It has come to my attention that a group of people is out in the public trying to sway opinion through deceptive means.
They only want their dogma taught in schools and would pull their children out if it is not the only thing taught.
They refuse to listen to any type of reason that contradicts their preset belief system. If it does not fit with what they already accept, then it is dismissed without investigation.
This group accepts without question whatever the leaders hand down as fact. They do not allow for challenges to come from within or without of their group. Anyone who does so is ignored or slandered.
They actively work to implement policies and laws that benefit their belief system and reflect the values that they deem important.
There are many more examples I could give to illustrate how rigid and unweiling this group is, but I am sure by now you all know I am talking about naturalists and their refusal to acknowledge anything but Darwinian evolution.
How clever. If only they didn't have science on their side. And if only you had more than a 2000 year old book written by morons on your side.
You mean morons – in your opinion – right?
And parts of the book have been proven to be at least several centuries older than 2000 years. Guess what proved that? Science. hehe
And seriously, the "science" you are referring to has only been around what? a hundred years or so?
Not that I don't think Darwin had some interesting points…but I think the bible has bigger better ones. :-D
And I thought that was pretty funny Aaron! :)
Maybe they don't accept other theories because there's no evidence to back them up? It's really weird how christianists cling to a literal interpretation of their holy book, even to the point of denying scientific evidence.
Creationists are abjectly ignorant people. Here is documentation of creationists in the past using the same rational you creationists (Aaron, Lawanda, Seeker) use today. Their tradition of ignorance and denial of science lives on today with you guys.
<blockquotes>And the implications for Fundamentalist dogma? Simple. In _The Great Monkey Trial_, by L. Sprague deCamp, we read of some Tennessee mountain folk who denounced William Jennings Bryan (the Ronald Reagan of the day) as a heretic because he believed that the Earth is round. They wanted "good Christian books" for our schools which teach the flatness of the Earth. A flat-earth evangelist of the time, Wilbur Glenn Voliva, proposed that Bryan and him should run for the Presidency on a platform to eliminate the twin heresies of evolution and the roundness of the Earth. Voliva believed that, if the Earth was moving, there would be a big wind, which is not observed. He also believed that it would be wasteful for God to put the Sun about 150 million kilometers from the Earth — after all, the Sun was created to light the Earth. He also complained about the "so-called fundamentalists who strain out the gnat of evolution while swallowing the camel of modern astronomy" (for more, see Martin Gardner's _Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science_). I wonder why present-day Fundamentalists do not call for equal time for flat-earth science in our schools.</blockquotes>
From http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/genesisd.htm
Need more?
Insects with four feet? (Leviticus 11:21-23)
Bats identified as "birds"? (Leviticus 11:13-19)
Rabbits claimed to chew their cud? (Leviticus 11:6)
Compared to people today, everybody 2000 years ago was a total moron. There’s no issue of opinion. They were idiots. And 2000 years, we’ll be morons; unless Christians really get all of the power they want. Then we’ll devolve.
Cin,
All of your supposed claims about the inaccuracy of Leviticus have been answered – and all three instances of Leviticus can easily be reconciled with science.
Rabbits Chewing the Cud
Insects with Four Feet
Bats are Birds
I am not surprised that you wonder this, because you don’t appear to understand creationism or science very well. To you, all such ‘absurd’ claims are equal. To those who investigate with open minds, evolution is not a foregone or proven conclusion, while the falsity of the flat earth is.
Seeker ROFL,
Rabbits eat their own crap so this makes Leviticus 11:6 true? Look at the mental gymnastics you have to perform to literally justify this "crap."
Anyway, this was not even the main point of my response to Aaron's post. The point is, evangelical creationists have not changed much since Wilbur Glenn Voliva. Creationists hold that faith trumps science which places them in the untenable position of making arguments like "chewing cud equates to eating crap."
If your rejection of the bible and creationism are based on these 'fallacies', you are on thin ice indeed.
One reason that Jesus taught in parables was that, people who were looking to find fault or reject his teaching could easily do so and think they were justified in doing so. In this way, their hearts towards God were revealed. You should be careful in how honestly you evaluate the teachings and claims of the Bible.
Luke 8:9-10
And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that 'seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.'
