Fairytale?

[Aron-Ra]

Well it surely is evidence. Neither is it possible to prove evolution.

Yes I can actually. But you have to be both honest and scientific for that to happen. Were you either, then you would have answered post #256 without my having to ever bring it up again. Creationists habitually duck and dodge every critical point or query and they always move the goal posts rather than allow themselves to be held accountable.

I was once involved in a debate with an evangelical minister who claimed to be a "government scientist", and he argued that evolution was "necessarily atheist and baseless speculation about how life created itself without God", (or words to that effect). I explained that evolution was a biological process and an inescapable fact of population genetics. But he wouldn't listen and kept asserting the same false definition.

This was a moderated debate with a geophysicist, a geneticist, and a famous paleontologist acting as moderators; all of whom promoted evolution, and all of them were Christians, and even church leaders. They corrected him both theologically and academically, but the evangelist refused to correct his assertion and kept repeating it.

He not only insisted that evolution was "how life created itself without God", but he claimed that it was even being that way both in high school and college. I cited seven high school and college text books, all recently written and currently used, and all of them defined evolution the way I did, and not one of them sounded anything like what he said. But he still would not concede his error! Instead he said that the reason all the science books disagreed with him was that they were written by a secret conspiracy of Satanic atheists, and that this legion of allegedly demonic minions included each of the Christians promoting science.

When someone is that irrational, illogical, and unreasonable, and SO determined to remain deluded that he will blindly disregard any and all proof of his own continuous failure, and instead assume without reason a god-like infallability for himself despite the fact that he is consistently proven wrong by every thing on every point every time, then there is little that can be done to help that person understand reason -short of prolongued sessions of psychotherapy with thorazine.

 

[Split Rock]

You know what I find wonderful. Is the fact that I don't even know you, nor have I ever been to where you have been or heard the same people you have heard and ALL your answers were EXACTLY the answers I would have given. Proof again that God is real and the scriptures are true.

Huh? How does that prove that God is real and the scriptures are true??

Since Aron and I agree that we are here because of common descent, then I guess that means evolution is true!

 

[FoeHammer]

Funny, He never said so. You sure you want to accept man's arbitrary word on it?

It is divinely inspired by The absolute authority (God).

Some may, some may not. Fortunately, both science and scientists encourage such skepticism -- don't take their word for it, run the experiment yourself, and all that.

This is the problem though isn't it? How many experiments are there that support the ToE beyond those that demonstrate variation within a kind.
Wolf, dog, coyote, cat. A child could easily tell you which one is not like the others. Now you have to explain to that child how all of them came from something that is not like any of them. Good luck with that.

I've yet to see a religious belief encourage skepticism -- except maybe Buddhism.

Matthew 24:4
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

Words such as these encourage me to be skeptical of others.

Matthew 7:20
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

I used to be skeptical of The Bible until I sampled its fruits.

I suppose that neither science nor most scientists are as arbitrary as you choose to be.

I suppose that ''most(?) scientists'' do not choose to be as arbitrary as I choose to be.

FoeHammer.

 

[FoeHammer]

So, your solution to an arbitrary classification system is to make it more arbitrary?

As I have stated I accept that Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and so draw a distinction between man and ape that does not allow for a common ancestor in the evolutionary sense.
Does the scientific method suffer as a consequence of this? Of course it doesn't, the only thing that does suffer as a consequence of this is the atheistic evo-fundies belief in common ancestry.

FoeHammer.

