Another proof of the good results of playboy had been the thread of foreign country special Playboy versions that released.Playboy International editions had been published throughout Brazil, Australia, Argentina, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, among other nations.

Of course, because from the nature of Playboy journal, it wasn’t widely accepted in some of the more traditionalistic countries.Most countries in the Asian currently have banned any sale and additionally publication regarding Playboy magazine attributable to what is named its lewd design and vulgarity that may be contradictory to the norms together with values from the people

is the church a cult? first we need to quickly define ‘cult’.

mercy church does not fall into the classic view of:

groups that follow other writings or give authority to something other than the bible.

but they do fall into another, even more dangerous category:

groups that twist the bible, changing it to fit whatever they fancy.

how can i say this?

with statements like these found in teachings:

“if you don’t have 12, you will be washed away like the sand”

“in order to be a real christian you must have 12″

“you will be asked by god to present your 12 when you are judged”

these are just 3 of dozens of teachings i could outline to show how the bible has been twisted and lies are given as truth to be followed.

I recently had a friend visit the church who went home crying. the message was clearly about people who were not fruitful according to the g12 model and how they would be cut off and burned in the fire. my friend doesn’t even go to this church and could see how this scripture was twisted to slander people who had left the church.

was mercy church always like this? no

think of thin slice of pie…one line point straight up, one pointing just off straight up. they used to go straight up…follow the bible…then g12 came along and things got off to the right a little. so little that you don’t even notice until you are so far off from the truth that you can’t see your way back. (yep, talking about myself)

a friend who goes to mercy church recently said to me:

“gosh, i’ve been reading my bible, and g12 doesn’t really line up with what god says does it?”

this was from a baby christian who decided to find out for himself what the bible said about being fruitful.

i’ll make this final statement:

mercy church uses fear, lies, false teachings and emotional manipulation to keep people submitted to the g12 model. its hard to see when you in it. it took me along time (years). i’m mad at myself for staying there, and sad that it continues, but glad that there are places to let the truth be known.

question everything, read your bible, know the truth.

1. Your assumptions

I think your first paragraph, about the suppositions behind the Problem of Evil, are incorrect – they don’t go back far enough to the PROBLEM, but start at the supposed SOLUTION (of the Incarnation).

Simply put, I think the problem of evil addresses the assumption that IF God is only good and created everything, how do you logically square that with the existence of evil? I don’t think that you need the incarnation to address this question.

Possible explanations include:

1. Deny Evil: There is no evil, you just imagine it.

2. Deny God’s Goodness: God can’t be all good, He had to create evil

3. Deny God’s Omnipotence: God can’t be almighty and all good, or He would do something about it.

4. Logical Possibility: God allows evil for some mysterious, worthy reason (theodicies)

5. Belligerence: Who are you to ask such questions, you rebellious infidel?!?

While many Christians claim #4, this is not an argument FOR a good God, just a defense of the logical *possibility* that an entirely good God and evil could co-exist. The likelihood of that claim is another matter.

As I understand it, Dr. Law says that the *unlikelihood* of God being good means that the Christian God does not exist. I think that’s weak, esp. in light of the actual arguments FOR theism and the ‘flaws’ in his ideas about good an devil..

2. “And thus all discussion of morality and apologists ‘theodicy’ is contained within this self limiting intellectual paradigm and bubble of presumption”

No, this argument is limited because the subject matter is limited – theodicies are a response to only the Problem of Evil (which, btw, may present an even bigger logical problem for atheism), and not more.

The problem of evil does not address the strong arguments for theism, nor the historical claims regarding Jesus, nor the existence of objective morals, etc.

3. “So like it or no, a new moral religious claim testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists.”

The crude site you link to is hardly an alternative to the robust and deep Christian world view. Is it any more than a shrine to John Milton? The supposed ‘correcting human nature…etc.” claims seem like little more than psychobabble. Please, don’t just link to a lame site filled with poetic musings.

