Which explains why the Vatican was the first governing body to recognize Hitlers election, and why Catholic churches aided ODESSA to move high ranking SS officers out of Germany as the war ended, instead of allowing them to be captured and tried as war criminals.
Do you have any citations that are not propaganda sites? As for the Catholic Church recognizing Hitler's election, well, in 1932 when he was legally and validly elected, why would they, along with every other authority recognize it? Isn't that how democracy works. You get who you vote for, even if that person isn't a very good person?
Again, if you have any sites that are validly recognized to support your claim as to why any group recognizing the free election in 1932 was wrong. Then please share it. But leave the propaganda and bashing sites to those who need them to justify their own untenable position.
The Catholic and Protestant Churches supported both Nazism and Fascism.
Actually I think you're the one that is wrong on that one. And so was I until not so long ago. The main thing that can be said against the Catholic church is that it didn't openly oppose nazism under the war - but they surely opposed them. Read up on Pius XI and XII . Wikipedia is a start.
You can't even say they didn't openly oppose nazism. 60,000 polish priests and 3 million catholics were killed in the concentration camps for opposing nazism.
The only reason the Church would stand up against nazism was because it was a threat to their control over the populace anyway, so it wasn't for some altruistic stand against nazism, but entirely about self-interest protectionism.
To highlight the hypocrisy of defending the church over this, consider that in an imaginary scenario the country you live in decides to do away with religious influence from all public life to mitigate the issues of police abusing the vulnerable - no more church schools to indoctrinate the young, no more church run addiction clinics etc. and they would all be replaced by secular state funded institutions. In this scenario the church would do exactly the same thing - fight against said government, but it wouldn't make them right. This is all they were doing against Nazism - fighting it not because of an inherent disagreement with Nazism, but simply to protect their own ability to manipulate and control people for their own ends.
Yeah, that's why 60,000 priests in Poland sacrificed their lives because of the threat to their control over the populace. Same for the 3 million catholics who died along with the 6 million jews in the concentration camps.
That is faulty logic, it assumes people are only capable of doing good because they believe some mythical being is looking over their shoulder. Personally I believe most people are good and do not require the threat of constant supervision to perform good deeds and any that do require it I try to avoid like the plague. Their are plenty of non-religious organisations around the world devoted to helping others.
No, that is not true at all. It assumes that people have free will to do good or evil. That capability does not require a deity looking over their shoulder and actually encourages the opposite -- making ones own choices. Where religion comes in, or the mythical being as you put it, is that there are consequences and ultimately accountability for those choices. That doesn't take a deity to observe the reality of consequences for choices or behavior.
As for the non-religious organizations around the world devoted to helping others, but most of them were founded by religious types. Even most government humanitarian and social programs are based on religious principles towards society, even though in the US, anyway, they can't directly mention those principles.
In the end, one cannot escape the profound impact that religion has had on the world, both good and bad. We would not have the modern society we have today, if not for the influence of religion in the past. And I say that as someone who is not a theist.
He praised their actions not their beliefs, I also praise the actions of church groups that help the needy and homeless. But I still don't believe in the mythology they try and push.
But it was their beliefs that led to their actions. Some would argue that the two are inseparable and therefore praising one is praising the other. However, just because one praises their belief (system) does not mean one has to follow it themselves.
I mostly agree with you, until the point of not thinking by themselves. I am religious, and I do learn science and have a very letftiah libertarian way of thinking, so I dont see how can someone say that I dont think by myself, still I might be blind.
Religions can only exist if people accept someone else's story regarding the existence and nature of a mythical being based on no factual evidence whatsoever. People believe in religions because it brings them comfort. But if you accept anything purely on faith and especially if you cannot possibly verify the claims, that is pretty much the definition of not thinking for yourself. You have traded rational and independent thought for comfort. Seems a costly trade to me.
All knowledge can only exist if people accept someone else's story regarding the event. People also believe in science because it brings them comfort. It provides order to their universe (regardless of the effects of entropy). Most advanced physics is accepted purely on faith by your reasoning, because it cannot possibly be verified. Yes, it works out mathematically, as long as you use irrational numbers, and the like, but it cannot be proven. For the record, I am not against science at all, I am just pointing out that by the parameters you have set up, it fails, too.