 

[FoeHammer]

*****



Now delusions aside, I didn't "neglect" to explain why it matters in terms of reality the way it really is. I did explain it, and you deleted, and now act as though you've never seen it. So here it is again:

If evolution from common ancestry is not true, and some flavor of special creation of different (as yet unidentified "kinds") is true, then there would be some surface level(s) in a cladogram where you would accept an actual evolutionary ancestry. But there must also be subsequent levels in that twin-nested hierarchy where life-forms would no longer be the same "kind", and wouldn't be biologically related anymore. At that point, they would be magically created separate "kinds" from those listed around it, and they would only be in those categories "in the mind of man", as seems to be your stance. Throw away any ideas you have about the importance of any other argument you might be thinking about. None of them compare to this. If creationism is true of anything more than a single ancestor of all living things, or if the concept of common ancestry is fundamentally mistaken, then there MUST be a point in the tree where taxonomy falls apart, where what we see as related to everything is really unrelated to anything else. And unless you're a Scientologist or a Raelian, that criteria must apply to other animals besides ourselves.

The original question from the other thread was:….. if atheistic evolution is a reality why is this even an issue? We’re born, we procreate, and we die, job done. How does science benefit us from an atheistic evolutionary point of view?

Now if you think that your explanation(?) above even begins to address this question, let alone answer it in any meaningful way, then you are mistaken. I am going to be extremely selective in responding to any more of your posts until you do address the question directly. It’s a plain and simple enough question so please try to answer it in as plain and simple a way as you can.

FoeHammer.

 

[Lilandra]

The original question from the other thread was:….. if atheistic evolution is a reality why is this even an issue? We’re born, we procreate, and we die, job done. How does science benefit us from an atheistic evolutionary point of view?

No, actually here is the OP...

There's no need to believe "in" evolution since it is a demonstrable fact which can be tested for so that our knowledge of it can be measured for accuracy objectively. And since there are no magic spells or talking animals in any aspect of evolution, as there are in most fairytales including Genesis, then exactly what do you think qualifies evolution as a fairytale? And do please be specific

You wouldn't need to misrepresent what he said if you had a valid point. It is necessary for you to dishonestly label the Theory of Evolution as "atheistic evolution". You cannot attack the theory in terms of evidence so you have to add the atheism thing to it, so Christians attribute some sort of taint to it that doesn't exist.

Do you add atheistic to the theory of gravity? What if science added eplanations from everyone'e favorite myths to scientific theories? Could they mske testable predictions from myths? Theories are explanations for patterns observed repeatedly in nature. For example, can you make observations from the myth of the Greek God Prometheus creating people from clay? What practical application would that provide us in the biological sciences? How could we test for that? Can we analyze humans and detect what percentage of our molecules are clay?

Science can apply evolution in practical ways like medicine. The observation that we are apes biologically makes nonhuman apes useful for medical testing in ways that are not ethical for humans. The kinship is unfortunate for some apes but the research yields medical benefits for humans.
What if we added the myth of Pandora's box as an explanation for diseases? What would that tell us? Exactly what pattern in that story is there anything to make predictions from? Can we search for the evil spirits that flew out the box to cause diseases?

Why must science reserve special treatment for the Genesis myth? Does it explain anything in nature in a testable way that would be useful in understanding how nature works? Like he replied to you if living things were specially created as it is depicted in Genesis, then there should be evidence of that. The cladogram will break down somewhere. You think between humans and nonhuman apes. The evidence would support that but it clearly show the opposite. So you are left with arguing the theory is somehow atheistic because you have no evidence the Genesis myth actually happened.

So you don't like atheists a lot of people in this country don't. But even if every single human in the world was a Christian, they are still apes related to other apes and evolved from a common ancestor with other apes.
Get over it.

 

[thaumaturgy]

As I have stated I accept that Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and so draw a distinction between man and ape that does not allow for a common ancestor in the evolutionary sense.

Well, actually you have painted yourself into a corner.

You claim Adam and Eve were created in God's image and that makes them distinct from other primates.

But in reality what that really means is that PRIMATES ARE GOD'S IMAGE.

Think about it. If we look, act, and for all intents and puposes appear to be nothing more than other primates and you say we were created in God's image, then YOU must believe God's image is that of a primate or ape.

Do you see the logical conundrum you have decreed for yourself?

