. Where the DNA is stripped and duplicated and new cells are created. This is true for all life, and the process of accidental mistakes that result in desirable traits become part of the life tree because the life is more sustainable or competes well compared to previous versions, ultimately over an extremely long time, 100's of millions of generations results in the totality of life on earth.
The unanswered question, is how does this DNA duplication factory happen by accident? Not to mention the accidental creation of DNA in the first place. I believe that these are unanswered and unduplicated in any experiment or theory (one theory are that it isn't accidental everywhere, but somehow happened accidentally once, and redistributed in the universe by some form, an alien invasion), (Other theories are that is a divine spark), (Others is that the universe in a perverse form of chemistry and physics demands that life spontaneously appears wherever the conditions are ripe). It's not a question of the eye, or the complexity of the brain. But life itself.
The next question becomes why small ever more complex that life is, how does this accidental creation of life itself, does the basic operating system, which is I suppose essentially chemistry, how does this chemical thing that happened, how in the world of I suppose anything, is rich enough in the get-go to ultimately support the ability to create all life and all life functions. (I think that this question may indeed be easier than the step 1 questions). Why is the first accidental step to life a single cell microbe, and not say a full grown human being. Why is accident 1 not more complex? We share 50% of our DNA with Bananas. We both have the same DNA factory inside our cells.
Everything in Cosmos is probably close to the truth - what they don't say, is that it's a roadmap of what GOD did.
God's creation story as told in the bible is for simple people, uneducated, unfamiliar with scientific principles and facts.
The two stories are the same, told from different perspectives.
Get over yourself. If God didn't want us to know *how* we were created, we wouldn't learn about it.
However, since we took the bite of that apple (read as "We asked Why or How"), we've been going down that road of learning anything and everything we could.
And keep an eye out for that bastard Emmanuel Goldstein, you never know where his agents are.
It is obvious that Cereal Killer was running the whole show. Acid Burn & Crash Override were nothing but unknowing minions. I wouldn't be surprised if The Plague was just a patsy as well. It was just a way to use Razer & Blades operation to take over the media 1984-style.
That's not luck. It's paying attention.
As for Obamacare sucking? What do you expect when insurance companies write laws? Also, the law made a liar out of Obama. Either he didn't know and lied because he wasn't told about the details and content of the law or he knew and he's exactly as evil and deceitful as people believe. Either way, it's an unsuitable situation.
And what do I get for my trouble of paying for affordable healthcare I never used for all these years? QUADRUPLE THE RATE. Thanks a lot Obamacare.
Sadly Christianity in the US has sects that might as well be in a Looney Tunes cartoon. It starts with rabid, primitive ministers who preach absurd sermons. They take one word, not understanding the meaning, and form cults from the linguistic confusion. LeBron James played an inspired basketball game the other night. It was wonderful to watch. He may have been inspired by god, Himself. That does not imply that Lebron played a perfect basketball game. there is a huge difference between inspired and perfect. The men who wrote the Bible were inspired. The King James version in particular is a work of the highest art. That does not imply that the bible is perfect. After all, it was written by men who were just like LeBron james inspired but not perfect. Further the message of the Bible had to be delivered in a way that people could understand it. Terms that are understood to men in the 21st. century would have meant nothing at all to men 2,000 years ago. But take a backwoods Baptist minister wound up in full religious fervor and he can take a Bible and twist it into nonsense beyond all reason. As America has declined we have more and more wrectched people who simply latch on to straws trying to survive. The doctrines that they latch onto would be an abomination to Christ and are not part of the Christian faith. But we all understand that no matter how much proof of evolution emerges that backwoods nut of a minister can simply claim the proofs were created by the devil and are all false proofs. If anything it was that minister who was created by the devil to deceive the followers.
Kibology?
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
A long time.
Equal time? Well then we need more series like Cosmos. Turn on your TV tomorrow morning (Sunday), flip through the channels and tell me how many you find "speaking the gospel"
Evolution is a fact, and there's a whole Theory surrounding that fact: the Theory of Evolution. Theory and unfounded hypothesis are as far from one another as any two concepts can be.
The problem we have is that "political correctness" is too entrenched in the Creationism vs Evolution battle, and that PC-ness dictates "everything/everyone should be treated equally and fairly". All fine for "fairness" (how to define it is another matter), but ideas/opinions are NOT people, and thus do not have some sort of right... .... crazy?
Let me give an example which exagerates the point:
Lets say that I have this belief that 2+2 = 5, and this differs from mainstream thought that 2+2=4 (except where pentium processors are involved where it is 3.9997, but that's a different matter).
I start complaining that my opinion/theory/belief/religion (how you want to define the credence of 2+2=5 is perhaps the crux) is NOT being given equal time in maths classes across the country.
Am I justified in demanding equal time?
Perhaps it is justified to teach it as an alternative school of philosophy (supposing that philosophy classes typically talk about different schools of thought, and they will present those most widely seen -if of course my 2+2=5 gains traction), however, to teach it in a MATHS class where we are talking about mathematical proofs, or at most teaching theories that have not been MATHEMATICALLY deemed unlikely, would probably be
In the same way, evolution is science. creationism is religion. Trying to push creationism into the realm of science, would demand applying the scientific method to it, the same as trying to push 2+2=5ism into maths would demand applying mathematical principals into it.
We're talking about science. You may not like it, but the world works on science (as opposed to praying on religion).
Equal time for kooky opinions vs science fact is not fair. Just in the same way that flat-earth believers should not be given same time as round-world (or irregular sphericalists if you prefer).
Creationism is far-fetched and sustained by belief, which is very close to being the definition of religion. If you want to bring it into the realm of science, then we get to the point of extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof... Once we get that, then we can start talking about shifting mainstream. Meanwhile, keep it in literal-reading bible schools of thought, which is where it belongs.
All the above is very opinionated. My opinion.
We are finding out that our entire cosmos is full of energy, even in the vaccum of space. And if you think in the perspective that God is the energy that fills the cosmos. And everything is just part of that energy that makes all of existence possible. And if these things like evolution and the big bang are the starting points of our existence. Then why is this wrong? When Genesis was being written the people then could not understand things like Stars, Galaxys, Black Holes, and Micro Organisms. Does that mean that they didn't exist? no The bible should be used as a guide post. Not as a tool to beat people into submission, and taken completly literally. Even Jesus Tought in metaphors.
Wait, Church believes Earth is the center of the Earth, yet Galileo didn't believe that. But Galileo was a Christian. I'm so confused. Oh, wait, Galileo was wrong about the tides. Ah, all is now reconciled.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Religion is a pacifier for weak-minded people who need some sort of fairy
tale so they can deal with the harsh realities of life.
Obviously there is a huge surplus of such people but that doesn't
mean these backward willfully ignorant idiots deserve any special
treatment.
Seems that the Designer blundered with the respiratory system and lungs then.
And what do I get for my trouble of paying for affordable healthcare I never used for all these years? QUADRUPLE THE RATE. Thanks a lot Obamacare.
I have a hard time believing your rate quadrupled. I mean, mine only tripled. Yup , in one month, it tripled. Of course, over the last 3 years it actually went up by a factor of 9.
Obamacare has forced me to drop my individual affordable healthcare because the rate tripled. Now I am having to go to my employer to try to get on the insurance plan that they offer. It is still twice what I was paying last year and four times what I was paying three years ago, but it is better than three times as high. At current growth rates, it will only be two more years before I have to spend 100% of my income on insurance.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
> Free hypocrisy points to all the posters who bash these guys but would gladly sign up for the Obama brown-shirt core to enforce "fairness" and "equality" on Fox new
I think these people only exist in your own mind. It's like many things that Tea Baggers like to believe in.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It is possible that Cosmos is on Fox to satisfy the demands of those who wanted equal time on Fox News.
1. As soon as creationists use actual facts: objectively observable, testable and debatable facts instead of simply pointing at a book and saying "there's the proof" then I will be more than happy to bankroll a Cosmos style show just for them. I don't have the money but I don't think they'll ever have the "goods" so I don't have to worry about raising it either. "WE" the collective have debated the creationist/evolution ideas ad-nauseam and creationists have no new information to bring to the debate. All of their arguments have been debunked and science has provided provable or plausible answers to every question posed to it.
2. Your right to free speech is just that a right. No-one has any obligation to provide time, space or audience for your expression. If you want to produce a show about creationism and can get a network to show it, good for you. Some believe we are all defended from aliens, or a flying spagettin monster; Cosmos has no obligation to offer those opinions either. Look Christians: There are about a billion of you. There are also about a billion Muslims and a billion Hindus and all of you believe that you worship the one true god and know the true meaning of all the ancient texts. You can't all be correct and the most plausible answer is that you are all wrong and there is no god, gods, spirits, or any other super natural powers.
3. The premise of most of religion's dislike of the Big Bang theory is that "nothing can just be, it has to be created". Well, where did you god come from if nothing "just is"? How improbable is it that super intelligent being that exists everywhere all the time(omnipresent) and has total knowledge(omniscient) and control(omnipotent) over every single quark in the entire Universe just spawned in to existence out of nothingness? For all your rants, you have the same problem as science except that science says "we don't know but we're looking really hard". Religion says "your question is stupid" (see item #1).
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
It's the Sign we were awaiting!
The New cComming is near!
http://www.kibo.com/
Oh, fuck, my eyes...
-- 29A the number of the Beast
They should ask the Commedy Channel. They would be great between Family Guy and Tosh.0
-- 29A the number of the Beast
He said objects. How does non living matter become alive? It can't. Or if it can, why don't we see it happening around us? What? It only happened that one time? Lucky.
Creationism believers already get plenty of time on Fox. Unfortunately it's always the same audience that pays any attention to it.
belief = gullible stupidity
thinking = analytic intelligence
I happen to find thought provoking shows a lot more interesting than any preaching, which I just either very funny or rage provoking.
To quote a Jain scholar on the absurdity of creationist belief,
"Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected.
If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now?
How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression.
If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally.
If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense?
If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could.
If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all modality, would have no desire to create anything.
If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe?
If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble.
If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else
If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not make creation wholly blissful free from misfortune?
If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all,
And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place?
Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
My favorite is the critique section in the wiki of this notion.
You know one time I did have a good argument against taxing churches. Now for the life of me I can't remember it.
Tax the bastards!
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Are you a fool or just pretending to be one, that is, a troll?
(1) There is no "equal time" regulation of the airwaves any longer
(2) Creationists are not all Christians
(2) Not all Christians are Creationists
(3) Not all Christian Creationists are ID (Intelligent Design subscribers)
(4) Not all Christian Creationists have the concerns that the ID is labelled to have
(5) Speech is free and you are free to listen or not
(6) 1 person, that is you, doesn't make a "we" (And believe me, you don't have the standing to claim a "royal" or "editorial" we.)
So, single-handedly and in three short sentences, you have lumped most of the world in your shroud of bigotry.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
Yes yes yes this this THIS times a million!
We need to start taxing 'religious' organizations the same way we tax every other business -- because that's what they are: businesses. Have been for a long, long time now, and it's time everyone stopped sticking their heads in the sand and admitted that. "Oh but that money is to do charitable work!" some are going to say, but I call bullshit on that. Know what they do with that money? They spend it on politics, and on building extravagant churches! Enough's enough, time for them to pay up like everyone else, and time for them to get their religious noses out of politics.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If he doesn't - he doesn't seem to be interested in "equal" opportunities for the propaganda of his believers, right?
And again: The strongest proof against "Intelligent Design" is that there are people who believe in it.
Science organizations can be non-profit.
A great number are non-profit and tax-exempt.
That would include colleges and universities, academic and scientific groups, etc., etc.
Which Science organization are you referring to that isn't a non-profit?
Oh hell yes.
A show like Cosmos is made only once every couple of decades. I want a creationist version of Cosmos to be made, and shown on TV. I want the creationists to get one of their best lecturers, and for them to go all out to beat Tyson deGrassee. Go ahead, do it. Fox will show it. Write up the script. Less talking, more producing.
Support creationism as science.
Be an ignoramus for Jesus.
"I was struck in the first episode where he talked about science and how, you know, all ideas are discussed, you know, everything is up for discussion – it's all on the table – and I thought to myself, 'No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem.
I was struck in this comment where he talked about the show and how, you know, all ideas are discussed, you know, everything is up for discussion – it's all on the table – and I thought to myself, 'No, consideration of he being a troll with asshole and mouth switched places here is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem.'
I demand that all churches be required to devote the same time talking about "accepted scientific truths" as they do talking about their imaginary friends.
It makes more sense than demanding a show about scientific truths talk about just their preference of imaginary friends.
offering weekly moral instruction to children
Particularly laughable. In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine. Not appropriate 'moral instruction' for a modern era. Keep the fairy tales out of science programming, end of story.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
From what I've read about it, saying the Noah movie counts as an argument for Christianity is like saying Thor: The Dark World was intended as an argument for Forn Siðr.
Time for the Slashdot ritual flogging. It's been about five minutes since the last one.
Prehistoric history is kind of a contradiction in terms, isn't it? It also isn't scientific, not being amenable to experiment.
But carry on with your ritual denunciation of those who won't recite your catechism ... because that's so rational ...
Which version of prehistory you believe has no practical significance at all.
That's not luck. It's paying attention.
You should write a book. Call it "How I Dodged Cancer". I don't think you'd have to worry about affordable anything, then.
Produce your own series. Find financial backers/advertisers and present the finished product to Fox or some other network. For them, its all about the money. If you have the backing, they'll sell you air time to hawk vacuum cleaners.
I'm getting the impression that the Creationists don't really have a coherent theory to present. Instead, they just hang onto the coattails of science and try to start fights. So, where is Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye's 5 minutes on the end of the Christian TV shows to refute the material presented?
Have gnu, will travel.
Just move to Oklahoma. The local Fox affiliate KOKH blacked out the evolution segment in an episode Cosmos.
