So, if the "illiterate natives" got it wrong, then what else is wrong? If the literal reading isn't right, then it's simply wrong to claim that the text is "dead-on right" just because it can possibly be read in some alternative way that doesn't happen to contradict scientific findings.
It should be remembered that the book of Genesis was revealed through Moses to a group of people who were not ready for a higher law. They were also still in a slave mindset, and generally illiterate.That's right: calling the Jews, and their entire Scriptural tradition, stupid can get you off the hook!
You can personally insult me all you want it does not change the fact that if someone is out there murdering people he is not obeying Jesus.
...so? Do all Christians obey Jesus? Are Christian's sinless? Even Christians don't claim that.
You will know a christian by the fruits they produce, that is the best answer I am capable of giving you.
No, that simply begs the question, because you are simply assuming that YOUR ideas about what is truly Christian are correct. Obviously, the Nazis had different ideas, and thought YOU had it wrong. We can't decide who's interpretation is right without cheating by begging the question.
Your view of christianity is a perfect example, because a bunch of evil men called themselves xtians (the Nazi's) you are convinced that all/most Christians ar antisemites.
Is lying about others Christlike? If so, then you're not a Christian. Read my post: where do I say that all Christians are anti-Semites? That's right, nowhere. In fact, you'll find me saying that just because some were, doesn't mean that all are: that that sort of thinking is a mistake. But the fact remains, anti-Semitism was a prevalent Christian position for centuries. That it no longer is, is a real credit to the evolution of Christian thought. But it's nothing but dishonest to try and pretend that the Nazis could not have been Christians just because they did things that are considered evil: that's just playing a True Scotsman game.
Nonsense. What we've found is that the rate of mutation is many order MORE than it needs to be, and that natural selection, if anything, actually seems to slow it DOWN.
Yep: the high level of dustfall was based on an old miscalculation taken from an earthbound measurement. It put the level of dustfall many orders of magnitude higher than it actually turned out to be when measured on the moon.
Ah yes, Johnson. Why are lawyers suddenly considered the most honest and upright of all professionals, just because they say things you like? Johnson brings the sort of ethics to the debate that a personal injury lawyer brings to law. In other words: he makes a lot of slanderous accusations and practiced usage of logical fallacy. His claims have been refuted countless times in books like "Tower of Babel," but even when it's proven how wrong he is, even after he admits it, like all creationists, he simply continues on making the same dishonest claims.
---This states that a species will get stronger, but it cannot explain how a species would turn into another species, such as a lizard into a bird.---
Boop boop! Red flag! "Species" is not a hard and fast category: there is no line, nothing stopping small changes from adding up to big ones. Lizards never "turn into" birds: there is instead a long long chain of intermediate creatures.
You should know that creationists often explicitly seek to debate only with people who anti-God agendas, and even simply refuse to accept that evolutionary theorists are anything but, even when they roundly deny it, and note that they are believers too. You should read about Michael Shermer's experience debating Gish in his book "Why People Believe Weird Things" (note, "God" is not one of the "weird things" he talks about, though the cult of Ayn Rand, creationism, Holocaust denial, recovered memory, etc. are)
The problem with this reading is that the same word is used later in the text to describe actual literal days, without comment or change in context. Not to mention the correlation to the Sabbath cycle. In fact, there's a fairly good arguement that each "day" is counted in the text by the revolution of the sun: which would seem silly if we were talking about "eras." But the main problem is that the OldEarth view is relatively new: none of the rabbinical readers ever seem to read it that way, and this in itself is fairly good evidence that, as long as the rabbinical tradition has any merit and extends back even to the first authroship of genesis, this is the way it what it was written to mean in the first place.
You're simply ignorant of other religions, in this case, Spinoza-like or Tolland-esque pantheism. The name is not "specific" to a certain religion just because you're louder.
Truly, you are clueless. If you want to play silly word games about who is and isn't really a "
"true" Chirstian, go play Boggle. You are in no position to decide what "true" Christianity is. Don't waste your time trying to think about history. Is Martin Luther, a vicious anti-Semite and the founder of Protestantism, not a "real" Christian, just becuase YOU say so?
Helloooo if the Nazi;s were polytheistic (ie believing in many nordic gods)
No no, they believed in the superiority of nordic RACE: i.e. blond haired, blue-eyed Germans.
they were not xtian, the only reason they tolerated any xtians was because of their alliance with italy, and the fact Germany had a large xtian population.
