Origins and Civil Liberties

[Digital_Savior]

Exerpts from Robert F. Smith's (of the ACLU) thesis titled Origins and Civil Liberties.

quote:For the past five years, I have closely followed creationist literature and have attended lectures and debates on related issues. A few recent examples will suffice: During the past academic year, Dr. Gary E. Parker, a biologist with the Institute for Creation Research, spoke twice at the Univ. of Missouri at Kansas City (26 Oct. 1979 and 28 Mar 1980). Dr. Duane T.. Gish, a biochemist and associate director of ICR, debated Dr. Vincent Sarich, an anthropologist from the Univ, of California at Berkeley, at the studios of TV-50 with a live audience (7 Mar 1980, Kansas City, KS), and the video tape has been shown nationwide. Dr. Gish and the Director of ICR, Dr. Henry Morris, each debated evolutionists on two campuses of the University of Missouri some years ago, and the debates are available on cassettes locally. Only a few days ago, ICR's Summer Institute on scientific creationism concluded at Calvary Bible College, Kansas City, Missouri.

Based solely on the scientific arguments pro and con, I have been forced to conclude that scientific creationism is not only a viable theory, but that it has achieved parity with (if not superiority over) the normative theory of biological evolution. That this should now be the case is somewhat surprising, particularly in view of what most of us were taught in primary and secondary school. In practical terms, the past decade of intense activity by scientific creationists has left most evolutionist professors unwilling to debate the creationist professors. Too many of the evolutionists have been publicly humiliated in such debates by their own lack of erudition and by the weaknesses of their theory. The ACLU should, of course, be unconcerned with the results of such debates as long as the free market-place of ideas remains open. For, in all of these debates, creationists have been scrupulous to adhere to strict discussion of science alone. Not religion! Statements to the contrary are false.

Contrary to the allegations of one member of the National ACLU Church - State Committee, no creationist professors are seeking to "require public schools to offer courses and textbooks that support the literal Genesis account of creation." Nor can it be legitimately suggested that scientific creationists are "disguising fundamentalist religion in scientific jargon," or that they are working for some covert "advancement of sectarian religion," whatever personal beliefs most of them may have. Scientific creationism is not religious creationism. As legal scholar Wendell R. Bird points out, "Being consistent with religious views does not make it religion." In 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, at a time and place where only religious creationism was legally taught, Clarence Darrow thought it "bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins" (Bird and Darrow quoted in Kansas City Times, Dec. 21,1978, p. 2E; cf. Scopes V. State, 154 Tenn. 105). Would the ACLU be any less bigoted were it to demand that a modern-day John T. Scopes be allowed to teach only neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory?

I am heartened to learn (if belatedly) that some members of the National ACLU Committee on Academic Freedom have reservations about the relevance to this issue of the establishment clause of the First Amendment (S. Hendel Addendum, June 9, 1980). Indeed, the de facto establishment of views on the ultimate nature of reality and the indoctrination of secondary school students (public and private) in only one view has been with us for some time. It is, of course, the scientific establishment that determines which view will be promulgated in public schools. Normative religion usually follows in the wake of that establishment in our own time, as in the time of Galileo Galilei.

Contrary to common assumption, Galileo was racked and forced to recant at the behest of the dogmatic, geocentric scientific establishment of his day (Ptolemaic). The Church had merely adopted the Ptolemaic assumptions, as it had Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies. The open society ought to include the broadest possible discussion of opposing views rather than demanding (coercing?) adherence to one narrow, totalist position. In practice, the dualmode approach to origins enhances education and confirms John Stuart Mill's notion that competing theories test and sharpen each other (On Liberty. chapter II).

In School District of Abington Township vs. Schempp, in 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court left public schools open to far broader categories of instruction than even the creationists seek:

* the State may not establish a "religion of secularism" in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus "preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe." Zorach V. Clauson, supra, [343 U.S.] at 314.

Not only are "religious exercises" not a part of scientific creationism, but one cannot conceive of any reason for "study of the Bible or of religion" in connection with it. Not even indirectly even though the Supreme Court would clearly allow it.

Scientific creationism depends rather upon normative science for its justification, i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy), inductive analysis of geologic strata, embryology, anthropology, multivariate analysis of fossils (paleontology & comparative anatomy), probability theory, etc. The upshot is that, although evolutionists might have comparative molecular biology on their side, recent discoveries have convinced many eminent evolutionists that one cannot obtain self-replicating molecules (life) in the presence of all-pervasive entropy/disorder, that there are no known transitional fossils (two such "missing links," Nebraska and Piltdown Man, were offered as evidence of evolution at the Scopes Monkey Trial, but they later turned out to be hoaxes), and the geologic column is characterized by the sudden, unsystematic, and catastrophic entry and exit of various forms of life. In each case, the scientific model is a theoretical construct based on circumstantial evidence from the past. Neither evolution nor creation has ever been observed, nor are they currently testable (provable) in a laboratory. Neither model is, thus, based any more on "faith" than the other. Similar problems of determining and reconstructing origins exist for astrophysics, where "steady state" and "big bang" models have existed side-by-side for a long time. That one model should coincide with some religious view is irrelevant.

In line with Lemon vs. Kurtzman (403 U.S 602,614; cf. 374 U.S. 215-6,222, 226), the only allowable test for the introduction of any theory of origins into the science curriculum of the public schools must be a test of scientific merit - which alone provides purpose, secularity, and lack of entanglement with religion. Government must remain neutral, and religion can have no hand in that assessment of merit. Separation of Church & State remains unthreatened by the introduction of scientific creationism. On the other hand, proscribing the teaching of scientific creationism would certainly violate the spirit of Epperson vs. Arkansas in that a de facto anti-creationist position is permitted while an anti-evolution statute is struck down! No group, secular or religious, should have the right to pretend that an area of knowledge doesn’t exist simply because it is "deemed to conflict with a particular" scientific dogma (393 U.S. 103). The Law is a double-edged sword, and the "right of teachers and students to be free of arbitrary restrictions upon the educational process (Meyer V. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390) ought to be applied as readily to restrictions upon teaching creationism as to teaching evolution.

Religious creationism is rightly to be excluded from any public school system as for the Iowa Dept. of Public Instruction (Jan 1978 position paper), and for Tennessee in Daniel vs. Waters (515 F2d 485). However, the leading professional organizations of educators and scientists pushing scientific creationism, the Creation Research Society (CRS), and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), have never sought to introduce religious creationism into the public schools. Indeed, in a recent lecture at UMKC, one ICR scientist, Or. Gary Parker, came under fire from a fundamentalist Christian in the audience for not mentioning Jesus or the Bible. ICR scientists stick to science remarkably well, and it has always been ICR policy to use education and persuasion in convincing states and school districts to put creationism in the science curriculum not via litigation or compulsory legislation, which are counterproductive, but by resolution, endorsement, and adoption of dual-model texts. Creationist scientists in this country are generally confident that they can win acceptance for scientific creationism in open debate on the scientific issues alone. In my judgment, they have good reason for such confidence, and ought to be given a hearing by the ACLU before any policy decisions are made.

I am not an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian, and my fundamentalist friends do not consider me to be a "Christian." I have no ulterior motive for the above statements (am not connected in any way with ICR or CRS), unless it is the simple-minded notion that the ACLU should maintain the highest possible standards in the protection and expansion of civil liberties The ACLU must avoid the adoption of policies based on fallacious reasoning or on the hearing of only one side of an issue.

I agree with this guy 100%. Scientists and School Administrators that are threatened by scientific creationism (or ID) should reconsider their motives in preventing theories such as these access to the community at large.

I sense a deep insecurity and bigotry amongst the ranks of evolution science and their supporters.

EDIT: Forgot the resource link. My bad. Thanks for pointing that out, Beta.

[This message has been edited by Digital_Savior (edited 04-28-2006).]

Wow. Strawmen, and lying, and bullshit; Oh my! I'll try to go over this when I get a chance, but it'll be kinda hard, seeing as the author says nothing of signifigance, and just states the way he wishes things were.

[Digital_Savior]

From a legal perspective, he is absolutely right, and he cites the relevant court cases that set the precedents protecting the right of scientific creationism to have equal footing in the public school system.

Good luck refuting this, since he has a law degree, and is an accomplished lawyer.

quote:Originally posted by Digital_Savior:

...and he cites the relevant court cases that set the precedents protecting the right of scientific creationism...

Too bad there's no such thing.

[Digital_Savior]

I wasn't referring to specifics. I was referring to Lemon vs. Kurtzman and School District of Abington Township vs. Schempp.

[Viraljimmy]

"Creationist scientists in this country are generally confident that they can win acceptance for scientific creationism in open debate on the scientific issues alone."

Bullshit. And they all know it.

Yes, a lawyer defending creationism as a science when he has no clue about science. In fact, what creationism does is playing the lawyer in science. Fabricating, twisting, lying. Nothing new here that's worth more than a eye-rolling smiley.

Reply to the excerpts,

Oh you left out,

-Robert E. Smith, "Origins and Civil Liberties," in Creation Social Sciences and Humanities Quarterly, 3 (Winter 1980): 23-24.

quote:"In practical terms, the past decade of intense activity by scientific creationists has left most evolutionist professors unwilling to debate the creationist professors."

BS, well sort of. Plenty of scientists are willing to debate creationists (although many see it as a waste of time and giving creationists what they want, acknowledgment). Of course there are many that are unwilling to debate creationists verbally but would rather participate in a written debate (written debates are geared more towards science), yet many creationists have refused to participate in a written debate. Take Walt Brown who has constantly weaseled his way out of debates (even though he claims to be willing to debate anyone) and Hovind (drdino) will only participate in spoken debates.

In the end a debate doesn't normally prove which side is right but who is the better debater. Take Hovind, I have torn some of his papers apart and he doesn't have a factual (or honest) leg to stand on. But there would be no way I would participate in a spoken debate against him, he is charismatic and knows how to play the game. I would get beaten not because his side is stronger but because he is a better spoken debater.

quote:"disguising fundamentalist religion in scientific jargon,"

When was this written?

In the recent Dover case creationists were caught red-handed trying to pass off creationism as a more secular Intelligent Design.

quote:whatever personal beliefs most of them may have. Scientific creationism is not religious creationism. As legal scholar Wendell R. Bird points out, "Being consistent with religious views does not make it religion."

I would agree with him if it wasn't for the fact that most creationist groups require members to sign a statement of faith that says the literal bible is true no matter what the evidence suggests.

quote:Would the ACLU be any less bigoted were it to demand that a modern-day John T. Scopes be allowed to teach only neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory?

Where do we stop? Should all religions be allowed to teach their views of origin in science class?

quote:Scientific creationism depends rather upon normative science for its justification, i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy), inductive analysis of geologic strata, embryology, anthropology, multivariate analysis of fossils (paleontology & comparative anatomy), probability theory, etc.

So what? Just because a theory uses previous science (often incorrectly) or fields doesn't mean it's correct

quote:recent discoveries have convinced many eminent evolutionists that one cannot obtain self-replicating molecules (life) in the presence of all-pervasive entropy/disorder, that there are no known transitional fossils (two such "missing links," Nebraska and Piltdown Man, were offered as evidence of evolution at the Scopes Monkey Trial, but they later turned out to be hoaxes), and the geologic column is characterized by the sudden, unsystematic, and catastrophic entry and exit of various forms of life. In each case, the scientific model is a theoretical construct based on circumstantial evidence from the past.

Then he degrades into a standard PRATT list.

Who are these eminent evolutionists?

Why does he think abiogenesis is part of evolution?

Does he understand what entropy really means?

BS "there are no known transitional fossils."

Do creationists really need to drag out two mistake fossils that were never accepted by the scientific community as evidence against evolution? Is that all they have?

quote:Neither evolution nor creation has ever been observed, nor are they currently testable (provable) in a laboratory. Neither model is, thus, based any more on "faith" than the other.

I would question exactly what he means by "evolution" and "creationism"

Evolution has been observed both in and out of the laboratory.

quote:ICR scientists stick to science remarkably well, and it has always been ICR policy to use education and persuasion in convincing states and school districts to put creationism in the science curriculum not via litigation or compulsory legislation, which are counterproductive, but by resolution, endorsement, and adoption of dual-model texts.

If by stick to science well he means throws out any evidence that doesn't fit their preconcieved ideas, then I agree.



Oh no a law degree, that makes him untouchable.

Old outdated paper, some of his claims may have been true or unchecked 26 years ago but they aren't today. maybe try something a bit more recent.