You claim something about God predicated on HUMANITY and it effectively guts your own argument.

Does the scientific method suffer as a consequence of this? Of course it doesn't,.

Well, yeah, it kinda does. Science only works when you don't multiply entities and you construct models that have no extraneous unprovable factors in them.

You have to explain the variability in the data using the minimum number of factors and all those factors must be provable and testable and observable to all objective observers.

So, yeah, it does suffer.

(Also science uses logic quite a bit, something that the aforementioned discussion of "God's Image" stumbles over quite severely).

 

[Pete Harcoff]

Does the scientific method suffer as a consequence of this? Of course it doesn't, the only thing that does suffer as a consequence of this is the atheistic evo-fundies belief in common ancestry.

*tap* *tap* This thing on? I guess you ignored my other posts where I point out that common ancestry is part on an applied science. IOW, it's used for stuff. Like, oh I dunno, research into HIV for example.

Did you miss it? Look again. ^^^^

So yes, there is a consequence. A consequence which you and every creationist here wants to ignore. Because you can't admit that evolutionary biology, including common ancestry is important.

Ignore it if you want, but like I said before, it's not going away.

 

[Aron-Ra]

It is divinely inspired by The absolute authority (God).

Just like the Qur'an, the Adi-Granth, the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas, the Avestas, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Book of Mormon. All of them were written by men inspired by thier gods, but nothing was ever written by a god, and there's no way to know if there ever even was such a thing, much less how much authority it might have had.

This is the problem though isn't it? How many experiments are there that support the ToE beyond those that demonstrate variation within a kind.
Wolf, dog, coyote, cat. A child could easily tell you which one is not like the others. Now you have to explain to that child how all of them came from something that is not like any of them. Good luck with that.

You would never have to do that. I've tried to show this to you but you keep ducking the issue. The very first ancestor you would have had in the evolutionary family tree is a eukaryote. Are you not a eukaryote still? As a human, you still belong to every taxonomic clade you ever evolved from. Creationists keep demanding we show something which evolution says is impossible; for offspring to somehow be unrelated to thier parents. But evolution never suggests that one thing ever turned into another fundamentally different thing. Every new species or genus, (etc.) that ever evolved was just a modified version of whatever its ancestors were, and evolution amounts no more than a matter of incremental, superficial changes slowly compiled atop various tiers of fundamental similarities. So by asking for something beyond "variations within a "kind" [lineage] is just another straw-man given by one who's denial of reality is that desperate.

I've yet to see a religious belief encourage skepticism -- except maybe Buddhism.

Matthew 24:4
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

Translation: Don't listen to anyone else, just believe me. That's not skepticism. But that is what someone might say if he were trying to deceive you.

Words such as these encourage me to be skeptical of others.

And yet you still blindly swallow all the unsubsubstantiated and indefensible nonsense spewing from the pulpit of your congregation, don't you? Skeptical, my hiney. You're as gullable as they get.

Matthew 7:20
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
I used to be skeptical of The Bible until I sampled its fruits.

Yeah, and I used to believe the Bible until I did the same thing. Those are definitely not the words of any superior being, those are the ravings of primitive and ignorant savages pretending to speak from authority.

 

[Lilandra]

Well it surely is evidence. Neither is it possible to prove evolution.

It is only evidence if it is testable by objective observers and they confirm the same conclusion.

You seem to view this issue personally and subjectively. You count what some guy on an internet board posts as evidence of God.

However, you discount evolution which has been observed to be a viable explanation by scientists. Scientists, who have actually performed experimants and fieldwork and studied college level biology extensively.

But you think your opinion carries equal weight to a scientific explanation. Odd that.

 

[FoeHammer]

*****

I have made a post in direct response to you but rather than reply to it you have taken it upon yourself to post a reply to something I directed toward another poster... Why is this?

Translation: Don't listen to anyone else, just believe me. That's not skepticism. But that is what someone might say if he were trying to deceive you.