You have no grasp of the related history. The Nazis, being Germans, were, like most Germans, predominantly Christian. The highest Nazi military honor was the Iron Cross. Just because it's inconvient to remember that the Germans were Christian doesn't erase this fact from reality.
Just because someone calls themselves a xtian, just because someone goes to church, just because someone owns a Bible does not make them a xtian.
What a dumb arguement. Whatever sect of Christian you are or suggest to me, I bet I could find tons of Christians willing to make the same statement about them. Obviously, everyone thinks they have the true faith. But the fact remains: the Germans, who by and large supported the Nazis and many of whom WERE the Nazis, were predominantly Christian, and that didn't magically change their beliefs as soon as Hitler took power. As Hitler went insane, he started to believe that he was god's chosen one and that normal church leaders stood in his way, but that doesn't change the fact that the whole appeal of anti-Semitism was the centuries long Christian inspired hatred of Jews (founded in the Pauline ideas of Martin Luther), a blot on Christianity that has only recently been mostly cured, to the great credit of the religion.
---But my real point is in a situation of national security or severe weather the airways are the only dependable way to go.---
So national security wasn't possible before TV? Come on: there are plenty of other ways to get messages out. Not everyone watches TV all day long anyway. And regardless, there will always be Tv signals and Tv stations that can be picked up by legacy tvs. It's just that commerical networks may not be able to survive. SOMEONE will be broadcasting no matter what.
---We have XM satellite we should get rid of FM just because?---
Hello? No one is deciding to get rid of anything. Commercial services are coming and going do to market conditions.
No, the Nazis were most definately predominantly Christian. But that doesn't mean that all Christians are Nazis, far from it. Some Nazis, most definately Hitler did, indeed, believe that nordic predominance was a part of their Christianity. But that doesn't make them any less Christian than any other sect with strange ideas.
But it must not be forgotten that the anti-Semtism that the Nazis spouted was very much rooted in Christian ideas: most predominantly those of Martin Luther, who centuries before had himself advocated things like concentration camps and forced explusion for Jews and many other things that the Nazi's later did. One of the first things the Nazi's did when they attained power was to declare a day in Luther's honor.
It was only the Christian leaders they opposed that they imprisoned: again, this doesn't make them any less Christian than Catholic nations who persecuted Protestants.
AA is not only very religious, but it has even argued that it's meetings have the protections of religion. The Big Book contains several passages that basically insult nonbelievers, most in the section titled "We Agnostics." At one point, it threatens with DEATH (via failure to get sober) anyone who does not believe: "To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster... To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face." and "But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life -- or else. Perhaps it is going to be that way with you. But cheer up, something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics."(both from page 44)
Here are a smattering of more of it's quotes:
"If you think you are an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you from accepting what is in this book, I feel sorry for you." (page 181) ( i.e., not believing in god, or not believing that one can know if there is a god, is a form of intellectual pride! (despite both being professions of lack of belief or ignorance!)
Even a cursory read of AA materials will find countless examples not simply of religious evangelism, but even slanderous insults on the character of non-believers like the ones above.
Being forced into a treatment program that uses religious evangelism is NOT considered justifiable, and "well, you don't have to listen" is not considered an excuse. The key difference is not who runs the program, but rather if the program mixes mandatory evangelism with its services. Catholic hospitals treat the sick: they don't force people to pray before treating them, or subject patients to prayers if they don't want them. But some programs do. In the case I am reffering to, it was an atheist who was sentanced to attend a particularly evangelical sect of AA as part of his treatment. That's just not justifiable: government cannot mandate religious practices.
You're a little confused. The government already DOES give to charities that are run by churches. The catch is that the charities services DON'T involve evangelism: they do actual charity work. They are almost always legally and financially distinct from the direct church leadership. There's nothing wrong with this. What's wrong with Bush's plan is that it wants to give money to programs in which there IS no distinction between the charity and the evangelism services: where money goes not into food or drug treatment, but rather into evangelical materials and worship services.
Um... so then what was your point in the first post?
Bush's initiative would be nothing new if all it meant was giving money to religious charities. We ALREADY do that, and rightly so... under the condition that they are actually doing charity work, not religious evangelizing. Most religious charities set up boards to keep the church and the charity financially separate, and that generally works out great. What people object to in Bush's proposal is that he is pushing for federal funding of programs that make evangelism the central part of their programs and services.
Uh, no. Not any more than signing your name at the bottom of a driver's liscence is an "atheist" act. The appeals court is not saying that no person can talk about god: it's saying that the government shouldn't be leading its citizens in any endorsement of any particular theology or religious ideas. That right is reserved for the people.