As a humanity, we have all been conditioned or indoctrinated, for all of history by ‘theological’ exegesis, particularly by those with their own religious claims and agendas, to accept that a literal proof of God is not possible for faith. And thus all discussion of morality and apologists ‘theodicy’ is contained within this self limiting intellectual paradigm and bubble of presumption, especially evident in the frictions between science and religion. It would now appear that all sides squabbling over the God question, religious, atheist and history itself have it wrong! That bubble could now burst at any time!

The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ is published on the web. Radically different from anything else we know of from history, this new teaching is predicated upon a precise and predefined experience, a direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power to confirm divine will, command and covenant, “correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries.” So like it or no, a new moral religious claim testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. Nothing short of a religious revolution is getting under way. More info at http://www.energon.org.uk

1) Where did life and humanity originate?
A) Over the last three billion years, man has evolved from a protein acid.

Quite honestly, natural selection and random mutation just do not produce those results in the labs or in observation. It’s a nice theory, but those who claim it to be gospel truth are believers, not scientists, imo.

2)Why is there suffering, sickness, and death?
A) Because humans are greedy.

Yes, that’s one reason – we would call it ‘sinful’ or ‘broken’ or ‘fallen.’

B) As for death, it is because of the telomeres at the end of the Chromosomes which hardwired a set limit of time that any human is capable of living. This is also known as the Hayflick Phenomenon.

This is an interesting conjecture, but also very limited. We may lengthen our age to even 1000 years (like the Old Testament patriarchs are reported to have lived), but death still comes – the question is, why are we MORTAL?

Unfortunately, aging research had two recent setbacks this past month, one by the author of the original seminal paper on sirtuin proteins, see Anti-Aging Research Faces Setback and Too Good To Be True? Anti-Aging Proteins Not So Potent After All

3)What is the cure for man’s suffering?
A) Two different answers. The extinction of man, or man caring about their fellow man.

Those are pleasant enough solutions, but caring alone won’t eradicate suffering, esp. the existential kind.

4)How does an atheist assign meaning to human activity?
A) In the same manner that a Theist would. Baseball is fun, so people want to play it. Murder hurts people so people don’t like it.

Something isn’t meaningful just because it is desirable – you may be answering a different question here, which is how do we know what is moral, to which some atheists respond with ‘Desirism’.

By meaning, I mean, worth doing. I know that may be splitting hairs, but desire and pain are not a complete solution to moral or ethical epistemology. While I agree that we can use the Golden Rule or some other moral principle, but unfortunately, that won’t, for instance, tell us if it’s wrong to eat animals, or MORE wrong to eat our children.

In an atheistic world view, you have no real independent manner in which to establish moral absolutes, and a very limited epistemic tools in which to determine what those absolutes might be. In the end, it comes down to popular opinion, or subjectivism. If Hitler thinks that racial purity will lead to peace, and has the might and convinces other, there is not really a good retort from the atheist – at least, it seems without authority (“says who?”).

5) Are humans of more intrinsic value than animals?
A) It depends on the humans and the animals. I would put Steven Hawking over any Chimp. I would put any Chimp over Marlalyn Manson.

That’s interesting. So you have some criteria for valuing Hawking over Manson? And your criteria could devalue Manson so much that Manson could. for instance, be used for food or experiments like chimps, or if he was, you could only be as inscensed as you are at chimp research?

6) How does an Atheist determine what is moral or immoral, right or wrong?
A) Through observation of the world around him or her. Does this action cause pain or suffering to another? Is it going to cause this person grief if I do such and such action?

Simple heuristics like that are used by everyone, but what about, for existence, the value of the fetus? Capital punishment? Any kind of just punishment?

7) What type of government does Atheistic Philosophy translate into?
A) There is no specific government for Atheistic Philosophy akin to a Theocracy for Theists. Each Atheist has his or her own views on the world and as such have different views on politics and governments. There is no right or wrong answer for this. Everyone is different.

So, for instance, atheistic communism is ok, but Islamic theocracy is not? At the very least, atheism must deny some forms of government, and prefer others, like Libertarianism – yet I wonder how many atheists are European socialists, which to me seems to go against human dignity and freedom.

