"A sucker is born every minute" -- PT Barnum

You have to be joking.

+1 !
Also I don't need to know which is true. I really don't. And I don't need to disprove anyone's faith. Further if it is a matter of faith to the C / ID crowd, why do they need to prove it?

Mul
In case you forgot...says nothing about Christianity and that is one of the things that makes this country great. We are not a religious state.

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Hmmm . . .what if god created evolution? what then?

That would be an intelligent thing to do...

What motivated this philosophy alf?...Was it the fear of church interfering with state, or state interfering with church?

"Our constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." -- John Adams

Good ole' public schools.

Stay on point Mul, i was questioning your statement that the US was created for Christians by Christians.

Christianity is not the only religion.

I actually attended a Methodist School most of my life.

Then what motivates you to make such an ill-informed comment?

Which comment was ill-informed from your perspective?

alf

Chipping at the foundation of your obviously uninformed perspective is a part of my strategy (staying on point). The Adams quote is only one of many evidences that I hope will shake you from your wanton reality slumber.

We still pray before Congress. We still swear on Bibles before court proceedings. We still recognize Sunday as a Federal day of rest...The Constitution ends in the statement "Our day of the LORD..."

Regarding my statement "This is a Christian nation, founded by Christians and for Christians (as a Founding Father once opined).

What religion do you think Adams intended?...Certainly not Islam, Buddhism or Judaism...or any other lesser religion. It is the Judeo-Christian philosophy of one God that has made this country great, and made this country the tolerant nation it is...This should be recognized and celebrated as it is unique to America...It should not be shoved down the memory hole as the ACLU fight religiously to achieve.

Mul
Freedom or religion is a conerstone of our nation. If you disagree that is fine, i will defend your right to Freedom of Speech.

alf

if i'm not mistaken, this is exactly the kind of thinking that got your ancestors thrown out of europe in the first place ...

too bad you haven't learned anything from that experience ...
SmileWavy Andy

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." -- Patrick Henry

You want to see this country descend into chaos, alf?...Pull the God of the Christians, the ONLY God, from the public sphere...God is the lynchpin, whether you like it or not...The more we turn our back on this God, that has blessed us so much, the more we indeed do slip into the morally decayed morass of secular humanism.

You are mistaken...My "kind" fled Europe and founded a limited government design that attempted to prevent, through a representative framework, precisely the encroachements on religion and personal liberty that the Democrats are attempting today...The "red coats are coming "and they vote Democrat.

Perhaps i am reading this wrongly, English is not my mother tounge...but this statement seems to contridict your previous quote that our nation was built by Christians FOR Christians.

alf, you are reading into what I said, something I did not say...I never said, nor ever would, that you should worship the God who inspired the Founding Fathers, and their constituency, to create the greatest country on Earth...Have your will, God gave it to you...Just don't forget what religion, even if they were fantastically wrong, laid the groundwork for the prosperity you enjoy today.

OK, my English is bad. I must have misunderstood this quote you made then. What was your point in this quote ?

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
...This is a Christian nation, founded by Christians and for Christians (as a Founding Father once opined)...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'll go out on a limb and guess that you were never a black man living in the south in the first half of the 20th century?

Oh... and... you're a troll.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that you have no idea who led the movement for abolition...I will go a little further out and guess that you don't know which political party took the mantle of the "abolition party"...I will then go a bit further out and assert that you are a leftist.

That if you take out Christianity from the country you take out its very foundation...Christianity and the believers in Christ, and their philosophy, is the crucial ingredient to our foundation and success...You pull out the lynch-pin (which is being attempted as we speak by the left and their legal arm the ACLU), this country will descend into a socialistic house-of-cards.

Mul
In no way am i proposing that we take Christianity or any other religion out of this country. I will defend the right of a Christian to practice Christianity just as i would defend the right of a Muslim to practice Islam in the US. I respect the founding fathers, their religion and their ideals.

Christianity does not have the monopoly on truth and in fact, the type of "Christianity" practiced by many Christians today is not very Christian at all.

I am shamed every time i hear God's name invoked as a war cry by our political leaders.

I am saddened every time i see someone calls themselves a 'christian' and puts down other religions as 'lesser'.

I am puzzled every time a 'christian' closes their minds to other thoughts and ideas.

That is not the Christian message that i learned. Jesus message was not one of hate, intolerance, close mindedness, selfishness or divisiveness.

INCOMING..................SmileWavy

There are those among us that prefer to be told what to think....
& those who prefer to think about what they,ve been told.

All of religion's books (Bible, Koran, etc etc) have only somewhat more relevance then a Tom Clancy novel....full of trial & tribulation, lots of BS filler & a few glowing grains of goodness. To take anyone of them literally is an escape from the responsibilities of higher thinking. I personally like this Jesus dude. I think of him as the ultimate liberal...you know, peace love....anyway, I try to use the 'ol "what would Jesus do" test whenever I'm in a crunch...I think this "belief" makes me a better person. I don't do it because "the Bible tells me so...", & I sure as hell don't do it to suck up to "God" so I can "live for eternity", what an egocentric notion THAT is....(has anyone ever seen the movie ZARDOZ???) anyway......I've sort of broken my own rule in that I think "beliefs" are very personal, variable things....& we should keep them that way, not force them onto others.