[Digital_Savior]

quote:Originally posted by Viraljimmy:

"Creationist scientists in this country are generally confident that they can win acceptance for scientific creationism in open debate on the scientific issues alone."

Bullshit. And they all know it.

Institute for Creation Research

Do you see religious creationism anywhere on that site ?

[Digital_Savior]

quote:Originally posted by elfstone:

Yes, a lawyer defending creationism as a science when he has no clue about science. In fact, what creationism does is playing the lawyer in science. Fabricating, twisting, lying. Nothing new here that's worth more than a eye-rolling smiley.

He builds a solid case for the inclusion of all viable scientific theories in the public school system, based on the laws we govern ourself by.

He is not claiming he can prove creationism scientifically.

READ IT AGAIN.

DS:

Define "Religious creationism"

Tell me, how do we tell when something is a viable scientific theory?

Church scientists have also said in the past that the earth was the center of the universe, that your whole body goes to heaven (the distinction was only changed recently), and that the earth is flat.

I honestly don't believe in creationism or evolution at the moment (neutral position) and am studying both, but lets see what Science Confronts the Paranormal has to say.

quote:Science confronts the paranormal:

"1. The Bible says that the earth was created at the same time as the universe was (in the beginning, god created the heaven and the earth) with the whole process taking six days. In fact whereas the Earth was created at the beggining of creation, the Sun, Moon, and stars were not created till the fourth day."

quote:Science confronts the paranormal:



"2. The bible says that in the six days of creation the whole job was finished (Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day god ended his work which he had made)."



"The astronomer on the other hand thinks stars are still being formed now and planets and satellites along with them; and the stars will continue to form for billion of years to come."

quote:Science confronts the paranormal:

"The Bible says that human beings were created on the sixth day of creation, so that the earth was empty of human intellegance for 5 days only.

The biologist on the otherhand thinks the ealiest beings that were even vaguely human, didn't appear on the earth until well over 4 1/2 billion years after its creation."

I don't feel like typing more but I will later if I must...

Putting motives on the outcome of scientific expirements is disgusting and shouldn't be considered science because it is incredably bias. Science is fact, not bias lies or oppinion, at best creationism is a theory thats been proven wrong.

quote:Originally posted by Digital_Savior:

Exerpts from Robert F. Smith's (of the ACLU) thesis titled Based solely on the scientific arguments pro and con, I have been forced to conclude that scientific creationism is not only a viable theory,

on what basis? how can a scientific theory be based around a non-falsifiable spagetti monster? and who is he do decide if it is scientifically valid? is he a scientist?

quote:...but that it has achieved parity with (if not superiority over) the normative theory of biological evolution. That this should now be the case is somewhat surprising, particularly in view of what most of us were taught in primary and secondary school. In practical terms, the past decade of intense activity by scientific creationists has left most evolutionist professors unwilling to debate the creationist professors. Too many of the evolutionists have been publicly humiliated in such debates by their own lack of erudition and by the weaknesses of their theory. The ACLU should, of course, be unconcerned with the results of such debates as long as the free market-place of ideas remains open. For, in all of these debates, creationists have been scrupulous to adhere to strict discussion of science alone. Not religion! Statements to the contrary are false.

ok...anything to back those assersions up? if i turned in a paper or did a speach like this i would not get an a. there is no meat to it, no details...he just repeats the same thing.

quote:Contrary to the allegations of one member of the National ACLU Church - State Committee, no creationist professors are seeking to "require public schools to offer courses and textbooks that support the literal Genesis account of creation." Nor can it be legitimately suggested that scientific creationists are "disguising fundamentalist religion in scientific jargon," or that they are working for some covert "advancement of sectarian religion," whatever personal beliefs most of them may have. Scientific creationism is not religious creationism. As legal scholar Wendell R. Bird points out, "Being consistent with religious views does not make it religion." In 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, at a time and place where only religious creationism was legally taught, Clarence Darrow thought it "bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins" (Bird and Darrow quoted in Kansas City Times, Dec. 21,1978, p. 2E; cf. Scopes V. State, 154 Tenn. 105). Would the ACLU be any less bigoted were it to demand that a modern-day John T. Scopes be allowed to teach only neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory?

if it has nothing to do with christianity, why are (nearly...i suppose there could be 1 or 2)all supporters of creationism religious?

why should a science classroom teach anything other than the leading scientific theory? should we teach high-school students about tesla's theories of gravity and electromagnetism? if the scientists change their mind at some point, then that is fine.

quote:I am heartened to learn (if belatedly) that some members of the National ACLU Committee on Academic Freedom have reservations about the relevance to this issue of the establishment clause of the First Amendment (S. Hendel Addendum, June 9, 1980). Indeed, the de facto establishment of views on the ultimate nature of reality and the indoctrination of secondary school students (public and private) in only one view has been with us for some time. It is, of course, the scientific establishment that determines which view will be promulgated in public schools. Normative religion usually follows in the wake of that establishment in our own time, as in the time of Galileo Galilei.

Contrary to common assumption, Galileo was racked and forced to recant at the behest of the dogmatic, geocentric scientific establishment of his day (Ptolemaic). The Church had merely adopted the Ptolemaic assumptions, as it had Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies. The open society ought to include the broadest possible discussion of opposing views rather than demanding (coercing?) adherence to one narrow, totalist position. In practice, the dualmode approach to origins enhances education and confirms John Stuart Mill's notion that competing theories test and sharpen each other (On Liberty. chapter II).

Title: FABRI DE PEIRESC'S QUEST FOR A METHOD TO CALCULATE TERRESTRIAL LONGITUDE , By: Tolbert, Jane T., Historian, 00182370, Summer99, Vol. 61, Issue 4

Database: Academic Search Premier





FABRI DE PEIRESC'S QUEST FOR A METHOD TO CALCULATE TERRESTRIAL LONGITUDE

The Roman Catholic Church of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries found itself beset by controversy on many fronts. The Protestant Reformation proved a serious threat to Church doctrine while the emerging scientific community challenged many of the Church's fundamental assumptions about humans, God, and the world. Basing its beliefs in the theories of Aristotle that the Earth was the pivot of the world around which the sun and all other heavenly bodies rotated, and the Biblical account of creation, the Church opposed the Copernican system that held that the Earth and other planets revolved about the sun. The injunction of 1616 promulgated by the Church, prohibited support of the Copernican propositions, condemned a pro-Copernican work by a Carmelite priest, and halted the publication of Copernicus's work pending changes. Furthermore, Cardinal Bellarmine instructed Galileo not to teach and publish on the Copernican system. In 1633, the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo was sentenced by the Inquisition for his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in which he claimed to prove the mobility of the Earth with his so-called theory of the tides.(n1)

One of the most successful organizers of scientific inquiry was Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), a member of the French nobility and an influential magistrate, who devoted much of his life to research, in the course of which he maintained correspondence networks across Europe and the Mediterranean world as a means of procuring and disseminating scientific information. This paper examines the ways in which Peiresc, a contemporary and friend of Galileo, managed to carry out astronomical observations at the very time when Galileo was condemned for the same activity. Peiresc not only received tacit permission from the Church but actively involved a number of Churchmen and missionaries as assistants and correspondents in his observations. Galileo's concern was with proof of the heliocentric system; he claimed to support the position of the Earth's mobility with astronomical observation and studies of ocean tides. This theory of the tides stated that the uneven daily movements of the Earth created the tides. His sentencing by the Inquisition was for insisting that the Copernican system was indeed a real, not hypothetical, system and that he had proof of the Earth's mobility...

at the end, it lists 62 sources.

yes, we should be teaching are kids critical thinking. unfortunately, we don't. not in any high school class.

quote:In School District of Abington Township vs. Schempp, in 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court left public schools open to far broader categories of instruction than even the creationists seek:

* the State may not establish a "religion of secularism" in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus "preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe." Zorach V. Clauson, supra, [343 U.S.] at 314.

Not only are "religious exercises" not a part of scientific creationism, but one cannot conceive of any reason for "study of the Bible or of religion" in connection with it. Not even indirectly even though the Supreme Court would clearly allow it.

Scientific creationism depends rather upon normative science for its justification, i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy), inductive analysis of geologic strata, embryology, anthropology, multivariate analysis of fossils (paleontology & comparative anatomy), probability theory, etc. The upshot is that, although evolutionists might have comparative molecular biology on their side, recent discoveries have convinced many eminent evolutionists that one cannot obtain self-replicating molecules (life) in the presence of all-pervasive entropy/disorder,

too bad evolution has absolutely nothing to say about the origins of life. all of those scientific fields also support or are neutral with respect to evolution to my knowledge.

quote:that there are no known transitional fossils (two such "missing links," Nebraska and Piltdown Man, were offered as evidence of evolution at the Scopes Monkey Trial, but they later turned out to be hoaxes), and the geologic column is characterized by the sudden, unsystematic, and catastrophic entry and exit of various forms of life. In each case, the scientific model is a theoretical construct based on circumstantial evidence from the past. Neither evolution nor creation has ever been observed,

micro-evolution has been observed. the fossils are exactly as we would expect them to be givin that it is a rare occurace. if we found every species, we would have to come up with some new geologic theories!

quote:[/b]

nor are they currently testable (provable) in a laboratory. Neither model is, thus, based any more on "faith" than the other. Similar problems of determining and reconstructing origins exist for astrophysics, where "steady state" and "big bang" models have existed side-by-side for a long time. That one model should coincide with some religious view is irrelevant.

[/b]

steady state theory has virtually no support in the scientific theory. we can see radiation from the big bang all around as. evolution is supported by evidence and has a theoretical mechanism to bring it about. tetonic plate theory was not accepted until a mechanism for it to occur was devised, even though there was plenty of circumstancial evidence. creationism has no verafiable mechanism so far.

quote:

In line with Lemon vs. Kurtzman (403 U.S 602,614; cf. 374 U.S. 215-6,222, 226), the only allowable test for the introduction of any theory of origins into the science curriculum of the public schools must be a test of scientific merit - which alone provides purpose, secularity, and lack of entanglement with religion. Government must remain neutral, and religion can have no hand in that assessment of merit. Separation of Church & State remains unthreatened by the introduction of scientific creationism. On the other hand, proscribing the teaching of scientific creationism would certainly violate the spirit of Epperson vs. Arkansas in that a de facto anti-creationist position is permitted while an anti-evolution statute is struck down! No group, secular or religious, should have the right to pretend that an area of knowledge doesn’t exist simply because it is "deemed to conflict with a particular" scientific dogma (393 U.S. 103). The Law is a double-edged sword, and the "right of teachers and students to be free of arbitrary restrictions upon the educational process (Meyer V. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390) ought to be applied as readily to restrictions upon teaching creationism as to teaching evolution.

creationism is not knowledge. it is nothing but a scientific "god of the gaps"

"look, my computer just crashed, since i can't comprehend why or how, it must have been a hacker." is reflective of this type of logic.

quote:

Religious creationism is rightly to be excluded from any public school system as for the Iowa Dept. of Public Instruction (Jan 1978 position paper), and for Tennessee in Daniel vs. Waters (515 F2d 485). However, the leading professional organizations of educators and scientists pushing scientific creationism, the Creation Research Society (CRS), and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), have never sought to introduce religious creationism into the public schools. Indeed, in a recent lecture at UMKC, one ICR scientist, Or. Gary Parker, came under fire from a fundamentalist Christian in the audience for not mentioning Jesus or the Bible. ICR scientists stick to science remarkably well, and it has always been ICR policy to use education and persuasion in convincing states and school districts to put creationism in the science curriculum not via litigation or compulsory legislation, which are counterproductive, but by resolution, endorsement, and adoption of dual-model texts. Creationist scientists in this country are generally confident that they can win acceptance for scientific creationism in open debate on the scientific issues alone. In my judgment, they have good reason for such confidence, and ought to be given a hearing by the ACLU before any policy decisions are made.

ok ,the crs has nothing to do with christianity. thats why they have this at the top of their website:"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them..."

and your right about the icr too. hears what they have to say:

We believe God has raised up ICR to spearhead Biblical Christianity's defense against the godless and compromising dogma of evolutionary humanism. Only by showing the scientific bankruptcy of evolution, while exalting Christ and the Bible, will Christians be successful in “the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:4,5).

quote:

I am not an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian, and my fundamentalist friends do not consider me to be a "Christian." I have no ulterior motive for the above statements (am not connected in any way with ICR or CRS), unless it is the simple-minded notion that the ACLU should maintain the highest possible standards in the protection and expansion of civil liberties The ACLU must avoid the adoption of policies based on fallacious reasoning or on the hearing of only one side of an issue.