Why is it irrational to follow "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but not just as irrational to accept the values enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence, the bill or rights, the constitution or anything else that is not based solely on the scientific method? We all rely on various belief systems, none of which are based on factual evidence.
So, using that as your criteria, we have all traded rational and independent thought for comfort.
I'll do that right now. As they say, Hitler made the trains run on time, but I still think we're better off without him around.
People have the capacity for decency, with or without superstitions of an all-seeing magician looking over their shoulder. Furthermore, I think it's fair to say the world has been a more perilous place because of organized religion.
There's just no good reason I can think of to keep harmful, vestigial garbage like that around. Our species is better off without it.
Actually, it was Mussolini who made the trains run on time, not Hitler. As for the rest of your post, all of today's morality is based on primitive superstitions (especially if you consider religion a superstition). It is fair to say that without organized religion, the world would be far different than today - for one, it was the monks that preserved all of the ancient texts we have today when most of the civilized world was overrun by the the many hoards. It was the church that developed the structures that we, today, call our judicial system. Same for universities, hospitals and a plethora of other social institutions that until recent times, were taken over by the government.
One cannot simply dismiss the role of religion, both good and bad, in the formation of our modern societies. Whether religion is based on a real deity or is just superstition, does not change the impact it has had. One has only to look at the so called godless societies of the past to envision a world today that would not have had religion. Things like survival of the fittest, subjugation of women, slavery, genocide, infanticide, etc. all would be prevalent. Moral codes that put an end to those all stemmed from societies that believed there was a greater purpose, outside of themselves.
Maybe we don't need those structures anymore today, but to deny that they shaped and influenced what we accept today is like denying the earth revolves around the sun.
To right. I would be happy if the organisation just kept its hands off our children, both by keeping out of our schools, and by keeping the hands of the priests tied firmly behind their backs.
Assuming you are in the US, you wouldn't have a public school system if it weren't for the church schools that the PS system was created to counter. As for priests, I'd be far more worried about the pedophiles not in clerical garb that have far more access to your children than the clergy. Abuse requires access and coaches, teachers, scout leaders, neighbors and relatives all have significantly more access today than does a local parish priest.
If you really want to protect children, you need to be vigilant everywhere and not just assume the danger is from one very small sub-group of an already small group known as clergy. Pedophiles count on societies ignorance to get away with what they do.
Saying that we would be better off without a religion is not the same as calling for its elimination.
We would be better off without stupid people, but that doesn't mean we should round 'em up.
Actually, saying we are better off without religion IS calling for its elimination, just like we are better off without without totalitarianism. We have a long history of trying to get rid of things we are better off without -- polio, smallpox, Marxism, Communism, people who think different than we do, etc. etc.
What would you think of the moral character of someone who believed you were going to hell unless you did something, but they couldnt be bothered to warn you of that fact?
Wait, so you are opposed to religion because it does not proselytize enough?
And still - just because you praise an organisation for its stand in a conflict, you don't need to subscribe to her ideology.
That is very true. It's important, though to also look at what stand Einstein is praising the organization for and that would be intellectual truth and moral freedom. Even if Einstein disagreed with the theology, that theology is what caused the foundation of Einstein's praise.
There were many conflicting writings to choose from at the time the Bible was formed. They could have made the Bible say many different things. That is says what it does is by choice.
That could be said about any field. There are mathematical models in existence that show how the everything revolves around the earth. But the scientific community has rejected those models. There are various models of evolution around (no, not intelligent design, but actual evolution) and yet the scientific community has rejected most of those. When I was growing up, there were 9 planets, now, because the scientific community has decided otherwise, there are only 8. Why is it okay for the scientific community to determine what is in its canons, but not the religious community?
Again, I am not a theist, but it seems that people go out of their ways to discount anything from alternative belief systems and yet ignore their own bias. I think there is a passage in the christian bible about removing the plank from one's own eye before the speck in another's.
As for my understanding of the various books not included - if you dismiss the ones that even modern scholars are skeptical about, they do not really change the central message or theme.
Reading will do far more to help your child in the new millennium than playing a computer game at a young age. Throwing and catching a ball will do more for hand eye coordination than playing a computer game. If the concern is about being able to have computer skills for the next generation (such as using a mouse and keyboard, etc.) well, the current generation and previous generation seemed to pick them up quite easily without having access to them as a toddler.
