Blackfork
Member
Separation of Chruch and State
Personally, I'd like to see the State separated from ANYTHING.
Personally, I'd like to see the State separated from ANYTHING.
Is the separation of church and state a lie?
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Pafrmu
Member
This is the longest a thread like this has lasted since I have joined. A big Thank You to both sides of the debate.
NineseveN
member
As an Agnostic myself, I can say that we're probably closer to the more moderate and middle of the road religious folks than most would think. It's the extremists on both sides of the coin (the religious fanatics that want to impose God's will on everyone and insist that everyone MUST believe as they do despite the utter lack of proof AND the Atheists that mock and criticize the religious types for claiming to know what they cannot prove while being hypocritical in that they also claim to know that no god exists, yet they cannot prove their claims either).
Uh oh, we're gettig eyeballed by the 'gun topic' purists...quick, if Saint George was personified as a firearm, what would he be? I'd say a Remington 700 in 30-06 with a walnut monte-carlo stock.
NineseveN
member
And with that, ladies and gents, I think we have a winner!
NineseveN
DBabsJr
The fact of introducing the subject at all reflects one opinion, rather than another.
Consider “if you are going to be a Martyr for Allah, here is some information to help you make suicide bombs."
Is that “zero opinion?”
ArmedBear
Helmetcase
There is a real, logical problem here, with “Freedom of Religion.” And I don’t know what to do about it.
If the JP is paid with my tax money, it IS my business; especially if the laws of my state do not authorize his actions.
DBabsJr
Doesn’t fly.
The fact of introducing the subject at all reflects one opinion, rather than another.
Consider “if you are going to be a Martyr for Allah, here is some information to help you make suicide bombs."
Is that “zero opinion?”
ArmedBear
Can we have a big AMEN for the brother? !!!
Helmetcase
It’s deeper than that, I think. Religious tolerance IS a religious belief, in itself. The idea that religion is only between a man & his God, is a religious belief (and one not at all typical of most religions throughout history.) Most of humanity’s religions have been wildly intolerant, repressive, and expansionist. And all such are now officially repressed in the USA. (Thank … whoever.) Only certain religions are free to practice – the civilized, sanitized ones, endorsed by the government.
There is a real, logical problem here, with “Freedom of Religion.” And I don’t know what to do about it.
NineseveN
Freshman Philosophy should have cured that one. I cannot prove that you are not a Leprechaun, or the Antichrist, but I can know that there is no evidence for it, and therefore no logical reason to believe it.
Weak, weak.
Freshman Philosophy should have cured that one. I cannot prove that you are not a Leprechaun, or the Antichrist, but I can know that there is no evidence for it, and therefore no logical reason to believe it.
Naw. A Barrett .50. In white DuraCoat.
NineseveN
member
It's a rule of evidence. Not being able to produce eivdence of something is not the same as proving it definitely does not exist. Once upon a time, no one could provide definitive evidence that the world was round, but it was, wasn't it?
I agree. But they would argue otherwise...
How about when the evidence you seek is all around you? When that evidence is the very air you breathe, the life you live, the consciousness with which you think? What happens when you do see all the evidence, yet claim it's not there or that it's something else, or don't know what it is at all?
And that, in a nutshell, is Freshman Philosophy. And Sophomore Philosophy, and Jun--ah, never mind.
My mother taught me to say "Yes Ma'm" not Imam.
REALLY?!?
So we're not responsible for anything?
Cool! Now I won't sweat voting or anything. It's God, not me.
Hell, if God did choose our rulers, I'd be pretty pissed off at him, given the nature of at least some of them (including, for my family, the man, the myth, the metaphor, live and in person, Adolf Hitler).
NineseveN
member
Well, the gods work in mysterious ways. In some circles, it is believed that the gods/God/whatever bring about calamities such as Hitler in order to give birth to an ever greater hero or a time of prosperity. I'm not saying I believe that, but it's an interesting point of view none the less.
That sort of thing is why I think a lot of religion-pushers are like patent medicine salesmen.
It's a gross violation of Occam's Razor, for one thing, and it's deliberately designed to be intrinsically irrefutable.
Furthermore, it absolves humans of any responsibility, despite its being taught along with the belief that we can be eternally damned for not fulfilling our responsibility as humans.
I don't buy it.
Ministry DOES make more sense than religion.
Ding dang a dang bong bing bong
Ticky ticky thought of a gun
Everytime I try to do it all now baby
Am I on the run
Why why why
Itll ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky
Dawn of a gun
Bing bing bang a bong a bong bing bang a
Ticky ticky thought of a gun
Bing bip bip a bop bop boom bam
Ticky ticky through the day
I wouldn't say it's a lie, I'd say it's a long held consensus.
I don't want a state religion, even if it's "Christianity" -- Whose brand of Christianity? Should we make Snake Handling the state religion?
I think the proper role of government should be to remain strictly neutral on religion, and allow any and all religions to compete in the free market of ideas that is this country. I will concede that it's very difficult when individual personalities are involved in government. It is everyone's tendency to push their views. Just don't use my taxes to endorse any of those religious ideas.
It's not secular humanism, it's the non-endorsement of any particular sect, plain and simple.
I don't want a state religion, even if it's "Christianity" -- Whose brand of Christianity? Should we make Snake Handling the state religion?
I think the proper role of government should be to remain strictly neutral on religion, and allow any and all religions to compete in the free market of ideas that is this country. I will concede that it's very difficult when individual personalities are involved in government. It is everyone's tendency to push their views. Just don't use my taxes to endorse any of those religious ideas.