Morons.
personally I want to see taxes get slashed accross the board and spending at a federal level cut by a drastic number as well. Let the people and states keep their money
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
No, the issue was the only one of the pieces of evidence Galileo provided that absolutely required heliocentrism(IE a moving earth) was his explanation of the tides. (You can have the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus with either the Tychonic or Copernican models. BTW those 2 are mathematically equivalent.) Basically he said the tides were caused because the earth moves around the sun and that causes the water to slosh around. The problem was that the model he gave ends up not matching reality.(Like I wrote it basically gets every observable fact about tides wrong except there are tides. This was apparently noticed at the time.) This is kind of odd given that Galileo is pretty much presented as the guy that "followed what the evidence told him" and "the father of science" stuff.(Since given the evidence at the time you literally couldn't determine which one was right, Tychonic or Copernican.) Of course once you have Newtonian mechanics and optics you have no hope of keeping Tychonic. Then again most of the stories you hear in school about Galileo don't mention the whole "G and the pope were old college buddies" or that he was basically playing politics in the late 14 early 15 hundreds. Of course the REALLY stupid thing about this portrayal is the Church has never been biblical literalists. That's the protestans.(How people get that confused is beyond me.) The RNC are control freaks, as long as they give you the thumbs up everything is ok. Do it one second before that and you have a problem.(Don't eat fish on Friday, time for mass, father says sit, father says kneel, father says stand.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Particularly laughable. In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine.
Ask True Believers about this, and they reply with variations on "Oh, that part of the bible does not count." Really.
Emmanuel Goldstein was a proxy for Trotsky - a caricature of a villain on whom the ruling clique blamed everything bad to deflect attention from their own incompetence and violence. Of course Trotsky was utterly powerless once exiled, and in "1984" there's nothing to suggest that Goldstein was any different. Goldstein could just as well have been dead at that point; it was simply convenient for the party to keep him in the popular consciousness.
So, do you have any evidence that the creationist movement is actually some fiction (possibly loosely inspired by real people) foisted upon us by the scientific community to distract us? Because from where I sit, it's quite obvious that creationists are not only a large and loud fraction of the American public, they're winning election to school boards and congressional seats, and attempting to refashion the primary school curriculum to include thinly-disguised proselytizing. (Meanwhile, their co-religionists, who may or may not be Biblical literalists, still account for more than 80% of Americans, if you believe the polls.) But maybe it's all a farce and that Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate was actually staged using a Hollywood character actor, and the real Ken Ham (if he ever existed) is actually living in a mud hut in Patagonia with a handful of peasants calling themselves "Answers in Genesis". And meanwhile, the scientific community, which is apparently powerless to stop federal budget cuts to basic research, nonetheless pulls the strings from behind the scenes...
So, are you just terrible at analogies, or is that what you really believe? Because it's taking conservative paranoia about liberal media control to the point of self-parody.
And for each viewpoint...
So we got Christians, Atheists, FSM, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindu, Scientologists, etc... Keep things going and it'll only be like one second for each every service day.
I think these people only exist in your own mind. It's like many things that Tea Baggers like to believe in.
You can actually find a handful of people who do believe that we should apply the fairness doctrine to Fox News - none of whom matter, of course. Juan Cole was the most famous, but I haven't heard a peep out of him for years. The remainder are the usual handful of trolls on Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, etc. They have about as much influence with the Democratic party as the militia movement has with the GOP, but they make convenient bogeymen.
Fox tv is complaining Fox News will not give them equal time?
Demonstrate magic and not only will everyone give you the time to espouse your ideas but everyone will throw gobs of money to figure it out.
Most of the crazy ideas only "work" because of magic. People of faith do not want to admit that but seriously which of these stories that people logically have a problem with would not work without magic or basic evidence. "Because" is not the only thing you need to give as an answer.
Look at the math for how the ark would with what we have around us today. Feeding, waste, and the shear number of species or as some would say "macroevolution" is never explained for the ark. There are how many types of insects? How many types of squirrels? Monkeys? Fresh water fish?
"Magic" becomes the only answer people like that need but they never have to prove anything....
I sound bitter because I am. These special people from a special place drive me to drink from getting the f-ing bill due to their beliefs and unwillingness to do the most basic act and think.
Church believes X. Dude comes along and says, "I can proof X is false because of reason Y which leads to prediction Z." Prediction Z turns out to be inaccurate. Therefore, no compelling reason for the church to change belief in X in such a way as to account for reason Y.
They have Fox News and all kinds of TV evangelist and church services. Remember, those churches are tax exempt.
photosMy Photostream
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
@plover...
In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it.
After all the bible tells them to do it!
... once all of the science organizations start running various charities, food shelves, hospitals, orphanages, offering weekly moral instruction to children ...
You mean like finding answers to health, nutrition, construction problems the way scientists, physicians and engineers do? Or like passing on modern ideas on philosophy and morality in stead of ancient and outdated scripture, the way academia does?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Being a scientific organization is one of the major listed justifications for tax exempt status - assuming the other criteria are met.
The part in bold there is kind of the point. Scientific organizations--actually educational organizations of all kinds--can indeed apply for non-profit status, but they have to prove they meet the standards. Churches are assumed to qualify a priori.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
They are by definition on the margins already.
Creation science is fringe science. This doesn't mean it's *wrong*, it means it doesn't get mentioned in a discussion of mainstream science, except to be refuted. That's just the way it is. Postmillenialsm doesn't get taught in fundamentalist Christian Sunday school as a valid alternative to The Rapture; it's only brought up to be refuted. Socialism doesn't get taught in American civics classes as a valid alternative to free market capitalism either.
That's the way things are: fringe groups, right or wrong, face an uphill battle if they want to be treated as credible. Fortunately science (and even social science) is much less prejudicial towards fringe groups than religion or politics. There are climate scientists who believe that climate change won't happen because it would violate God's plan. They still publish in mainstream science journals too, and are doing legitimate science. Science is not concerned with the psychological reasons you believe something, but rather what evidence you can bring to the table.
So creationists *do* have equal time. So far as I know there is no scientific journal that has a policy of rejecting papers because the authors are creationists. They just can't publish papers that treat creationism as an established theory. That's jumping way ahead of what they have to first: impeach evolution by natural selection under conditions favorable to it as the null hypothesis.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Gay
Intelligent Designer, of course, why else would the gay parts fit together so well?
Make your own damn Cosmos.
They are, sometimes. ;)
Funny that they have a fit if you dare even suggest taxing churches but didn't their own book say "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's"?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
instead of "that some believe that's not possible" and it would be okay. Or people believing in fairies will be next demanding airtime.
They can demand all they want. What I demand is, that if a show is supposed to present scientific results about what we know about the universe at this point, then it should not feed religious issues into the topic. Make a different show, name it differently, and talk about religious issues all you want. But demanding all scientific publications (tv or not) also include all kinds of religious and creativist ideas as well is plainly idiotic. If you feel offended by that view, then at least you know how other people feel when you demand them to be fed religious issues everywhere they turn. And that comes from a person (yes, me) who has been regularly going to church since early childhood. Religion has its place, and I don't believe Cosmos is that. Neither is our children's biology class for that matter.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Teach the controversy! My great great great granddad is an alien! From the planet Xyxyxyx 7!
No, what I mean is what I wrote: running charities, food shelves, hospitals, orphanages, and so on. Developing academic knowledge of the variance in protein content of a particular wheat variety doesn't actually feed people. You have to give them food for them to be fed. Developing a better bonding process for shingles so that they last 30 years instead of 25 years doesn't actually house people. You have to give them a place to sleep in a building for them to be housed. Scientific work is both useful and important, but it is not the only important work.
Many of the so called "modern ideas" are simply restatements of bad old ideas. But perhaps you can tell me, when the principle of treat people as you wish to be treated, or love your neighbor, become obsolete?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Some believe that it's not possible that life arose from simple organic compounds. Sure, there are people who believe a lot of things. There are the Mormons and the Scientologists who have their space alien fantasies. There are those who think that Jews and black people are inherently inferior to those of "Aryan" ancestry. There are those who still cling to the idea that Obama was not born in Hawaii, that he is a Muslim, etc. etc. etc. Yet, nearly everyone to actually analyzes such beliefs can find no credence for them. "Cosmos" is science, after all, what has been demonstrated to be true or seems to be so based upon the evidence.
If the lunatic fringe want equal time, they can make their own damned show and show it on one of the Christian nutcase cable channels.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Only the most moronic of people would believe as it has long been disproved by the very science you want to wine dont include you.
You have to have you like the bones like Neil has at a very minimum. But of course they creationism is not science it religion.
And anyone who cant understand that should not be allowed near your kids.
Last time that happened in the USA, it was called the Great Depression, you want version 2.0, so the rich can start jumping out of windows again?
Not nearly all Protestants are biblical literalists. Most of the mainstream believe that scripture is sufficient without needing a person to interpret it for the common man. That becomes more a matter of the priest or minister being just a person who leads rituals and not a necessary intermediary between the common man and God. But sufficent is not at all the same thing as inerrant.
I agreee that the Republican National Comittee are control freaks, and to a lesser extent, so's the Roman Catholic Church (I llke this Pope better than Bennie so far though). Most organized religions devolve to be about control, whatever the founders and reformers intended. Galileo got more flack for ignoring the Pope's order not to publish for the common man in Itallian until he had presented his arguments to the learned in Latin and let the church have prior approval, than anything else. Secular judges still put people away for talking about a case outside court, and not usually just house arrest either, so I'm not sure why people think what the RCC did there was especially wrong, but are OK with their legal system today. .
Who is John Cabal?
Stoopid is easy to spot. You're STOOPID.
To qualify for tax exempt status churches also have to meet various criteria. (.pdf)
I will also note that everyone on Slashdot loves to quote the Constitution, but tend to be forgetful about some clauses.
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[
There seems to be historical and documentary evidence that freedom of religion was important in the founding of the US.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"Yes yes yes this this THIS times a million! "
No, no, no... billions and billions of times. (Yes, I know: Sagan never actually said that.)
Here's the problem with that, and it's such a HUGE amount of history that it shouldn't even need to be mentioned. But it seems that it does, so here goes:
History says very clearly that once you allow government to get involved with religion, or religion with government, pretty soon you have government-mandated religion, or religion-run government. And both of those are Very Bad. Religions have never -- ever, ever -- been good heads of government. And it's pretty obvious why government-mandated religion is just as bad.
That is why we have effective separation of Church and State in the US. But many people misunderstand it.
Contrary to what many people seem to think, the reason for that separation is not to "keep religion out" of everything. At all. It is intended to prevent any kind of official government sponsorhip of a particular religion. Our Founders were intimately familiar with religious persecution, and it was their intent to prevent it. But it was not their intent to suppress religion.
Example: a nearby city government had prayer before every meeting. The prayers were generally given by a Catholic priest, probably just because there was a big Catholic church just down the street. Some people objected, and it went all the way up to the State Supreme Court. This is what the court said (paraphrase):
"There is no law or clause in the Constitution preventing you from having prayer. However, you ARE prohibited from supporting any PARTICULAR religion. Offering Catholic prayer before every meeting is de facto government sponsorship of a particular religion."
The city's answer: now, any religion that wants to participate can get put on their list. They either rotate through the list or draw them at random... I'm not sure which. But the upshot is that they still have prayer before every meeting, but it isn't necessarily Catholic or even Christian. I remember once they had prayers from the local Baha'i faith.
Now, nobody has any reason to object and there are no problems. Even the atheists don't seem to have a problem with it.
Yes, Yes, we know you don't even watch TV.
Next you'll be bloviating about how you don't even own one. Aren't you the special snowflake?
Obligatory Onion Article Reference:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/
*citation needed*
You are an embarrassment to all humanity.
Gah, yes you're right. Not all protestants are biblical literalists. What I was getting at is at least here in the US the creationist movement is pretty much Protestant. (Although admittedly you can find the occasional Roman Catholic that's one. The priest at my church when I was growing was one.) Yes, I meant the RCC as a religion tend to be control freaks.(You know, they did execute William Tyndale for translating the bible.) Anyway can't say I disagree with you on the RNC either though.(Then again I think pretty much the same of the DNC but then again I don't like politicians much.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Equal time applies to opinion, particularly of a political or religious nature. Creationism is not nor will it ever be a legitimate scientific theory because it is unfalsifiable and untestable. Even other legitimate hypotheses about how life arose on Earth, such as exogenesis, hardly deserve equal time because their probability is so low.
I'm not sure it really a good idea, since people are already donating their taxed money to support their church. Why should donated money be taxed twice? Plus don't stereotype, not all churches teach literal versions of their religious histories and they do provide charity to many around the world. Most provide education that is better then that provided by state schools.
The difference is that churches are allowed to actively lobby for a cause while maintaining their tax exempt status. While a church is not allowed to, for instance, lobby for a particular candidate, they can lobby for a particular cause that is relevant to their faith (such as same sex marriage).
By contrast, if a scientific group lobbies for something such as reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, replacing fossil fuel plants with nuclear and renewables, or more stringent oversight by the USDA on GMO's ecological impact, they would usually lose their charitable organization status.
So sure, scientific organizations are tax exempt, but as soon as they step out of the scientific arena by issuing weak "statements" into the political arena to spend money trying to effect change, at the very least, they have their charitable status revoked so you cannot claim donations as deductions. On the other hand, many churches were able to maintain their charitable organization status even as they poured millions of dollars into fighting for clearly partisan causes, such as opposing same-sex marriage.
You appeared to be arguing that the differences in tax status of religious vs scientific institutions, such as they are, are justified because some of the former act charitably some times. I don't mean to diminish that at all, by pointing out that efforts of modern scientists also contribute a great deal of practical and immediate value. And, by that measure, the tax status difference can not reasonably be justified, imho.
Values such as you mention have not become obsolete, but following them blindly because some old book says so has. The reason I live by "do unto others..." despite being an atheist is it makes basic sense to me. I find I keep having to point out the obvious, not being a christian (or whatever) doesn't mean I oppose all of its ideals as a matter of principle or something.