Take heed that no man deceive you is a maxim that I have adopted in all areas of my life whatever the topic, whoever the individual..... it has indeed encouraged me to be skeptical.

And yet you still blindly swallow all the unsubsubstantiated and indefensible nonsense spewing from the pulpit of your congregation, don't you?

I do not attend a church so what exactly did you mean by this remark?

Skeptical, my hiney. You're as gullable as they get.

LOL. I'm not the one believing in the nonsense that is the ToE... you are! And you cannot, from an atheistic evolutionary perspective, give me any good reason why any of it matters.

Yeah, and I used to believe the Bible until I did the same thing. Those are definitely not the words of any superior being, those are the ravings of primitive and ignorant savages pretending to speak from authority.

I doubt that you ever believed The Bible and unless you have ever accepted and acknowledged your sin before God and accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour (been born again) then I don't believe that you have ever sampled its fruits.

You really do demonstrate an extreme level of ignorance with regards to The Bible and its teachings and a total disregard for anything that I have ever said about my faith. You know absolutely nothing about me beyond that which I have revealed. if you want to know more then ask if not then do not make comments relative to it as you will only end up looking more and more foolish each time I have to set you straight


Foeammer.

 

[Aron-Ra]

The original question from the other thread was:….. if atheistic evolution is a reality why is this even an issue? We’re born, we procreate, and we die, job done. How does science benefit us from an atheistic evolutionary point of view?

Now if you think that your explanation(?) above even begins to address this question, let alone answer it in any meaningful way, then you are mistaken. I am going to be extremely selective in responding to any more of your posts until you do address the question directly. It’s a plain and simple enough question so please try to answer it in as plain and simple a way as you can.

I already answered this question too, in the post you're replying to in fact. But you snipped that too just so you can make another false accusation.

There's a old proverb, "Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore." In one sense it means, "God helps those who help themselves." But in another sense, it means that whatever you need done, you'd better do it yourself, 'cuz it ain't just gonna magically happen because God doesn't do things that way. Everyone who believes in God believes he does things that way. That nothing ever poofs out of nothing, and money doesn't just rain down from the sky, and lost children don't get teleported back home. Whether God does it or not, everything happens in a sequence of natural occurances. Believers say that God orchestrates seemingly random events so that they work out the way he wants them to. And that is exactly what theistic evolutionists believe about evolution. So science benefits atheists in exactly the same way that it benefits anyone else.

The problem you're having with this isn't the atheism thing, because most of the people who accept evolution believe it was conceived and guided by God. Your problem is that you want to say that God couldn't do things they way he always does if you're talking about the ancient past. Then, you insist that he had to do things magically, with incantations, ritual spells, enchanted artifacts, pyrotechnic potions. Why should God totally change his pattern of behavior for you? Because you worship a book. You are an idolater because you have taken man-made and committee-compiled compendium of myths and you've erected that as your god. To prove that, you actually believe that if the Bible is wrong, then God is wrong. In your perspective, if the Bible isn't itself infallable, (which it can't be) then God can't exist, not your version of it, nor anyone else's either. So what you have is a false dichotomy wherein you think we must either worship the Bible or be atheist. You do not consider that other religions may be right, or that God could still be real, but that all religions including yours could be wrong about him. But whether God exists or not, the Bible is still wrong either way.

 

[Aron-Ra]

I have made a post in direct response to you but rather than reply to it you have taken it upon yourself to post a reply to something I directed toward another poster... Why is this?

Company showed up before I was ready to press "submit". Get over yourself.

Take heed that no man deceive you is a maxim that I have adopted in all areas of my life whatever the topic, whoever the individual..... it has indeed encouraged me to be skeptical.