It's not secular humanism, it's the non-endorsement of any particular sect, plain and simple.
BrennanKG
Member
So where does the "Our god/faith/doctrine is better than yours" idea fit in the heirarchy of human arrogance? Most organized religions seem, even given varying degrees of proselytizing/conversion efforts, to believe that everyone should believe as they do.
B.
SolaScriptura139
Member
Um, sorry, but I was a geology student my first year of college, not internet research. How about we not make insulting assumptions about my level of intelligence? Natural selection and genetic mutation is the driving force behind physical evolution, according to the theory. Sexual reproduction only allows the species to continue on. By the way, you can make arguments for your position without being insulting. Throwing insults only shows insecurity on your part.
Helmetcase
Member
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It's been a while since AP Biology in 10th grade (I got a 4 on the test), but my recollection is that you're wrong.
SolaScriptura139
Member
Well, sexual reproduction, according to how I was taught, allows for genetic mutation, and even causes some. But sexual reproduction cannot be said to be the whole driving force of evolution, because if their is no mutation, there is no evolution, and if there is no natural selection, there is no need for mutation.
Not true.
Sexual reproduction and recombinant DNA are peas in a pod. Speciation, too, physical and behavioral.
And it's entirely true that the "Darwinism" attacked by Creationists I've heard and read is a straw man. Darwin postulated gradual change, but Creationists rightly note that homeostasis is prevalent in biology on every level. The thing is, so do those who do evolution research. Current work in evolution accounts for "punctuated equilibrium," not Darwin's gradual change hypothesis.
I studied organisms, not rocks, and I finished my degree. No insult intended. For your own benefit: you're in over your head here if you are unaware of the fundamental part that sexual reproduction plays in evolution.
I haven't followed the science closely for a long time, so when I see that Creationists are presenting outdated hypotheses as "what the other side believes", I mean they're REALLY out of date.
My personal opinion: if you want to see God at work, learn about Complexity Theory (Chaos).
What the...?
Check out this book, and others by the same author, if you really want to understand what you're arguing against.
http://www.amazon.com/-Selfish-Gene...4670/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-1488803-9367318?ie=UTF8
Agree with anything or not, it's certainly good to understand what you're really discussing.
SolaScriptura139
Member
The problem I have with Punctuated Equilibrium, also called Punctuated Gradualism, if I remember the terms correctly, is if you have a species that gives birth to a whole new species, then how does that new species procreate?
PS. We did study evolution in Geology.
What I was saying was that mutation is essential to evolution, it's a basic tenet of evolution, and I was trying to prove that you need natural selection to provide a need for mutation.
If this is true, then how come they still teach gradual change in school?
PS. We did study evolution in Geology.
What I was saying was that mutation is essential to evolution, it's a basic tenet of evolution, and I was trying to prove that you need natural selection to provide a need for mutation.
If this is true, then how come they still teach gradual change in school?
Do you understand how speciation occurs? Generally, it involves the isolation of a group of the species, through behavior, geography, etc. That group changes together, and becomes a separate species as a group. After X generations of adaptive change that occurs independently from the other population, which is either static because it's well-adapted, or changing in other directions because it's facing a different set of selection pressures, the isolated group can't interbreed freely with the original species. Scientific terminology refers to this as "speciation."
"Punctuated" refers to geological time, not seconds, minutes or hours.
We can observe this happening with species, and it is sometimes argued whether two geographically separate and otherwise different populations of a genus of organism represent separate species or not.
Darwin's finches were a dramatic illustration of this at work: very similar species of birds, separated by different geography, food, etc. It could be seen quite easily how birds might be separated on an island, and selected for smaller individuals by various factors, until they could no longer interbreed with birds from a different island. Throughout their history, though, that population could always breed with each other. There's no logical or logistical problem with that.
Not as much as we did in 4 years of Evolutionary Biology, evidently... I don't claim to know squat about Geology. There's no shame in admitting that you don't know everything, either. I sure don't.
I understand what you were trying to do. That's why I responded with, "What the...?" and I reiterate that response. It's best to understand your argument if you want to make it.
Check this out: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
SolaScriptura139
Member
I never said that I knew everything, I was qualifying the fact that I'm not a complete idiot as Wheeler was trying to portray me. As evidently seen, I'm very rusty when it comes to evolution. It's not vital to my life, so I don't study it that much. I was stating what I learned from my evolution class, if that information was wrong, then I have been misinformed. In addition, I was letting you know that the field of geology is not just limited to rocks. I wasn't staking a claim to omniscience.
If you're interested, check out the link I posted above. It is interesting, I promise.
If you're not interested, and you don't know much about it, why even discuss it?
To say that someone doesn't know about something isn't to say that he's an idiot.
I know nothing about Sikh history. I'm confident that I'm not an idiot. However, I won't tell you anything about Sikhs, either, except that I knew a couple, they wore white clothes, did yoga every morning, and one of them was really into auto racing.
If you're not interested, and you don't know much about it, why even discuss it?
To say that someone doesn't know about something isn't to say that he's an idiot.
I know nothing about Sikh history. I'm confident that I'm not an idiot. However, I won't tell you anything about Sikhs, either, except that I knew a couple, they wore white clothes, did yoga every morning, and one of them was really into auto racing.
Art Eatman
Moderator In Memoriam
Dang! Y'all ran off from Miz Harris and didn't even say goodby!
Art
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