I find valuable lessons, alongside unbearable smallmindedness, in the various holy scriptures, in the same way as I might find them in (other) fairytales, aphorisms, plays, poems, etc.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
"In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it. "
First, churches are not their followers... the followers do pay taxes. And second, taxing churches would create the kind of government-church relationship that we have chosen to shun here in the United States, for good historical reasons.
Sure, you can scientifically disprove certain types of creationism, such as the claim that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, but the sine qua non of creationism, that "God created the Universe" is not falsifiable and therefore not even a scientific question but rather a theological or philosophical one. This is what many physicists call, "not even wrong," because unlike an erroneous theory, creationism cannot be disproved because it does not make any specific predictions that can be tested.
It basically goes back to Berkeley asking the question of how we can disprove that we are not butterflies dreaming we are men. The answer is, we cannot, but it does not matter. The same is true of creationism. Nobody can ever disprove it, but it does not matter because it has zero effect on our scientific understanding of the universe. Nobody can disprove that gravity is caused by undetectable fair farts either.
Really, why is this creationists nonsense so much discussed in the US? It is not science. They claim to have a theory, but it is not testable. Therefore, by definition it is not a theory. And it is not really about religion. As the last pope pointed out, religion is about why are we here and science is about how did it happen. Furthermore, religion is about believe and science is the opposite. Thanks god they are not that prominent in Europe at the moment and I hope we are protected from them. However, I could be wrong.
so creationists want it their way...
[...] so the rich can start jumping out of windows again?
That doesn't sound so bad.
I dont think you have any idea what you are talking about. all im saying is I want to follow the 10th amendment. If it is not written in the constitution, the feds have no authority on the issue. If they dont like it, make an amendment to the constitution but stop abusing things like the interstate commerce clause
/. will I get modded down for wishing people get to keep what they earn
Only on
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The reality is creationism shouldn't get any time because this debate has been done and it got no traction.
What matters is the mainstream scientific community, peer reviewed publications, scrutinized by the worldwide biology / genetic PhDs of the world. In that arena creationism has been thoroughly debunked.
Cosmos isn't a scientific discussion program, it's a scientific education program. So unproven theories should not be given any credit in such a medium.
Of course, Cosmos is a TV show, the National Geographic could choose to show it. But I doubt the current producers would accept to show credible scientific theories side by side with creationism.
People that believe in creationism as hard scientific data usually don't have much of a measurable IQ, BTW.
Teaching creationism at church sunday school is one thing, but in high school, nonononono !
I wouldn't accuse him, he got it spot on.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
If you extrapolate in 3D from a point, you get a sphere. We are off to the "left side" of the Milky Way (although I don't think I would want to be in the middle.)
My wife had the best quip when she saw me reading this article...
"Sure, they can get equal air time as soon as the pope starts dedicating equal air time to Darwinisim."
Prices of every insurance policy went up by at least 30% some as much as 300%.
Medication costs went up as much as 1000% (my out of pocket went from 14.95 to 150.00 a month because of Obamanationcare).
So the people who have little or no money get loads of freebies.
Rest of us - just get extra loads.
When the creationist universe turns 13 billon, it can have its own TV show too. Mazel Tov!
Put them at the end or beginning "you pick I don't even care" so I can skip it all at once?
+1, it would be nice not to have to pay the workers so much and with lower taxes we can drop their salaries and have more profit, bigger bonuses and more money for campaign contributions to get our guys into government and laws passed to protect our business model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Hey now! Let's not forget incest, screwing your wife's servants, murdering people for various evils such as being gay, and (let's not forget the New Testament) wives being subservient to their husbands, literally "as the Church serves Christ our Lord". I think if I ever even hinted I should have the equivalent of divine authority over my household, my girlfriend might stab me. Can't say she'd be wrong to, either.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I have never fully understood the irrational frothing of the creationists. Why can't they just say that God created science and therefore science is a piece of God?
I'll tell you my personal theory. This has nothing to do with God, it has everything to do with some slimeball holding his hand out and demanding a Cosmos quality show be produced showing HIS point of view. All on someone else's dime, of course.
No, I can confirm I've heard similar rationalising.
Everything from getting embarrassed and changing the subject to "That part doesn't apply in today's modern age"
How do you rationalise it to yourself if it isn't the bury your head in the sand technique?
Of course no one but a church could possibly hope to run charities, food shelves, hospitals and orphanages.
but didn't their own book
You seriously just lumped EVERY religion in the world into believing in Jesus and his teachings? So I guess everyone is now either an atheist or a christian? The Jews are going to be fucking pissed! I can't imagine the others who don't believe anything special about the bible are happy now either.
Talk about not knowing anything at all about a subject, wow.
Perhaps you should refrain from quoting the bible since you clearly haven't bothered to read the quote you are referring to and have gotten it from someone else and seem to not know anything at all about religion in general.
You're more or less exactly the same as retarded creationists, you're doing the same thing, but you think its okay because you're making things up for your team!
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Doesn't "stupid" have enough representation these days?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It certainly was and is. But that in now way gives one religion more sway then any others, or even those who choose not to believe.
So please explain why one religion should get equal time while all the others are ignored.
And many churches today violate their tax exempt status under the law, also the Constitution itself in no way requires tax exempt status.
net earnings may not inure to the benefit of any private individual or shareholder
the organization may not intervene in political campaigns
no substantial part of its activity may be attempting to influence legislation
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
They already have equal time - and place - it's called "church".
How about we amend the history curriculum to explain the well understood history of when, where, how and why the Abrahamic religions were made up?
https://archive.org/details/Wh...
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Wrot...
Need Mercedes parts ?
I have no idea how you got that response to what I said. I said nothing about workers and corps.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You misunderstand me: I don't want the Separation of Church and State to be erased. I sure as hell don't want "state mandated religion" or "state endorsed religion" or any such thing. For the record, in my opinion, organized religions are the ones who are trying to erase that Separation, and they're doing it by intentionally getting their sheeplike congregations to vote the way the churches want them to vote, and they're collecting monies from the same people to give to political candidates and to support ballot initiatives that further their political agendas. Meanwhile they're building extravagant churches and spending money on extravagant things and paying some of their leaders extravagant salaries, and there aren't any taxes being paid. How is this fair? If they would stay out of politics and government themselves then maybe I wouldn't care as much, or if they actually spent all that money they apparently have (based on what they're spending it on) on things like the homeless problem or feeding the poor instead of flashy church buildings etc then again I wouldn't have much to complain about. But instead of making their primary concern the health and well-being of people's "spiritual lives" (whatever that means) and actual charitable causes, they meddle in politics and government with obvious intent to try to become the ruling faction in this country. Where is your Separation of Church and State now? It's blindingly obvious that if they had their way, they'd see candidates elected to office who would begin to erase that Separation and turn the U.S. into a religion-run country.
People can have their religion and spiritual beliefs all they want, and good for them if it somehow improves the quality of their lives. But that's where the line needs to be drawn: It needs to be about the individual, and it needs to not be about Power Seeking More Power, which is the direction it's been going for a long, long time now. It has to stop.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Looking at the whole thing from Europe, I can rarely decide whether to laugh or cry. These people belong into a mental institution, not on TV, and yet they do actually have an audience? People take them seriously? They are powerful enough to change election results? WTF America ?
That their whole "equal time" attack angle isn't seen as dramatically failing the giggle test is a mystery that I can't wrap my head around. How about equal time for Scientology, african witch doctors and the norse Ragnarok myth, too? Can I please get my own made-up pet-theory from the religion I founded yesterday into the textbooks? No one has ever disproved it, you know? And I have a scientist who (after a few beers) told me it sounds plausible...
These people are clowns and need to be ridiculed and laughed at and nothing else and until that happens, I will shake my head about America and consider you all mentally unstable.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I think you may have misunderstood the comment. What we have now is lack of separation - the state, usually the courts, decides what is and is not a religion or a religious establishment and consequently how it will be taxed.
What people are pushing for is an end to this practice - treat all non-profits the same way, including religions. This means that your weird cult will have to fill out a little more paperwork to get its tax exempt status, but you don't run the risk of some orthodox judge denouncing you as heretics. The catch is, and this is why people lobby against this, you would actually have to be a non-profit. There are criteria to be met, audits to pass. Some "churches," which are really just operating as scams, wouldn't qualify. The Westboro Baptist Church, for example, operates out of the family home (tax free) and claims the swimming pool as a baptismal font (tax free).
History says very clearly that once you allow government to get involved with religion, or religion with government, pretty soon you have government-mandated religion, or religion-run government. And both of those are Very Bad. Religions have never -- ever, ever -- been good heads of government. And it's pretty obvious why government-mandated religion is just as bad.
Yes, but you missed the point by exactly 180 degrees there.
Government giving special status to religions (by tax excemption) is the opposite of government staying out of religion. What the GP wants is that religion has no special status and is treated just like everyone else, and that would be less government involvement with religion, because it does away with the special treatment and registration, and reduces the interface between them. Now they aren't special little kids anymore, they're just taxpayers just like everyone else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Natural selection is not "unknowable". We have some awareness of how mutations occur. We also know that some mutations are beneficial (help the organism live longer and reproduce), while most are harmful. The human eye does not show a lack of evolution.
Thus anything is proof of evolution according to you.
Not quite so much as anything is evidence for God (to the believer).
You said,
Let the people and states keep their money
When in reality it'll only be a few people keeping the money while the rest (including the States) will continue the race to the bottom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
+1 Totally confused
But since it won't have blackjack and hookers, don't expect me to watch it. That's the only part of religion that's interesting anyway--when the preacher gets caught with the deacon's wife!
In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine.
I get that you might have some difficulty accepting that its not to be taken literally, its a common disorder among techies, we have a difficult time accepting that not everything means exactly what it says sometimes since we tend to work in technical absolutes as much as possible ... but if you are so utterly stupid that you think it 'approves' of those things then I realize I'm wrong, you're not that stupid, you're that ignorant.
Let's just take a look at mass murder. I'm sure you remember the story about the walls of Jericho, right?
Then the Lord said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.["] ... Joshua commanded the army, "Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be devoted* to the Lord ... so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys... Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house... So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.
Maybe that doesn't fit the exact description of genocide, but it is GOD commanding mass murder.
This is my favorite sentence from that chapter:
All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.
See, the Creator of the Universe needs some cold hard cash, similar to today. You'd think he'd be even better than the fed at printing money being the all powerful ruler of everything, but alas, no.
Regarding the actual definition of genocide, this is him saying to commit genocide:
For the day has come to destroy all the Philistines and to remove all survivors who could help Tyre and Sidon.
Show me where, in anything that I just posted, that it says not to take it literally, because it looks literal to me. Or do you mean that your pastor told you not to take it literally?
The bible as a work of literature has its exemplary moments, and I would encourage everyone to read it, from start to finish. But as a book on morality it is severely lacking in that you can never tell what to take literally, and what to not take literally. I guess use your own judgement? Well, you don't need the bible to do that.
*The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
That is a very interesting post you wrote. Now, what the fuck does it have to do with revoking the tax-exempt status that churches have?
I've been debating several creationists on a different site for several weeks now. There arguments all boil down to 2:
1) the universe is beautiful therefore a god must have created it..
2) I'm an idiot for not seeing the beauty that god created.
When someone believes just because they have a need to believe, there's no room left for logical debate. it's over. Thought stops, insults start.
IMHO the smoking gun that proves evolution beyond any further discussion is the chromosomal difference between humans and great apes. Humans have 23 pair (46 total) apes have 24 pair (48 total). Lining up human chromosome #2 shows the exact fusion of 2 ancestral chromosomes. It has 2 centromeres and 3 telomores ( 2 centers and 3 ends on the same chromosome). The DNA on the chromosomes even lines up.
Plus.... we have fossils.
For one, there is this big, burning ball of gas just 93 million miles away from us.
So that's what happened to Fred Phelps.
All that tripe you hear from the right wingers arguing for lower taxes is just the winners of the current generation destroying the ladder they climbed.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
taxing churches would create the kind of government-church relationship that we have chosen to shun here in the United States
Um, no, the exact opposite actually. If the government is capable of granting tax-exempt status to a group on the basis of it being a church, then the government is also capable of denying tax-exempt status to another group on the basis of "we, the government, do not believe you count as a church". But by disallowing tax-exempt status for religious reasons, you take away the ability for the government to cherry-pick valid religions.
It doesn't happen around us because the conditions aren't right. For one thing, it may have happened under very different atmospheric conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
Would you mind giving some specific nitpicks?
I'm not the GP's author, but I feel the same way about the show, so here's mine:
Basically, while the show isn't terrible (if it was, I wouldn't watch it) it could be more accurate than it is. The narrative isn't that bad, but the CGI department clearly has free reign to make animations look like whatever they want with no regard to accuracy.
One example is when they showed a model of the solar system, it was essentially the same as any model you'd see in a book, with the animations designed to be attractive rather than accurate. The sizes of planets relative to the space between them wasn't correct. It's slightly forgivable since, if it was, you wouldn't be able to see them when you zoom out to view the entire system. They also did a fly-through of an asteroid belt with many asteroids separated by no more than double their diameter, which isn't remotely accurate, but does look like any asteroid belt you've ever seen in a movie. If asteroid belts were actually that dense, we'd never be able to get any spacecraft through them, but we've never had a probe hit an asteroid because the asteroid belts are mostly empty. Hell, if they were that dense, the rocks would coalesce into something larger until they were spaced sufficiently that gravity no longer caused the now much larger pieces to coalesce. In fact, my understanding of this is that asteroids aren't really large rocks at all, but they're clusters of smaller rocks that are weakly held together by gravity. I can't say I know for sure as I'm no expert on this stuff, but then that's what disappoints me so much about it. In a visual that lasted about ten seconds they could have taught people more than they ever knew about asteroid belts, but rather than do so, they just had their CGI department render an asteroid belt as if they were making it for a movie rather than worry about it being scientifically accurate.