It's ability to stick in a vacuum comes from the fact that the adhesive technique is all about the geometry of the molecules involved, not any sort of chemical process that requires air. So the technique didn't have to come into being with "ceiling in a vacuum" in mind: it's just a "good trick" for sticking that also happens to work regardless of what sorts of surfaces or surrounding conditions abound.
Sounds like you are simply making an arguement of habit, not of any sort of fundamental need.Just because we have become accustomed to doing something a certain way doesn't mean that change is bad.
I>It takes a cry baby to not want something for free and complain that people still want it.
Eh? If I can make any sense out of this arguement, it sounds like you actually think that "free" Tv is "free." But it's not: it's paid for using a bussiness model that may or may not be able to survive in the future. Of course people want to have things without paying for it. That's hardly the point.
If you have the luxury of a PVR, great. But don't think that it's an excuse to get rid of "Major" television.
Hello? It's not an "excuse": it's a matter of finding a way to financially support Tv.
Come to think of it, you don't actually seem to be making much sense, so maybe I'm wasting my time in responding.
Look: just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't make them a liar.
I didn't say that you were a liar because you disagreed with me: I said you were a liar because you said several demonstrably false things (including several about me and what I said). Perhaps this was, after all, unintentional on your part, in which case, I said, I apologize for the accusation.
Now, please explain to me - if evolution (or rather Darwinian natural selection) is not "purely random", then what is it?
You know, it's not my job to explain this to you. It's explained countless times all over the place. Your account of what "evolution" and "natural selection" are, is simply fanciful. How can you possibly judge the applicability of evolutionary theory, and the honesty of defenders of evolutionary theory, if you have a parody vision of what evolution is (and, I have to say, a vision that, despite your protestations, is easily identifiable as a creationist account). Mutation is simply ONE factor that builds up variation in a population. But mutation, even "good" mutation, is not how evolution or natural selection works. If all evolution was was the hope that good mutations would arise occasionally to adapt a species, then evolution would be highly implausible. But that's not it at all. In fact, population genetics studies have shown that, far from natural selection being limited by the rate of mutation, in practice natural selection actually serves to slow the rate of mutation down. Natural selection, first of all, works on interbreeding populations, not individuals (the advances of singular mutants wouldn't last very long in any given pool). Environmental conditions select ranges from a diverse population, and the next generation is then also diverse, but representively slanted in a particular direction of variation. That's how adpation generally works. It's not a process of simply waiting around for a mutation to break a logjam in development. It's not a process that waits for the right roll of the dice.
However, the pro-evolution types are just as bad.
Nonsense. Certianly, there are impatient and insulting people out there who shill for evolution, and some are unecessarily insulting to people's religious beliefs. But nowhere in scientific circles do you find toleration for lying, and resucitating even disproven lies. Nowhere do you find people like Hovind of course. But you also wont find people like Robert Johnson or like Dembski, who wildly misrepresent the positions of others, make wide use of rhetorical and logical fallacy and simply lie about the evidence to cast doubt on the applicability of evolutionary theory. Even Behe, who's arguement is baseless (and already raised and refuted nearly a hundred years ago) but at least fairly honest, makes huge factual misteps that he refuses to correct (like his claim that there is no literature on molecular evolution, when indeed there is lots).
I have heard Dawkins, on NPR's Connection, claim that no theologian is supernaturalist. Considering that I know quite a few theologians, almost all of which believe more or less in a number of supernatural events, I have to wonder whether Dawkins is deluded or just lying?
Knowing a little bit about how you think, I have to wonder: do you have any idea what Dawkins was saying? I certainly have no idea exactly what he's talking about from that short (mis?)quote. I certainly very much doubt that he was saying that no theologian _believes_ in the supernatural, since that's not even something he thinks in the first place. But regardless, what does this have to do with Dawkin's account of evolution? How does it demonstrate that he is positing a "weird force" that is "invisible" to explain the building power of the evolutionary process?
I suggest you try the "The Tower of Babel" and then, perhaps "Darwin's Dangerous Idea."
However, you are certainly out of line to claim that Piltdown was not an out and out fraud - Hesperopithecus is debatable.
Read my post again: notice the "unlike"? You want to apologize, again?