8) How does Atheism view religions and religious faith?
A) Again, different Atheists view religions differently. Some feel that Religion can be a positive force in the world, whereas others feel that religions are a poison and should be taken out of the world post haste.

True that. The real issue is, doesn’t atheism pretty much view faith as a LIE? I don’t see how you can justify any stronger position than agnosticism without making a faith statement about what you BELIEVE based on the incomplete evidence (in both directions).

9) Who are the authoritative writers/books of atheism? What are the central tenets of atheism, and if they have a “greatest commandment”, what is it?
A) There is no authoritative writers or books for Atheism. Nor is there any tenet or commandment for Atheism.

I think this is true, but also disingenous. True, there is no official ‘atheist bible’ or authoritative handbook, and there is a spectrum of belief on secondary issues. However, on the primary positive statement “God does NOT exist” most atheists (except for agnostics, aka “weak atheists”) agree. And there are, of course, representative luminaries from atheist thought that are at least defacto prophets who articulate the central dogmas of atheism, right? Nietzsche, Russel, Hume (I wouldn’t put Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, or Dawkins in the same intellectual class as them – these modern guys are more polemicists than philosophers).

10) What happens after we die?

A) We begin to decompose, our carbon based bodies releasing the nutrients that we have taken in over the decades of life, so that flora and fauna may dine upon our remains. As for any “Soul”, the only thing that could be classified as a “Soul” is the brain, and once that stops working, there is nothing left of us, aside from the memories of us in our friends and families.

Lack of evidence in this regard is not evidence. And some experiments seem to prove the existence of independent mind. But all claims as to the existence or non of the afterlife are conjectures, statements of faith, and to be chosen based on inference, I think.

Thanks again for the conversation.

Heck, I’d like to leave behind something more meaningful, like a seminal book, or a library, or people who are positively changed for generations, starting with my own family.

I guess this is more an exercise in summing up your current philosophy of meaning and value.

Please see my response at http://www.wholereason.com/2011/09/why-is-it-so-i…

That’s what people believed then. Lots of them. They were wrong, and most of us have since learned better.

Evolution is simply a useful theory that has substantial predictive power. That’s what science relies upon for progress: theories that, when tested, and when used as the basis for later theories, help successfully predict outcomes.

One makes a theory based on observation, constructs a test to measure that theory’s predicted results as accurately as possible, and measures the resulting evidence. That’s how the scientific method works.

Responsible scientist do their best to exclude or compensate for bias, but some bias is always present.

The science of the time, and the bias in the minds of the scientists of the time, combined to produce in some thinkers what seemed a logical progression from evolutionary theory to the practices of eugenics and racism.

In fact, if they understood evolution better, they would have steered clear of eugenics and racism. Evolutionary theory holds that random mutations are successively tested in the real world, with the survival of the fittest. Rinse, repeat, improve.

But if you artificially terminate some mutations, as eugenics would have us do, you eliminate entire branches of future potential that can provide unimagined benefits.

We are already having this problem today in agriculture. We artificially promoted the proliferation of specific mutations in the plant and animal kingdom, and now we have to do all kinds of shenanigans to protect these artificially promoted (in some cases, engineered) strains. Meanwhile, we continue to discover new benefits of species that were previously undiscovered.

The guys who wrote that book, and others like them, were wrong. Maybe evil. But that doesn’t mean that the theory of evolution leads inescapably to evil, or even that it’s not worth using (and, thereby, testing) in further scientific study.

Is not the Christian religion based on living life by Christ’s example? Taking from the Bible leasons from his life and applying it to our own? Once we start insisting every single word of the Bible is fact, truth and God’s will, do we not run into some very difficult problems that are the root cause for driving so many people away from the Christian faith?

That would be very nice, caring and considerate if it were true. But the fact is nothing could be further from the truth. We are threatened with the roasting pits of hell and torture for all of eternity, if we choose not to worship God. How can it be said that God offers a free choice, when the alternative is so dispicable and disgusting?