Basically, following the "a picture is worth a thousand words" rule, the show is hugely misinformative. It's only accurate if you know enough about science to realize the imagery is inaccurate and that only the narration is scientifically accurate, but if that's the case then you're not the audience who could most benefit from the show, and the show is still passing up a huge opportunity to be an order of magnitude more educational simply by showing people better representations of what things actually look like. ...and since I have it saved on DVR, let me fast-forward through it and see what else I can nitpick on:
The inside of cells is shown to be largely empty space. This is obviously untrue as there is no empty space on earth. Not to mention the frightening rendition of molecules that look more like hairballs. I can't even begin to understand what they were thinking with that design. At first I thought maybe each point of light was an atom and the lines were atomic bonds, but then they showed some DNA and, well, I just have no clue what the fuck they were trying to do as not only does it not resemble anything you might see in an electron microscope, but it doesn't even resemble any atomic structure diagrams I've ever seen. Indeed, whatever it is, it doesn't represent the atomic structure at all. I could have created something far more accurate from memory despite being a high-school drop-out who maybe one day glanced at the Wikipedia page on DNA but certainly didn't bother to read it in any detail. In an age when it takes all of ten seconds to look something up on Wikipedia, such inaccuracy is a blatant disregard for accuracy. It's a complete lack of effort to communicate any factual information at all about what DNA looks like. Again, I'm sure some people might be like "so what, it's just pretty graphics meant to keep people entertained while they listen to the real science" but when a picture is worth a thousand words, they're throwing away so much opportunity to teach people things about the world that it's just sad.
No other comment than the title. Just thought it was interesting.
In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine.
Holy fucking shit do you need to work on your reading comprehension skills if THATS what you think from reading the bible.
I get that you might have some difficulty accepting that its not to be taken literally [...]
How cute, you've proved OFnow's post exactly.
Second, maybe we can consider changes once all of the science organizations start running various charities, food shelves, hospitals, orphanages, offering weekly moral instruction to children, and so on. Even then you won't have replaced the role of the church in society.
Serious question, why all? Why not some? It's not like we're holding the various religious institutions to that standard (unless you're using a No True Scotsman definition to cherry-pick religious institutions).
He doesn't understand that there's no discussion NOW, 'cause the discussion has already been had, and creationism lost. In addition, creation IS NOT science. At most, it's a hypothesis that hasn't been scientifically proven.
Your fundamental problem is you haven't defined what this "life" property is that you think is imbibed within certain clumps of matter.
So the creationalists want equal coverage for their theories including the one that the universe is only 5,000 years old. I say yes..
But let it be in proportion to their theory. so that makes a response to a 1 hour show over say 15 episodes for a theory that the universe is 15 billion years old and not only 5 thousand to be 0.018 seconds.
So I say give them the airtime they deserve, one TV frame.
consider changes once all of the science organizations start running various charities, food shelves, hospitals, orphanages
And those activities are already tax exempt. If Microsoft gives a million dollars to a food shelf, you can be sure they deduct it off their taxes. No change there.
John
There seems to be historical and documentary evidence that freedom of religion was important in the founding of the US.
That merely requires freedom of religion. If all religions are taxed equally, that still meets the criterion just fine.
thats how it is now, If we have 50 states, all run mainly by themselves, as intended when this country was founded. Its much easier to get things done on a smaller scale that is a net benifit for the people who actually live there. for example, my taxes in NY should in no way be linked to say the schools in texas.
Our state tax burden would indeed rise, but our federal taxes would drop 10 fold
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Most provide education that is better then that provided by state schools.
Do they teach proper spelling and grammar? Do they teach their students the difference between then and than?
and not one piece of what you said has anything to do with what I said.
Im not arguing for no taxes, im not some anarchist. I simply want the states to handle the brunt of governmental duties and the federal government to stick to its constitutional duties.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Funny that they have a fit if you dare even suggest taxing churches but didn't their own book say "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's"?
And what is even more funny is that christians have to pay taxes just like everybody else. Even the preachers and pastors have to pay taxes. So, christians already "render unto Ceasar". It's true! Regardless of where you stand on tax exemption status for religious institutions(*), "render unto Ceasar" has nothing to do with taxing churches. This revelation will probably make your head explode but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
(*) It's a really crappy, even dangerous, idea for historical reasons which others have already alluded to.
It certainly was and is. But that in now way gives one religion more sway then any others, or even those who choose not to believe.
Please stop repeating that crap. Nobody choses to believe or not to believe anything. Did you "chose" to believe in gravity, rain, oxygen or electricity? Or did you simply encounter enough evidence that you were convinced through no intentional decision? Did you sit down one day and dicide not to believe in unicorns, pixie dust or wood nimphs? Or did you never find enough evidence to convince you that they exist.
Nobody choses to believe or not believe something. They can chose to ignore or fabricate evidence (though at some point even this is impossible for most people) or surround themselves with people (maybe once a week) that reinforce their beliefs. If someone does not believe in something, it is not because they chose not to, but because they do not have enough evidence to convince them it exists.
Tell you what, next time I fall off a cliff while hiking I will simply chose not be believe in gravity or sharp rocks.
There are definitely some regressive teachings in the new testament... But the rejection of the old testament isn't just modern Christians attempting to distance themselves from embarrassing quotes. The old testament is more of a history and the rules described there are part of a covenant between god and the Israelites which modern Christians don't feel beholden to because of their belief that redemption comes through accepting Jesus. So you can call it hand wavy nonsense but there is a limited amount of internal consistency.
Source: apostate.
What could he really talk about, the creation story in genesis is a whole 2 pages long (and even repeats itself); he couldn't talk about what is in the Bible for more than a couple minutes.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You must have issues with your reading comprehension or something if you think the bible says it is all fine. Do you look at a history book snd think slavery or the holocuast are fine brcause it talks of those events to?
The bible is little more then a history book in this sense. It talks about events that happened and some of those events were specifically at the instructions of god but any morals or code of conduct in it contradict those things like the ten commandments and Jesus' teachings. This is somewhat of an important distinction. Another important distinction is the concept of covenants and how they supplant each other.
Yes! Please! Its a joke that they dont pay taxes and increase the everyones tax burden and use tax created services for free.
offering weekly moral instruction to children
Particularly laughable. In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine.
This may come as a shock to you but not everything in the bible is to be taken as "all fine". In fact, sometimes, events are told which are explicitly not "all fine". Being in the bible should not automatically be taken as some sort of endorsement by God. That is not to say that there aren't some legitimately questionable stories recounted in the bible. Just that a facile interpretation isn't very helpful. BTW, christians would also do well to eschew facile interpretation too.
Second, maybe we can consider changes once all of the science organizations start running various charities, food ...
Yeah what contribution has science made to society?
I'm calling you out as an Obama shill. You're full of shit.
BTW, you guys should come up with another colloquialism besides "leveled the playing field." That one's a bit played-out.
1/3 of American Christians do think the bible should be taken literally, according to various polls. 56% think the bible should "have a greater role in society", yet - 57% didn't read the bible at all the year the poll was taken. 75% of people in the USA think the bible is the word of god, or inspired by god.
If you accept the Bible to be the "word of god", and most Americans do, then you are NOT taking it metaphorically. But, on the other hand most Americans haven't actually read the whole bible and only hear the "good" parts in church, as selected by their pastor. The evidence is overwhelming that most USA christians have a simple, literal, or almost literal, belief in the bible. They are not taking it metaphorically.
Once you decide that the bible should be taken "metaphorically" how does one decide what it really means? How does one decide which parts should be ignored? How does one decide which parts are good? It appears that most theologians are using rational, post enlightenment ideals, to cherry pick the good parts from the bible, and explaining away the parts that are evil, or contradicted by science as metaphor. Once you start down this path you are pretty close not needing the bible at all for your moral outlook, and discarding the iron age myths in favour of modern secular morals will seem a sensible step.
Anarchists never rule
You are confusing the term science and secular.
There are lots of secular charities, and they do a lot of good.The modern welfare state is one form of very well organized secular charity.
Anarchists never rule
I never suggested that. But do let me know when the National Academy of Science opens a soup kitchen.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Yeah, those pre-existing conditions, caps on how much health care you get, and HUGE profits for medical care that the law is attempting to fix are just side effects of how it is hurtin 'Murica!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Sorry, but if you want to spread idiocy, spread it on your own time and your own dime. If you can't hack that, don't whine about "equal time".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'm well aware of the First Amendment, because the Establishment clause is exactly why there should not be tax exemptions for churches.
(1) the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
(2) by making in law the tax exemptions for establishments of religion, Congress has violated the First Amendment.
That's it. Period. Nobody needs a tax exempt company or a tax exempt multi-storey statue of a crucifix or a tax exempt state-of-the-art thousand-seat multimedia amphitheater just so they can pray. But as Congress and the Churches want to have their cake and eat it too, we get laws like those in the PDF you cited, full of weasel words and "oh but we really aren't respecting establishment of religion" regulations you could drive a televangelist's limo through - ironic when one of the few things that ever saw Jesus truly angered was the act of hypocrisy, and for the pertinent example I refer you to his chasing the money changers out of the temple.
I mean, look at the title of that PDF: "tax guide for Churches and Religious Organizations benefits and responsibilities under the federal tax law"
And _that's_ the stench that pervades government. Hypocrisy. Do as we say, not as we do. We don't torture, it's enhanced interrogation. We uphold our oath, but none of us read through the Patriot Act before we voted on it. We don't spy on our citizens, we just collect metadata that would've caught Paul Revere. We are the land of the Free, ignore our incarceration rate exceeding Russia and China combined. We outlawed slavery (except the government can do it!), pay no attention to our for-profit prisons. We uphold democracy and the will of the people, except when it suits our interests to topple it in other countries. And on and on and on.
It reeks.
You mean expecting everyone else to pay for all of the stuff you use. Remember, a lot of us are old enough to have raised children and are used to self-entitled whining.
The problem with writing is that sarcasm and humor sometimes don't work well, and come out looking like someone making a sarcastic, humorous comment is actually making a statement which they believe. If your comment is an attempt to use sarcasm and humor, i apologize ahead of time.
If, on the other hand, you're actually putting forth what you honestly believe.. then you are a fucking idiot. Worse than that, you're a fucking idiot who's either incredibly stupid and refuses to actually learn what's in the Bible, or you're a lying idiot trying to minimize all the sociopathic bullshit that God not only condoned, but commanded people do.... all written in the Bible.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
NO REALLY?
"In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it. "
First, churches are not their followers... the followers do pay taxes.
Not on money they give to their church. So it's really 2 tax exemptions, the one for the individual deducting money given to the church and one for income to the church not being taxed. If the church were a business (it's not, it's a virus - the only goal of a church is to grow) it would have had to pay taxes on the income and the individual would have to pay taxes as well, Meanwhile, the rest of us pick up that tax shortfall (and pay for the "quiverfull" families).
Enigma
In the past 35,000 to 50,000 years that our ancestors have had some form of religious or shamanistic practices, there has never, ever, not even once, ever, been a single piece of evidence for a god, gods, goddesses, or maker.... ever. If creationism were to be given a second of consideration out of a decade of time, that would already be more than it's fair share.
Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence; in this case, the claim of "creationism" at least need a single piece of actual evidence.... and the delusions of mentally ill people does not count.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Most Christians are boycotting that movie. Including that on the list is disingenuous . Even the director said he doesn't care about what the Christians think.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
The primordial Earth had a reducing atmosphere. The current Earth has an oxidizing atmosphere, thanks to plants.
Life doesn't evolve again because we are not in the same conditions.
Amen!
Rationalize what? I mean the stories are little more than history and they are delivered in yhe context of covenants- each chonollogically new covenant replacing the older ones.
What you likely are experiencing is people who have no idea how to deal with someone too ignorant about the subject to comprehend the meaning of including the old testament with the new testament.
By the way, it doesn't apply now is the correct answer. Its because of the covenants if you missed it. You really should take a bit of time and try to understand the concepts you are criticizing before spouting of about it.
So you claim "paying attention" is a means to avoid being born with a genetic disease.
Well, we've already established you're a moron for thinking "being careful" means you won't be born with a genetic disease. Or develop cancer.
The reason you're a moron here is the reason those people couldn't "keep their plan" is they already dropped their old plan. Insurance companies routinely re-write the plan every single year, which creates a new insurance plan. These upset people were already on a new plan after the deadline for keeping your old plan passed.
The only thing Obama should have done is included "And your insurance company wants to offer it" to the quote.
Given your poor reasoning skill so far, I'm going to guess that your nice, cheap plan actually sucked. Probably covered almost nothing with a very low lifetime cap. The kind of plan that people think is a great deal until they get unlucky and have to really use it.
I say let them have their own show. It can be on the Comedy Central.
Wives aren't simply expected to be subservient no matter what. In a Christian marriage, the two people are expected to behave as if they're the same person. If the wife has a broken leg, then the husband's priority should be that broken leg. If it's a truly Christian marriage, it isn't a problem for the woman to be subservient, because the husband will see his wife's needs as being the equal of his own. If he's abusive with his power, than it's not a Christian marriage and the subservient aspect doesn't apply.
How is lowering taxes connected to lowering worker pay?
I think maybe someone has either fed you some bullshit or you are grasping for anything and looking foolish in the process.
Depending on who you talk to, being male is a genetic disease... and so is being white.
This "required insurance law" is nothing new. In every single state where auto insurance requirements were written into law, average cost of insurance went up for just about everyone. Doing the same to medical insurance yielded predictable results.
I am a non-smoker, light drinker, healthy eater, regular exerciser who has never suffered a major health problem, I have perfect vision, no aches or pains or other annoyances. If you want to call that a matter of luck, you could say that. But what's not luck is that the law changed and now insurance for me is much higher because prior to the law, I enjoyed the lowest rates because I cost insurance companies NOTHING. But I will say this:
My mother had a mild diabetic condition and was a smoker. There is also obesity in my family. There is no known cancer in my family lines. I have taken measures in my own life's habits to avoid a range of foods and behaviors. That is not luck and frankly I believe it's why I am the only one of five sons that does not wear glasses. (They keep saying 'you'll get it too later...' and they said it 20 years ago. I think there may be something to the way I operate to defy my own family's genetic weaknesses.)