Oh, well, that's the Landover Church, some of the biggest nutjobs in the universe.
To my daughter Juliet…
Dear Juliet,
Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the sun and are very far away? And how do we know that Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the sun?
The answer to these questions is “evidence.” Sometimes evidence means actually seeing ( or hearing, feeling, smelling….. ) that something is true. Astronauts have travelled far enough from earth to see with their own eyes that it is round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The “evening star” looks like a bright twinkle in the sky, but with a telescope, you can see that it is a beautiful ball – the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing ( or hearing or feeling….. ) is called an observation.
Often, evidence isn’t just an observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there’s been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular suspect. If a person’s fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn’t prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it’s joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.
Scientists – the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe – often work like detectives. They make a guess ( called a hypothesis ) about what might be true. They then say to themselves: If that were really true, we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveller, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started.When a doctor says that you have the measles, he doesn’t take one look at you and see measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then he says to himself: If she has measles I ought to see…… Then he runs through the list of predictions and tests them with his eyes ( have you got spots? ); hands ( is your forehead hot? ); and ears ( does your chest wheeze in a measly way? ). Only then does he make his decision and say, ” I diagnose that the child has measles. ” Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or X-Rays, which help their eyes, hands, and ears to make observations.
The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something , and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called “tradition,” “authority,” and “revelation.”
First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about fifty children. These children were invited because they had been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by “tradition.” Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either. They said things like: “We Hindus believe so and so”; “We Muslims believe such and such”; “We Christians believe something else.”
Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn’t all be right. The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite right and proper, and he didn’t even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But that isn’t the point I want to make for the moment. I simply want to ask where their beliefs come from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing; perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they’ve been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over the centuries. That’s tradition.
The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up a story that isn’t true, handing it down over a number of centuries doesn’t make it any truer!
Most people in England have been baptised into the Church of England, but this is only one of the branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches such as Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Methodist churches. They all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims. People who believe even slightly different things from each other go to war over their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good reasons – evidence – for believing what they believe. But actually, their different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.
Let’s talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn’t die but was lifted bodily in to Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like anybody else. These other religions don’t talk about much and, unlike Roman Catholics, they don’t call her the “Queen of Heaven.” The tradition that Mary’s body was lifted into Heaven is not an old one. The bible says nothing on how she died; in fact, the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn’t invented until about six centuries after Jesus’ time. At first, it was just made up, in the same way as any story like “Snow White” was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as and official Roman Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950, when I was the age you are now. But the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented six hundred years after Mary’s death.
I’ll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another way. But first, I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in anything: authority and revelation.
Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.
When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary’s body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope ( 1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding.
Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven’t seen the evidence ourselves and we have to take somebody else’s word for it. I haven’t, with my own eyes, seen the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead, I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like “authority.” But actually, it is much better than authority, because the people who wrote the books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary’s body zooming off to Heaven.
The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called “revelation.” If you had asked the pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary’s body disappeared into Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been “revealed” to him. He shut himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling “revelation.” It isn’t only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But is it a good reason?
Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You’d be very upset, and you’d probably say, “Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?” Now suppose I answered: “I don’t actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just have a funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead.” You’d be pretty cross with me for scaring you, because you’d know that an inside “feeling” on its own is not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We all have inside feelings from time to time, sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don’t. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.
People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise, you’ d never be confident of things like “My wife loves me.” But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little titbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t a purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn’t even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can’t trust them.
Inside feelings are valuable in science, too, but only for giving you ideas that you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a “hunch'” about an idea that just “feels” right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they are supported by evidence.
I promised that I’d come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of Africa. Crayfish to be good at surviving in fresh, water, while lobsters are built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals, too, and we are built to be good at surviving in a world full of ….. other people. Most of us don’t hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters; we buy it from other people who have bought it from yet other people. We ”swim” through a “sea of people.” Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water, the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.
You speak English, but your friend Ann-Kathrin speaks German. You each speak the language that fits you to ‘`swim about” in your own separate “people sea.” Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way . In England, Pepe is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or more true than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at “swimming about in their people sea,” children have to learn the language of their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The child’s brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child can’t be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.