If only that were true. Because if it were, then you'd be a scientific rationalist like me. But instead, you accept as absolute truth the ravings of superstitious primitives who obviously had no idea what they were talking about. Without any evidence at all whatsoever, you've not only decided that supernatural things 'might' be true, you've convinced yourself beyond reason that they are true, and more true than anything anyone ever wrote even could be -despite the fact that everything your book talks about has been shown to be wrong, sometimes on many levels. You've allowed the men pushing religion to deceive you into believing the book men wrote was really written by a god. This could not have happened had you adhered to the maxim you claim.

And yet you still blindly swallow all the unsubsubstantiated and indefensible nonsense spewing from the pulpit of your congregation, don't you?

I do not attend a church so what exactly did you mean by this remark?

Oh, so you're alone in your beliefs, are you?

Skeptical, my hiney. You're as gullable as they get.

LOL. I'm not the one believing in the nonsense that is the ToE... you are!

That's right. You deny what is demonstrably factual and believe in magic instead.

And you cannot, from an atheistic evolutionary perspective, give me any good reason why any of it matters.

Yes I can, and did, and have before too. But if you were right, why would anything matter at all?

I doubt that you ever believed The Bible and unless you have ever accepted and acknowledged your sin before God and accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour (been born again) then I don't believe that you have ever sampled its fruits.

You really do demonstrate an extreme level of ignorance with regards to The Bible and its teachings and a total disregard for anything that I have ever said about my faith. You know absolutely nothing about me beyond that which I have revealed. if you want to know more then ask if not then do not make comments relative to it as you will only end up looking more and more foolish each time I have to set you straight

You've yet to set me, (or anyone else here) straight on anything. But I've corrected you with every post. I never believed the Bible was literal history, that's true. Because its pretty obvious Genesis intended "the fruit of the tree of ___" to be allegory. As one Pentacostal preacher I know said,

"Augustine was the type of pastor and theologian who knew scientists. He read them. He read the Latin translations of the best Greek philosophers and astronomers and he knew all this stuff. And after reading Genesis and thinking about it he came up with the conclusion that the story in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 was not a simple historical sequence of events. It just couldn't be. It's not what the words meant. It just wasn't. He wrote three whole books on it and Augustine is, nearly all church historians will tell you, the single most influential guy in forming basic Christian doctrines for every denomination. Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, you name it. ..."you've got Jewish writers in the Middle Ages who wrote books on Genesis and they didn't read Augustine but they came away with the same conclusion : that the six days of Creation could not be six literal days. No way. That's not what the Hebrew says. And that they weren't six things in a row either but that they were six revelations of what happened in order of importance. So there are two thousand years of thoughtful guys reading The Old Testament carefully and treating it with respect and coming away with the conclusion that is was not simple, secular, history. ...Look the Bible is not to be degraded to common history. It's more eternal than that. The world is very old and it has gone through a very long history."
--Bones, Bibles, & Creation: Rev. Robert T. Bakker, Ph.D.

Like most people who don't take the Bible literally, I still believed the Bible was divinely inspired, and that it was written this way in order for the message to remain eternal, to be sure it continued to be passed down despite the opions of the cultures who got ahold of it. I continued to believe in the divine construct of the Bible right up until I read it. Then it wasn't possible to believe that anymore. Once I got passed Genesis, and into the meat of the rest of the Book, I realized these could not be the words of God. I remained a Christian for many years, and was even "reborn" at nineteen. But then I learned the meaning of faith, and realized that it is opposed to the maxim you pretend to hold and which I really do hold. its not just men trying to deceive you. Faith enables you to deceive yourself! So I abandoned it. I continued to believe in a god or god-like thing for many years, and I thought I would more likely find the true message of God by studying all the religions instead of just one. But that had the reverse effect. I now know more about religion than anyone you'll ever likely meet on the street. But the more I learned, the less I could believe in anything anymore.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

I'm not the one believing in the nonsense that is the ToE... you are! And you cannot, from an atheistic evolutionary perspective, give me any good reason why any of it matters.