Yes, I paid lower rates for a coverage plan which completely covered my wife having our son. I think the deductible was like $200 or something. That was with three days in the hospital to relax and stuff. The plan was pretty awesome in that regard. But to go from about $250 a month to $1000? Something stinks here. There could be mitigating factors -- I could have advanced in age brakets, my location certainly changed. (I have heard more densely populated areas enjoy lower rates under Obamacare) But the high costs of healthcare insurance is caused by a wide range of things. The group has just expanded to include every obese, heart-diseased shmuck out there. That's NOT a group I am a member of and never have been before. Now we get to pay higher rates because we're more actively paying for fat-asses who can't choose to eat better food.
If you think because you disagree with what I have to say that my reasoning skills are at fault, I think you have the reasoning skills problem.
Fact is, pre-Obamacare, I was at about $250/mo for myself, my wife and my son covering medical and dental. Post-Obamacare, I'm now doing about $1000/mo. Exactly what reasoning skills do I need to notice that I have to pay a lot more for something I don't use?
The court was wrong. The constitution and the Founders are quite clear about it - the government does not sponsor religion. It does not sponsor a specific religion, true enough. But neither does it sponsor ALL religions, nor any religion. And no, atheists are not happy with it. The ideal, as intended by the Founders, is that a government body does not perform a religious ritual of any kind at its meeting. Allowing a different religious ritual each meeting doesn't cut it. It's interesting how some state pols and courts imagine that making a prayer non-denominational somehow makes it non-religious. A prayer is a prayer is religious. How is that so hard to understand?
"You misunderstand me: I don't want the Separation of Church and State to be erased. I sure as hell don't want 'state mandated religion' or 'state endorsed religion' or any such thing."
No, I didn't misunderstand you. You misunderstood me. By promoting the taxation of religion you are in fact promoting these things. Because this is one of those times that a slippery slope argument is real.
As soon as you allow taxation -- the very DAY it was allowed -- you would start having discriminatory taxation. And it would continue to get worse. (What, you actually thought the IRS was honest? We have some very recent history proving otherwise.)
Government would start supporting (or the opposite: taxing) some religions more than others. And it would start controlling what was taxable: this kind of service, or that kind of service? How much should people tithe? Should tithing be in a separate category? Hey, wait a minute... doesn't that religion or that church promote terrorism?
And the other way around: soon, you'd have churches lobbying Congress. Why not? They're taxpayers like everybody else, yes? Why shouldn't they have a say in how their tax money is spent by Congress. Pretty soon, you'd see the richer churches getting perks that the other churches don't enjoy... and on and on it goes. It would never end.
Our Founders understood this. Don't mess with it. You'd end up hoist by your own petard.
There are a couple of questions I would like to ask because I'm curious and I know I'll get get a variety of hopefully civil answers.
Do you as a non-theist believe in any life after death or do you believe you simply go to the worms and that is that?
Do you believe that your body is animated by your spirit? Put another way, do you inhabit your body or are you your body?
Disclaimer: I am a Christian and I don't wish to hound you, only learn what you may believe.
Cheers!
Why? There's a lot of things I can't avoid and others I can. I do have a good and relatively clean genetic background. I eat as healthy as I know how with my wife cooking most meals at home -- she even makes our bread for us. I have fresh vegetables and lots more homemade stuff than most people get these days. And I certainly pay through the nose to get it -- my wife stays at home and I am a single income earner. That's an extreme compromise I admit, but the benefits are also pretty obvious.
I stay as far away from HFCS and other poisons as I possibly can. I have pretty much given up on excessively sweet things and have actually lost the taste and cravings for it over a decade ago. None of the things I do warrant writing a book. Just read articles on healthy living and ACTUALLY DO IT. That's where people fail the most. They just don't do it.
Would you believe that I have a fairly large salad EVERY DAY and on weekdays, TWICE a day. My wife makes my lunch, and that's what I get : salad and some kind of meat. That's fives days a week. Breakfast is also not terribly creative and defies what most people call healthy. Whole fried egg and large sausage patty on flat bread with cheese? A bit better than McDonald's. Again, nothing worth writing a book about.
And I drink water!! I have given up on soda almost completely. I drink unsweetened tea and V8 drinks too, but iced water with maybe a twist of lime or lemon is just great for me. Those changes from today's norm were not easy to make. And falling off of that wagon would probably be too easy except that I am just not "that guy." A personal sense of integrity isn't luck. You just have to do the things you know you should. And once again, THAT is where the majority fail.
Most health problems are COMPLETELY preventable. Jackasses out there just won't address the problems. Those jackasses are mostly food producers and government regulators, but also include people who make lots of life choices which compromise health for other things. The life choices I make are not easy ones and they aren't cheap ones. But I believe they are good ones.
Is there room for improvement? Oh yeah. I wish my wife would make better pizza. She's Japanese and doesn't vary her recipes or processes too much. Anyone who understands Japanese personalities understands what I'm talking about. But over all? The best improvements would come from the supply and regulatory side of things. One of my wife's friends moved from the US to Japan with her American husband. He was chubby here. A year in Japan and the weight just disappeared. Yes, he walks more, takes public transit and all that, but they eat mostly American style food there. What gives? Well, I'll tell you, after reading ingredients lists and the differences in food regulation in Japan, it's not hard to figure out what's different. I can't live in Japan though -- NO SAUSAGE and BACON... not as I know and love them anyway.
This is a long post. Enjoy the book I just wrote for you.
Messed up quote tags. Apologies for that.
"I think you may have misunderstood the comment. What we have now is lack of separation - the state, usually the courts, decides what is and is not a religion ... "
Huh? Where did you get this idea? No, they don't. The Supreme Court has very clearly ruled that the government does not have Constitutional authority to decide what constitutes a religion and what does not. Essentially, if someone believes it, it's a religion. Because the simple fact is that nobody can prove otherwise. Trying to rule any other way would be de facto supporting some religions over others, which the Constitution expressly forbids.
"... or a religious establishment and consequently how it will be taxed."
See, that's where it is. You are conflating two very different issues. You are referring to the government's definition of what a church is. That is a different matter. In order to be tax-exempt under the law, a church has to have a congregation and meet regularly, among other things. I actually looked into this a few years ago, because I was considering starting up a "Sunday Drinks and TV" church in my community. (Yes, really.)
But make no mistake: the government isn't deciding whether it's a valid religion or not. It's judging whether you are actually running a real church, or just trying to evade taxes. That's a completely different thing. And actually the rules are pretty reasonable, because of that whole religion thing. The government has to be very careful what it does in that regard.
As I say, I looked into the requirements. Essentially you have to prove you have a congregation and that you meet regularly, fill out the government paperwork for tax exemption, and keep proper books regarding expenses and donations. There are a few other minor things, but not many.
I don't doubt that some people abuse the system, but jeez, look at some of the giant corporations that don't even pay taxes. Let's have some perspective here.
But as for your dream of getting Westboro Baptist Church declared "not a religion", that will never happen. You MIGHT be able to prove they aren't a real church, or that they're cheating on taxes, but I doubt you could do the former (because the rules aren't harsh at all), and the latter is difficult.
ah. you have asked and received this asnwer i guess? liar. =-) i again have no idea how you have been modded up, other than that you are echoing popular setiment. in a just world, you would be lost in the noise of all the others with no original thought. not interesting at all.
Donations to charitable and religious organizations are tax deductible. So the money being donated isn't being taxed.
"Yes, but you missed the point by exactly 180 degrees there."
No, I did not miss the point. See my second comment to the person to whom I replied originally for a better explanation.
As soon as the government started taxing religion, it would start to do so unequally. And that just leads to worse. It is a very slippery slope, and our founders understood that.
"The ideal, as intended by the Founders, is that a government body does not perform a religious ritual of any kind at its meeting."
I have read uncountable historical documents that say otherwise.
Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But historically, that is just plain untrue. They held prayers before some of THEIR OWN meetings... though not everybody participated.
I was talking about Copernicus.
"First, churches are not their followers... the followers do pay taxes."
Not on money they give to their church. So it's really 2 tax exemptions, the one for the individual deducting money given to the church and one for income to the church not being taxed.
No, it's not 2 exemptions, it's just one. You are a member of the church... for practical purposes the money isn't changing hands. You put the money in the church pool, and the church does what you consider to be good works with that money (including the payment of the pastor or priest or whatever... that's overhead). In that respect a church is not different from any other non-profit club to which you belong.
The theory is that you are doing good community works with your donated money. But regardless, you can't get around the Constitutional prohibition... nor should you. A law is a law is a law, even if it's a tax law. And the Constitution forbids any such with respect to religion.
Even the Westboro Baptist Church believes it's doing community service. I don't happen to think so, but my opinion doesn't count. You can't shut them down without also shutting down the Catholics. And once you start down that road, of deciding which religions or churches are "worthy" and which are not, you have run afoul of just exactly what the founders were warning about.
Those events are apparently to be taken literally, but they don't constitute some sort of general moral command like the Ten Commandments. You aren't expected to go assault either Jericho or the Philistines today. I'm not sure why you would be confused about that.
If God is God, and the creator of the universe, then God gets to set the rules. Mass killing isn't necessarily mass murder.
If you've ever actually read the Bible you may want to consider trying it again with a study Bible since it would both enrich your understanding and provide useful linkages. It looks to be like you are either missing a lot or creating greater difficulties for yourself by misunderstandings.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Well I did say "religious establishment," - a church, baptismal font, or religious themed amusement park. My dream doesn't apply only to the Westboro Baptist Church, but most of the gospel of wealth churches, the scientologists, etc. But again: classifying churches as non-profits, rather than in their own category, is really about separating government and religion.
You say the current rules aren't difficult, and I'm sure that's true, but so what? I don't see the point that you're making there. The rules under my dream would be non-existent. Maybe your screwy religion doesn't have a congregation but believes in salvation through good works, and you do that through a soup kitchen somewhere. A soup kitchen which shouldn't have to be classified any differently from any other religious establishment.
I watched the science guy debate and the religious nutjob said the ark would not have had that many animals as they would only need certain forms. So you'd have a 4 legged mammal form which would later, post flood, turn into cats, dogs, cows, all other 4 legged mammals. From that context I would say creationists believe in adaptions leading to new species.
"You say the current rules aren't difficult, and I'm sure that's true, but so what? I don't see the point that you're making there. The rules under my dream would be non-existent."
I understand. My point was that in the real world it doesn't work. The moment you let government tax churches, it would start taxing them unequally. And it would only get worse from there. If there was ever a genuine "slippery slope" in the world, this is it. And man, is it slippery.
I don't think anybody's saying our current system is perfect. But the alternative just isn't any better. There's WAY too much potential for disaster. I wouldn't even say potential, honestly. I'd say inevitability.
Creations believe all kinds of things, there are creations that believe in evolution and that god planted the seeds their are creations who reject any form of evolution. In a supernatural universe everything and anything is possible, and nothing can be ruled.
OK, I misunderstood you and can't disagree that the American federal government has grown way too much in relation to the States. What the ideal is is up for debate remembering as the originally setup led to the American civil war with lots of deaths etc. Really the Constitution probably needs some tweeking but the Americans don't seem interested in opening that can of worms and can't even do something as basic and sure to pass as make the Air Force constitutional, little well work on the more questionable stuff like how far does the Interstate Commerce clause go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
And what does the movie Noah have to do with the evolution/creation airtime discussion that is the focus of the parent post? Absolutely nothing.
No, I can confirm I've heard similar rationalising.
Everything from getting embarrassed and changing the subject to "That part doesn't apply in today's modern age"
How do you rationalise it to yourself if it isn't the bury your head in the sand technique?
I think that we could agree that it is possible to know the right answer to a question or problem, but not know how it was derived. Some of what you refer to is that simple: right answer, don't know how it was obtained. There is a lot of that in society since few people go to the trouble of deriving all knowledge from first principles themselves.
But lets be a little more specific about some of the factors that would come into play. One of them is the body of law involved. The Bible contains many sets of rules or laws, some of which only apply in specific circumstances. For example, there are rules that apply specifically to worship by priests in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. As you may well know, the 2nd temple was destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago and hasn't been rebuilt since. If you aren't a Jewish priest conducting worship in the Jewish temple that has yet to be rebuilt in Jerusalem then those laws would never apply to you. I will also note that there is only one place where the temple can be built according to the law, and that place is currently occupied by the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest place in Islam. The bottom line is that the purpose and scope of the law matters. The Ten Commandments are generally applicable, the laws governing Jewish priests conducting worship are very narrow in scope.
Beyond the question of the body of law and the applicability is the earthly ministry of Jesus, the Christ. The purpose of the sacrifices made in the Jewish temple were in essence as payment for breaking God's laws, for sinning. Christians believe that the death of Jesus on the cross was the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of humanity and whoever believes in Him as savior has their sins forgiven. As a result Christians are not obligated to have sacrifices made to pay for their sins in the temple. Various other laws would also not apply for a similar reason.
You can find explanations of the sacrifice that Jesus made and its meaning here or here.
I hope that helped.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The gist of the reason for not taxing churches is because of they tend to provide charity.
Unlike your demands, the demands of a large, radical group of dimwits with a serious political clout will make an impact. Thanks, Ronald.
Or is there a channel for make believe and fairy tales?
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
Actually, the argument for rejecting the old testament is even easier. The old testament was written (really passed down orally) at a time when there was little distinction made between secular law and religious law. The two got stirred together because, well, anything considered important was taught to the younger generations in pretty much the same way. The new testament records are substantially more pure and accurate, being that they both were purely religious records (the christians had no secular legal power) and were written down to begin with (much of the new testament is made up of letters between the then-current apostles and the christian church in various areas.)