Being mistaken does not make someone a liar
I think I'm well advised to doubt your sincerity, considering that your OP made you out to be some sort of disgruntled expert on this subject, despite the fact that the things you've said have often been verbatim recitations of standard creationist literature. But if it was an honest mistake, I retract that statement insofar as it pertains to you. I'm even sorry that you got taken in. The fact remains that the NM is almost always described as a fabrication or a fraud by creationists, even insinuating that the entire scientific community fabracated it to fool the public, and that IS dishonest, whether it's your fault or not.
As best as I understand Neo-Darwinism (a la Dawkins) it appears to posit some kind of weird force, the mechanisms of which are so unclear as to be invisible, that somehow makes formation of more complex life forms more probable.
Please, by all means send this discovery to Dawkins: I'm sure he will be quite exicted to discover a "weird force" at work. It will certainly surprise him to find that he's argued that more complex forms are simply "more probable" as opposed to describing mechanisms by which they develop. So I can't imagine where you've gotten this idea, except perhaps from some of Gould's more loony critiques, or perhaps an intelligent design theorist. But if you can't even bother to fairly represent people's arguements, why should I consider you honest? How is this sort of sloppy straw man slander consistent with honest approach to the subject? And, of course, this entire response is non-sequitur. It doesn't fix the fact that you seem to think that natural selection is "purely random," and so far I haven't present an evolutionary "arguement" for you to refute with neo-darwinism or anything else.
First, this is a substantial departure from Darwinian Natural Selection, and second I wonder when you 19th century naturalistic types give up and just say "God" again?
I'm not a "naturalist." Are you channeling Johnson now? "God" is not a default hypothesis. There is no default hypothesis. There is, however, a pretty solid line of explanation for life on earth based on so far observable laws. If you wish to fill any ignorance with "God did it," that's your bussiness, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that (indeed, most evolutionary scientists do so). But it's certainly not necessary in theory, and it certainly doesn't really explain anything.
Wait, so now people are owed free tv, just because they had it in the past?
And cable tv should be free, just because it has ads? That's not a necessarily very accurate statement. Sure, cable stations have both ads AND subscriber revenue, but that's in part because each channel has a lower viewer base overall than the main networks: so despite the same number of ads, they don't get paid as much (since ads pay out in viewership, not mere display). So of COURSE they need subscriber fees to balance out the discrepancies...
Actually, the "Nebraska Man" (better referred to as Hesperopithecus) was widely trumpeted by the scientific community as the final proof of evolution during the monkey trials in the thirties.
Widely? You mean: Osborn? Again, read the scientific literature at the time. Read what the scientific community thought of Osborn's find (hint: less than impressed, and unconvinced). Then come back and tell me if your statement here is anything other than simply misleading.
Testimony regarding hesperopithecus was introduced into the Scopes trial.
Maybe it's just "politics" talking: but I think you're a liar. Not only wasn't it in the end, but the only one who called for it was Bryan. But of course, noting that would take most of the wind out of the accusation... so why note it? Politics?
Similar things were done using the Piltdown skulls, which have also since proven to be outright fabrications.
Let's get this straight. The Nebraska Man, unlike the Piltdown, was a not a "fabrication." To insinuate that it was is simply dishonest. It was, instead, perfectly conventional science: a scientist made a claim based on what he thought was new evidence, the scientific community was skeptical of it, then via further exploration it got ruled out as a mistake. But to call it a "fabrication" is simply to lie.
A good start would be books by some of the true scientists out there who've spoken up on natural selection, such as Michael Behe.
Oh, good grief. So you've read some Intelligent Designer books (which are pitched as being evenhanded, surely where you got this silly "above-it-all" pose you're striking), and now you think you're an expert. You're exactly the mark that people like Behe and Dembski went after by appealing not to any sort of peer review with their ideas, but rather to the public. And the result is wildly silly ideas that are nevertheless compelling to those that otherwise have no idea what they are talking about, and have no ability to check their claims against the facts.
but that purely random Natural Selection does not appear to be a sufficient explanation for speciazation.
Red flag: again "purely random" natural selection? Buzz: down the crapper goes your credibility...
Cute: so you, and this quote, make no substantive refutation to the any of the claims at hand. And anyway a guy MUST not have an agenda, because he lambastes both "sides." And to top it all off, Mr. "I hate these people who think they know what they're talking about" was dead wrong about a key accusation, which he almost certainly picked up from a creationist screed: perhaps in trying to get a evenhanded survey of the material. What you forgot is that one side lies, and instead of correcting lies as time goes on, inflates them. I guess it's all the same to you: everything's politics, right?