Besides, who is to say that by the time your child is older that the mouse will still even be the primary input device?
Go old school and expand his/her intellect and coordination. There are already enough computer junkies who cannot think for themselves. Do the world a favor and raise your child to be a critical thinker first.
I'm fairly certain that were Einstein still alive, he would be shaking his head at such ridiculousness.
I'm fairly certain that Einstein, no longer being alive, now knows more about the existence of God (or not) than all of the people posting comments on his religious views.
Actually it's not a "book" as such. It is distinctly a collection of stories and letters that were at one stage compiled and bound together. The original authors never intended for them to be in a book. Many of the letters were probably never even meant for more than one person. Go figure.
What "ample evidence" is there that any individual part was rewritten?
There were religious councils held in europe through the middle-ages that specificaly focused on rewriting parts of the bible so they suited the changing views of church.
No offense, but I would give those sources more credit if their entire existence wouldn't be completely undermined by saying anything to the contrary.
And if it wasn't completely unrealistic and contradicted by the incredibly well documented existence of Apocrypha, multiple councils to determine the true gospels, and the fact that the Church has always been far more political than religious even if its followers are not.
Hmmm, sounds like a disgruntled Catholic. However, even with all of those multiple councils to determine the true gospels and the apocryphal books, there is no evidence that the words of the accepted books were changed, which is what the previous post is trying to show with the citations given. Now, if you have citations to the contrary then I'm sure the readers here would love to see them.
Of course, The Faithful claim that $DEITY in his glorious omnipotence has kept The Holy Word pure and absolutely identical to The Original.
In common-speek that's a circular proof and can thusly be completely ignored.
Actually, the catholics, which are the largest christian denomination on the planet do not hold this point of view. They talk about the "truth" contained, but accept that variations in the text have crept in. So, at least for the largest christian sect, your circular proof argument is invalid. Also, the Jews don't hold that point of view, either. So, it's not valid for them, either. And finally, the Muslims don't care about the judeo-christian bible, so it doesn't apply to them, either.
The bible has been in human hands for centuries and copied by hand before printing presses came in. A spelling mistake here, bad handwriting there, the next guy comes along and misreads a word and then 'fixes' the sentence so that it makes sense. I'd be shocked if there was a single page in there that hadn't changed. And that's only accidental changes.
Looking at the things politicians do today, when it's easier to fact-check and catch them out than ever before, I find it completely believable that people just... mis-copied parts of the bible to justify whatever they felt like doing. It's not like people in the year 900 were going to get on Facebook and compare notes with people in other countries. They'd probably never touched a copy of the Bible. Probably couldn't read. A man with a bible could tell people it said anything. Make some changes in his copy, noone would ever know.
Case in point, many protestants accept that "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory" as the ending of the lord's prayer (or our father), when in fact, it was added to the margin by a monk copying the original text, either because it was part of a liturgical prayer or his own personal inspiration. The earlier texts, however, do not have it. But the King James version of the bible included it.
Evidence of alterations come from textual analysis. For example, some of the alterations use phrases that were in use much later than the stories were supposedly written down.
I am not a theist, but that is an invalid argument. The early Jews had an oral tradition and the stories were written down long afterwards. As each Hebrew community had it's own priests and texts there were variations. These were at some point in antiquity combined into a single text, but that does not mean they were altered in the sense you use the word. Finally, it is well established among historians that the texts in question were not meant to be a scientific account or even an historical one in the sense we use it today.
Now, whether it was inspired or not, that is for the theists to believe in.
The summary states: "The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case over the objections of the Obama administration, which had urged the justices to leave the lower court rulings in place."
And yet, the linked article makes no claim like that, nor does the summary provide a link to that. So, please, where is the citation to support that claim?
Another thing lacking in the traditional CS route is understanding of the business one is coding for. I managed projects for a large taxing authority. We found it much more productive to take existing employees who understood the various tax procedures and workflows in the department and train them to program versus hiring CS graduates and train them in tax policy and procedures. People from the "floor" have a totally different insight than management and CS graduates and their insight leads to much more efficient ways of doing things. Of course, the people we pulled from the floor did have an aptitude for programming and desingFor the record, we also hired some CS graduates, depending on specific skill sets needed.