It’s a pity, but it can’t help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what the grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence, or at least sensible. But if some of it is false, silly, or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the children believing that, too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do? Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once something gets itself strongly believed – even if it is completely untrue and there never was any reason to believe it in the first place – it can go on forever.
Could this be what has happened with religions ? Belief that there is a god or gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into blood – not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions of people believe them. Perhaps this because they were told to believe them when they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.
Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or Quakers , Mormons or Holy Rollers, and are all utterly covinced that they are right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the same kind of reason as you speak English and Ann-Kathrin speaks German. Both languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can’t be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can’t be alive in Catholic Southern Ireland but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.
What can we do about all this ? It is not easy for you to do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: “Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority, or revelation?” And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: “What kind of evidence is there for that?” And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.
Your loving
Daddy
Good And Bad Reasons For Believing
Richard Dawkins
Cineaste, as you associate me with flat-earthers you are doing the same thing anti-God evangelists have been doing for years. Finding the most absurd statement and tying everyone to it. Can I go chase down a quote from Peter Singer about killing infants and attribute it to you? Can I go and find the study by Darwinists that said rape is okay because it is just part of our evolution as humans and say you believe that?
Yes, "kook Christians" believed in a flat earth, so did thousands of "intelligent scientists." What is interesting is that the Bible talks about the earth being round, thousands of years before science discovered it – <a href="http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=Isaiah+40:22&version=49" rel="nofollow">Isaiah 40:22 speaks of the circle of the earth. (That verse also talks about the universe expanding, which it took science until the 1900's to discover.)
The reason no one believes in a flat earth is because it can be visibly tested and confirmed (show me that happening with macroevolution and you got me convinced), same with geocentricism. Which leads to another odd thing – while ignorant Christians may have said the sun should revolve around the earth, the location of the sun, the orbit of the earth, the rotation of the earth, etc. are all part of the anthropic constants that must be in place for life to happen on earth.
According to atheists a miracle happened life by natural causes, according to Christians a miracle happened by supernatural causes. Which is more logical?
Yeah I guess Newton, Pascal, Einstein, Carver, Lister, Joule, Edwards, Mather, Kepler, Bacon etc were all Morons.
Einstein? You think he was theistic?
Aaron – Isaiah 40:22 can be a flat circle which is not a sphere. Reading that verse I am amazed at how liberaly you interpet scripture. In Isaiah 40:22 the context of "stretching out the heavens like a curtain" is the same as "stretching out your hand" in welcome. Do you honestly believe this is a reference to Hubble? Nuts! Totally nuts. If the bible said the earth was flat, you Aaron, would no doubt contend the Earth is flat just like Seeker contends rabbits chew their cud, when in reality they are eating their own poop.
According to atheists a miracle happened…
Really!? Do you even realize this is an oxymoron?
I am just telling you how leading atheistic sceintist describe several instances like first life, the exact anthropic prinicples being meet on Earth, beginning of the universe, etc. There are no truely naturalistic explanations for these events. The word miracle is their word not mine.
See your problem is this Cineaste, the Bible doesn't say the Earth is flat, but you try to make it say something it doesn't or you try to connect every Christian or creationists with the most ignorant example you can find. As I said earlier, should I connect you to every insane comment that other Darwinists make? So you think killing infants is okay and rape should just be accepted? I'm glad we've got that settled.
As to your contention that seeker is trying to dance around the issue of "chewing cud." What you don't seem to understand Cineaste is that the Bible wasn't written in English, so when it is translated chew their cud in some translations, it does not carry all the same connotations as the English phrase. Seeker explained it to you, but you feel like you've got to stick to the website talking points and ignore what he said. Just like your link to the verse about bats being birds. If you had read the footnotes on the link you gave, you would see that it says "or things that fly."
According to atheists a miracle happened, life by natural causes…
So you think killing infants is okay and rape should just be accepted?
that the Bible wasn't written in English, so when it (eating poop) is translated chew their cud in some translations…
the Bible doesn't say the Earth is flat (it says it's a circle)
Aaron, sadly, your points are not really worth responding to. You argue that atheists believe in miracles, question if I think killing infants and rape is acceptable, contend "chewing cud" has a biblical translation of eating poop, and that the word "circle" literally means "sphere."
you try to connect every Christian or creationists with the most ignorant example you can find.