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So, if the "illiterate natives" got it wrong, then what else is wrong? If the literal reading isn't right, then it's simply wrong to claim that the text is "dead-on right" just because it can possibly be read in some alternative way that doesn't happen to contradict scientific findings.
It should be remembered that the book of Genesis was revealed through Moses to a group of people who were not ready for a higher law. They were also still in a slave mindset, and generally illiterate.That's right: calling the Jews, and their entire Scriptural tradition, stupid can get you off the hook!
You can personally insult me all you want it does not change the fact that if someone is out there murdering people he is not obeying Jesus.
...so? Do all Christians obey Jesus? Are Christian's sinless? Even Christians don't claim that.
You will know a christian by the fruits they produce, that is the best answer I am capable of giving you.
No, that simply begs the question, because you are simply assuming that YOUR ideas about what is truly Christian are correct. Obviously, the Nazis had different ideas, and thought YOU had it wrong. We can't decide who's interpretation is right without cheating by begging the question.
Your view of christianity is a perfect example, because a bunch of evil men called themselves xtians (the Nazi's) you are convinced that all/most Christians ar antisemites.
Is lying about others Christlike? If so, then you're not a Christian. Read my post: where do I say that all Christians are anti-Semites? That's right, nowhere. In fact, you'll find me saying that just because some were, doesn't mean that all are: that that sort of thinking is a mistake. But the fact remains, anti-Semitism was a prevalent Christian position for centuries. That it no longer is, is a real credit to the evolution of Christian thought. But it's nothing but dishonest to try and pretend that the Nazis could not have been Christians just because they did things that are considered evil: that's just playing a True Scotsman game.
Nonsense. What we've found is that the rate of mutation is many order MORE than it needs to be, and that natural selection, if anything, actually seems to slow it DOWN.
Yep: the high level of dustfall was based on an old miscalculation taken from an earthbound measurement. It put the level of dustfall many orders of magnitude higher than it actually turned out to be when measured on the moon.
Ah yes, Johnson. Why are lawyers suddenly considered the most honest and upright of all professionals, just because they say things you like? Johnson brings the sort of ethics to the debate that a personal injury lawyer brings to law. In other words: he makes a lot of slanderous accusations and practiced usage of logical fallacy. His claims have been refuted countless times in books like "Tower of Babel," but even when it's proven how wrong he is, even after he admits it, like all creationists, he simply continues on making the same dishonest claims.
---This states that a species will get stronger, but it cannot explain how a species would turn into another species, such as a lizard into a bird.---
Boop boop! Red flag!
"Species" is not a hard and fast category: there is no line, nothing stopping small changes from adding up to big ones. Lizards never "turn into" birds: there is instead a long long chain of intermediate creatures.
You should know that creationists often explicitly seek to debate only with people who anti-God agendas, and even simply refuse to accept that evolutionary theorists are anything but, even when they roundly deny it, and note that they are believers too. You should read about Michael Shermer's experience debating Gish in his book "Why People Believe Weird Things" (note, "God" is not one of the "weird things" he talks about, though the cult of Ayn Rand, creationism, Holocaust denial, recovered memory, etc. are)
The problem with this reading is that the same word is used later in the text to describe actual literal days, without comment or change in context. Not to mention the correlation to the Sabbath cycle. In fact, there's a fairly good arguement that each "day" is counted in the text by the revolution of the sun: which would seem silly if we were talking about "eras." But the main problem is that the OldEarth view is relatively new: none of the rabbinical readers ever seem to read it that way, and this in itself is fairly good evidence that, as long as the rabbinical tradition has any merit and extends back even to the first authroship of genesis, this is the way it what it was written to mean in the first place.
You're simply ignorant of other religions, in this case, Spinoza-like or Tolland-esque pantheism. The name is not "specific" to a certain religion just because you're louder.
Truly, you are clueless. If you want to play silly word games about who is and isn't really a " "true" Chirstian, go play Boggle. You are in no position to decide what "true" Christianity is. Don't waste your time trying to think about history. Is Martin Luther, a vicious anti-Semite and the founder of Protestantism, not a "real" Christian, just becuase YOU say so?
Helloooo if the Nazi;s were polytheistic (ie believing in many nordic gods)
No no, they believed in the superiority of nordic RACE: i.e. blond haired, blue-eyed Germans.
they were not xtian, the only reason they tolerated any xtians was because of their alliance with italy, and the fact Germany had a large xtian population.