Business IT shops would do much better to consider apprenticeship programs. What is taught in most CS programs did not transfer well into what we needed most. My recommendation to students wanting to pursue a career in IT would be to get a business administration degree with various CS classes as electives (or even minor in CS). That is, unless, you want to work for the big tech companies, in which case, I would flip that and go CS with a minor in business.
At least that is how it works in the Midwest of the US.
They should try my hot new idea. Nude flights! Let the TSA worry about the baggage. Nude travelers get the fast-track onto a jet. It could start with Sandals and French Riviera vacation flights and expand to tropical get-aways. You gotta be O.K. with natural humans of any age, but, this should speed up the poking and prodding segment of consumer abuse. What a conversation starter, imagine the people you'd meet with nothing to hide! How refreshing.
With an obesity epidemic in the US, you really want nude flights?
Here is the CDC page, http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/bikeinjuries.html although the data is a little old. 500,000 injuries, 700 deaths 59% children. Remember, too, that a child's skull is a lot thinner than an adults. Also, children tend to be less cautious and have less control of the bike. Cars are not the only problem for bicyclists. Sewer grates, dogs, debris in the road and distractions all are more likely to cause a fall. Given that, even without a brain injury, hitting the pavement with one's head will lead to nasty scars and scalp injuries. Even if the rate of injury is relatively low, is it still not worth protecting against when the solution is so simple?
Put differently, the chance of a baseball player actually getting hit in the groin with a baseball is pretty low, but they all were cups just in case. If it is that important to protect the family jewels, should protecting one's brain and head be of even greater importance? Just a thought.
ps. there is a link from the cdc page to the bicyclinginfo.org that is full of statistics, including crash statistics. Some of the stats conflict with the CDC stats and the Children's Safety Network. All of them, though show that there are risks involved and fatalities do occur more than people would expect.
Slashdot Mirror
Which explains why the Vatican was the first governing body to recognize Hitlers election, and why Catholic churches aided ODESSA to move high ranking SS officers out of Germany as the war ended, instead of allowing them to be captured and tried as war criminals.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html
http://www.catholicarrogance.org/Catholic/RC_scandal-3.html ...but some of us in the US are not the only ones with seeing things this way...
http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2008/10/a_papal_dustup_over_the_holoca
Do you have any citations that are not propaganda sites? As for the Catholic Church recognizing Hitler's election, well, in 1932 when he was legally and validly elected, why would they, along with every other authority recognize it? Isn't that how democracy works. You get who you vote for, even if that person isn't a very good person?
Again, if you have any sites that are validly recognized to support your claim as to why any group recognizing the free election in 1932 was wrong. Then please share it. But leave the propaganda and bashing sites to those who need them to justify their own untenable position.
Actually I think you're the one that is wrong on that one. And so was I until not so long ago. The main thing that can be said against the Catholic church is that it didn't openly oppose nazism under the war - but they surely opposed them. Read up on Pius XI and XII . Wikipedia is a start.
You can't even say they didn't openly oppose nazism. 60,000 polish priests and 3 million catholics were killed in the concentration camps for opposing nazism.
The only reason the Church would stand up against nazism was because it was a threat to their control over the populace anyway, so it wasn't for some altruistic stand against nazism, but entirely about self-interest protectionism.
To highlight the hypocrisy of defending the church over this, consider that in an imaginary scenario the country you live in decides to do away with religious influence from all public life to mitigate the issues of police abusing the vulnerable - no more church schools to indoctrinate the young, no more church run addiction clinics etc. and they would all be replaced by secular state funded institutions. In this scenario the church would do exactly the same thing - fight against said government, but it wouldn't make them right. This is all they were doing against Nazism - fighting it not because of an inherent disagreement with Nazism, but simply to protect their own ability to manipulate and control people for their own ends.
Yeah, that's why 60,000 priests in Poland sacrificed their lives because of the threat to their control over the populace. Same for the 3 million catholics who died along with the 6 million jews in the concentration camps.
That is faulty logic, it assumes people are only capable of doing good because they believe some mythical being is looking over their shoulder. Personally I believe most people are good and do not require the threat of constant supervision to perform good deeds and any that do require it I try to avoid like the plague. Their are plenty of non-religious organisations around the world devoted to helping others.