Why are you so insistant on basing your Christian faith on such dogged adhearance to ancient scripts, written in unenlightened times? Surely the Christian faith is based on living our lives by Jesus’ example. Showing and sharing kindness, compassion and understanding to all. Not on dogmatically insisting on following ancient rituals and superstitions.

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I am quite sure the answer to that is yes. I too have little if any qualms about such a concept. When you talk of “Chimeras” it conjures up beasts of mythical antiquity, but the reality is totally different. Lab rats carrying human genetic codes will open new doors of understanding that shall allow humanity to develop and progress.

I know of no biblical scripture that explicitly forbids such practice but do find scripture that sanctions such activity. Genesis 1:26, and especialy Genesis 1:28

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Why would people not want to embrace the fact that God himself farts and feels the exact same feelings of relief, disgust and amusement as we all do? He made us in his image didn’t he? Why would people assume God doesn’t fart?

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I have no doubt that atheists can and do act morally or recognize and affirm the objective morality of things like the golden rule or parts of the Sermon on the mount. But on what logical grounds?

I mean, is ‘success’ the measure of what is moral? What if being unkind proves to be successful instead of being kind?

I’ve read up on Luke’s pursuit of atheistic Desirism as an explanation or method for determining morals, but I think it suffers the same logical circularity, and as of yet, has not really defined a hierarchy of values (e.g. are humans more important than animals? are the unborn people with rights?).

Again, my real beef is that logically, atheism seems committed to subjective moralism, which in my evaluation of history and the nature of man, leads inexorably to the abuse of power and justification of evil. That’s the whole argument.

A non-theist external moral referent? How about…laws?

An atheist would argue that the Ten Commandments were written by men, not God; that same atheist can easily respect the moral value of those Commandments, accepting them as an external referent.

Most of my morals and ethics are derived from my Protestant upbringing. I no longer believe the theist portion of that belief system, but the basic values of the morality taught in the Sermon on the Mount remain.

Separately, the Prisoner’s Dilemma and game theory teach us that, as it happens, being kind to others is an excellent success strategy. One might call atheistic morality “enlightened self-interest” — doing well by doing good.

You must appeal, in a sense, to man’s intuitions about objective morality, because reason without an external referent can NOT prove objective morals, and that to be logically consistent, you must appeal to an outside authority who can not only declare what is moral, but proclaim it as a duty that is punishable if not followed.

To rephrase the constitutional phrase, I would say “we hold that all men of sound intuition will recognize that objective morals exist, esp. the rights of equality of men, and further, that such rights are established, not by governments or the consensus of men, but objectively by God.”

I think you can’t really be logical about objective morality in any other way.

But when you lack an external referent, then of course, you are being self-referential, essentially, being subjective.

A view that incorporates both, an external referent that defines what is objectively true, plus our own confirmation of such with reason, is the best of both systems. And this is what, I argue, Christianity supports.

Does that make sense? For example, what is the external referent in atheism that would, for example, support the claim that humans are of more worth than other animals? Or that animals should not be killed and eaten?

I’m not saying that all the arguments on either side of this debate are ironclad. I’m just presenting them as I understand (or misunderstand ;) them.

It seems to me that you are arguing that purely subjective morals lead to violence, and also that purely objective morals lead to violence. Which sounds like all roads lead to violence…

…unless you are saying that there is an optimal blend of subjective and objective morality that leads away from violence? And that Reformed Protestant Christianity is the best example of such a civilizing and humane moral alloy?

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In “There Is a God,” Flew quotes extensively from a conversation he had with Leftow, a professor at Oxford. So I asked Flew, “Do you know Brian Leftow?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think I do.”

“Do you know the work of the philosopher John Leslie?” Leslie is discussed extensively in the book.

Flew paused, seeming unsure. “I think he’s quite good.” But he said he did not remember the specifics of Leslie’s work.

“Have you ever run across the philosopher Paul Davies?” In his book, Flew calls Paul Davies “arguably the most influential contemporary expositor of modern science.”

“I’m afraid this is a spectacle of my not remembering!”