You have no grasp of the related history. The Nazis, being Germans, were, like most Germans, predominantly Christian. The highest Nazi military honor was the Iron Cross. Just because it's inconvient to remember that the Germans were Christian doesn't erase this fact from reality.
Just because someone calls themselves a xtian, just because someone goes to church, just because someone owns a Bible does not make them a xtian.
What a dumb arguement. Whatever sect of Christian you are or suggest to me, I bet I could find tons of Christians willing to make the same statement about them. Obviously, everyone thinks they have the true faith.
But the fact remains: the Germans, who by and large supported the Nazis and many of whom WERE the Nazis, were predominantly Christian, and that didn't magically change their beliefs as soon as Hitler took power. As Hitler went insane, he started to believe that he was god's chosen one and that normal church leaders stood in his way, but that doesn't change the fact that the whole appeal of anti-Semitism was the centuries long Christian inspired hatred of Jews (founded in the Pauline ideas of Martin Luther), a blot on Christianity that has only recently been mostly cured, to the great credit of the religion.
---But my real point is in a situation of national security or severe weather the airways are the only dependable way to go.---
So national security wasn't possible before TV? Come on: there are plenty of other ways to get messages out. Not everyone watches TV all day long anyway. And regardless, there will always be Tv signals and Tv stations that can be picked up by legacy tvs. It's just that commerical networks may not be able to survive. SOMEONE will be broadcasting no matter what.
---We have XM satellite we should get rid of FM just because?---
Hello? No one is deciding to get rid of anything. Commercial services are coming and going do to market conditions.
No, the Nazis were most definately predominantly Christian. But that doesn't mean that all Christians are Nazis, far from it. Some Nazis, most definately Hitler did, indeed, believe that nordic predominance was a part of their Christianity. But that doesn't make them any less Christian than any other sect with strange ideas.
But it must not be forgotten that the anti-Semtism that the Nazis spouted was very much rooted in Christian ideas: most predominantly those of Martin Luther, who centuries before had himself advocated things like concentration camps and forced explusion for Jews and many other things that the Nazi's later did. One of the first things the Nazi's did when they attained power was to declare a day in Luther's honor.
It was only the Christian leaders they opposed that they imprisoned: again, this doesn't make them any less Christian than Catholic nations who persecuted Protestants.
AA is not only very religious, but it has even argued that it's meetings have the protections of religion. The Big Book contains several passages that basically insult nonbelievers, most in the section titled "We Agnostics." At one point, it threatens with DEATH (via failure to get sober) anyone who does not believe: "To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster ... To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face." and "But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life -- or else. Perhaps it is going to be that way with you. But cheer up, something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics."(both from page 44)
Here are a smattering of more of it's quotes:
"If you think you are an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you from accepting what is in this book, I feel sorry for you." (page 181) ( i.e., not believing in god, or not believing that one can know if there is a god, is a form of intellectual pride! (despite both being professions of lack of belief or ignorance!)
Even a cursory read of AA materials will find countless examples not simply of religious evangelism, but even slanderous insults on the character of non-believers like the ones above.
Some courts disagree with you. like this one, In NY
Being forced into a treatment program that uses religious evangelism is NOT considered justifiable, and "well, you don't have to listen" is not considered an excuse. The key difference is not who runs the program, but rather if the program mixes mandatory evangelism with its services. Catholic hospitals treat the sick: they don't force people to pray before treating them, or subject patients to prayers if they don't want them. But some programs do. In the case I am reffering to, it was an atheist who was sentanced to attend a particularly evangelical sect of AA as part of his treatment. That's just not justifiable: government cannot mandate religious practices.
You're a little confused. The government already DOES give to charities that are run by churches. The catch is that the charities services DON'T involve evangelism: they do actual charity work. They are almost always legally and financially distinct from the direct church leadership. There's nothing wrong with this. What's wrong with Bush's plan is that it wants to give money to programs in which there IS no distinction between the charity and the evangelism services: where money goes not into food or drug treatment, but rather into evangelical materials and worship services.
Um... so then what was your point in the first post?
Bush's initiative would be nothing new if all it meant was giving money to religious charities. We ALREADY do that, and rightly so... under the condition that they are actually doing charity work, not religious evangelizing. Most religious charities set up boards to keep the church and the charity financially separate, and that generally works out great. What people object to in Bush's proposal is that he is pushing for federal funding of programs that make evangelism the central part of their programs and services.