No, that is not true at all. It assumes that people have free will to do good or evil. That capability does not require a deity looking over their shoulder and actually encourages the opposite -- making ones own choices. Where religion comes in, or the mythical being as you put it, is that there are consequences and ultimately accountability for those choices. That doesn't take a deity to observe the reality of consequences for choices or behavior.
As for the non-religious organizations around the world devoted to helping others, but most of them were founded by religious types. Even most government humanitarian and social programs are based on religious principles towards society, even though in the US, anyway, they can't directly mention those principles.
In the end, one cannot escape the profound impact that religion has had on the world, both good and bad. We would not have the modern society we have today, if not for the influence of religion in the past. And I say that as someone who is not a theist.
He praised their actions not their beliefs, I also praise the actions of church groups that help the needy and homeless. But I still don't believe in the mythology they try and push.
But it was their beliefs that led to their actions. Some would argue that the two are inseparable and therefore praising one is praising the other. However, just because one praises their belief (system) does not mean one has to follow it themselves.
I mostly agree with you, until the point of not thinking by themselves. I am religious, and I do learn science and have a very letftiah libertarian way of thinking, so I dont see how can someone say that I dont think by myself, still I might be blind.
Religions can only exist if people accept someone else's story regarding the existence and nature of a mythical being based on no factual evidence whatsoever. People believe in religions because it brings them comfort. But if you accept anything purely on faith and especially if you cannot possibly verify the claims, that is pretty much the definition of not thinking for yourself. You have traded rational and independent thought for comfort. Seems a costly trade to me.
All knowledge can only exist if people accept someone else's story regarding the event. People also believe in science because it brings them comfort. It provides order to their universe (regardless of the effects of entropy). Most advanced physics is accepted purely on faith by your reasoning, because it cannot possibly be verified. Yes, it works out mathematically, as long as you use irrational numbers, and the like, but it cannot be proven. For the record, I am not against science at all, I am just pointing out that by the parameters you have set up, it fails, too.
Why is it irrational to follow "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but not just as irrational to accept the values enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence, the bill or rights, the constitution or anything else that is not based solely on the scientific method? We all rely on various belief systems, none of which are based on factual evidence.
So, using that as your criteria, we have all traded rational and independent thought for comfort.
So are you really attempting to compare organized religion to Nazi Germany?
I'll do that right now. As they say, Hitler made the trains run on time, but I still think we're better off without him around.
People have the capacity for decency, with or without superstitions of an all-seeing magician looking over their shoulder. Furthermore, I think it's fair to say the world has been a more perilous place because of organized religion.
There's just no good reason I can think of to keep harmful, vestigial garbage like that around. Our species is better off without it.
Actually, it was Mussolini who made the trains run on time, not Hitler. As for the rest of your post, all of today's morality is based on primitive superstitions (especially if you consider religion a superstition). It is fair to say that without organized religion, the world would be far different than today - for one, it was the monks that preserved all of the ancient texts we have today when most of the civilized world was overrun by the the many hoards. It was the church that developed the structures that we, today, call our judicial system. Same for universities, hospitals and a plethora of other social institutions that until recent times, were taken over by the government.
One cannot simply dismiss the role of religion, both good and bad, in the formation of our modern societies. Whether religion is based on a real deity or is just superstition, does not change the impact it has had. One has only to look at the so called godless societies of the past to envision a world today that would not have had religion. Things like survival of the fittest, subjugation of women, slavery, genocide, infanticide, etc. all would be prevalent. Moral codes that put an end to those all stemmed from societies that believed there was a greater purpose, outside of themselves.
Maybe we don't need those structures anymore today, but to deny that they shaped and influenced what we accept today is like denying the earth revolves around the sun.
To right. I would be happy if the organisation just kept its hands off our children, both by keeping out of our schools, and by keeping the hands of the priests tied firmly behind their backs.
Assuming you are in the US, you wouldn't have a public school system if it weren't for the church schools that the PS system was created to counter. As for priests, I'd be far more worried about the pedophiles not in clerical garb that have far more access to your children than the clergy. Abuse requires access and coaches, teachers, scout leaders, neighbors and relatives all have significantly more access today than does a local parish priest.