Ignoring the atheistic bit (which makes no sense when discussing science), I have repeatedly explained why evolutionary biology is important. Like a few posts ago even.

Are you going to continue to ignore it?

 

[TheOutsider]

"Christian Skeptic", my favorite oxymoron of the day. The two are mutually exclusive. Christianity is built on one thing: Faith. You cannot be a Christian without faith. For a Christian to say that they are skeptical is laughable.

 

[Inan3]

Meaning, for those of you keeping score at home, that it was Christians who first started the attack against other Christians -- as it usually goes.

Well, NP there you go again "twisting" the truth. This was not Christians "attacking" other Christians. It was a family concerned about their children having to filter the scriptures in a different light than what they were taught at home or in their church. And quite frankly, I don't have a problem with that. On the other hand, the wacko atheist Madalyn Murray O'hair, was attacking Christianity. She first filed a lawsuit in 1960 and Schemp's was in 1963. So I guess she was first after all. Even her own son admitted that she lied about the issues she brought before the courts. Her attack was against God but in a way it was a good thing, because it woke up the church to get involved with the issues of society that could bring to an end our freedoms and rights.

 

[FoeHammer]

I already answered this question too, in the post you're replying to in fact. But you snipped that too just so you can make another false accusation.

The original question was: if atheistic evolution is a reality why is this even an issue? We’re born, we procreate, and we die, job done. How does science benefit us from an atheistic evolutionary point of view?
Your answer was:

If evolution from common ancestry is not true, and some flavor of special creation of different (as yet unidentified "kinds") is true, then there would be some surface level(s) in a cladogram where you would accept an actual evolutionary ancestry. But there must also be subsequent levels in that twin-nested hierarchy where life-forms would no longer be the same "kind", and wouldn't be biologically related anymore. At that point, they would be magically created separate "kinds" from those listed around it, and they would only be in those categories "in the mind of man", as seems to be your stance. Throw away any ideas you have about the importance of any other argument you might be thinking about. None of them compare to this. If creationism is true of anything more than a single ancestor of all living things, or if the concept of common ancestry is fundamentally mistaken, then there MUST be a point in the tree where taxonomy falls apart, where what we see as related to everything is really unrelated to anything else. And unless you're a Scientologist or a Raelian, that criteria must apply to other animals besides ourselves.

I fail to see how this even begins to address the question let alone asnswer it. You're going to have to spell it out.

There's a old proverb, "Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore." In one sense it means, "God helps those who help themselves." But in another sense, it means that whatever you need done, you'd better do it yourself, 'cuz it ain't just gonna magically happen because God doesn't do things that way. Everyone who believes in God believes he does things that way. That nothing ever poofs out of nothing, and money doesn't just rain down from the sky, and lost children don't get teleported back home. Whether God does it or not, everything happens in a sequence of natural occurances. Believers say that God orchestrates seemingly random events so that they work out the way he wants them to. And that is exactly what theistic evolutionists believe about evolution. So science benefits atheists in exactly the same way that it benefits anyone else.

If life is the result of a chance chemical combination and reaction, and the diversity of life that is observed today is the product of a blind and random process, and thoughts are merely random chemical reactions, how and why does any of this matter.
Evolution as a process doesn't require us to explore or understand our origins nor does it require that we interfere in that process. Our continued existence or our immediate extinction is of no importance and little, if any, consequence to the process.
is it merely a coincidence, a matter of luck(?), that random chemical reactions give rise to logic and consistency of thought sufficient to produce the things that we do, most, if not all, of which have absolutely no bearing or influence on the process of evolution itself?

The problem you're having with this isn't the atheism thing, because most of the people who accept evolution believe it was conceived and guided by God.

I do not count the compromised opinions of theistic evolutionists. I have yet to see them produce any scripture to support their position.

Your problem is that you want to say that God couldn't do things they way he always does if you're talking about the ancient past.