None of this makes an argument for the divinity of the religious instruction contained in either testament. However, the purity of those teachings and the accuracy of the contents relative to the original source strongly favors the new testament.
75% of people in the USA think the bible is the word of god, or inspired by god.
Well, hold on. "The word of God" and "inspired by God" mean two very different things, the former being "fundie" and the latter decidedly not. I think it's important to keep that in mind when considering the 75% statistic. And I'd be curious to know how it splits on the "word" vs. "inspired" opinion, especially how it splits geographically.
It appears that most theologians are using rational, post enlightenment ideals, to cherry pick the good parts from the bible, and explaining away the parts that are evil, or contradicted by science as metaphor.
And that's definitely a Good Thing (TM). I don't recall the theologian who said this, but the Bible is not a book, it's a library.
Once you start down this path you are pretty close not needing the bible at all for your moral outlook, and discarding the iron age myths in favour of modern secular morals will seem a sensible step.
Fair enough. But I don't think anyone would disagree that our modern secular humanistic moralities have been at least shaped in part by the bible and other religious texts.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Keeping it simple minded, your whole argument or "history" is a joke. The country [US] and just about every advanced civilization used religion, in fact if you studied you history religion is pretty much worded and changed to fit the times, there are thousands of scrolls that all tell different stories over one occurrence, and the "chosen" ones, where then re-worded, and added too.
And taxing a business, lets not fool ourselves, the churches or these TV sell outs are nothing more then pyramid scheme. These people on TV are wearing a 1,000 dollar suit, and spending money like the old days of cocaine king pins.
Taxation doesn't lead to government controlled Religion, and that makes me laugh, because the f'in country uses religious principles, in its laws/courts/constitution.
You want to see government ran religion it already exists it called Patriotism. Every government outside the US, uses it, with the word and protection of GOD..
please please, yes this. Ill start opening them just in case.
Of course they sponsor religions, what do you think tax exempt means?
Not abusive with his power...Have you heard about this bible thing, you should give it a read.
Hey look what I found down the back of the couch, it's a new covenant.
Problem solved.
When providing scientific proof of God, the show should be over quickly ... ...), saying those are acts of God is more to the point of man of the day being unable to distinguish natural phenomena from said acts ... just as nowadays' technical advances would be seen by a 19th century person ... ... ... succumbing to authority, letting them do with you more less how they desire, and not doing much about it ... plus, states more or less enforces that image ... even in countries that say they've separated church and state, the ties are still there ...
Sure, you can prove that certain events have happened in one way or another (e.g. great flood, Sodom & Gomorrah,
Also, seeing what havoc religion creates on the grand scale (not talking about the personal level - rather what is caused by the conflicts between people of different faith), earth might be better off without it
As for the personal level - speaking of the relation between the individual and the church and/or state - at least some religions seem to be focused in keeping people at bay
Don't get me wrong - there's a lot of good things being done by religious people. But that's just that: the PEOPLE are the ones doing the good things!
It's sad that you pretend to be making fun when it is clear that you do not have a clue.
The concept of covenants is riddled all through the bible, Torah, and Qur'an and is explained quite well. It's why Christianity is not just Jews on steroids and why the christian faith was/is so controversial to Judaism and Islam- it established a unique set of rules on what to do/how to behave and worship. It supplants the covenant in place when Christ was on earth and completes prophecy bringing in the new covenant.
All your little jest is doing is clearly demonstrating how utterly clueless you are.
Cosmos: The Next Generation bills itself as a program that "transport[s] viewers to new worlds and across the universe...."
In reality, it does so across the visible universe.
Churches are not for profit organizations that get their money from charitable donations. There are charitable organizations that are secular and based around modern science, and they enjoy similar status.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
What exactly is wrong with polygamy?
I don't want to be absorbing Phelps Rays for the rest of my life.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
Best first do something about the methods big business uses to avoid actually paying taxes. Otherwise churches probably still won't pay much in the way of taxes.
Then again most of the stories you hear in school about Galileo don't mention the whole "G and the pope were old college buddies" or that he was basically playing politics in the late 14 early 15 hundreds.
I think the real story of Galileo is even more fascinating than the inaccurate/popular ones that get trotted out in history books and partisan sides. The science of the story almost didn't matter; the real lesson to be learned was "it may not pay to insult the one person who is able to protect you."
As usual, there were a number of shades of grey. I still don't quite know why we insist every story is black and white.
So, why did you bring up "moral instruction" ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
no, i mean the opposite of expecting everyone else to pay for all the stuff I use. Im for personal responsibility, not a handout
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Let's go watch the movie instead
Because Creationism is just a fairy tale. This show is about science and how things really happened based on evidence, not a bedtime story that someone wrote down. The people who watch it are there because of the science and don't want the Christianity BS. That's what Sunday morning evangelists TV shows are for. Go mortgage your house for them.
What would really help would be if you could show us the part where it says its ok to commit genocide, but only under these circumstances.
And if you want to follow your theory of things are only ok in certain situations, then none of those things are relevant any more so why not throw away the whole book. Or would you still like to pick and choose the bits you want to believe in?
Churches are charitable organisations as they are funded through donations. If you tax them, you're also gonna have to tax every charitable organisation out there.
Developing academic knowledge of the variance in protein content of a particular wheat variety doesn't actually feed people.
Yea teaching a man to fish is pointless. Give him a fish today and tomorrow when he comes back for another fish, start babbling on about jesus while he waits for his fish.
As soon as the government started taxing religion, it would start to do so unequally.
It is taxing religions unequally today! We keep trying to explain to you that, by allowing the government to grant tax-exempt status on the basis of religion, we have granted the government the power to determine what is and is not a valid religion (you want tax exempt status? Sorry, but we, the government, think you do not count as a religion). You have done nothing to counter that claim. All you do is continually repeat "letting the government tax churches will lead to government-sponsored churches. Because I said so."
And that just leads to worse. It is a very slippery slope, and our founders understood that.
So where, exactly, is it written by our founders that "churches should not be taxed because it will lead to government-sponsored churches". Please, take all the time you need. And don't worry, it doesn't need to say that exactly.
TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!
Oh FFS, you're right, the government would make a hot mess of the whole thing..
It still leaves the problem unsolved though: Organized religion misuses their place in society to influence politics and government, and also (more in line with what TFA was actually about) how people view science, education, and knowledge in general.
I just turned 49. The trend I've been seeing develop over the last several decades, is a turning away from science, technology, and seeking of knowledge in general, and towards ignorance, superstition, and a general rejection of all the progress we've made over the last, say, hundred years or so. My fear is we're headed towards a modern-day Dark Age. In part I understand why people might move in this direction: We are, after all, just poor cavemen still, with caveman brains, and this whole 'sentience' thing still just a relatively new trick for us as a species, literally a paper-thin patina overlaying the animal that we still very much are. As individuals, we've the potential for awesome things, and you see this awesomeness happening -- but as a species, we're still reacting like the poor caveman/animal we are underneath. I am far from being a Luddite, but I still understand why so many people are rejecting social and technological progress: It's happening too fast for many, it's overloading that paper-thin layer of convoluted grey matter, and the caveman brain underneath is reacting predictably: By pulling back, making warding signs against evil, and rejecting these things. But unfortunately Power Seeks Power, and some humans crave Power, and religion offers them a path to that, through manipulating the fears of others. How do we stop this? Is there even a way? I know that the ultimate cure for what ails Humanity in general is time: We, as a species, need more time to evolve, to get past the animal needs and desires that drive us to do stupid, destructive things, but that'll take thousands of years, not mere years or decades. Meanwhile organized religion has had thousands of years of Human history to hone it's skills at playing on the caveman fears of Humanity in order to make them docile tools of their organizations. What are we to do?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
When they cannot understand the difference between faith and fact, I don't see how anyone should give them any airtime.
A law is a law is a law, even if it's a tax law. And the Constitution forbids any such with respect to religion.
What is a law that says "groups of people may petition the government for tax-exempt status on the basis of being a church" if not a law that runs afoul of exactly what you just said?
And once you start down that road, of deciding which religions or churches are "worthy" and which are not, you have run afoul of just exactly what the founders were warning about.
False. By requiring that all groups of people who wish to be granted tax-exempt status go through the same set of steps, you eliminate the ability for government to decide which religions are worthy. Because unlike today, there won't be anything about religion in the paper-work being filed!!!!
Yes, I'd love to hear a meeting start with an Atheist like Hitchens or Dawkins. I am sure that if Hitchens were to compare Religion to North Korea,
.he would no longer get invited to offer equal time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
America tolerates descent, as long as it is marginalized and not making headway.
personally I want to see taxes get slashed accross the board and spending at a federal level cut by a drastic number as well. Let the people and states keep their money
You do realize that states that think this way tend to take more from the federal government than they send.
The creationists have a valid argument IF we are talking about a Friday night beer brawl over whose football team is better. But we are not. We are talking about whether the universe is closed, open, or balanced. Is it 13.7B years old or is the current expansion 13.8B years old?
If you want to argue that the earth is 6,000 years old, go talk to the "Last Thursdians", the Hindus and all those other nonsense mythologies. Myths make great themes for movies, but I would not want my heart surgeon or bridge-designer acting on those myths. The Creationists are fundamentally different from the others because they bring their arguments to places where actions are developed, and that makes them dangerous.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Spending by the federal government is probably one of the larger single sources of spending in the economy. Massive cuts such as you are advocating for would result in job losses in both the public and private sectors leading to increased unemployment, in addition to reduced sales leading to decreases in production leading to companies going out of business. Increased unemployment will lead to increased demand on welfare, which isn't good for society, too. And public sector cuts will lead to a decrease in the services to the public, which I'm sure would not go over well with many people.
So, massive cuts -> economic chaos for the masses. Doesn't sound like a Good Thing.
You mean the daily bible shows I see on my TV listing aren't "equal" enough for your people? And, do try to say that ID and creationism aren't tied directly to the Christian religion. That is just disingenuous.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Cosmos is more about equal time for science, not the other way around.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
@plover...
In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it.
After all the bible tells them to do it!
You make the not unusual mistake of thinking that fundamentalist churches follow the teachings of Christ. They are more about old testament in fact. Want to shut up a fundie? Ask them to compare the sermon on the mount with their beliefs.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If creationists want a show where they can espouse their nonsensical ideology, let them produce it. "COSMOS" was developed by Carl Sagan who would roll over in his grave if he knew these conversations were going on. Science has no room for "superstitions". There are still people who believe the earth is flat. Let the Creationists argue with the flat earthers. They are both on the same level and in complete denial of everything empirical.
That's what it's become, and it's what we're used to, so we think that's normal. The Framers certainly didn't see it that way. Taxation was simply to pay for the cost of running the government (yes, that includes the military but not things like health care, food stamps, and social security).
The situation we have today comes from the "chicken in every pot" philosophy. Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you.
This made my cup of coffee even better.
I figure those of us who are making a scientific inquiry into the matter of how we got here, have about 1900 years coming. They should check back around....3914?
If God is God, and the creator of the universe, then God gets to set the rules. Mass killing isn't necessarily mass murder.
Wow, are you really ok with worshipping, (not just loving and being devoted to but worshipping) a god who has arbitrary rules like that.
No wonder you think the NSA can do no wrong, you worship them too it seems.
When you need people to tell you what's inside a book, it's either that it's too complicated (tech stuff, specialized book, etc) or it's that someone will try to fill your brain with their view of things. Obviously, someone explaining the bible falls in the second category.
It looks as if religion has found a set of explanations to make the big book acceptable and now it's serving that to the world, not the other way around.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
But I don't think anyone would disagree that our modern secular humanistic moralities have been at least shaped in part by the bible and other religious texts.
No, no, not by the bible, only by the "good parts" of the bible, or in other words, by other people that chose those good parts. The Bible has nothing to do with it.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Ask True Believers about this, and they reply with variations on "Oh, that part of the bible does not count."
Really.
While out of the other side of their mouths, they tell you that every single word of the bible is god-inspired, and that is is absolute and unchangeable.
I Agree, and if "we" REALLY want to "stay out of Religion" then perhaps it's time to take "Marriage" back, having only Marriages performed in front of a City/County/Governmental official to be recognized and putting religious rites back where they should remain, within the Churches and whether or not any particular "Church" agrees with or denies Same-Sex Marriage is an issue to be tried and fought within the confines of that Church, not the street as it is currently.
1) The Constitution provides you all the "equal airtime" you're going to get, you have the right to speak your mind, not one thing states that the US Government or any Private entity is required to provide the soapbox for you to stand upon.
2) Until you can actually prove that your stance based upon mythology has actual scientific merit, even if you were given the airtime, you still have nothing to actually say.
3) That "marginalization" that was mentioned, you do that to yourself with your continued support of mythology over provable science. Short of lobotomizing the greatest majority of intelligent beings on the planet, mythology will continue to lose out to science.
I thought that was what the Freedom From Religion Foundation was all about- establishing a non-theist religion.
It is not about being a religious organization, it is about being a non profit. There are a lot of non tax paying anti Christian organizations also. Please do not comment about something you have not researched.
>Its because of the covenants if you missed it.
That's all very nice (and a fine example of sophistry, too) but that proposition is completely inconsistent with the message of many Christian (specifically Protestant) sects which claim the absolute inerrancy of the bible, both testaments, no exceptions.
Using simpler words to avoid misunderstanding: you cannot simultaneously claim that the bible is inerrant AND pick and choose what you will believe. Either the book is the perfect word of God or it isn't.
In even simpler words, covenant THIS.
Not my joke, but to the point: "Your religion is like your penis; I'm glad you have one, I'm happy you're proud of it, but please don't whip it out in public or cram it down my children's throats."
Taxation of churches is crazy talk. The church is funded by people who have already paid taxes and are giving extra donations. You wouldn't tax a soccer club or a community center. Churches often do community services to help people, offer counselling, soup kitchens, build schools and medical facilities, wells, and agricultural programs in poor countries. Shelter for homeless people, helping convicts, providing shelter for people during disasters. I'm not sure about the USA but it was the church that started universal education in Canada.