If you really want to protect children, you need to be vigilant everywhere and not just assume the danger is from one very small sub-group of an already small group known as clergy. Pedophiles count on societies ignorance to get away with what they do.
Saying that we would be better off without a religion is not the same as calling for its elimination.
We would be better off without stupid people, but that doesn't mean we should round 'em up.
Actually, saying we are better off without religion IS calling for its elimination, just like we are better off without without totalitarianism. We have a long history of trying to get rid of things we are better off without -- polio, smallpox, Marxism, Communism, people who think different than we do, etc. etc.
What would you think of the moral character of someone who believed you were going to hell unless you did something, but they couldnt be bothered to warn you of that fact?
Wait, so you are opposed to religion because it does not proselytize enough?
And still - just because you praise an organisation for its stand in a conflict, you don't need to subscribe to her ideology.
That is very true. It's important, though to also look at what stand Einstein is praising the organization for and that would be intellectual truth and moral freedom. Even if Einstein disagreed with the theology, that theology is what caused the foundation of Einstein's praise.
There were many conflicting writings to choose from at the time the Bible was formed. They could have made the Bible say many different things. That is says what it does is by choice.
That could be said about any field. There are mathematical models in existence that show how the everything revolves around the earth. But the scientific community has rejected those models. There are various models of evolution around (no, not intelligent design, but actual evolution) and yet the scientific community has rejected most of those. When I was growing up, there were 9 planets, now, because the scientific community has decided otherwise, there are only 8. Why is it okay for the scientific community to determine what is in its canons, but not the religious community?
Again, I am not a theist, but it seems that people go out of their ways to discount anything from alternative belief systems and yet ignore their own bias. I think there is a passage in the christian bible about removing the plank from one's own eye before the speck in another's.
As for my understanding of the various books not included - if you dismiss the ones that even modern scholars are skeptical about, they do not really change the central message or theme.
Reading will do far more to help your child in the new millennium than playing a computer game at a young age. Throwing and catching a ball will do more for hand eye coordination than playing a computer game. If the concern is about being able to have computer skills for the next generation (such as using a mouse and keyboard, etc.) well, the current generation and previous generation seemed to pick them up quite easily without having access to them as a toddler.
Besides, who is to say that by the time your child is older that the mouse will still even be the primary input device?
Go old school and expand his/her intellect and coordination. There are already enough computer junkies who cannot think for themselves. Do the world a favor and raise your child to be a critical thinker first.
I'm fairly certain that were Einstein still alive, he would be shaking his head at such ridiculousness.
I'm fairly certain that Einstein, no longer being alive, now knows more about the existence of God (or not) than all of the people posting comments on his religious views.
Actually it's not a "book" as such. It is distinctly a collection of stories and letters that were at one stage compiled and bound together. The original authors never intended for them to be in a book. Many of the letters were probably never even meant for more than one person. Go figure.
What "ample evidence" is there that any individual part was rewritten?
There were religious councils held in europe through the middle-ages that specificaly focused on rewriting parts of the bible so they suited the changing views of church.
Citations please.
No offense, but I would give those sources more credit if their entire existence wouldn't be completely undermined by saying anything to the contrary.
And if it wasn't completely unrealistic and contradicted by the incredibly well documented existence of Apocrypha, multiple councils to determine the true gospels, and the fact that the Church has always been far more political than religious even if its followers are not.
Hmmm, sounds like a disgruntled Catholic. However, even with all of those multiple councils to determine the true gospels and the apocryphal books, there is no evidence that the words of the accepted books were changed, which is what the previous post is trying to show with the citations given. Now, if you have citations to the contrary then I'm sure the readers here would love to see them.
Of course, The Faithful claim that $DEITY in his glorious omnipotence has kept The Holy Word pure and absolutely identical to The Original.
In common-speek that's a circular proof and can thusly be completely ignored.
Actually, the catholics, which are the largest christian denomination on the planet do not hold this point of view. They talk about the "truth" contained, but accept that variations in the text have crept in. So, at least for the largest christian sect, your circular proof argument is invalid. Also, the Jews don't hold that point of view, either. So, it's not valid for them, either. And finally, the Muslims don't care about the judeo-christian bible, so it doesn't apply to them, either.