This makes no sense and you are doing what I advised you not to do.

[quote]Then, you insist that he had to do things magically, with incantations, ritual spells, enchanted artifacts, pyrotechnic potions.[/quote]

I insist nothing of the kind I accept what is recorded in Genesis andyour use of these words are merely an attempt to ridicule The Bible. By ''magic'', ''incantations'', ''ritual spells'', ''enchanted artifacts'' and ''pyrotechnic potions'' what I think you really mean is via a process that is beyond your understanding and willingness to believe, which would make it an argument from personal incredulity. A logical fallacy.

Why should God totally change his pattern of behavior for you?

You’re not making any sense. What pattern of behaviour?

Because you worship a book. You are an idolater because you have taken man-made and committee-compiled compendium of myths and you've erected that as your god.

This is a strawman, another logical fallacy. I believe The Bible to be the revealed word of The God I worship. I add nothing to it and take nothing away.

To prove that, you actually believe that if the Bible is wrong, then God is wrong.

I do not believe that God can be wrong and as the revealed word of God I do not believe that The Bible is wrong.You have failed to prove anything though you have demonstrated your arrogance in presuming my position and proceeding to argue against it.

In your perspective, if the Bible isn't itself infallable, (which it can't be) then God can't exist, not your version of it, nor anyone else's either.

You’re continuing in your argument from personal incredulity, strawman building and arrogance in your presumption of my perspective.
God exists regardless of what you or I may or may not think.
Yet again you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the Christian teaching and faith in general and my perspective and faith in Christ in particular.

So what you have is a false dichotomy wherein you think we must either worship the Bible or be atheist. You do not consider that other religions may be right, or that God could still be real, but that all religions including yours could be wrong about him. But whether God exists or not, the Bible is still wrong either way.

Again a strawman. I have no false dichotomy though there is a dichotomy and that is atheism or theism.

Do not imagine for one moment that any dealings you may have had with ‘’christians’’ up to now has prepared you for an argument with this Christian and left you with any hope of prevailing. My faith has been, and continues to be, tried, tested and strengthened by The Almighty Himself. You won't even come close to testing it.


FoeHammer.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

Hey, Aron-Ra, you want to try directing FoeHammer to my posts on the relevance and application of common descent? Because he appears to be ignoring (either intentionally or unintentionally) my attempts to raise those points, yet he keeps asking why it's relevant.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Well, NP there you go again "twisting" the truth. This was not Christians "attacking" other Christians. It was a family concerned about their children having to filter the scriptures in a different light than what they were taught at home or in their church.

And usually the Church takes care of those internecine issues so well.

As the papal legate during the Albigensian Crucade supposedly said:

"Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" — "Kill them [all]! Surely the Lord discerns which [ones] are his"

(check it out here)

Her attack was against God but in a way it was a good thing, because it woke up the church to get involved with the issues of society that could bring to an end our freedoms and rights.

Would you be OK if your kids were asked to stand silently while muslim prayers were recited in your SCHOOL?

Note, your kids wouldn't have to recite the muslim prayers.

But indeed time would come out each day for the appropriate worship of Al'lah.

That would be OK with you? This is your tax money too. And who knows, maybe one of your kids would decide to say the magical words that would make them PERMANENTLY a muslim! That would be great too. It's all just personal belief and I know all Christians are purely ecumenical as to the equality of all belief.

So you call O'Hair a wacko. And annoyingly nasty she may have been. But why would we need to have prayer in school?

Why would I as a tax payer have any of my kids' time taken up with what I consider both a waste of time and a religious indoctrination?

 

[USincognito]

"Christian Skeptic", my favorite oxymoron of the day. The two are mutually exclusive. Christianity is built on one thing: Faith. You cannot be a Christian without faith. For a Christian to say that they are skeptical is laughable.

I have to disagree with this. Organized skepticism needs more religious people involved, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.

Not to sure about $cientologists though...