Origins and Civil Liberties.

[/b]

i propose that either this guy is religious, or really needs to investigate what he is talking about before giving a speach about it. but the real issue is is he a scientist. no? i didn't think so.

quote:I agree with this guy 100%. Scientists and School Administrators that are threatened by scientific creationism (or ID) should reconsider their motives in preventing theories such as these access to the community at large.

I sense a deep insecurity and bigotry amongst the ranks of evolution science and their supporters.

id does not threaten scientifc theory because it is not scientific. the proponents he claimed to be unbiased clearly were. if he was a serious scholar, he would have checked his sources first. he is either a liar, a hypocrite, a a dumbass.

it also brings your own integrity into question for not checking what the article was saying before believing it.



please respond...but don't forget to respond to all of my points. you have the tendancy to pick out the parts you want to refute, and leave the rest. honestly, i'd really like to see how you weasle your way out of this one.



[This message has been edited by kenwih (edited 04-27-2006).]

Also I'd like to add to that last post, that evolution, although it has a few flaws in my oppinion, has genetics supporting it. Can you give me genetics, math formulas or physics supporting creationism?

Incredable claims require incredable proof.

quote:Originally posted by Digital_Savior:

Institute for Creation Research

Do you see religious creationism anywhere on that site ?

how bout you link them to the front page?

http:../../www.icr.org/default.htm

i thought deception was against christian morals. i guess not when you are misleading people into believing your point of view, eh?

quote:Originally posted by kenwih:



i thought deception was against christian morals. i guess not when you are misleading people into believing your point of view, eh?

kenwih, without bending and twisting the original bible no-one with half a brain would believe. As I said above until recently the church held several beliefs (given above) proven beyond a doubt false. Creationism, I predict, will be one of those things in 100 years. Also the bible in talking about creationism, clearly says false things. Was the earth created before the sun and the moon? No, the Bible says it was. Were Humans "created" before other life on earth? No, the bible says it was. Also like I said the earth is not the center of the universe, just as humans were not the first creature on earth.

quote:We believe God has raised up ICR to spearhead Biblical Christianity's defense against the godless and compromising dogma of evolutionary humanism. Only by showing the scientific bankruptcy of evolution, while exalting Christ and the Bible, will Christians be successful in “the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:4,5).

You just proved me right Digital Savior, that is about as valid as Nazism research on the superior race.

[This message has been edited by Aft3r ImaGe (edited 04-27-2006).]

[Digital_Savior]

quote:Originally posted by Beta69:

Reply to the excerpts,

Oh you left out,

-Robert E. Smith, "Origins and Civil Liberties," in Creation Social Sciences and Humanities Quarterly, 3 (Winter 1980): 23-24.

Did I have to....? I gave the link to the article, which includes that information. I didn't quote every single thing he said, either.

I hardly see how that matters. *blinks*

quote:BS, well sort of. Plenty of scientists are willing to debate creationists (although many see it as a waste of time and giving creationists what they want, acknowledgment). Of course there are many that are unwilling to debate creationists verbally but would rather participate in a written debate (written debates are geared more towards science), yet many creationists have refused to participate in a written debate. Take Walt Brown who has constantly weaseled his way out of debates (even though he claims to be willing to debate anyone) and Hovind (drdino) will only participate in spoken debates.

"For good or ill, the late Stephen Jay Gould had a huge influence on American scientific culture, and on balance the good came out on top. His powerful voice will echo on for a long time. Although he and I disagreed about much, we shared much, too, including a spellbound delight in the wonders of the natural world and a passionate conviction that such wonders deserve nothing less than a purely natural explanation.

Another thing about which we agreed was our refusal to engage in public debates with creationists. Steve had even more reason that me to be irritated by them. They distorted the theory of punctuated equilibrium so that it appeared to support their preposterous (but astonishingly common) belief that there are no intermediates in the fossil record. Gould's reply deserves to be widely known:

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or stupidity, I do not know-as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.1

Sometime in the 1980s when I was on a visit to the United States, a television station wanted to stage a debate between me and a prominent creationist called, I think, Duane P Gish. I telephoned Stephen Gould for advice. He was friendly and decisive: "Don't do it." The point is not, he said, whether or not you would "win" the debate. Winning is not what the creationists realistically aspire to. For them, it is sufficient that the debate happens at all. They need the publicity. We don't. To the gullible public that is their natural constituency, it is enough that their man is seen sharing a platform with a real scientist. "There must be something in creationism, or Dr. So-and-So would not have agreed to debate it on equal terms." Inevitably, when you turn down the invitation, you will be accused of cowardice or of inability to defend your own beliefs. But that is better than supplying the creationists with what they crave: the oxygen of respectability in the world of real science." Source

"It is no wonder that many biologists will simply refuse to debate creationists or I.D.ers," she said, using the abbreviation for intelligent design, a cousin of creationism. "It is as if they aren't

listening." Source

Someone made a very good point on his blog:

"That may seem counterintuitive in light of recent legal and public-relations setbacks suffered by critics of Darwinism -- notably a federal judge's decision forbidding the teaching of "Intelligent Design" (a term for one aspect of the anti-Darwin critique) in Dover, Pa., public schools. But it is a sign of weakness, not strength, when one side in an ostensibly scientific debate resorts to silencing the other. If the case for Darwin is such a slam-dunk, why not welcome the chance for its opponents to make fools of themselves?"

There is an obvious, and blatant, disdain for any scientist that supports scientific creationism, such as the scientist's over at the ICR. This is a pathetic scapegoat on the part of the evolutionary community.

Essentially, they are claiming ID to be a pseudo-science, so it is therefore acceptable for them to ignore it altogether.

If you recall, Darwinian evolution went through the same kind of rebuffing when it was introduced.

As for Walt Brown and Dr. Kent Hovind, you are making a comparison where there is no comparison to be had. You cite TWO people that represent creationism, who have supposedly refused to debate in written form (a contention I am not going to refute here, because that is not the purpose of this thread), but I am talking about a whole COMMUNITY of scientists that refuse to give any credence, whatsoever, to the theory of Intelligent Design (i.e. scientific creationism).

Scientific creationism is as valid a theory as Darwinian evolution, and the fact that it is being rebuffed instead of outright refuted tells me that the evolutionary community at large has something to fear.

Mr. Smith makes an excellent case for the inclusion of scientific creationism in public school curriculae. Please debate that, as this thread isn't about proving creationism.

quote:In the end a debate doesn't normally prove which side is right but who is the better debater. Take Hovind, I have torn some of his papers apart and he doesn't have a factual (or honest) leg to stand on. But there would be no way I would participate in a spoken debate against him, he is charismatic and knows how to play the game. I would get beaten not because his side is stronger but because he is a better spoken debater.

How kind of you to admit that. What you claim doesn't bear any relevance to this thread, and it is certainly nothing worth basing your argument on, as it is all personal opinion.

Deal with the legal aspects, please.

quote:When was this written?

In the recent Dover case creationists were caught red-handed trying to pass off creationism as a more secular Intelligent Design.

It IS dated, mind you. But you should have known that, since you made it a point to show me that I didn't include the total header of the article, which shows the year as 1980.

Many things have changed since this dissent was written, but the legal aspects are very much the same.

quote:I would agree with him if it wasn't for the fact that most creationist groups require members to sign a statement of faith that says the literal bible is true no matter what the evidence suggests.

Scientists on either side of the spectrum aren't allowed to have personal religious beliefs ? if they sign these documents, it is of their own free will. They don't have to.

Also, I have never heard of such a thing (doesn't mean it isn't true). Can you please start backing up your claims with evidence ? I hardly see why I should have to run around confirming your information. I spend enough time providing sources for my own material.

quote:Where do we stop? Should all religions be allowed to teach their views of origin in science class?

Where does what stop ? Scientific creationism hasn't been allowed to "begin." It is a valid theory, just like any other, and it is ridiculous to ostracize it the way the evolutionary community does.

This argument is less about religion, and more about science. A belief system is a belief system, and evolution demands the same flavor of "faith" that scientific creationism does.

quote:So what? Just because a theory uses previous science (often incorrectly) or fields doesn't mean it's correct

Then it is the burden of scientific peers to refute the application of "old science" to the modern theory of creationism. Since they have largely refused to do that, there is no hope of fair treatment.

May I remind you that Evolution uses "old science," too. It is arguable that they, too, use is incorrectly.

So, I ask you, where does it end ?

Also, I don't think you read that right, because it gave no markers for the age of the sciences being used. His point is that scientific creationists use science, in the same ways evolutionists do.

quote:Then he degrades into a standard PRATT list.

Who are these eminent evolutionists?

Why does he think abiogenesis is part of evolution?

Does he understand what entropy really means?

BS "there are no known transitional fossils."

Do creationists really need to drag out two mistake fossils that were never accepted by the scientific community as evidence against evolution? Is that all they have?

The information I have is the information I provided. There aren't volumes of text written on his personal understanding of the sciences applied to creationist theory. He is giving a broad overview, based on what he has reviewed. This dissent is in opposition to the assertion that there are no legal grounds by which scientific creationism can enter into the public school curriculae. If I am reading his tone correctly, he is trying to convince the powers that be within the ACLU to stop representing those that wish to silence scientific creationism.

quote:I would question exactly what he means by "evolution" and "creationism"

Evolution has been observed both in and out of the laboratory.

Evolution: We have not seen a single celled organism evolve into a higher life form.

Creation: We did not see God create the universe.

I personally do not beileve that evolution has been observed anywhere, and many agree. Again, I am not here to debate the validity of creationism. I am here to illustrate that what the evolutionary and legal communities are doing by blackballing REAL scientific studies on creation is illegal, and bigoted, at best.

quote:If by stick to science well he means throws out any evidence that doesn't fit their preconcieved ideas, then I agree.

If by peer review you mean not giving any sort of chance for creationists to make their case, then I agree with Mr. Smith.

You are parroting the very same rhetoric of the world's most renowned evolutionary scientists. "It's pseudo-science, so we don't HAVE to refute it."

What a copout.

quote:Oh no a law degree, that makes him untouchable.

It sure as hell doesn't, but it's laughable when some 16 year old kid tries to claim that he's an idiot, and has no right to dissent on legal matters pertaining to creationism.

quote:Old outdated paper, some of his claims may have been true or unchecked 26 years ago but they aren't today. maybe try something a bit more recent.

You have failed to provide an argument that would render this paper unusable.

Try something a bit more speculative, and less opinionated.

[Digital_Savior]

quote:Originally posted by kenwih:



how bout you link them to the front page?

http:../../www.icr.org/default.htm

i thought deception was against christian morals. i guess not when you are misleading people into believing your point of view, eh?

I have many things I would like to call you right now, but for the sake of brevity, I will point out that I linked you people to the RESEARCH PAGE, which contains the SCIENCE that you claim doesn't exist.

quote:Did I have to....? I gave the link to the article, which includes that information. I didn't quote every single thing he said, either.

I hardly see how that matters. *blinks*

You did? I don't see the link. The point is the article is from 1980 and is quite dated on both its scientific and legal claims.

quote:If the case for Darwin is such a slam-dunk, why not welcome the chance for its opponents to make fools of themselves?"

There is an obvious, and blatant, disdain for any scientist that supports scientific creationism, such as the scientist's over at the ICR. This is a pathetic scapegoat on the part of the evolutionary community.

IDists and creationists have constantly made fools of themselves before, why should we sacrifice children's education (something already lacking) just to prove a point? As the most recent court case has shown the point is to try and teach religion in science.

I agree there is a disdain for scientists that support creationism, it doesn't come from some sort of evil conspiracy or the worry that creationism is true but from the willingness to lie and distort science for supposed religious beliefs. There is a disdain for the guy who sells "cures they don't want you to know about" and other scam books, doesn't mean the books are right. Although many pseudo-science groups play on peoples willingness to side with the underdog or against the supposed corrupt system.

quote:As for Walt Brown and Dr. Kent Hovind, you are making a comparison where there is no comparison to be had. You cite TWO people that represent creationism, who have supposedly refused to debate in written form (a contention I am not going to refute here, because that is not the purpose of this thread), but I am talking about a whole COMMUNITY of scientists that refuse to give any credence, whatsoever, to the theory of Intelligent Design (i.e. scientific creationism).