30 seconds on Google turned up this article and a speech on the subject.
The bible has been in human hands for centuries and copied by hand before printing presses came in. A spelling mistake here, bad handwriting there, the next guy comes along and misreads a word and then 'fixes' the sentence so that it makes sense. I'd be shocked if there was a single page in there that hadn't changed. And that's only accidental changes.
Looking at the things politicians do today, when it's easier to fact-check and catch them out than ever before, I find it completely believable that people just... mis-copied parts of the bible to justify whatever they felt like doing. It's not like people in the year 900 were going to get on Facebook and compare notes with people in other countries. They'd probably never touched a copy of the Bible. Probably couldn't read. A man with a bible could tell people it said anything. Make some changes in his copy, noone would ever know.
Case in point, many protestants accept that "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory" as the ending of the lord's prayer (or our father), when in fact, it was added to the margin by a monk copying the original text, either because it was part of a liturgical prayer or his own personal inspiration. The earlier texts, however, do not have it. But the King James version of the bible included it.
Evidence of alterations come from textual analysis. For example, some of the alterations use phrases that were in use much later than the stories were supposedly written down.
I am not a theist, but that is an invalid argument. The early Jews had an oral tradition and the stories were written down long afterwards. As each Hebrew community had it's own priests and texts there were variations. These were at some point in antiquity combined into a single text, but that does not mean they were altered in the sense you use the word. Finally, it is well established among historians that the texts in question were not meant to be a scientific account or even an historical one in the sense we use it today.
Now, whether it was inspired or not, that is for the theists to believe in.
The summary states: "The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case over the objections of the Obama administration, which had urged the justices to leave the lower court rulings in place."
And yet, the linked article makes no claim like that, nor does the summary provide a link to that. So, please, where is the citation to support that claim?
Another thing lacking in the traditional CS route is understanding of the business one is coding for. I managed projects for a large taxing authority. We found it much more productive to take existing employees who understood the various tax procedures and workflows in the department and train them to program versus hiring CS graduates and train them in tax policy and procedures. People from the "floor" have a totally different insight than management and CS graduates and their insight leads to much more efficient ways of doing things. Of course, the people we pulled from the floor did have an aptitude for programming and desingFor the record, we also hired some CS graduates, depending on specific skill sets needed.
Business IT shops would do much better to consider apprenticeship programs. What is taught in most CS programs did not transfer well into what we needed most. My recommendation to students wanting to pursue a career in IT would be to get a business administration degree with various CS classes as electives (or even minor in CS). That is, unless, you want to work for the big tech companies, in which case, I would flip that and go CS with a minor in business.
At least that is how it works in the Midwest of the US.
They should try my hot new idea.
Nude flights! Let the TSA worry about the baggage. Nude travelers get the fast-track onto a jet.
It could start with Sandals and French Riviera vacation flights and expand to tropical get-aways.
You gotta be O.K. with natural humans of any age, but, this should speed up the poking and prodding segment of consumer abuse.
What a conversation starter, imagine the people you'd meet with nothing to hide! How refreshing.
With an obesity epidemic in the US, you really want nude flights?
Maybe they are buying up all of those phones from Android that Google won't let them sell and rebranding them?
Here is the CDC page, http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/bikeinjuries.html although the data is a little old. 500,000 injuries, 700 deaths 59% children. Remember, too, that a child's skull is a lot thinner than an adults. Also, children tend to be less cautious and have less control of the bike. Cars are not the only problem for bicyclists. Sewer grates, dogs, debris in the road and distractions all are more likely to cause a fall. Given that, even without a brain injury, hitting the pavement with one's head will lead to nasty scars and scalp injuries. Even if the rate of injury is relatively low, is it still not worth protecting against when the solution is so simple?
Put differently, the chance of a baseball player actually getting hit in the groin with a baseball is pretty low, but they all were cups just in case. If it is that important to protect the family jewels, should protecting one's brain and head be of even greater importance? Just a thought.
ps. there is a link from the cdc page to the bicyclinginfo.org that is full of statistics, including crash statistics. Some of the stats conflict with the CDC stats and the Children's Safety Network. All of them, though show that there are risks involved and fatalities do occur more than people would expect.