(See your statements above.) I don't need to draw connections between creationists and ignorance. Considering your own arguments, you are doing that to yourself. I don't know what has gotten into you today but I really think you should pray about it and ask God, "Do I really mean the things I say or am I just saying these things to Cineaste to argue with him?"
Cineaste, I actually do pray about writing things. Sometimes not enough, but it is a subject of my prayer. If nothing else that comment made me smile and laugh. Honestly, you have no idea how much I pray about that and about you, Sam and Louis. As I am learning this week (our church is having special services through Wed.) there is always room for more prayer, but I do pray about these things.
My point about killing infants, etc. was that you took extreme creationist positions like flat earth and tried to tie that around the next of seeker and I. I was pointing out that your fellow Darwinists make outlandish claims that you see no purpose in responding to because you don't believe them. Neither do we see any point in responding to assertions about flat earth. That was my point.
I explained my "miracle" comment. Leading atheist sceintist used that exact word to describe several things such as first life, life on earth, etc. But you take that as me being ignorant?
I tried to explain to you why you couldn't take the exact English phrase and apply the same connotations to the Biblical phrase, but you ignore that.
Circle may not be the same as sphere, but it does run contrary to the explanation most had of the earth. They claimed it had four corners, so it was not a move from a circle to a sphere. It was a move from a square to a sphere. Cirlce gives an indication of the sphere. But even it had no connection to the shape of the Earth, none of that means the Bible talks about a flat Earth and none of that means that Creationists are as ignorant as those who believe in a flat Earth or geocentricism.
ANY young Earth creationist position is extreme/ignorant. To argue that the Earth is 6,000 years old is as nonsensical as arguing the Earth is flat. There is no way around that. It's simply cuckoo. The Chinese civilization is older than that, for goodness sake.
I explained my "miracle" comment. Leading atheist sceintist used that exact word to describe several things such as first life, life on earth, etc. But you take that as me being ignorant?
Think about it. Atheist. Miracle. Oxymoron. Nonesense.
You have taken Stephen Jay Gould's comments completely out of context recently so why should anyone trust you to not do the same with another scientist?
I tried to explain to you why you couldn't take the exact English phrase and apply the same connotations to the Biblical phrase, but you ignore that. Leviticus 11:6
Rabbits don't chew their cud Aaron. The bible got that wrong. You can try to spin it and spin it again but it just makes you seem dogmatic and immovable.
extreme creationist positions like flat earth
While terms like "the four corners of the earth" may indicate that early people perceived the earth as flat, and such terms as "circle of the earth" makes it seem to skeptics that biblical authors only thought in two dimensions, what they are ignorant of are (1) the phenomenological nature of scripture (e.g. describing the sun as "rising and setting" when in pure scientific terms, it doesn't do that), and (2) issues regarding figures of speech and bible translation.
Again, skeptics try to build their cases against scripture with such views as the flat earth myth.
However, the spherical earth was acknowledged from the beginning of Christianity. It's association with religion was a well-documented and untrue history created by Washington Irving in his retelling of the story of Columbus.
The polemic is still used by liberals who are, unfortunately, ignorant of history in this matter.
Rabbits don't chew their cud Aaron. The bible got that wrong.
No, (1) you got it wrong, since your narrow fundamentalist approach to bible interpretation makes you conclude that the earth must be flat, and you have no concept of such things are phenomenology and figures of speech, ad (2) the translators did their best in translating Hebrew into English.
But as I said, you have no interest in seeing the truths of scripture, you are looking to find fault. I suspect you will always find it, thinking that you are merely being rational. However, in this case, you are being dogmatic and clearly simplistic and irrational to make your point. Thank God your attack is so easily dismissed, else I might have had to re-examine my faith ;)
I read this the other day, but didnt post because I am a busy girl, plus I know most of you here consider me "ignorant" just like Louis does, so I don't know why you'd want me to chime it… but I will ;)
First of all. I agree with most of that letter to the 10 year old daughter. I tell my kids a lot of the same things. But I also tell them to check their references, in which I include the Bible.
I check Science this way too, ignorant as that may seem to you.