I never said they represent all of creationism but they were examples of a bigger issue. Again there are many scientists that do debate creationists and many creationists who refuse written debates.

quote:Scientific creationism is as valid a theory as Darwinian evolution, and the fact that it is being rebuffed instead of outright refuted tells me that the evolutionary community at large has something to fear.

bullshit (yes in bold to get the point across) creationism hasn't provided near the support that evolution has, there are a couple of large groups that were made to refute creationism. The NCSE was established to refute creationism and the push to teach religion in science.

Many creationist claims have been outright refuted, even in this forum, the fact you leave the thread or distort the refutations to hide from them is not my problem, nor should it be our childrens.

quote:How kind of you to admit that. What you claim doesn't bear any relevance to this thread, and it is certainly nothing worth basing your argument on, as it is all personal opinion.

Deal with the legal aspects, please.

Sure it has relevance. The article tried to use the supposed fact that scientists don't debate creationists as a reason they are treating creationism unfairly, but the truth is a debate does not always prove an argument right or wrong.

What legal aspects exactly?

quote:It IS dated, mind you. But you should have known that, since you made it a point to show me that I didn't include the total header of the article, which shows the year as 1980.

Many things have changed since this dissent was written, but the legal aspects are very much the same.

Yes I do know that but only after I wrote that question, and apparently didn't remove it.

why didn't you include the date of 1980?

quote:Scientists on either side of the spectrum aren't allowed to have personal religious beliefs ? if they sign these documents, it is of their own free will. They don't have to.

Also, I have never heard of such a thing (doesn't mean it isn't true). Can you please start backing up your claims with evidence ? I hardly see why I should have to run around confirming your information. I spend enough time providing sources for my own material.

First of all I didn't say scientists aren't allowed to have beliefs. Peer review journals shouldn't have beliefs. If I saw a peer review journal that said you must believe in atheism to be published in the journal I would call it BS. Many creationist groups require members to say creationism and the bible are true before they are allowed to publish information under that group.

AHAHAHAhAHA so ironic I love it. You want me to start backing up my claims. Ahahaha.

I believe I have actually given these sources to both you and Hyroglyph before, did you just ignore them?

Ok,

AIG's statement of faith,

"No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record." http:../../www.answersingenesis.org/home...bout/faith.asp

ICR,

"ICR believes: ...

"[the bible is] infallible and completely authoritative on all matters with which they deal, free from error of any sort, scientific and historical as well as moral and theological."

"All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week described in Genesis 1:1-2:3, and confirmed in Exodus 20:8-11. The creation record is factual, historical and perspicuous; thus all theories of origins or development which involve evolution in any form are false." http:../../www.icr.org/index.php@module=home&action=faq

ICR is less blatant than AIG however we can see they choose the bible first and are willing to ignore anything that contradicts this.

quote:Where does what stop ? Scientific creationism hasn't been allowed to "begin." It is a valid theory, just like any other, and it is ridiculous to ostracize it the way the evolutionary community does.

Where does allowing the "fair" teaching of origins stop? How many religions do we include?

You keep saying it's a valid theory but so far no creationist in any other thread has proven this. Creationism has not been submitted to proper peer review journals and shown valid. What makes it valid?

quote:Then it is the burden of scientific peers to refute the application of "old science" to the modern theory of creationism. Since they have largely refused to do that, there is no hope of fair treatment.

Another BS claim. He brings up entropy. The way creationists distort the 2LoT to provide supposed evidence against evolution (not for creationism) has been beaten to death in this forum and everywhere else.

quote:Also, I don't think you read that right, because it gave no markers for the age of the sciences being used. His point is that scientific creationists use science, in the same ways evolutionists do.

No they don't. I've shown where creationists have ignored and distort data in other threads, I've also shown where creationists admit they ignore data.

The proper way to use science is not to ignore anything that contradicts your preconceived conclusion.

quote:I personally do not beileve that evolution has been observed anywhere, and many agree. Again, I am not here to debate the validity of creationism. I am here to illustrate that what the evolutionary and legal communities are doing by blackballing REAL scientific studies on creation is illegal, and bigoted, at best.

Then you are either misunderstanding evolution or would be wrong.

So far you haven't illustrated the blackballing whatso ever. The article just states "it's bigotry" yet doesn't support it. It did not provide any evidence evolution or scientists are anti-religion, the closest you can get is to say evolution and scientists are against falsified theories about the origin of the species that are also believed by religious groups. But if we take that road then teaching a spherical earth is bigoted against those that believe the earth is flat.

quote:It sure as hell doesn't, but it's laughable when some 16 year old kid tries to claim that he's an idiot, and has no right to dissent on legal matters pertaining to creationism.

Hope you aren't suggesting I'm 16 (I'm not) or that just because someone is 16 they should be ignored if they have a point (they shouldn't).

quote:Try something a bit more speculative, and less opinionated.

The problem is your outdated paper is mainly opinion, he doesn't provide any solid evidence for creationism being taught in school. You ignore 26 years of research and legal development as well.

as predicted, DS was unable to reply to even one of my points. tell you what DS, i'll make it easy on you, just reply to this one point, which basically invalidates the entire article because it proves the ID 'scientists' are not neutral, but have an agenda, while the article jumps through hoops to deceptively paint the organizations as pure science.

quote:Originally posted by kenwih:

ok ,the crs has nothing to do with christianity. thats why they have this at the top of their website:"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them..."

and your right about the icr too. hears what they have to say:

We believe God has raised up ICR to spearhead Biblical Christianity's defense against the godless and compromising dogma of evolutionary humanism. Only by showing the scientific bankruptcy of evolution, while exalting Christ and the Bible, will Christians be successful in “the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:4,5).

quote:Originally posted by Digital_Savior:

I have many things I would like to call you right now, but for the sake of brevity, I will point out that I linked you people to the RESEARCH PAGE, which contains the SCIENCE that you claim doesn't exist.

the point is that they are biased toward biblical creationism. this goes against the article you posted which asserts that they are not biased and using pure science to explore the possiblity of intelligent design. it claims that they don't refer to the bible, but what about this:

"In addition to a firm commitment to creationism and to full Biblical inerrancy and authority, the ICR Graduate School is committed to traditional education and to high standards of academic excellence. Each student's graduate program will consist predominantly of classroom lecture courses, with interaction between instructors and students, plus a research investigation and M.S. thesis. ICR's highly qualified and experienced faculty is in itself assurance of a rigorous and creative educational experience for its graduates, equipping them both for productive careers in their chosen fields and for making a significant contribution to the ongoing worldwide revival of theistic creationism. "

a scientist can't take this standpoint. with each experiment and investigation, a true scientist tries to analyze the data objectively. this is clearly not the case with these organizations.



if you think you can understand and explain how this research supports creationism, go ahead.

[Rust]

quote:

In School District of Abington Township vs. Schempp, in 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court left public schools open to far broader categories of instruction than even the creationists seek:

* the State may not establish a "religion of secularism" in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus "preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe." Zorach V. Clauson, supra, [343 U.S.] at 314.

Not only are "religious exercises" not a part of scientific creationism, but one cannot conceive of any reason for "study of the Bible or of religion" in connection with it. Not even indirectly even though the Supreme Court would clearly allow it.

He has ignored the statement that directly follows that quotation. It reads, "Government may not finance religious groups nor undertake religious instruction nor blend secular and sectarian education nor use secular institutions to force one or some religion on any person."

1. "Intelligent Design" (ID) is inherently connected with Christian creationism, Its greatest proponents, believe in the Christian god, and have repeatedly expressed the intent to further Christian beliefs if ID manages to take hold in the education system.

As Judge Jones showed in his decision on the issue of ID in the Dover district:

"The Discovery Institute, the think tank promoting ID whose CRSC developed the Wedge Document, acknowledges as "Governing Goals" to "defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God." (P-140 at 4). In addition, and as previously noted, the Wedge Document states in its "Five Year Strategic Plan Summary" that the IDM's goal is to replace science as currently practiced with "theistic and Christian science." Id. at 6. The IDM accordingly seeks nothing less than a complete scientific revolution in which ID will supplant evolutionary theory." - The Decision of the court in KITZMILLER v. DOVER

It is clearly evident that ID is Christian creationism in disguise, and any attempts to insert it in a Science class room would violate the Lemon test, the Endorsement test, as well as the statements made in the Zorach V. Clauson ruling, which Smith cites.

2. ID is also not Science; hence the issue of inserting it in a Science classroom, would still exist, even in the advent that it were not an inherently religious position ( a fact which as been established above).

Again, to cite Judge Jones ruling on the very issue:

"After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.

Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena. (9:19-22 (Haught); 5:25-29 (Pennock); 1:62 (Miller)). This revolution entailed the rejection of the appeal to authority, and by extension, revelation, in favor of empirical evidence. (5:28 (Pennock)). Since that time period, science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea's worth. (9:21-22 (Haught ); 1:63 (Miller)). In deliberately omitting theological or "ultimate" explanations for the existence or characteristics of the natural world, science does not consider issues of "meaning" and "purpose" in the world. (9:21 (Haught); 1:64, 87 (Miller)). While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science. (3:103 (Miller); 9:19-20 (Haught)). This self-imposed convention of science, which limits inquiry to testable, natural explanations about the natural world, is referred to by philosophers as "methodological naturalism" and is sometimes known as the scientific method. (5:23, 29-30 (Pennock)). Methodological naturalism is a "ground rule" of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify. (1:59-64, 2:41-43 (Miller); 5:8, 23-30 (Pennock))."

quote:In line with Lemon vs. Kurtzman (403 U.S 602,614; cf. 374 U.S. 215-6,222, 226), the only allowable test for the introduction of any theory of origins into the science curriculum of the public schools must be a test of scientific merit - which alone provides purpose, secularity, and lack of entanglement with religion. Government must remain neutral, and religion can have no hand in that assessment of merit. Separation of Church & State remains unthreatened by the introduction of scientific creationism.

Teaching ID is not on line with the Lemon Test - it is in direct contradiction of it. Presumably this uneducated statement stems from the fact that Smith was ignorant of the blatantly Christian position of ID proponents (which is extremely possible given that the article is over 25 years old!).

Like Judge Jones points out, the evidence clearly supports the belief that the ID movement is a front for Christian beliefs. To add to the other statement quoted previously:

"If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this,...We call our strategy the "wedge." -- Phillip Johnson. "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds". 1997.

"Intelligent Design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God. . . . The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ. . . . And if there's anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view. . . . It's important that we understand the world. God has created it; Jesus is incarnate in the world" -- William Dembski

It is clear that to a third-party observer - one possessing more knowledge of the issue than an average individual (Modrovich, 385 F.3d at 407) - the ID movement has with it clear Christian motivations, which the very proponents of the issue have made clear.

Promoting ID would be a direct violation of the Lemon Test, as it would it would 'have the primary effect of either advancing religion' - it certainly is not "in line" with it at all. Again, I assume this terribly mistaken statement of Smith's is product of his ignorance (acceptable given how long ago he made it) of the motivations of those who are promoting ID primarily.

nicely put rust

Here's my take on it:

I agree that both evolutionary thought and creationism should be taught. The fact of the matter is, neither can be confirmed with Newtonian precision, and therefore, its tentative nature should be continually examined and re-examined until a satisfactory relationship between mechanisms and evidence correlate. However, it may surprise you to know that I don't think that theology should be taught alongside science... At least not in a classroom setting that is devoted to the matters of science. To me, creationism merely says, "Looking at the natural evidence, it seems that there is a greater drama that lies underneath the material, and we shouldn't deny the possibility of such." But, I don't think in public schools that we should be forced to side, or even present any given dogma.

As I've said before: Is it true that most creationsts are Christian? Probably. But they shouldn't have to apologize for that. Any scientist, or any human being for that matter, has the unalienable right to ascribe to any belief they want without hindrance. I mean, we don't even have to give this Creator a name. Many of the early naturalists didn't even believe in a personal God. They simply reasoned that life is too perfectly situated to sustain itself by mere natural means. So, let theology and science meet in another setting. Silencing the staunch fact that life behaves in a manner that indicates a higher level of intelligence is not the route to go. That's a bunch of bull excrement.

With having said that, ICR, AIG, or whatever other website doesn't have to apologize for their beliefs either. That isn't a public school, its a website, and they have the freedom of speech. For as much as I disagree with ACLU on many matters, or TalkOrigins, I would never silence their right to an unabridged freedom of speech.

To do so is to undermine the very fabric of American ideals.