He said this with a laugh. When we began the interview, he warned me, with merry self-deprecation, that he suffers from “nominal aphasia,” or the inability to reproduce names. But he forgot more than names. He didn’t remember talking with Paul Kurtz about his introduction to “God and Philosophy” just two years ago. There were words in his book, like “abiogenesis,” that now he could not define. When I asked about Gary Habermas, who told me that he and Flew had been friends for 22 years and exchanged “dozens” of letters, Flew said, “He and I met at a debate, I think.” I pointed out to him that in his earlier philosophical work he argued that the mere concept of God was incoherent, so if he was now a theist, he must reject huge chunks of his old philosophy. “Yes, maybe there’s a major inconsistency there,” he said, seeming grateful for my insight. And he seemed generally uninterested in the content of his book — he spent far more time talking about the dangers of unchecked Muslim immigration and his embrace of the anti-E.U. United Kingdom Independence Party.

As he himself conceded, he had not written his book.

“This is really Roy’s doing,” he said, before I had even figured out a polite way to ask. “He showed it to me, and I said O.K. I’m too old for this kind of work!”

When I asked Varghese, he freely admitted that the book was his idea and that he had done all the original writing for it. But he made the book sound like more of a joint effort — slightly more, anyway. “There was stuff he had written before, and some of that was adapted to this,” Varghese said. “There is stuff he’d written to me in correspondence, and I organized a lot of it. And I had interviews with him. So those three elements went into it. Oh, and I exposed him to certain authors and got his views on them. We pulled it together. And then to make it more reader-friendly, HarperCollins had a more popular author go through it.”

"But it seems to me that you have confirmed my claim about atheists *properly* believing some things in spite of the lack of evidence."

Nope. There is evidence for doing the right thing. I'll say it again, there are mountains of evidence to suggest that the golden rule is good for society. Utilitarianism is one reason I "ought" to follow the golden rule.

"In a dispute between members of a cohesive group of reasoning beings, the demand for a reason is a demand for a justification that can be accepted by the group as a whole." Thus, consideration of others' interests has long been a necessary part of the human experience. Singer believes that reason now compels the equal consideration of all people's interests:

If I have seen that from an ethical point of view I am just one person among the many in my society, and my interests are no more important, from the point of view of the whole, than the similar interests of others within my society, I am ready to see that, from a still larger point of view, my society is just one among other societies, and the interests of members of my society are no more important, from that larger perspective, than the similar interests of members of other societies… Taking the impartial element in ethical reasoning to its logical conclusion means, first, accepting that we ought to have equal concern for all human beings.

- Peter Singer

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

"My point about hardwiring was that a moral instinct being hardwired isn't evidence that following that instinct is the right thing to do–at most it explains how we come to *think* that said morality is the right thing to do."

Well, you are essentially repeating what I said earlier: That's where the hardwiring is mitigated by intellect.

"Any evidence you have for a moral instinct being the product of evolution is irrelevant to the question of whether we *ought* to follow the evolved morality."

The "ought" is derived from our moral intuitions hard-wired into us by evolution. This has nothing to do with what I think you are defining "ought" as; metaphysically objective. I define "ought" as epistemologically objective.

Pain is felt, but it is more than "just feelings": there’s a lot more we can say about pain than "I feel it" or "Ouch!" In the same way, morality is more than "just feelings" and there’s a lot more we can say about it than "I feel it" or "Yuck!" or "Yay!". What we’ve just shown is that although moral feelings exist in a metaphysically subjective way, there can still be epistemological objectivity about them. Just as doctors can use epistemologically objective scientific methods to investigate metaphysically subjective matters like pain, so we can use epistemologically objective rational methods to investigate metaphysically subjective matters like moral feelings.

…once you allow that people can reason about morality, you undermine ethical subjectivism entirely, since as a matter of fact, not all arguments are equivalent, some are better than others, and so some people’ s moral claims are objectively more worthy of belief than others — because they are more reasonable.

This is why "mitigation by reason and intellect" is such an important part of my argument about hardwired moral intuition.

Source:Thinking Critically About the "Subjective"/"Objective" Distinction

As for point #3, honestly Keith, I still don't see how the SoM is not just another incarnation of the Golden Rule.