Uh, no. Not any more than signing your name at the bottom of a driver's liscence is an "atheist" act. The appeals court is not saying that no person can talk about god: it's saying that the government shouldn't be leading its citizens in any endorsement of any particular theology or religious ideas. That right is reserved for the people.
It's ability to stick in a vacuum comes from the fact that the adhesive technique is all about the geometry of the molecules involved, not any sort of chemical process that requires air. So the technique didn't have to come into being with "ceiling in a vacuum" in mind: it's just a "good trick" for sticking that also happens to work regardless of what sorts of surfaces or surrounding conditions abound.
Sounds like you are simply making an arguement of habit, not of any sort of fundamental need.Just because we have become accustomed to doing something a certain way doesn't mean that change is bad.
I>It takes a cry baby to not want something for free and complain that people still want it.
Eh? If I can make any sense out of this arguement, it sounds like you actually think that "free" Tv is "free." But it's not: it's paid for using a bussiness model that may or may not be able to survive in the future. Of course people want to have things without paying for it. That's hardly the point.
If you have the luxury of a PVR, great. But don't think that it's an excuse to get rid of "Major" television.
Hello? It's not an "excuse": it's a matter of finding a way to financially support Tv.
Come to think of it, you don't actually seem to be making much sense, so maybe I'm wasting my time in responding.
Look: just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't make them a liar.
I didn't say that you were a liar because you disagreed with me: I said you were a liar because you said several demonstrably false things (including several about me and what I said). Perhaps this was, after all, unintentional on your part, in which case, I said, I apologize for the accusation.
Now, please explain to me - if evolution (or rather Darwinian natural selection) is not "purely random", then what is it?
You know, it's not my job to explain this to you. It's explained countless times all over the place. Your account of what "evolution" and "natural selection" are, is simply fanciful. How can you possibly judge the applicability of evolutionary theory, and the honesty of defenders of evolutionary theory, if you have a parody vision of what evolution is (and, I have to say, a vision that, despite your protestations, is easily identifiable as a creationist account).
Mutation is simply ONE factor that builds up variation in a population. But mutation, even "good" mutation, is not how evolution or natural selection works. If all evolution was was the hope that good mutations would arise occasionally to adapt a species, then evolution would be highly implausible. But that's not it at all. In fact, population genetics studies have shown that, far from natural selection being limited by the rate of mutation, in practice natural selection actually serves to slow the rate of mutation down.
Natural selection, first of all, works on interbreeding populations, not individuals (the advances of singular mutants wouldn't last very long in any given pool). Environmental conditions select ranges from a diverse population, and the next generation is then also diverse, but representively slanted in a particular direction of variation. That's how adpation generally works. It's not a process of simply waiting around for a mutation to break a logjam in development. It's not a process that waits for the right roll of the dice.
However, the pro-evolution types are just as bad.
Nonsense. Certianly, there are impatient and insulting people out there who shill for evolution, and some are unecessarily insulting to people's religious beliefs. But nowhere in scientific circles do you find toleration for lying, and resucitating even disproven lies. Nowhere do you find people like Hovind of course. But you also wont find people like Robert Johnson or like Dembski, who wildly misrepresent the positions of others, make wide use of rhetorical and logical fallacy and simply lie about the evidence to cast doubt on the applicability of evolutionary theory. Even Behe, who's arguement is baseless (and already raised and refuted nearly a hundred years ago) but at least fairly honest, makes huge factual misteps that he refuses to correct (like his claim that there is no literature on molecular evolution, when indeed there is lots).
I have heard Dawkins, on NPR's Connection, claim that no theologian is supernaturalist. Considering that I know quite a few theologians, almost all of which believe more or less in a number of supernatural events, I have to wonder whether Dawkins is deluded or just lying?
Knowing a little bit about how you think, I have to wonder: do you have any idea what Dawkins was saying? I certainly have no idea exactly what he's talking about from that short (mis?)quote. I certainly very much doubt that he was saying that no theologian _believes_ in the supernatural, since that's not even something he thinks in the first place. But regardless, what does this have to do with Dawkin's account of evolution? How does it demonstrate that he is positing a "weird force" that is "invisible" to explain the building power of the evolutionary process?
I suggest you try the "The Tower of Babel" and then, perhaps "Darwin's Dangerous Idea."
However, you are certainly out of line to claim that Piltdown was not an out and out fraud - Hesperopithecus is debatable.
Read my post again: notice the "unlike"? You want to apologize, again?
Being mistaken does not make someone a liar
I think I'm well advised to doubt your sincerity, considering that your OP made you out to be some sort of disgruntled expert on this subject, despite the fact that the things you've said have often been verbatim recitations of standard creationist literature.