So your saying people who pay tax and then give extra out of their own pocket should be taxed a second time.
I have two words for Creationists out there: "Flu Shot". If you don't believe evolution is real, you shouldn't take the annual flue shot as recommended by the CCD, and eventually your kin will lose out, exactly as described by Darwin, you will fail to reproduce and people in your lineage will eventually be removed from the population. The H1N1 virus affected people of reproductive age more than other groups. It could become an agent of Natural Selection.
Creationists want the matter decided as if it were a political referendum. Science operates are a higher standard. It doesn't claim to have absolute knowledge, unlike many theists who thurnp their Scripture, and indeed Creationism is really just a rhetorical position that defends the moral absolution of those who embrace it along with their appeal to force in their reading of Scripture.
That this debate should still be going on might be due to a host of factors, the tax-exempt status of churches, but also the general intellectual backwardness of Americans, the failure of the schools to teach critical thought, and the increasing social divisions between sections of this nation that might lead to its breakup. The Blue Vs. Red, the Urban vs. Rural divides seem to flollow the Evolution vs. Creationism divide somewhat. Even though if the matter was a problem of following evidence and thinking, if Creationists want to make it political in the same way that being Conservative is political, or wanting to own guns and live in the country is political, I say give them their due, but make them become a separate nation from mine.
I know this much, if those Southern Baptists, Jahovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists and the whole host of Evangelical churches want to legislate what is truth and make for themselves a separate nation in the Old South, for instance, they might be as bad off as Hitler calling Quantum Mechanics Jewish Science and losing armed conflict with opponents who believed in science.The contingancy might have been that the first atomic bomb was used on Hitler's Germany, just as biological warfare based on evolution could be used in a war against people who deny evolution. Deny the methods of science at your own risk, true believers.
Religion does not begin and end with your alleged Christ.
I hope that helped.
Do you feel condescended to now? I hope so, because then you'll understand how the rest of us feel when you religious zealots pat us on our little heads and say patronizing things as if we are just too stupid or "lost" to get on their bandwagon.
As to the "covenant" sophistry above, you Christian (specifically Protestant) religious adherents can't have it both ways: either the bible is the inerrant word of God or it isn't, you don't get to pick and choose what is or isn't in the "covenant" or which "covenant" is in force these days. Nobody on TV yelling about Gawd tells me about covenants; they just tell me The Gays are going to Hell because Leviticus says so, meanwhile they wear clothes of mixed fabrics and I'm quite sure don't send oblations of beeves for sacrifice as required. Well, Deuteronomy 21:18-21 either gets you heaven or life in prison, but it's the word of God so you better believe it (and good luck to your recalcitrant son). Oh, wait, that part of God's Inerrant Word is inoperative now? FUCK YOU.
Let me close with a joke that isn't mine, but is very appropriate: "You religion is like your penis; I'm glad you have one, I'm very happy you like it, but please don't whip it out in public or shove it down my children's throats."
More to the point, the intent of the founders was freedom FROM religion. Their idea was believe what you want if you want to, don't believe if you don't want to, but no church police coming into your home to ensure you're correctly practicing the prescribed religion (that happened all the time in Colonial New England, Massachusetts especially). Thirty seconds on Google finds this:
"Enforcement was probably stricter in New England than elsewhere, mainly because of the structure of government in each town, which depended upon cooperation between ecclesiastical and secular authorities to enforce both religious and civil regulations. Whereas most colonies taxed residents to support the local church and its minister, New England colonies (except Rhode Island) went even further to regulate religious life by prescribing doctrinal uniformity by law. [emphasis mine] In the seventeenth century, Massachusetts punished Quakers and drove them from the colony, and four were hanged for persistent return. Authorities also punished Baptists with beatings and imprisonment, and many alleged witches were sentenced to imprisonment or hanging in the latter half of the seventeenth century."
You want a Theocracy? Move to Iran or join the Taliban and help re-take Afghanistan but GTFO of here...
Cosmos, arguably not cutting edge, like many other publicly financed entities has a decidedly anti-God POV. As do many post I've read here. I'm not trying to feed the trolls but take a little select tidbits of science, ignore the rest and mix it with propaganda hype and you're good to go.
Even if you don't believe in God you will find that publicly funded programs either tow the line or loose their funding and reputations. Even among atheist. Politics, socialism and a number of social demographics are used as weapons against anybody with a traditional values. Even our founding Fathers are called terrorist or worse in some circles.
For years our nation fought for individual rights and against communism, yet today as even one of my very liberal friends has pointed out communism in our government and media is fighting against any sort of non conforming view.
So rant on. Sometime in one's lifetime a person might get tired of being a tool no matter which side they're on. It's just a matter of what you will do about it if and when the epiphany comes.
And after that, It's the hollow earthers demanding "equal time", and then it's the "never went to the moon" crackpots, and next the "I believe everything the gov't said about 911" crackpots.. I mean, where does it end?
Keep the religious ideology on the religious channels. There are plenty of them. Creationists like to pretend that their religious ideas are science, but they are totally devoid of scientific evidence, by their very faith-based nature. Teaching Creationism as an alternative scientific doctrine is just another way to destroy young minds.
Every Creationist should read, as a penance, at least two textbooks on molecular genetics.
Lets keep separation of church and state intact. Remember, nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
Someday you may understand two things: 1) other people aren't so lucky, 2) the concept of compassion.
This space intentionally left blank.
Trust me, an ex-employee of the insurance industry, when I tell you that a health insurance plan with family coverage that cost you $250 a month sucked; you just were lucky enough never have to find out how.
This space intentionally left blank.
>A worldview in which all that exist are space, time, matter, energy and chance allows people to pursue their own perverted and tyrannical ways.
as does a world in which people believe a God exists, and if you don't believe that then you've either never read human history (specifically the egregious behavior of religious leaders from King David to Jim Jones) or you are truly a religious troll...
This space intentionally left blank.
I think the primary reason is that if you can tax something, you can destroy it with carefully designed taxes. Congress may not have the power to ban religion X, but they may be able to craft a tax on churches that only hits religion X and hits it hard enough to make it really hard for that one religion to operate.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I demand equal air time for Wiccan science on Christian networks!
And aboriginal creation myths! And...
I'm not exactly sure if this can be explained in any simpler terms but i will give it one last shot beford declaring you too incompetant to overcome your ignorance.
Lets focus on the fallacy within your argument. Take any history book and it will basically say this is how thing were. Now when you look at real life and notice the north is no longer at war with the south or that we are no longer under rule of the king of england, you do not assume the history book was in error. No, you assume something has changed. So why cannot a history book that talks about the US across colonial days, the civil war, and today be correct even though it says things that are no longer followed today?
Now i know you are trolling and to simpke minded folk like you, you might even make sense. Your argument ignores fundemental facts of religion that have been present as long as we have known sbout that religion. You absolutely can claim the bible is inerrant and only the things under the current covenant apply. The problem with your thinking relies completely on your ignorance on the subject and inability or unwillingness to correct that. The stories in the old testament are the telling of the various covenants . The new testament contains the current covenant and evidence of it being created by the fulfilment of prophecy. The jews and muslims dont believe the fulfilment happened and the muslins think Jesus was only a prophit. That only happens with the concepts of covenants.
The academic public policy take on this is as follows:
Diversity of opinion can be in several forms:
* a diversity of available (biased) channels, even though some of them give no time to opposing opinions
* a diversity of programs over time within a channel
* a diversity of opinions within a program.
For a FTA channel using the radio spectrum, the broadcasting license gives the right to use a scarce public good (one of the very limited number of interference free VHF or UHF channels available in the service area) giving access (and ability to influence) all citizens. In that case it is reasonable for the channel to be required to reflect the diversity of political, religious, and scientific opinion within the country.
There are so many channels available on cable and satellite that there is no requirement for any one of them to be required to reflect diversity of opinion.
There is no requirement to reflect diversity in any particular program - with the possible exception of programs that are produced with public money.
IMHO science does not have to reflect religious views because they are not about science.
similarly, religion does not have to have a scientific basis because it is not about science.
The two belief sets do not overlap. R union S = 0 , T=True , R= False
On an earlier point, TV networks are usually not paid to present a program. If they do, it is because they believe that it will be of sufficient interest to enable advertisements to be sold to a target audience through it. The networks are not in the least interested in the truth contained therein. They are not in the business of relaying truth. For God's sake! - they are in the advertising industry.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
It didn't suck. it resulted in practically royal treatment for my wife when she had our son. But outside of that and those regular visits and checks, it was fine.
Compassion only goes as far as a person's failure to take care of himself.
I get that other people aren't so lucky. There are lots of ways I am not so lucky. I never had my way with hot women the way some others do. Those are lucky people right? I'm certainly not rich or famous or powerful. But I do take responsibility for my life and that of my family. That's work, determination, not luck.
And if by compassion you mean that I should help pay the enormous profits of the medical and insurance companies so that people who can't take care of their health, smoking, drinking, doing drugs, eating frikken Fritos instead of salad can visit doctors who sell medicine instead of prevention? No. I don't have compassion for that. My money and resources need to go to my family.
And when you are asked what you are willing to give up so other people can have something they didn't earn, what will you give? How many things that you don't need do you own? Of those, how many are you willing to sell and donate the proceeds? If you aren't doing that now, don't talk to me or anyone else about compassion and luck.
Unfortunately for these people, everything begins and ends with their alleged christ.
The Fairness Doctrine should not be confused with the Equal Time rule. The Fairness Doctrine deals with discussion of controversial issues, while the Equal Time rule deals only with political candidates. Scientific Fact vs. Belief does not a controversy make. As such neither Fairness Doctrine, nor the Equal Time rule actually apply here.
How,do new churches get started? Simple, it is,Sunday, and rthe preacher is preaching. He reads a bible verse, and proceeds to tell the congregation what it means. Then a man stands up in the back and says, " I don't agree, I think it means this. And I am going to start my own church." He leaves, as does half of the congregration, and a new church is started.
Oh really?
I think you'll find that the new covenant is more like an addendum rather than a replacement.
Matthew 5:18-19
Luke 16:17
And if you insist on finding a passage that is contradictory (not too tough to do) , we still have support for slavery, eternal punishment for though crime, separation of families and human sacrifice.
Since they had Odin in the very first scene, of the very first episode, I don't think you can make a case they're representing it as Factually Accurate, especially since Ragnar Lothbrok is probably an amalgam of several real Scandinavians to begin with (even before the tv show)
Sorry, they're not kosher.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
...is it?
Let's just cut to the chase. Thomas Paine in "Age Of Reason", which you can read online sorted this all out very nicely: the entire body of our religious works is hearsay.
New Testament, old, whatever. We've got little more than, "somebody says god says...", which isn't jack shit in a court of law, where the big kids actually make the rules.
No wonder it's embarrassing! Really, the most common ugly social issue arguments boil down to "somebody says god says...." and that somebody can be from the Bible, or Pastor Corn Hole Bob, who has it on good authority, or some other garbage.
All of it carries exactly the authority you grant it, and for all of us, it's entirely optional too, meaning none of us really have to care what "somebody says God says."
It's like trying to split the baby. Dig too deep into the problem and it gets really messy. Better to just move on and treat other people the same way you would like to be treated.
Racism, bigotry and theocracy are always wrong. Doesn't matter who says God says whatever. It's just wrong.
There, now we all can get along, New Testament or old, whatever.
And yes, God told me. Really.
Blogging because I can...
Let the circle jerk ensure! Wasn't this story inevitable?
" Tyson showed life arose from simple organic compounds without mentioning that some believe that's not possible"
https://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/03/21/scientists-finish-a-53-year-old-classic-experiment-on-the-origins-of-life/
which one of the two genesis creation stories does he want to talk about?
Funny how most western countries tax churches and are less religious than the US.
While such an approach would indeed limit the power wielded by [the federal] government, wouldn't it increase costs overall? Or do you disagree that an economy of scale reduces costs?
If the former, is this something we can afford, given the current state of the economy and the already-high levels of government spending we have today? Or, if the latter, how do you explain modern economies?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Was there a newer covenant that came after the one established through Jesus? Or are you dismissing valid criticism of Christian apologists by deliberately ignoring the countless parts of the New Testament that are commonly glossed over for lack of relevance to today's modern age? It's not just Leviticus that we're talking about here.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Science requires facts for decent/discussion. Dogma (Christian, Islam, Satanism, Hebrew politics ) truths/views are about myth, theology, mysticism, allegory, fables/legends , there are always dissenting dogma views.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Evolution is defined by a species ability to survive and procreate. I am pretty sure the survivability of the Duck would be inversely proportional it proclivity to trying to mate with a crocodile.
There should be NO taxpayer subsidies for a Creation Museum. To sponsor disinformation, especially those with religious origins, via taxpayer funds is unconstitutional!
This is just one of the most insidious underminings of scientific rational thought in this country and is a hallmark of fundamentalist simpleton "education" programs.
If we continue to allow this, we're doomed!
I think churches should be taxed on any income that doesn't go directly to "good works" -- ie. some form of charity or support structure. Which would put them on an equal footing with other charitable organizations. (Tho having perused some of those tax documents... dodging out of taxes is more like it.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
who said anything about unequal, tax them the same as any business and be done with it.
Hey look what I found down the back of the couch, it's a new covenant. Problem solved.
The bible as a work of literature has its exemplary moments, and I would encourage everyone to read it, from start to finish. But as a book on morality it is severely lacking in that you can never tell what to take literally, and what to not take literally. I guess use your own judgement? Well, you don't need the bible to do that.
It depends on what you mean by a "book of morality". The bible is primarily a narrative, containing stories of people failing, succeeding, and generally exploring every point on the spectrum between good and evil. Aesop's Fables, or other "moral" works also contain good and evil characters - not everything that happens is meant as an example of how to behave. There's a new branch of theology emerging around that fact - the bible is not, in fact, a book of moral instruction, but a book of stories, some of which are explicitly fictional. Why would a god choose to communicate to us through stories? It's an interesting question, IMO.