I suppose we should teach the theory of a geocentric solar system, as heliocentrism is just a theory. I mean, we haven't been to the outermost part of the solar system to actually witness the earth rotating around the sun, so geocentrism is just as plausible as heliocentrism.

/17th century Christian rhetoric

[This message has been edited by Elephantitis Man (edited 04-28-2006).]

[Digital_Savior]

quote:please respond...but don't forget to respond to all of my points. you have the tendancy to pick out the parts you want to refute, and leave the rest. honestly, i'd really like to see how you weasle your way out of this one.

I do ? Hmmm...no, I don't think so.

You can either take this back, because it is a falsehood, or you can get used to receiving no response from me.

It's your choice.

[Digital_Savior]

quote:Originally posted by kenwih:

as predicted, DS was unable to reply to even one of my points. tell you what DS, i'll make it easy on you, just reply to this one point, which basically invalidates the entire article because it proves the ID 'scientists' are not neutral, but have an agenda, while the article jumps through hoops to deceptively paint the organizations as pure science.

Don't talk to me like that. I had to go to COLLEGE.

Yeah, that's right, I have a life outside of totse.

I will reply when I have the time.

quote:Originally posted by Digital_Savior:

I will reply when I have the time.

Yep, you said the same thing to me, and you never replied. Stop with the excuses, we all have lives outside TOTSE.

[This message has been edited by Adrenochrome (edited 04-28-2006).]

quote:Originally posted by hyroglyphx:

Here's my take on it:

I agree that both evolutionary thought and creationism should be taught. The fact of the matter is, neither can be confirmed with Newtonian precision, and therefore, its tentative nature should be continually examined and re-examined until a satisfactory relationship between mechanisms and evidence correlate. However, it may surprise you to know that I don't think that theology should be taught alongside science... At least not in a classroom setting that is devoted to the matters of science. To me, creationism merely says, "Looking at the natural evidence, it seems that there is a greater drama that lies underneath the material, and we shouldn't deny the possibility of such." But, I don't think in public schools that we should be forced to side, or even present any given dogma.

As I've said before: Is it true that most creationsts are Christian? Probably. But they shouldn't have to apologize for that. Any scientist, or any human being for that matter, has the unalienable right to ascribe to any belief they want without hindrance. I mean, we don't even have to give this Creator a name. Many of the early naturalists didn't even believe in a personal God. They simply reasoned that life is too perfectly situated to sustain itself by mere natural means. So, let theology and science meet in another setting. Silencing the staunch fact that life behaves in a manner that indicates a higher level of intelligence is not the route to go. That's a bunch of bull excrement.

With having said that, ICR, AIG, or whatever other website doesn't have to apologize for their beliefs either. That isn't a public school, its a website, and they have the freedom of speech. For as much as I disagree with ACLU on many matters, or TalkOrigins, I would never silence their right to an unabridged freedom of speech.

To do so is to undermine the very fabric of American ideals.

well, i more or less agree with you...except that creationism is not science and should not be taught in a science classroom.

DS...you think you are special because you went to school? wtf? it's obvious to any regular to this forum that you pick and choose what you want to respond to. if you want to defend your support of this article, then respond to my comments.



im in college too. i also work full time. in fact i am very busy right now at the end of the semster and have twenty pages to write in the next four days...but somehow i still have time to refute your posts.

why don't you stop making excuses and respond to my posts? until you do i, and everyone else, will assume that i am right and you are wrong.

edit: i like how you omitted and refused to respond to my quote of myself. that makes twice you couldn't come up with an answer to my question. once again, what does it mean that 'scientists' think like this:

Originally posted by kenwih:

quote:the crs has nothing to do with christianity. thats why they have this at the top of their website:"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them..."

and your right about the icr too. hears what they have to say:

We believe God has raised up ICR to spearhead Biblical Christianity's defense against the godless and compromising dogma of evolutionary humanism. Only by showing the scientific bankruptcy of evolution, while exalting Christ and the Bible, will Christians be successful in “the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:4,5)

now please, try to be intellectually honest with us and yourself. think about these issues and respond honestly and completely. if you don't, you only prove your deception and bias.



[This message has been edited by kenwih (edited 04-28-2006).]

quote:Originally posted by Digital_Savior:

Institute for Creation Research

Do you see religious creationism anywhere on that site ?

quote: BY ICR:

ICR believes:

1. The Creator of the universe is a triune God -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is only one eternal and transcendent God, the source of all being and meaning, and He exists in three persons, each of whom participated in the work of creation.

2. The Bible consisting of the thirty-nine canonical books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament, is the divinely inspired revelation of the Creator to man. Its unique, plenary, verbal inspiration guarantees that these writings as originally and miraculously given, are infallible and completely authoritative on all matters with which they deal, free from error of any sort, scientific and historical as well as moral and theological.

3. All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week described in Genesis 1:1-2:3, and confirmed in Exodus 20:8-11. The creation record is factual, historical and perspicuous; thus all theories of origins or development which involve evolution in any form are false. All things which now exist are sustained and ordered by God's providential care. However, a part of the spiritual creation, Satan and his angels, rebelled against God after the creation and are attempting to thwart His divine purposes in creation.

4. The first human beings, Adam and Eve, were specially created by God, and all other men and women are their descendants. In Adam, mankind was instructed to exercise "dominion" over all other created organisms, and over the earth itself (an implicit commission for true science, technology, commerce, fine art, and education) but the temptation by Satan and the entrance of sin brought God's curse on that dominion and on mankind, culminating in death and separation from God as the natural and proper consequence of sin.

5. The Biblical record of primeval earth history in Genesis 1-11 is fully historical and perspicuous, including the creation and the fall of man, the curse on the creation and its subjection to the bondage of decay, the promised Redeemer, the worldwide cataclysmic deluge in the days of Noah, the post-diluvian renewal, man's commission to subdue the earth (now augmented by the institution of human government), and the origin of nations and languages at the tower of Babel.

6. The alienation of man from his Creator because of sin can only be remedied by the Creator Himself, who became man in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, through miraculous conception and virgin birth. In Christ were indissolubly united perfect sinless humanity and full deity, so that His substitutionary death is the only necessary and sufficient price of man's redemption. That the redemption was completely efficacious is assured by His bodily resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven; the resurrection of Christ is thus the focal point of history, assuring the consummation of God's purposes in creation.

7. The final restoration of creation's perfection is yet future, but individuals can immediately be restored to fellowship with their Creator, on the basis of His redemptive work on their behalf, receiving forgiveness and eternal life solely through personal trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, accepting Him not only as estranged Creator but also as reconciling Redeemer and coming King. Those who reject Him, however, or who neglect to believe on Him, thereby continue in their state of rebellion and must ultimately be consigned to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

8. The eventual accomplishment of God's eternal purposes in creation, with the removal of His curse and the restoration of all things to divine perfection, will take place at the personal bodily return to earth of Jesus Christ to judge and purge sin and to establish His eternal kingdom.

9. Each believer should participate in the "ministry of reconciliation," by seeking both to bring individuals back to God in Christ (the "Great Commission") and to "subdue the earth" for God's glory (the Edenic-Noahic Commission). The three institutions established by the Creator for the implementation of His purposes in this world (home, government, church) should be honored and supported as such.

Yes, yes I do.



[This message has been edited by Fundokiller (edited 04-28-2006).]

Yay another evolution/creationism thread... oh wait. No one cares.

[Digital_Savior]

[quote]quote:Originally posted by Fundokiller:

Yes, yes I do.

Ok, I meant in the research, not the whole site. *sighs*

Investment trusts are companies that invest in the shares of other companies for the purpose of acting as a collective investment scheme.

Investors' money is pooled together from the sale of a fixed number of shares a trust issues when it launches. The board will typically delegate responsibility to a professional fund manager to invest in the stocks and shares of a wide range of companies (more than most people could practically invest in themselves). The investment trust often has no employees, only a board of directors comprising only non-executive directors. However in recent years this has started to change, especially with the emergence of both private equity groups and commercial property trusts both of which sometimes use investment trusts as a holding vehicle.

Investment trusts are traded on stock exchanges like other public companies. The share price does not always reflect the underlying value of the share portfolio held by the investment trust. In such cases, the investment trust is referred to as trading at a discount (or premium) to NAV (net asset value).

The investment trust sector, in particular split capital investment trusts suffered somewhat from around 2000 to 2003 when the creation of a compensation scheme resolved some problems. Today (October 2005) the sector is relatively healthy although care should be taken in trust selection, as with any other investment

Contents [hide]

1 History

2 Split Capital Investment Trusts

3 See also

4 External links





[edit]

History

The first investment trust was started in 1868 by F&C. The Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust plc objective was 'to give the investor of moderate means the same advantages as the large capitalists in diminishing the risk of spreading the investment over a number of stocks'. As well as being the oldest investment trust, it is now also the largest global growth investment trust in the world and still open to investment. It currently owns shares in more than 500 companies in 30 different countries. (Source: F&C).

[edit]

Split Capital Investment Trusts

Traditional 'Investment Trusts' normally offer only one type of share (ordinary shares) and have an unlimited life. Split Capital Investment Trusts have a more complicated structure. Splits issue different classes of share to give the investor a choice of shares to match their needs. Most Splits have a limited life determined at launch known as the wind-up date. Typically the life of a Split Capital Trust is five to ten years.

Every Split Capital Trust will have at least two classes of share:

In order of (typical) priority and increasing risk

Zero Dividend Preference shares - no dividends, only capital growth at a pre-established redemption price(assuming sufficient assets)

Income shares - entitiled to most (or all) of the income generated from the assets of a trust until the wind-up date, with some capital protection

Annuity Income shares - very high and rising yield, but virtually no capital protection

Ordinary Income shares (aka Income & Residual Capital shares)- a high income and a share of the remaining assets of the trust after prior ranking shares

Capital shares - entitiled most (or all) of the remaining assets after prior ranking share classes have been paid; very high risk

The type of share you invest in is ranked in a predetermined order of priority, which becomes important when the trust reaches its wind-up date. If the Split has acquired any debt, debentures or loan stock, then this is paid out first, before any shareholders. Next in line to be repaid are Zero Dividend Preference shares, followed by any Income shares and then Capital. Although this order of priority is the most common way shares are paid out at the wind-up date, it may alter slightly from trust to trust.

Splits may also issue Packaged Units combining certain classes of share, usually reflecting the share classes in the trust usually in the same ratio. This makes them essentially the same investment as an ordinary share in a conventional Investment Trust.

I will now examine Digital_Savior's Source

quote:Their Own Version of a Big Bang

Those who believe in creationism -- children and adults -- are being taught to challenge evolution's tenets in an in-your-face way.

By Stephanie Simon

Times Staff Writer

February 11, 2006

WAYNE, N.J. — Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.

"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"

No, which is why we have scientists who study fossils, use carbon dating methodes, study layers of earth etc. in order to determine the age of fossils ect. You can do carbon dating yourself with the proper meterials so you can see for yourself if its true, if you blindly listen to someone then your no better that a Nazi soldier who chooses not to think for himself.

quote:

The children roared their assent.

"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them.

No that is not how I answered now is it? Stereotyping other people is not scientific, it is also stupid to blindly label people, once again this can be compared to the nazi's anti-seminism, it is false research with the intent to harm other people's reputation and assualt them with flat out lies.

quote:

"Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.

The bible, once again lets look at the bible's view on creationism, and how to compares to science....

Science confronts the paranormal:

"1. The Bible says that the earth was created at the same time as the universe was (in the beginning, god created the heaven and the earth) with the whole process taking six days. In fact whereas the Earth was created at the beggining of creation, the Sun, Moon, and stars were not created till the fourth day."

Does anyone see a problem with this already?

Science confronts the paranormal:

"2. The bible says that in the six days of creation the whole job was finished (Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day god ended his work which he had made)."

"The astronomer on the other hand thinks stars are still being formed now and planets and satellites along with them; and the stars will continue to form for billion of years to come."

Science confronts the paranormal:

"The Bible says that human beings were created on the sixth day of creation, so that the earth was empty of human intellegance for 5 days only.

The biologist on the otherhand thinks the ealiest beings that were even vaguely human, didn't appear on the earth until well over 4 1/2 billion years after its creation."

The church has known to be wrong as pointed out earlier:

quote:Originally posted by Aft3r ImaGe:

Church scientists have also said in the past that the earth was the center of the universe, that your whole body goes to heaven (the distinction was only changed recently), and that the earth is flat.

quote:

"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.

"God!" the boys and girls shouted.