But if it was an honest mistake, I retract that statement insofar as it pertains to you. I'm even sorry that you got taken in. The fact remains that the NM is almost always described as a fabrication or a fraud by creationists, even insinuating that the entire scientific community fabracated it to fool the public, and that IS dishonest, whether it's your fault or not.
As best as I understand Neo-Darwinism (a la Dawkins) it appears to posit some kind of weird force, the mechanisms of which are so unclear as to be invisible, that somehow makes formation of more complex life forms more probable.
Please, by all means send this discovery to Dawkins: I'm sure he will be quite exicted to discover a "weird force" at work. It will certainly surprise him to find that he's argued that more complex forms are simply "more probable" as opposed to describing mechanisms by which they develop. So I can't imagine where you've gotten this idea, except perhaps from some of Gould's more loony critiques, or perhaps an intelligent design theorist. But if you can't even bother to fairly represent people's arguements, why should I consider you honest? How is this sort of sloppy straw man slander consistent with honest approach to the subject?
And, of course, this entire response is non-sequitur. It doesn't fix the fact that you seem to think that natural selection is "purely random," and so far I haven't present an evolutionary "arguement" for you to refute with neo-darwinism or anything else.
First, this is a substantial departure from Darwinian Natural Selection, and second I wonder when you 19th century naturalistic types give up and just say "God" again?
I'm not a "naturalist." Are you channeling Johnson now?
"God" is not a default hypothesis. There is no default hypothesis. There is, however, a pretty solid line of explanation for life on earth based on so far observable laws. If you wish to fill any ignorance with "God did it," that's your bussiness, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that (indeed, most evolutionary scientists do so). But it's certainly not necessary in theory, and it certainly doesn't really explain anything.
Wait, so now people are owed free tv, just because they had it in the past? And cable tv should be free, just because it has ads? That's not a necessarily very accurate statement. Sure, cable stations have both ads AND subscriber revenue, but that's in part because each channel has a lower viewer base overall than the main networks: so despite the same number of ads, they don't get paid as much (since ads pay out in viewership, not mere display). So of COURSE they need subscriber fees to balance out the discrepancies...
Actually, the "Nebraska Man" (better referred to as Hesperopithecus) was widely trumpeted by the scientific community as the final proof of evolution during the monkey trials in the thirties.
Widely? You mean: Osborn? Again, read the scientific literature at the time. Read what the scientific community thought of Osborn's find (hint: less than impressed, and unconvinced). Then come back and tell me if your statement here is anything other than simply misleading.
Testimony regarding hesperopithecus was introduced into the Scopes trial.
Maybe it's just "politics" talking: but I think you're a liar. Not only wasn't it in the end, but the only one who called for it was Bryan. But of course, noting that would take most of the wind out of the accusation... so why note it? Politics?
Similar things were done using the Piltdown skulls, which have also since proven to be outright fabrications.
Let's get this straight. The Nebraska Man, unlike the Piltdown, was a not a "fabrication." To insinuate that it was is simply dishonest. It was, instead, perfectly conventional science: a scientist made a claim based on what he thought was new evidence, the scientific community was skeptical of it, then via further exploration it got ruled out as a mistake. But to call it a "fabrication" is simply to lie.
A good start would be books by some of the true scientists out there who've spoken up on natural selection, such as Michael Behe.
Oh, good grief. So you've read some Intelligent Designer books (which are pitched as being evenhanded, surely where you got this silly "above-it-all" pose you're striking), and now you think you're an expert. You're exactly the mark that people like Behe and Dembski went after by appealing not to any sort of peer review with their ideas, but rather to the public. And the result is wildly silly ideas that are nevertheless compelling to those that otherwise have no idea what they are talking about, and have no ability to check their claims against the facts.
but that purely random Natural Selection does not appear to be a sufficient explanation for speciazation.
Red flag: again "purely random" natural selection? Buzz: down the crapper goes your credibility...
Cute: so you, and this quote, make no substantive refutation to the any of the claims at hand. And anyway a guy MUST not have an agenda, because he lambastes both "sides." And to top it all off, Mr. "I hate these people who think they know what they're talking about" was dead wrong about a key accusation, which he almost certainly picked up from a creationist screed: perhaps in trying to get a evenhanded survey of the material. What you forgot is that one side lies, and instead of correcting lies as time goes on, inflates them. I guess it's all the same to you: everything's politics, right?