That said, the various genocides within the old testament are problematic. Nobody who is morally honest can say that a just god would ever command such a thing. Biblical scholars tend to treat it as some mixture of revisionism/unreliable narration - the Israelites commit genocide, and then use God to justify their actions.
It's a complicated text. Some people find a lot of beauty and value in it, and the new testament in particular contains some statements that are absolutely revolutionary and inspiring. These things are mostly ignored by the modern church.
so basically you're arguing that any group of people who pool their money together for any cause whatsoever should be taxed as a for-profit business? groups of friends pitching in for a keg of beer. friends and family contributing aid to a friend or family member who can't pay hospital bills or afford to repair a house that's falling apart. because that's all that a church, as a financial entity, is.
why should anyone care what christians think?
Right after you start teaching evolution in church. Maybe not even then, as there will be no more demand for stupid anymore.
What amuses me is that you are complaining about this.
Meanwhile they're building extravagant churches and spending money on extravagant things and paying some of their leaders extravagant salaries, and there aren't any taxes being paid.
I don't know if you are jealous or are trying to stifle them. The point of government not endorsing in religion is that religion DOESN'T pay taxes. Any religion.
All those extravagant churches serve a purpose: to support a congregation. This congregation is the one who pays the bills for the facility. Any mega church utility bills are in the millions. You think the leader is that wealthy and runs it by fiat? NO, and all of them will tell you that (they also will tell you its the God's money).
None of them qualifies as a business in the sense you are thinking because they make no money other than what comes in. Book deals don't happen for the local pastor in Bigbee Valley CME Church. TV time is expensive anyway you cut it. Ask Glenn Beck that. He pays taxes and relies on subscribers only too.
What amuses me more is you are afraid of this turning into a theocracy. You know what? That's what the founding fathers escaped.
You have this delusion that Christians are going to ban alcohol consumption, pornography, drug use, abortion and mandate everyone go and listen to a guy speak homily for one hr every Sunday while everything is closed.
Never happen. This isn't that world anymore.
Jesus drank wine. No where in the bible does it ban wine. Its bans overindulgence and drunkenness. Guess what? There are already dozens of laws that also ban that.
Abortion is murder no matter how you want to color it with pleasant words and straw man arguments. It is the destructive removal of a fetus from a mother. There are means to prevent getting pregnant in the first place up to surgery. My opinion about abortion is not material to the situation. Some people support this. (until you suggest if they support their mother doing the same thing) Others view that any life has a right. best example: do you think Wendy Davis would support her mother aborting her? NO.
The most interesting thing is that when you speak about a woman's right or choice to remove said growing fetus you can't do it with out being selfish or self serving. Yes, Christians speak against that. However, if you think that reducing the population is a good thing in an of itself thats another non religious argument.
Pornography is another issue. Jesus loved the people but condemned their activities because ultimately pornography has long reaching and graphic effects. Using their own industry standards, Adult actresses have the highest number of suicides among all entertainers. Highest number of drug use and abuse. And the highest number of mental health issues. Over half of retired adult actresses claim its eats their soul. Sure Bella Knox can claim she feels empowered by having a man call her a slut and say she loves having anal intercourse while giving fellatio to another man. However, the guardian shows that she has self mutation scars on her thighs. That is a mental illness.
WE should love on her. She will eventually discover the truth. Even if no one in college discovered her, the fact she is on video means that her future bosses are watching. And they aren't interested in employing her.
Westboro finally isn't a church, its a cult that claims it follows Jesus. And as a cult it stays insular and perverts everything it touches. The only reason it still exists because its cult doesn't rape children or enslave people physically.
You say its only for people to have religion and beliefs if they want but only if their private. Who are you to dictate what people can believe? What if I say its ok for you to think in private but thats where I draw the line. If I hear you speak you will be silenced. Thats just as crazy a statement. Its not only ignorant (because you don't understand religion of any type), its tyrannical. Its what Hitler said before the Jews were murdere
Of course no one but a church could possibly hope to run charities, food shelves, hospitals and orphanages.
Of course not. There are plenty of charities that do this that are not churches. Even the government (in theory) does some of this work too.
Unfortunately, they do not do enough of it - especially in this political climate of "makers and moochers" - so despite what you may hear about a few "wealth theology" abominations, most churches (and synagogues, and temples and mosques etc.) actually do a lot of work to patch up the truly evil state of the US "safety net". Just near me, local churches provide homeless shelters, food banks, cheap to free meeting space for support groups and if all else fails, a steady stream of volunteers for simply doing such work. BTW, I live in fairly large, affluent and nominally "liberal" city and these problems are still widespread.
And this is why churches have traditionally been given tax-exempt status - along with other organizations that do such work. Not because they are churches but because of the work they do.
The vast majority of us in worship communities would welcome help of any kind. For my part, I don't care if you are an atheist or an animist: If you want to do the work of the Kingdom, then I say that what we have in common is far more important than a few ontological squabbles.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
I do understand the concepts. Often, it's religious believers who seem to have missed it.
This conversation appears to be replayed on an infinite loop:
Believer: NO HOMO! Leviticus something-or-other.
Me: New Covenant, Mixed Fibers, Shrimp.
Believer: Oh, right. Something vaguely worded from Paul, not Jesus.
/ time passes
Believer: NO HOMO! Leviticus something-or-other.
It's like they forget. Or they're deliberately forgetting. They can, in theory, make a case based on various Epistles, but it's hard for me to take their exigesis seriously when I have to start fixing the really obvious errors. I'm not supposed to have to be the one to have to point out that New Covenant stuff, or the obvious contradictions in picking and choosing from Leviticus.
You are missing a small point here. If you want to use the bible as an example them lets use ALL of it. Yes Jericho was commanded to be utterly destroyed by God. However it also said in an earlier book that In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Also, he cut a blood covenant with Abraham and then gave the land that the City is occupying to him. So. A: God created the land and all the materials used to build the city including the people's ancestors. B: he gave the land to Abraham whose descendants eventually ended up in egyptian via their choice. C. When Abraham's descendants left egypt they still remained in a blood covenant with God and therefore owners of the land the occupants of Jericho were on. The leaders of the city refused to recognize this. Therefore the solution was their destruction of which God approved. D: God gave specific instructions how to defeat Jericho including a specific timeframe which so happened included an impending earthquake which caused the walls to drop straight down allowing Abraham's descendants to breach the city. It amuses me that you want to use an example but fail to even understand what you are using. If you own something its yours. If its a piece of land all of it is yours including mineral rights etc. God doesn't need money because he invented it and anything that could be used to make it. Its like saying that "jack johns needs gold" knowing full well his land rests on the largest gold mine and because of that he sells the gold to all the nations and is a founding member of the illuminati. The property was taken to be destroyed and converted so Abraham's descendants could use it because it is theirs. The points of the bible can reduced to 7 things.: God is eternal, outside of this universe God created everything God owns everything. God created people in his image because he wanted a family People screwed up because we chose to rebel against him God still loved us enough to offer a solution to our rebellion Those who reject God's solution are separated by their own choice not God's
Once you decide that the bible should be taken "metaphorically" it becomes no different than Stephen King's 'the stand' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone or herman melville's 'moby dick'. Oh and this is no such thing as Modern secular morals. Is murder moral? It can be if enough people believe. Watch the first episode of 'The 100' thats exactly what they are dealing with. Murdering people because there simply isn't enough resources? Is that moral. To them it is. Truth has to be a specific principle that doesn't change regardless of the year, politics or peoples belief.
Barton offered personal support to the men in hopes of keeping their spirits up: she read to them, wrote letters for them, listened to their personal problems, and prayed with them.
A Memory of Solferino, a book written by Henry Dunant, founder of the global Red Cross network.
Dunant was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the first son of businessman Jean-Jacques Dunant and Antoinette Dunant-Colladon. His family was devoutly Calvinist and had significant influence in Geneva society. His parents stressed the value of social work, and his father was active helping orphans and parolees, while his mother worked with the sick and poor. His father worked in a prison and an orphanage. Dunant grew up during the period of religious awakening known as the Réveil, and at age 18 he joined the Geneva Society for Alms giving. In the following year, together with friends, he founded the so-called "Thursday Association", a loose band of young men that met to study the Bible and help the poor, and he spent much of his free time engaged in prison visits and social work. On 30 November 1852, he founded the Geneva chapter of the YMCA and three years later he took part in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of its international organization.
This is the person responsible for the Geneva convention. On Food banks:
The world's first food bank was the St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance in Arizona, founded by John van Hengel in 1967. According to sociology professor Janet Poppendieck, hunger within the US was widely considered to be a solved problem until the mid-1960s. By the mid sixties, several states had ended the free distribution of federal food surpluses, instead providing an early form of food stamps which had the benefit of allowing recipients to choose food of their liking, rather than having to accept whatever happened to be in surplus at the time. However, there was a minimum charge and some people could not afford the stamps, leading to severe hunger. One response from American society to the rediscovery of hunger was to step up the support provided by soup kitchens and similar civil society food relief agencies - some of these dated back to the Great Depression and earlier. In 1965, while volunteering for a community dining room, van Hengel learned that grocery stores often had to throw away food that had damaged packaging or was near expiration. He started collecting that food for the dining room but soon had too much for that one program. He thought of creating a central location from which any agency can receive donations. Described as a classic case of "if you build it they will come", the first food bank was created with the help of St. Mary's Basilica.
The honest truth is that secular things like this fail because without religion, people honestly don't give a damn about anyone. They are interested in profit for themselves, convenience for themselves and comfort for themselves. There is nothing wrong with these items unless they stand alone.
Yes, he walks more, takes public transit and all that,
You seem to dismiss it like it doesn't really make a difference. Did you compare portion sizes of food? I would bet that typical portions of food in Japan, even American style food, will be smaller than what you get in the US. And even if his portions aren't smaller in Japan, the extra exercise alone might make enough of a difference to account for the weight loss.
Round here we tend to leave that to surgeons.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The welfare state is unconstitutional.
--
roman_mir
Either the Bible details all these laws and rules of applicability, or it doesn't.
If it does, then there are a whole lot of people that have studied the Bible and come to different conclusions.
If it doesn't, and where does this additional knowledge come from.
The whole thing was written piecemeal by many men. Then out of all the writings certain pieces were chosen for inclusion by committee. Exactly what evidence is there that the result is exactly as the one true God intended?
Given the choice between believing it is the word of God, and assuming it's the work of men for exerting control and gathering power I have no trouble deciding that the latter is the simplest and most likely scenario. Occam's razor for the win.
Having the power isn't the problem?
All scientific evidence shows that the husband and the wife cannot have the same perspective.
But even if you suppose it really isn't a "problem", why does it need to be a rule? If there's no issue and both parties would make the same choices anyway, then logically the rule is unnecessary. Even God can't win against logic.
The rule exists because men created it. Like most of religion, it's about power and control.
So the only way to understand the Bible "properly" is to have a teacher or guide to help you "interpret" what you're reading?
Then what use is the Bible?
And what use is that when different people will inevitably teach you different meanings?
Also, there are plenty of scriptures, why choose the Bible at all?
the new testament in particular contains some statements that are absolutely revolutionary and inspiring
[citations desired]
That may be true but it only affects people who itemize.
The amount of pick and mix the religious people do is kind of incredible.
So why did they pick creationism, when it conflicts with everything? Why not skip that part, as well as the genocide and slavery?
Does anyone know?
It seems very easy to see the description of the creation of the universe as symbolic.
Well, if you think what I'm talking about has Anything to do with picking up hot women, you have not only missed the point but you prove how you lack both compassion and insight. I hope you learn both before life drops it's inevitable bombs on you, bombs that aren't your fault and over which you have no control (like age, accidental trauma, or non-user-induced disease).
You ARE, in fact, your brother's keeper. Keep that in mind. Altruism, far from being weakness as the Objectivist Randians believe, is a concept without which no multi-celled organism can live or any society thrive. Just because we CAN cut each other's throats doesn't mean it's a good idea...
"Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! " - Marley's Ghost in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"
And fuck you with your "what have I done for others". I run charities that raise money for afterschool arts programs for kids, actively support homeless shelters, let homeless people who are getting back on their feet live with me for free, and donate to food pantries. What matters is what YOU do for others, a concept clearly lost on you. Where's your list?
"No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent" - John Donne
Your rigid and self-centered beliefs make me think you're actually quite frightened and don't know it.
Good luck.
PS It's still me, I just am not allowed to log into SD from this machine.
Right, but you never tested that policy (thank God) with long-term catastrophic illness or a long stay in the ICU, and it almost certainly had lifetime benefit caps (which the examples I cited can burn through in months), pre-existing condition exclusions, and no prevention against policy rescission (the ability oft the company to drop you at any time for any or no reason and without appeal, but usually after they get sick of paying out benefits, however little). All that crap is gone now with the ACA, and that is a good thing.
Trust me, I used to work in the insurance industry so I know all the tricks. Did you ever actually read every tiny detail in that policy contract?
The reason that policy is gone is that it doesn't meet minimum standards.
Pants will be shat when they learn of the Anatosuchus.
Every Sunday there are numerous shows for creationism and they have their own channel called TBN the bible network
A Pastafarian on a creationist show would be hilarious, anyways.
There are how many 24 hour JESUS channels? blasting the airwaves 24/7 about SALVATION!
And now they are whining that a single weekly TV show is cutting into their Indoctrination time?
I am a Christian, or specifically a Lutheran, and these assholes out there that I see are "Christians" are not worshiping the same god as I am. My god teaches tolerance, love, and to be giving. Not hate, fear, and uncertainty that it seems is the new Christian Doctrine.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Since 2005 my insurance costs have went up 20X yes 2000% increase.
Insurance companies are all scumbag thieves, I just wish that "obamacare" was a real plan with single payer instead if this Republican Romneycare abortion that allowed the insurance companies to essentially control it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.