This is PURELY SUPERSTISION. There is NO PROOF AT ALL. In NO WAY is this science, the way he is leading these children is comparable to a cult leader leading innocents astray.

quote:

"Who's the only one who knows everything?"

"God!"

This is disgusting and immoral, I almost feel sick that those people are being taught to FORCEFULLY REJECT ALL ASPECTS OF SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE.

quote:

"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"

The children answered with a thundering: "God!"

He just taught, hoards of blind followers, to ignore reason, science, and knowledge. This distresses me to no end. Is there a difference between your run of a mill cult and christianity?

The cult checklist:

A checklist, allegedly based on empirical research, was made by professor Eileen Barker, in which traits of groups that can evolve to be dangerous are described. These traits include:

1. A movement that separates itself from society, either geographically or socially;

Seperation and shunning of science?

2. Adherents who become increasingly dependent on the movement for their view on reality;

This is obvious.

3. Important decisions in the lives of the adherents are made by others;

Priests and the bible.

4. Making sharp distinctions between us and them, divine and satanic, good and evil, etc. that are not open for discussion;

VERY TRUE!

5. Leaders who claim divine authority for their deeds and for their orders to their followers;

The church!

6. Leaders and movements who are unequivocally focused on achieving a certain goal.

The rejecting of science and the converting of others to thier beliefs.

Well I think we just classified christianity as a cult...

quote:

A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn't engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views — aggressively.

This may eventually lead to violence and aggression, and serious close mindedness.

quote:

He urges students to offer creationist critiques of their textbooks, parents to take on science museum docents, professionals to raise the subject with colleagues. If Ham has done his job well, his acolytes will ask enough pointed questions — and set forth enough persuasive arguments — to shake the doctrine of Darwin.

"We're going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles," Ham, 54, recently told the 1,200 adults gathered at Calvary Temple here in northern New Jersey. It was a Friday night, the kickoff of a heavily advertised weekend conference sponsored by Ham's ministry, Answers in Genesis.

To a burst of applause, Ham exhorted: "Get out and change the world!"

6. Leaders and movements who are unequivocally focused on achieving a certain goal.

quote:

Over the last two decades, this type of "creation evangelism" has become a booming industry. Several hundred independent speakers promote biblical creation at churches, colleges, private schools, Rotary clubs. They lead tours to the Grand Canyon or the local museum to study the world through a creationist lens.

This promotes increadable unchanging close mindedness, the opposite of science.

quote:

They churn out stacks of home-schooling material. A geology text devotes a chapter to Noah's flood; an astronomy book quotes Genesis on the origins of the universe; a science unit for second-graders features daily "evolution stumpers" that teach children to argue against the theory that is a cornerstone of modern science.

Allow me to argue against creationism...

The earth has been proven to be younger than the sun. This contradicts genesis. The earth needs to be created at exactly the same time as the rest of the universe for this to be true, therefor it is untrue. Also it was proven through rock dating, and fossils that humans are not as old as dinosaurs, or the single celled orginisms on the bottom of the ocean. In order for genesis to be true humans need to be "created" on the 5TH day of earths existance.

"The Bible says that human beings were created on the sixth day of creation, so that the earth was empty of human intellegance for 5 days only.

The biologist on the otherhand thinks the ealiest beings that were even vaguely human, didn't appear on the earth until well over 4 1/2 billion years after its creation."

quote:

Answers in Genesis is the biggest of these ministries. Ham co-founded the nonprofit in his native Australia in 1979. The U.S. branch, funded mostly by donations, has an annual budget of $15 million and 160 employees who produce books and DVDs, maintain a comprehensive website, and arrange more than 500 speeches a year for Ham and four other full-time evangelists.

Anyone see simularitys to that an the Nazi propoganda program?

quote:

With pulpit-thumping passion, Ham insists the Bible be taken literally: God created the universe and all its creatures in six 24-hour days, roughly 6,000 years ago.

This has been PROVEN untrue. Ham has left science and reason in the dust, and is mislead to an extreme.

quote:

Hundreds of pastors will preach a different message Sunday, in honor of Charles Darwin's 197th birthday. In a national campaign, they will tell congregations that it's possible to be a Christian and accept evolution.

Science changes as new evidence is presented, in order for religion to survive it must accept science or completely reject it.

quote:

Ham considers that treason. When pastors dismiss the creation account as a fable, he says, they give their flock license to disregard the Bible's moral teachings as well. He shows his audiences a graphic that places the theory of evolution at the root of all social ills: abortion, divorce, racism, gay marriage, store clerks who say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

First of all, we can clearly see he is out to attack science with a vengance(which is a sin). He has chosen to REJECT SCIENCE. Also he follows cult symptons, considering all who don't follow his beliefs socialy ill. Saying happy holidays respects and tolerates all religions.

Once again the christian cult trait is seen...

1. A movement that separates itself from society, either geographically or socially;

2. Adherents who become increasingly dependent on the movement for their view on reality;

quote:

The science Ham finds so dangerous holds that the first primitive scraps of genetic material appeared on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago. From these humble beginnings, a huge diversity of species evolved over the eons, through lucky mutations and natural selection.

The vast majority of scientists find no credible evidence to dispute this account and a tremendous amount to support it. They've identified thousands of transitional fossils, such as a whale that lumbered on land; a bird with reptilian features; and "Lucy," a remote cousin of modern man who walked on two legs but swung from trees like a chimp.

There are reasons why evolution has evidence and creationism doesn't. I'll leave you to come to your own conclusion why.

quote:

Still, millions of Americans find evolution preposterous. Polls consistently show that roughly half of Americans believe the biblical account instead.

Cults tend to continue belief in a certain ideal or prediction even after it is proven false.

quote:

In the 1970s, Ham taught evolution and creationism side by side in Australian public schools. Raised in a Christian family, Ham trusted God's account over Darwin's; the more he studied Genesis, the more he felt moved to defend it. He quit teaching after five years to take up evangelism full time.

It is easy to see that he chose something with absolutly no evidence supporting it besides a book written by humans. I could just as easily choose the belief that mushroom people brought about our existance for purposes of thier own, this has an equal amount of proof as the bible. Wait till you see the Mushroom creation verses science thread!

quote:

A father of five who bears an uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, Ham moved his family to the U.S. in 1987. He worked for the Institute for Creation Research near San Diego and in 1994 founded the U.S. branch of Answers in Genesis in northern Kentucky. America sorely needed someone to stand up for the Bible, he reasoned. With a network of Christian radio and TV, the U.S. also offered Ham a launch pad to take his movement global.

The gamble paid off. Ham's daily 90-second broadcasts — on themes such as life in the Garden of Eden — are heard on more than 1,000 radio stations worldwide. He's building a $25 million Creation Museum near the Cincinnati international airport. He has produced dozens of books and videos for all ages, including a top-selling alphabet rhyme that begins: "A is for Adam, God made him from dust / He wasn't a monkey, he looked just like us."

It is dangerous to see that this cult has funneled 25 million dollars toward promoting thier cause. Promoting things proven wrong.

quote:

At the heart of this vast ministry are the speaking tours — so popular that many are booked three years in advance. Ham, who earns about $120,000 a year, might address a few dozen men at a small-town service club or a packed family service at a suburban mega-church. His multimedia presentations swing in tone from revival meeting to college lecture.

It seems as though Ham has profited quite nicely from this whole ordeal hasn't he?

I wouldn't go as far as to say curruption...

but its a DEFINITE possibility.

quote:

About 6,000 adults and children attended at least some of the recent conference in this suburb north of Newark. (Tickets for the weekend cost $25 per family, though several events were free.)

In six hourlong lectures, Ham and his colleague David Menton, an anatomy professor retired from Washington University in St. Louis, laid out their best arguments for creationism. Ham described the fossil record as "billions of dead things … laid down by water" — proof, he said, of Noah's flood. Menton marveled at the mechanics of the human eye, far too intricate, he said, to have evolved by random mutation.

Well you see, billions of dead things exist because of billions of years of life on earth. Maybe if the important detail relating to how the fossils can be dated and proven to be over 6000 years old, then people would consider this untrue.

quote:

"We often come across to the world as if we have blind faith: 'The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it,' " Ham said.

I have NEVER seen a better definition of blind faith. You difined it perfectly, probibly because you have blind faith.

quote:

In his view, creationists need more than faith to win over the world. They need answers to the questions skeptics toss their way.

PEOPLE ARE THINKING? NO WONDER HE IS WORRIED!

quote:

"We're giving you answers," Ham said. "We're like bulldozers, coming in to reclaim the ground."

Repeating lies, no matter how many times it is said, is still a lie. It is a proven lie.

quote:

In two 90-minute workshops for children, Ham adopted a much lighter tone, mocking scientists who think birds evolved from dinosaurs ("if that were true, I'd be worried about my Thanksgiving turkey!").

Because as we can see mocking makes one correct! NO IT DOESN'T. Your thanksgiving turkey is nothing to worry about because it is not a dinosaur, it is a DISSENDANT of a dinosaur. Failing to see thing you continue to lie with a passion.

quote:

He showed the children a photo of a fossilized hat found in a mine to prove it doesn't take millions of years to create ancient-looking artifacts.

Luckly dating methodes can determine the percice date, imagine if we judged everything by looks. We'd be pretty ignorant...

quote:

He pointed out cave drawings of a creature resembling a brachiosaur to make the case that man lived alongside dinosaurs after God created all the land animals on Day 6.

There are also cave paintings of ufos and mushrooms (this is actually true, [it may have been shamanic use of phycedelic mushrooms]).

Using that same logic stated in Ham's report, Alien mushrooms may have created us AND dinosaurs. Wow...

quote:In a bit that brought the house down, Ham flashed a picture of a chimpanzee. "Did your grandfather look like this?" he demanded.

This is true, their ancestors did, not their immediate relatives.

quote:

"Noooooo!" the children called.

"And did your grandmother look like that?" Ham displayed a photo of the same chimp wearing lipstick. The children erupted in giggles. "Noooooo!"

"We are not just an animal," Ham said. He had the children repeat that, their small voices rising in unison: "We are not just an animal. We are made in the image of God."

As the session ended, Nicole Ableson, 34, rounded up her four young children. "This shows your kids that there are other people who are out there who believe what you believe, and who have done the research,"

THEY DIDN'T DO RESEARCH. THERE IS NO PROOF WHAT-SO-EVER OF CREATIONISM.

quote:

she said. "So they don't think 'This is just my parents believing in fairy tales.' "

Emily Maynard, 12, was also delighted with Ham's presentation. Home-schooled and voraciously curious, she had recently read an encyclopedia for fun — and caught herself almost believing the entry on evolution. "They were explaining about apes standing up, evolving to man, and I could kind of see that's how it could happen," she said.

She examined both sides of the story and thought for herself till....

quote:

Ham convinced her otherwise. As her mother beamed, Emily repeated Ham's mantra: "The Bible is the history book of the universe."

A perfect example of a lunatic brain washing children. I propose an arrest.

quote:

Ben Watson wasn't quite as confident. His father, a pastor in Staten Island, N.Y., had let him skip a day of second grade to attend. Ben went to public school, the Rev. Dave Watson explained, "and I thought it would be good for him to get a different perspective" for an upcoming project on Tyrannosaurus rex.

"You going to put in your report that dinosaurs are millions of years old?" Watson, 46, asked his son.

"No…. " Ben said. He hesitated. "But that's what my book says…. "

"It's a lot to think about," his dad reassured him. "We'll do more research."

Good Reaserch other sources!

quote:

Ham encourages people to further their research with the dozens of books and DVDs sold by his ministry.

How is one soppost to examine other sources, with only one source?

It is disgusting to see a young boy robbed of his privilage to think freely.

quote:[b]

They give answers to every question a critic might ask: How did Noah fit dinosaurs on the ark? He took babies. Why didn't a tyrannosaur eat Eve? All creatures were vegetarians until Adam's sin brought death into the world. How can we have modern breeds of dog like the poodle if God finished his work 6,000 years ago? He created a dog "kind" — a master blueprint — and let evolution take over from there.

[b]

Could he have made this up as he went anymore than he did? He even stated something supporting evolution. Not only that but many carnivores would not had survived as vegitarians. Also does this make meat eaters sinners?

quote:

Accountant Paul Ingis, 43, has been studying such material for years, and looks for opportunities to share the answers he's mastered. When clients ask what he's been up to, Ingis responds that he's been studying creation science. If they express interest, he launches into his routine.

"It's fishing. You never know when you might meet the one in 1,000 who will listen," Ingis said.