P.S. Stewart, the above may address some of your comments as well.

"The presence of similar behavioral patterns, whether genetically-based or not, does nothing to suggest that there is any kind of obligation, on anyone's part, to act on these patterns."

Stewart, with the new data from Dr. Marc Hauser (evolutionary biologist at Harvard) and primatologist Dr. Frans de Waal (director of the Living Links Center at Emory University) I think it's time to rethink conventional moral philosophy. This includes you cannot derive an "ought" from an "is".

Dr. de Waal does not accept the philosophers’ view that biologists cannot step from “is” to “ought.” “I’m not sure how realistic the distinction is,” he said. “Animals do have ‘oughts.’ If a juvenile is in a fight, the mother must get up and defend her. Or in food sharing, animals do put pressure on each other, which is the first kind of ‘ought’ situation.”

Dr. de Waal’s definition of morality is more down to earth than Dr. Prinz’s. Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared values.” The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies “in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval.” By this definition chimpanzees in his view do possess some of the behavioral capacities built in our moral systems.

Source: NY TIMES Science article: Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

I beg you all, please read the article so you can understand this reasoning. Stewart, it's not circular reasoning. I think part of the problem is biological determinism scares a lot of people. There is certainly an element of that in the new research. However, our intellect can override our instincts.

"…how can you reasonably claim that they (moral intuitions) are universal"

Because they are hardwired into our genes. As such, they are not relative to circumstances, culture, belief, personal preference, etc. Absolute – (6. viewed independently; not comparative or relative; ultimate; intrinsic: absolute knowledge.)

Read the book of Romans, Paul's extended explanation of the gospel. The first three chapters are about one thing…the guilt of all mankind. That's all stick.

Could there be a third option, that of leaving God to do the pulling and the pushing? None of us like being treated like donkeys by the preacher and all of us can tell when that's happening.

How about drastic thought?
We are not responsible (in preaching) for pointing out other peoples sin although we Are repsonsible for pointing out God ways of living and how to achieve that.

We are also responsible for introducing them to Jesus and in the light of his presence…..stuff gets sorted
(+ in standing in the light of his presence, we are all grubby and all need forgiveness and all need it often so that levels us nicely and stops the tendancy to prod or poke others into the Kingdom, a tendancy that preachers can fall into )

Oh and I love your words about the goodness of God drawing us.
I'd probably want to flesh that out a tad and say that it's our relationship with him that is way too precious to mess with ….that draws us. Maybe that's just me. But I do work better with the idea of a personal relationship drawing me on to change. Than with the idea of being motivated by a concept.

Your accusation is like me saying "because you oppose polygamy/polyamory/bestiality (consensual), you have no room to talk about morality since you are against equal rights."

I oppose neither polyamory nor polygamy. There should not be laws against polygamy, and if the next civil rights battle were to repeal laws criminalizing those marriages, they’d have my support. (However, coercing young girls to be polygamous brides, as the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints no longer (officially) does, ought to be illegal.)

Neither polyamory nor polygamy by consenting adults is comparable to bestiality. Bestiality is not sex with a consenting partner, it is animal rape.

This is the problem with liberalism – living in the realm of imagination instead of fact. In actuality, my family has been involved in both environmentalism and feminism since before I was born. But the hateful, bitter, anti-masculine feminism went too far in establishing women's 'rights', as the pro-gay lobby does today, imo.

>> ROBIN: Seeker, your opposition to equal rights disqualifies you from any authority on morality,

I don't oppose equal rights, I only oppose the tacet approval of an unnatural dysfunction as normal. It's bad for children and society. So is abortion/infanticide.

Your accusation is like me saying "because you oppose polygamy/polyamory/bestiality (consensual), you have no room to talk about morality since you are against equal rights."

I would heartily approve of such a statement, however, applied to those who are pro-choice.

Sorry boys, but pushing for gay marriage is just not going to cut it with those of us who look at nature and see that such relationships may make you feel better, but they aren’t what creation intended.