SOOOOOOooooooo
:o

while we blither away about this STUPID "Intelligent design" crap (anyone want to look up "oxymoron" ) the Chinese are pushing their kids to learn real science in schools, putting men in orbit around the once very flat Earth & have ambitions to put Chinese men on the Moon...

& the barbarians burned the library at Alexandria.................


DARKBEER
http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/pint1.gif

Greg
I will raise a Guiness to that! WWJD.

ChiCom on the moon, might get the space race going again and focus our national attention to something productive and positive.

I'm not learning Mandarin because its fun...

Other than the gratuitous exposure of breasts , possibly one of the worst movies ever. Connery must look back and shake his head.

Really?
http://www.fantascienza.com/cinema/zardoz/media/zed.jpg
:eek:

HA! you kill me!

No need to bring political parties into this. I was merely pointing out the your 'christian' view of this country is warped.

Because it is a question of faith, there is no need to prove ID or creation.

??

But your logic only applies to people of your faith. The rest of us require more proof than "the Bible says so". Hence the resistance to teaching religious mythology as science in public schools.

Mike

since SOME of you may have missed the point...let me re-direct.

I mention Zardoz, not to encourage infatuation with body parts, or a partially nude Connery, but to those that may have looked past these 70's excesses, the movie took on the issue of immortality or "eternal life", & did a rather good job of showing how incredibally BORING it would be, to the point of madness....

Religion is for those afraid to accept the responsibility of their own mortality....do it right THIS time, it's the only chance you get !!!

(the most "intellegent design" I know is Butzi's 901...)

The same can be said about the current 'evolution based' teachings on the origins of man! While 'evolution' can be seen within a given species, there is no evidence that unequivocally proves that one species can evolve into another, more complex species. Also: there is no proof that the origin of the universe has evolutionary beginnings - no one has been able to explain how everything came into exsistence out of nothingness.

So the starting point for both sides cannot be proven. One side says the universe was 'jump started' by a Greater Being; the other side said it started out of nothingness - things just fell in place and life simply started to happen.

And to that point - both Creationism/Intelligent Design, and the 'humanistic' explanation of the origins of the universe BOTH fall under a philosophical, even metaphysical venue. So in that sense, they already are teaching philosophical ideas in the science class, and use science to explain the philosophy they teach about the origins of everything.

Deep.
-Z-man.

While I do not know what you consider to be "unequivocal proof" of one species evolving into another, there is alot of evidence in the fossil record for this exact occurence (the evolution of the horse is especially well represented). Also, we have observed the evolution of new species in the laboratory, so to say that it doesn't occur is incorrect.

Your statement about "how everything came into existence out of nothingness" is a straw man argument. That, for one thing, has nothing to do with theory of evolution and does not even represent the current thinking in cosmology. We need a good thread on mbrane theory if you want to explore the beginning of the universe.

While I totally agree that we do not know everything and that there are some extremely interesting questions yet to be answered, I think it is more exciting to try to understand the universe with an inquiring open mind (science) and be wrong on occasion that to assume that you already know it (religion).

Mike

Ah, but we 'religious zealots' never lay claim to knowing it all - rather I believe that God has not revealed many of the mysteries of the universe to man, including how we got here. He made this point clear many times, as recorded in the Bible. Should that stop me from seeking answers? Absolutely not! Like I said before, just because God said it, and I believe it, that doesn't mean I can't question it! (And look at science to find an answer!)

The Old Teastament book of Job is a book on man's questioning of God, and God's answers to man. In the end, Job didn't have all his questions answered, but his understanding of God and the universe became much deeper, more significant. I think more Christians should approach God the way Job did.

Not all relgious folk are as close minded as you may believe...
-Zoltan.

For sure. And conversely there are alot of people that hide behind science and dogmatically assume that science is always right. Both are close-minded and equally wrong, IMO.

I do believe, though, that *most* religious people struggle when science points to different conclusions that what their particular religion teaches (history is littered with examples of this). How these people deal with these challenges, to me, says alot about the person.

Mike

Wow. This thread has hit 9 pages and is still pissing people off.

A comment to MUL: Your statements about the party that ended slavery are a bit off. Lincoln was running on a platform to not expand slavery. He specifically made the point that he was not intending to abolish it. How he came to abolish slavery is a longer story but has little to do with a Republican desire to end the practice. In fact, the Demacrats at the time were the frothing at the mouth abolitionists. None of this means much because the "party of lincoln" is now not much like what it was at its beginings.

I find it interesting that you cite the example of people like Hitler using a goddless view to bring about the rise of Nazism. In fact he appealed to Christian faith.

In any case if you want to forward your views about ID or creationism, you ought to at least read up on the Answers in Genisis website. They have compile a book of arguments that creationist should no longer use to advance their views. So far, every argument you have posted is one the list. You don't have to trust me on this. They are certified, card carrying creationists. At least they are attempt to avoid often discredited arguments (some of which are rather silly).