Are blind followers really that hard to meet?

1 in 1,000?

quote:It's impossible to measure the success of the one-on-one evangelizing inspired by Answers in Genesis. But Glenn Branch, who defends evolution for a living, does not doubt it's having an effect.

Ham and his fellow evangelists "do a lot to promote a climate of ignorance, skepticism and hostility with respect to evolution," said Branch, deputy director of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education.

Notice how one orginization is non-profit while one managed to rake in 25,000,000$?

quote:

Evolution has scored a few high-profile victories. A federal judge ruled in December that the school board in Dover, Pa., could not require teachers to discuss intelligent design (the concept that some life is so complex, it could not have evolved by random chance). And in Cobb County, Ga., a federal judge ruled that disclaimers pasted onto science textbooks were illegal. (The stickers, removed last year, called evolution "a theory, not a fact.")

Still, those who teach and promote evolution say the challenges are multiplying.

Several Imax theaters in the South — including a few in science museums — have refused to show movies that mention evolution or the Earth's age.

The preventing of the circulation of outside facts is anouther cult sympton.

In referance to more cult & christian simularities:

In his "Building Resistance to Manipulation", the psychologist Steve K.D. Eichel created a checklist of signs of a sect designed to brainwash its members into loyal followers:

* Isolate them in new surroundings apart from old friends or reference-points;

Preventing them from viewing science meterial.

* Provide them with instant acceptance from a seemingly loving group;

Christianity's main appeal.

* Keep them away from competing or critical ideas;

Preventing them from veiwing scientific evidence and meterial.

* Provide an authority figure that everyone seems to acknowledge as having some special skill or awareness;

The bible and the priests who interpret it, and people like Ham.

* Provide a philosophy that seems logical and appears to answer all or the most important questions in life;

Creationism has been difined!

* Structure all or most activities so that there is little time for privacy or independent action or thought, provide a sense of "us" versus "them";

The family rallys verses schools teaching science, skipping school and forcing your kid to comply to your beliefs? I'd say so.

* Promise instant or imminent solutions to deep or long-term problems;

We have a religion people!

quote:

Bills that would allow or require science teachers to mention alternatives to evolution have been introduced in Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Utah. State boards of education in Kansas and Ohio adopted guidelines that single out evolution for critique. The governor of Kentucky used his State of the Commonwealth address to encourage public schools to teach alternative theories of man's origins.

Theories which have been proven wrong?

quote:

A national conference for science teachers in the spring will focus on helping them respond to creationists' challenges. In an informal survey, the National Science Teachers Assn. found that nearly a third of its members felt pressured to play down evolution.

Ham's dream is to increase that pressure.

1. A movement that separates itself from society, either geographically or socially;

2. Adherents who become increasingly dependent on the movement for their view on reality;

3. Important decisions in the lives of the adherents are made by others;

4. Making sharp distinctions between us and them, divine and satanic, good and evil, etc. that are not open for discussion;

5. Leaders who claim divine authority for their deeds and for their orders to their followers;

6. Leaders and movements who are unequivocally focused on achieving a certain goal.

The proof that this is cult extremism is incredable.

quote:

He will evangelize in Rocky Mount, N.C., next weekend and in Bossier City, La., after that. The month of March will take him to Modesto; Avon, Ind.; and a college retreat outside Cincinnati. His colleagues from Answers in Genesis will match his pace, preaching over the next few weeks in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio.

At every stop, they will recruit men, women and children to stand up for God as the creator.

Cult traits:

# A powerful leader who claims divinity or a special mission entrusted to him/her from above;

# Revealed scriptures or doctrine;

# Deceptive recruitment;



Creationism is completely diviod of scientific value. This is proven.

I would go as far to say that Christianity is a cult with many people profiting from the money it earns them. (This guy is making a pretty good living in return for converting people)

Anyone with intellect please debate these unfounded enormous web of lies.

If people are not educated it is only a matter of time before a new dark age, and total ignorance.



[This message has been edited by Aft3r ImaGe (edited 04-28-2006).]

[Real.PUA]

Sorry. Creation isn't scientific. /thread

quote:Originally posted by Real.PUA:

Sorry. Creation isn't scientific. /thread

They tend to completely avoid my posts at the cost of not posting in the thread, or avoiding comfronting the issues proving them wrong.

quote:Originally posted by Digital_Savior:

Institute for Creation Research

Do you see religious creationism anywhere on that site ?

Never mind the fact that the founder of the organization, and all the scientists are sworn religious creationists...

If you look on the research papers page, there are a few religious creationist papers, so yeah, there is religious creationism on that site.

Digital_Savior=teh sux0r

quote:Originally posted by kenwih:

Digital_Savior=teh sux0r

Quality argument.

A couple more like that and creationists will be completely convinced.

apparently you didn't read the thread. it is clear that DS is not going to post anything relevant or intelligent. DS and most creationists will not change their reality tunnel, no matter what is posted.

edit:

quote:Originally posted by Aft3r ImaGe:

They tend to completely avoid my posts at the cost of not posting in the thread, or avoiding comfronting the issues proving them wrong.

[This message has been edited by kenwih (edited 04-29-2006).]

quote:Originally posted by kenwih:

apparently you didn't read the thread. it is clear that DS is not going to post anything relevant or intelligent. DS and most creationists will not change their reality tunnel, no matter what is posted.

I proved creationism impossible, if you still believe then your holding onto cult-like beliefs which is very unhealthy and I suggest re-examining your life.

Because whenever I successfully prove a religous subject wrong the thread dies, I am going to post signifigantly less in this forum, because it's pointless. Digital_Savior said she wanted a debate, but avoids it at all costs. I'm sorry but you bible thumpers are frauds who need to re-examine your life to try to see where you became so valnerable as to fall for rediculous things that do nothing beyond provide you comfort. I remember in one thread I posted 3 consecutive posts that were huge and completely debunked the claims of Interest, Hyro, and D_S. D_S responded by saying I was self centered, thats right she resorted to petty name calling out of desperation and didn't post in that thread again. Since they have abandon logic, and reason it is beyond reason to debate people who when proven wrong repeate what was proven wrong as their come back. It's so incredabley stupid I see no point debating it, as many thinkers have come to the same conclusion, now I know why.

I will end my post with some of the greatest and most influencial thinkers, inventers, and scientists of our time.

quote:

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."

[Benjamin Franklin]

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."

[Ben Franklin, _Poor Richard's Almanac_, 1754 (Works, Volume XIII)]

"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan] way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. [Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures for defense of Christianity.] It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist"

[Benjamin Franklin, "Autobiography,"p.66 as published in *The American

Tradition in Literature,* seventh edition (short), McGraw-Hill,p.180]

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."

[Benjamin Franklin, in _Toward The Mystery_]

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."

[Benjamin Franklin from "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728]

"Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man."

[Thomas Paine]

"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."

[Thomas Paine]

"As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men."

[Thomas Paine, writing to Andrew Dean August 15, 1806]

"...Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas."

[Thomas Paine, Age Of Reason, pg. 54]

"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."

[Thomas Paine]

"The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God. The Word of God exists in something else."

[Thomas Paine, Age of Reason]

"The adulterous connection between church and state."

[Thomas Paine, _The Age of Reason_]

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel."

[Thomas Paine, _The Age of Reason_]

"That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not."

[The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. 9 p. 134]

"The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act..."

[_The Age of Reason_, Thomas Paine, p. 153]

"There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice....".

[Thomas Paine]

"..but the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any..."

[_The Age of Reason_, Thomas Paine, p. 104]

"As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book."

[Thomas Paine, Letter to William Duane, April 23, 1806]

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church."

[Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]

"The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar..."

[Thomas Paine]

"What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith."

[Thomas Paine]

"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."

[George Washington, address to Congress, 8 January, 1790]

"In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue."

[Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man, pamphlet, 1784]

"While we are under the tyranny of Priests [...] it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith."

[Ethan Allen, _Reason_the_Only_Oracle_of_Man_]

"The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma."

[Abraham Lincoln]

"I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity."

[Abraham Lincoln]

"My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."

[Abraham Lincoln, letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln]

"It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity."

[Abraham Lincoln, from "What Great Men Think Of Religion" by Ira Cardiff]

"I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by religious men who are certain they represent the Divine will. ... I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it be probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me."

[Abraham Lincoln. Chapter 14 of Part 5 of *Six Historic Americans* by John Ramsburg]

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."

[President John F. Kennedy]

"I would suggest the taxation of all property equally whether church or corporation."

[Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)]

"If not an absolute atheist, he had no belief in a future existence. All his ideas of obligation or retribution were bounded by the present life."

[President John Quincy Adams on Thomas Jefferson, 1831]

"The Christian God is a being of terrific character -- cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust."

[Thomas Jefferson, _Jefferson Bible_]

"If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else."

[Thomas Jefferson]

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."

[Thomas Jefferson]

"He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."

[Thomas Jefferson]

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

[Thomas Jefferson]

"If we could believe that [Jesus]...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter."

[Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd president of the U.S.]

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association]

"All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution."

[Thomas Jefferson, 1776]

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

[Thomas Jefferson]

"...difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."

[Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia [1781-1785]"]

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."

[Thomas Jefferson, in _Toward the Mystery_]

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac."

[Thomas Jefferson, _Jefferson Bible_]

"[no citizen] shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever...[to] compell a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of [religious] opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical."

[Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom]

"..our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry"

[Thomas Jefferson]

"A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written."

[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771]

"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world."

[Thomas Jefferson]

"We discover [in the gospels] a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication."

[Thomas Jefferson, _Jefferson Bible_]

"The Christian god can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites."

[Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr]

"...merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."

[Thomas Jefferson, on the Revelations in the Bible, from Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986.]

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."

[Thomas Jefferson, February 10, 1814]

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."

[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787]

"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctirnes which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."

[Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams]

"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticisms of Plato materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence"

[Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814]

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

[Susan B. Anthony]

"I was born a heretic. I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."

[Susan B. Anthony]

"To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom..."

[Susan B. Anthony]

"The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading."

[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]

"The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion."

[Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Eight Years and More"]

"The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences."

[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]

"All through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture. Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth."

[Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible

Part 2. (From Great Infidels pg. 143.)]

"The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation."

[Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), U.S. campaigner for

women's rights. Free Thought Magazine (Sept. 1896)]

"The divorce between church and state ought to be absolute. It ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no church property anywhere, in any state, or in any nation, should be exempt from taxation, for if you exempt the church property of any church organization, to that extent you impose tax upon the whole community."

[US Pres. James A. Garfield, address to Congress]

"It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

[Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782]

[laws establishing freedom of religion]..."were meant to include within them the Muslim, the Hindoo [sic], and the infidel of any sort."

[Thomas Jefferson in a letter to his nephew, Dethloff, Henry C., ed. Thomas Jefferson and American Democracy. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co. 1971]

"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."

[Jefferson and Madison, from the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom]

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."

[Thomas Jefferson, to Baron von Humboldt, 1813]

"To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education."

[Thomas Jefferson]

"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.

But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."

[Thomas Jefferson, to S. Kercheval, 1810]

"...If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that is pleasing to him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God."

[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814]

"They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live."

[Thomas Jefferson]

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Woods]

"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church

... made of Christendom a slaughter-house."

[Thomas Jefferson, to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822]

"The Athanasian paradox that one is three and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck."

[Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith]

"Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church."

[Eleanor Roosevelt]

"[In regard to the Trinity]; "Tom, had you and I been 40 days with Moses, and beheld the great God, and even if God himself had tried to tell us that three was one . . . and one equals three, you and I would never have believed it. We would never fall victims to such lies."

[John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson]

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."

[John Adams]

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"

[John Adams]

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect."

[James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1,1774,

as quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion

and the New Nation, San Francisco:Harper & Row, 1987, p. 37]

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

[James Madison, 1803]

"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

[James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", addressed to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785]

"[i]t may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others."

[James Madison, in a letter to Rev Jasper Adams spring 1832, from "James Madison on Religious Liberty", edited by Robert S. Alley, ISBN 0-8975-298-X. pp. 237-238]

"Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."

[Justice Black, on the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment]

"No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion."

[Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion

in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]

"No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or nonattendance."

[U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, Majority opinion

Everson v. Board of Education 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]

"Neither the fact that the prayer is denominationally neutral nor the fact that its observance on the part of the students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations of the Establishment Clause."

[U.S. Supreme Court, Engle v. Vitale (1962)]

"The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles."