I imagine Seeker’s great‐grandparents doing similar concern trolling: Listen, liberals, if you want to be seen as moral, pushing this women’s lib agenda is just not going to cut it with those of us who read scripture and know what God ordained woman’s role to be.

Seeker, your opposition to equal rights disqualifies you from any authority on morality, and will put you on the wrong side of history as well. If you bigots see we egalitarians as immoral, it is to your own shame. Go ahead and fume while we on the side of the angels (so to speak) fight for freedom.

@danielg

No such "mass of evidence" exists. It is a collection of spotty data, coupled with some really elegant theorizing, grounded in little more than wishful thinking. There is literally very little "there" there.

You’ve been greatly misinformed.

An immense body of evidence of common descent does exist, and speciation has been observed.

“The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust.” — Richard Dawkins, “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”

"Furthermore, Darwin was one of the least racist men of the Victorian age. He was an abolitionist who abhorred slavery. He understood, and his work demonstrated, that all of humanity had a mutual common ancestry — a powerful argument against racism. (Perhaps this is why "Prinzipelles zur Säuberung der öffentlichen Bücherein" (1935) [Principles for the Cleansing of Public Libraries] banned Origin of Species to be committed to Nazi bonfires.)"

I'm going to remember this for future conversations with creationists.

I guess Darwin never foresaw the modern day liberal who despises having children, and who would murder their own out of convenience via abortion. Looks like the more intelligent, at least by passing on their genes to progeny, are religious people.

Let me see if I understand your logic: Darwin says intelligent people with good educations succeed better and leave more progeny. Modern liberals hate children, so they abort their pregancies. All religious people oppose abortion, hence they leave more progeny. Therefore, religious conservatives are more successful, educated, and intelligent than other people.

This is flame bait, right? You must be trolling.

Um, while natural selection may occur within the human population, Darwin's real contribution was to suggest that some races are less evolved, more apelike, and inferior, and would be exterminated over time.

Before Darwin left on his journey on H.M.S. Beagle, the British were exterminating Aborigines in Tasmania. They didn’t need the theory of natural selection to think the Abos were inferior, animalistic savages needing extermination.

Darwin didn’t invent racism. Furthermore, Darwin was one of the least racist men of the Victorian age. He was an abolitionist who abhorred slavery. He understood, and his work demonstrated, that all of humanity had a mutual common ancestry — a powerful argument against racism. (Perhaps this is why “Prinzipelles zur Säuberung der öffentlichen Bücherein” (1935) [Principles for the Cleansing of Public Libraries] banned Origin of Species to be committed to Nazi bonfires.)

seeker misquotes out of context:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.
- Charles Darwin, from The Descent of Man

That statement, in context:

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridæ—between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

Darwin is certainly not espousing eugenics; he is extrapolating that the gap between humans and primates will grow wider in the future.

small sample sizes aren't necessarily "bad science", they're just not conclusive in and of themselves – you can question them, but not necessarily dismiss them out of hand unless they had other problems

Wrong. You can and should dismiss them out of hand when the sample size is far too small to have any probative value. It’s not a matter of “not conclusive”, it’s a matter of “not meaningful”.

An extreme example should make this obvious: A statistical study with a sample size of 1 can be dismissed out of hand.

I guess I should mention something, since this thread went way off-topic (which was the subject of the study Seeker referenced). Sam alluded to this, but never really drew the point home—self-selecting bias is a huge problem in soft sciences, especially sociology and psychology. It is even a problem in the harder sciences like physics and chemistry, where a reliance on data is supposed to be more concrete in drawing conclusions. Indeed, the only way to state something authoritatively about behavior in any respectable medical or science journal is to have such an enormous sample size that the results are easily generalized to the population as a whole. Sample sizes of 20 and 25 are not only not generalizable, they open the study to charges of bias, since those 20 and 25 people could have been chosen from such a limited pool (even if they were technically chosen at random) that the researchers were in effect building their bias into the structure of the study.

And given the open biases of NARTH, they should have been especially careful to avoid this pitfall. They didn't. It's bad science.

Indeed it is.