[U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis]

"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and state.'"

[Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]

"The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."

[Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947),last words]

EDISON

"I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States."

[Thomas Edison]

"My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it."

[Thomas Edison, "Do We Live Again?"]

"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God."

[Thomas Alva Edison, "Columbian Magazine"]

"All Bibles are man-made."

[Thomas Edison]

"So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk."

[Thomas Edison]

"To those seaching for truth - not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope."

[Thomas Edison]

TWAIN

"One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it - they also believed the world was flat."

[Mark Twain]

"The Bible is "a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology."

[Mark Twain, "Mark Twain and the Bible"]

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."

[Mark Twain]

"There is nothing in either savage or civilised history that is more utterly complete, more remorselessly sweeping than the Father of Mercy's campaign among the Midianites. The official report deals only in masses, all the virgins, all the men, all the babies. all 'creatures that breathe,' all houses. all cities. It gives you just one vast picture ...as far as the eye can reach, of charred ruins and storm-swept desolation... Would you expect this same conscienceless God, this moral bankrupt, to become a teacher of morals, of gentleness, of meekness, of righteousness, of purity?"

[Mark Twain, "Letters from the Earth"]

"The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."

[Mark Twain]

"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."

[Mark Twain]

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast"

[Mark Twain, _Reflections on Religion_, 1906]

"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."

[Mark Twain]

"When the human race has once acquired a supersitition nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it."

[Autobiography of Mark Twain]

"It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either."

[Mark Twain]

"Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!"

[Mark Twain]

"A man is accepted into a church for what he

believes and he is turned out for what he knows."

[Mark Twain]

"(The Bible) is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. This Bible is built mainly out of fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about."

[Mark Twain, "Letters from the Earth"]

"Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven"

[Mark Twain]

"You have noticed that the human being is a curiosity. In times past he has had (and worn out and flung away) hundreds and hundreds of religions; today he has hundreds and hundreds of religions, and launches not fewer than three new ones every year. I could enlarge on that number and still be within the facts."

[Mark Twain, "Letters From the Earth"]

"During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry."

[Mark Twain, "Europe and Elsewhere"]

"I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass."

[Mark Twain, Speech to the Red Cross, New York, Dec. 31, 1899]

"Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either."

[Mark Twain]

"it is believed by everyone that when he was in heaven he was stern, hard, resentful, jealous and cruel, but that when he came down to earth, he became the opposite... sweet, gentle merciful, forgiving. He was a thousand billion times crueler than ever he was in the Old Testament... Meek and gentle? By and by we will examine that popular sarcasm by the light of the hell which he invented."

[Mark Twain, on Jesus Christ, in "Letters from the Earth"]

"What a man misses mostly in heaven is company."

[Mark Twain]

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

[Mark Twain]

"...Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the 'noblest work of God.'"

[Mark Twain, "Letters From the Earth"]

EINSTEIN

"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiratation of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God."

[Albert Einstein, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited

by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press]

"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."

[Albert Einstein]

"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

[Albert Einstein,_The World as I See It_]

"The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously."

[Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946]

"The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action."

[Albert Einstein]

"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."

["Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh

Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.]

"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."

[Albert Einstein]

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

[Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930]

"What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism"

[Albert Einstein]

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."

[Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955]

"Although I cannot believe that the individual survives the death of his body, feeble souls harbor such thought through fear or ridiculous egotism."

[Albert Einstein]

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

[Albert Einstein, 1954, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press]

"The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning."

[Albert Einstein]

SAGAN

"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."

[Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"]

"Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy."

[Carl Sagan]

"(When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the movie "Jurassic Park" was shown in Israel, it was condemned by some Orthodox rabbis because it accepted evolution and because it taught that dinosaurs lived a hundred million years ago--when, as is plainly stated at every Rosh Hashonhan and every Jewish wedding ceremony, the Universe is less than 6,000 years old."

[Carl Sagan, _The Demon-Haunted World:

Science as a Candle in the Dark_, p. 325]

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."

[Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address]

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)"

[Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,"]

"At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion."

[Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"]

"If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate....Try science."

[Carl Sagan, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

[Carl Sagan]

"Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are *any* miraculous cures from faith-healing, beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose' of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers."

[Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"]

"Many statements about God are confidently made by theologians on grounds that today at least sound specious. Thomas Aquinas claimed to prove that God cannot make another God, or commit suicide, or make a man without a soul, or even make a triangle whose interior angles do not equal 180 degrees. But Bolyai and Lobachevsky were able to accomplish this last feat (on a curved surface) in the nineteenth century, and they were not even approximately gods."

[Carl Sagan, _Broca's Brain_]

"Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?"

[Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"]

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking."

[Carl Sagan]

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

[Carl Sagan]

"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe."

[Carl Sagan]

"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?....For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

[Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"]

"Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along."

[Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,"]

"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true."

[Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism]

"You see, the religious people -- most of them -- really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods let well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would have listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition."

[Carl Sagan, character Sol Hadden in _Contact_, 1985]

"There was no deathbed conversion," Druyan says. "No appeals to God, no hope for an afterlife, no pretending that he and I, who had been inseparably for twenty years, were not saying goodbye forever."

"Didn't he want to believe?" she was asked.

"Carl never wanted to believe," she replies fiercely. "He wanted to KNOW."

[Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's wife, from Newsweek magazine]

HAWKING

"What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary."

[Stephen W. Hawking, Der Spiegel, 1989]

DAWKINS

"It's been suggested that if the supernaturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?"

[Richard Dawkins, The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder]

"Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading."

[Richard Dawkins]

"It is often said, mainly by the "no-contests", that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't *prove* that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?"

[Richard Dawkins]

"In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science."

[Richard Dawkins]

"They express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation."

[Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene"]

"Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that. We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude the He is very, very improbable indeed."

[Richard Dawkins, from the _New Humanist_, the Journal

of the Rationalist Press Association, Vol 107 No 2]

"The trouble is that God in this sophisticated, physicist's sense bears no resemblance to the God of the Bible or any other religion. If a physicist says God is another name for Planck's constant, or God is a superstring, we should take it as a picturesque metaphorical way of saying that the nature of superstrings or the value of Planck's constant is a profound mystery. It has obviously not the smallest connection with a being capable of forgiving sins, a being who might listen to prayers, who cares about whether or not the Sabbath begins at 5pm or 6pm, whether you wear a veil or have a bit of arm showing; and no connection whatever with a being capable of imposing a death penalty on His son to expiate the sins of the world before and after he was born. "

[Richard Dawkins]

"If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place. Epidemiology, not evidence."

[Richard Dawkins]

"Blind faith can justify anything. In a man believes in a different god, or even if he uses a different ritual for worshipping the same god, blind faith can decree that he should die - on the cross, at the stake, skewered on a Crusader's sword, shot in a Beirut street, or blown up in a bar in Belfast. Memes for blind faith have their own ruthless ways of propagating themselves. This is true of patriotic and political as well as religious blind faith."

[Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene"]

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."

[Richard Dawkins]

"I suspect that today if you asked people to justify their belief in God, the dominant reason would be scientific. Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don't know it. "

[Richard Dawkins]

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference."

[Richard Dawkins, "River Out of Eden"]

"On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus [full of children from a Roman Catholic school and for no apparent reason but with wholesale loss of life] are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless _good_ [italics in original] fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

[Richard Dawkins, _River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of

Life_, 1995, BasicBooks, New York; ISBN 0-465-01606-5]

"I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things."

[Richard Dawkins, from the _New Humanist_, the Journal

of the Rationalist Press Association, Vol 107 No 2]

"The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity."

[Richard Dawkins, _The Blind Watchmaker_ (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), p. 317]

"And it's not just faith itself: it's the idea that faith is a virtue and the less evidence there is, the more virtuous it is. You can actually quote, well, Tertullian for example: "It is certain because it is impossible." Sir Thomas Brown, actually seeking for more difficult things to believe, because things for which there is mere evidence are just too easy, and it's no test of his faith. In order to have a test of your faith, you must be asked to believe really daft things like the transubstantiation, you know, the blood of Christ turning into wine, and stuff... That is so manifestly absurd that you've got to be a really great believer, in the class of the Electric Monk, in order to believe it..... You're actually showing off your believing credentials by the ability to believe something like that... If it were an easy thing to believe, substantiated by facts, then it wouldn't be any great achievement."

[Richard Dawkins, interview with Douglas Adams]

FREUD

"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."

[Sigmund Freud, "Future of an Illusion"]

"In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable."

[Sigmund Freud, Austrian physician and

pioneer psychoanalyst (1856-1939)]

"While the different religions wrangle with one another as to which of them is in possesion of the truth, In our view the truth of religion may be altogether disregarded...if one attempts to assign religion it's place in mans evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity."

[Sigmund Freud, "Moses and Monotheism"]

"No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere."

[Sigmund Freud, "The Future of an Illusion"]

"A great deal is already gained with the first step: the humanization of nature. Impersonal forces and destinies cannot be approached... if everywhere in nature there are Beings around us of a kind that we know in our own society.... we can apply the same methods against these violent supermen outside that we employ in our own society; we can try to adjure them, to appease them, to bribe them, and, by so influencing them, we may rob them of a part of their power

[Sigmund Freud, "The Future of an Illusion"]

"When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect"

[Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion]

"Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever."

[Sigmund Freud, letter to Charles Singer]

"Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man."

[Sigmund Freud, New York Times Magazine, 6 May 1956]

"The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief."

[Sigmund Freud]

OTHER SCIENTISTS

"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles."

[James Watson, winner of the Nobel prize for his co-discovery of the structure of DNA]

"Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer. It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and cruelty for that."

[Benjamin Spock]

"As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress."

[J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life, 10 October 1949]

"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors."

[J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life, 10 October 1949]

"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation..."

[Charles Darwin]

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

[Charles Darwin, Introduction to "The Descent of Man, 1871]

"I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."

[Charles Darwin]

"For myself, I do not believe in any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities."

[Charles Darwin]

"They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit..."

[Galileo Galilei, 1615]

"I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use."

[Galileo]

"It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved."

[Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]

"To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover."

[Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]

"It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment."

[Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church."

[Ferdinand Magellan]

"It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations."

[Richard Feynman, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"]

"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents."

[Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",

The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186]

"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."

[Stephen J. Gould]

"The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos."

[Stephen Jay Gould, "Dinosaur in a Haystack"]

"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?"

[Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer"]

"Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade-- a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense. We make and test risky predictions all the time; our success is not dogma, but a highly probable indication of evolution's basic truth."

[Stephen Jay Gould, "Dinosaur in a Haystack"]

Wether or not you choose to look at fact, remember this, the original purpose of religion is peace and love. It never justifies violence, so if you stay peaceful and help each other, without hidden motives (like converting them) then your on the right track.

Goodbye thinkers, debators, and blind followers, you'll still see me around in other forums on totse.

-Aft3r ImaGe

I proved creationism impossible, if you still believe then your holding onto cult-like beliefs which is very unhealthy and I suggest re-examining your life.

Wow, sounds compelling... I didn't see where you proved creationism is impossible. Could you repost that?

Because whenever I successfully prove a religous subject wrong the thread dies, I am going to post signifigantly less in this forum, because it's pointless.

No offense, but of the handful of times I've seen your posts, they are either terribly insipid or stultified. You really aren't saying much in them that we haven't already rehashed a million times. So, if a thread dies after you post, its because you have nothing interesting to say. Beta, Rust, and a few others actually present a good and intelligible treatise. They can hold my attention because they are fun to debate. But with you, its like debating a kid in Jr. High. There's no challenge in it. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but that's how I feel.

Digital_Savior said she wanted a debate, but avoids it at all costs. I'm sorry but you bible thumpers are frauds who need to re-examine your life to try to see where you became so valnerable as to fall for rediculous things that do nothing beyond provide you comfort. I remember in one thread I posted 3 consecutive posts that were huge and completely debunked the claims of Interest, Hyro, and D_S.

Wow, completely debunked Interest, myself, and Digital. Again, it sounds compelling. Perhaps you can resurrect that post from the dead so we know what you're referring to.

D_S responded by saying I was self centered, thats right she resorted to petty name calling out of desperation and didn't post in that thread again. Since they have abandon logic, and reason it is beyond reason to debate people who when proven wrong repeate what was proven wrong as their come back. It's so incredabley stupid I see no point debating it, as many thinkers have come to the same conclusion, now I know why.

I will end my post with some of the greatest and most influencial thinkers, inventers, and scientists of our time.

........................................Okay.