There is nothing in the Bible that states that when God created the Earth he did not use a big boom. But it also does not say that bits of the formless earth he put together were not much older than other bits he used to "form" the earth. (Genesis 1:2)
And he did not say that animals would not change at all to fit their environment. But they would produce their "kind". (Genesis 1:24) Which they do. I have yet to see science produce a horse from a mule.
As far as educating as opposed to indoctrinating…that is my goal as I raise my children :)
I firmly believe that people are lazy when it comes to their beliefs. They prefer to follow. And let other people do the math, so to speak.
I try to do the math with my own brain, thought and feelings. (I prefer more thought to feeling, myself…even though it doesnt appear that my thought process is as advanced as some of you think yours is…)
The thing is, that I also have faith. Which is my evidence of things not seen. I did NOT see the creation of the earth. I can assume no one else around today did either. So they claim scientific evidence that will change in theory from time to time…I claim to stay with the Bible. (I did not say with preconceived religious ideas people have claimed from the Bible)
I really think Science can discover many secrets of this earth and its goings on. But I really don't see how they make the Bible null. Because science has changed in theory so often that it seems rather confusing itself, truthfully.
The passages you refer to in Levitucus where God was telling them what to eat and stuff – the rabbit does appear to chew all the time. Maybe they are chewing crap, but it is referred to as cud in the Bible. They do chew, though. I don't understand how that is supposed to make me think the Bible is crap?
I am sorry that you think I am abjectly ignorant. :(
I know most of you here consider me "ignorant" just like Louis does.
I do not consider you stupid. Yes, I do consider creationists as "ignorant." But this is not intended as an insult. It just means that you lack knowledge of how evolution works. Abject ignorance comes about when one believes a superstition like Genesis, instead of facts.
I have nothing against you Lawanda, we just believe in different things. I do not think less of you for your beliefs. I think Islam, Christianity, Paganism, Scientology, Hinduism, etc are all equal: I am a secularist after all :) I meant what I said when I told you we need a woman's perspective on this blog. I have a Christian friend who is a lot like you; she has kids and was raised by her parents to believe, so she does. We are still friends though and it takes more understanding on both sides to remain friends than if we agreed on everything. But that's life. It's too short to spend any time on hate.
As far as educating as opposed to indoctrinating…that is my goal as I raise my children :)
To truely do this, then you can't teach them that the Bible is the source of all truth (except maybe for things like math). This is what Richard Dawkins was telling his daughter. What you will do now Lawanda, is tell me the the Bible IS the source of truth. Well, Muslims teach their children…
The Qur'an is the ultimate scientific truth. Nothing can contradict the Qur'an.
Lawanda, why should I believe the Bible over the Koran and vice versa? Are they not both religions which indoctrinate their children into believing one is better than the other? I am not sure you see what I am trying to show you but I can hope :)
"To truely do this, then you can't teach them that the Bible is the source of all truth (except maybe for things like math)."
You make me laugh so hard! rofl hehehe I like humor. ;) Plus I am glad you don't hate me. :)
I have to tell you the truth. I have not read the Koran in its entirety. I have read some of it and lots about it….And I view it much like I view the Book of Mormon, which I have read nearly all of. My view is that it is not the truth.
I was raised to look at other religious things and "try them". And so I have.
Both the Koran and the book of Mormon say an angel delivered them to their respective prophets. (Galatians 1:8) And both were written after the Bible and take ideas from the Bible. (And both readily admit this fact too.)
The Bible's duration and availability and, to me, it's wisdom – make it hard for me to ignore. Even if I were to try not to be a christian…I live by the words of the Bible, and have for so long, that it would be hard to turn me into a non-believer :)
And I guess that is indoctrination in a way. But it is also a fact of life that the beliefs of a person will be passed on to his/her children. The difference I think is in the fact that exploration is denied in indoctrination, where if you are trying to educate, then you encourage exploration of everything.
You can indoctrinate a child with your nonbelief of all things, too. If your child takes your word for it, or is never introduced to the Bible (or Koran or Book of Mormon, or what have you…) then what chance have they of not being a follower of just you?
A child is like a sponge, a young child will believe whatever he is told. When they start getting older they start questioning things. That is when they need to be told to search, not their hearts, but the world – for wisdom and true things.
And I want my children to be wise and good. I want them to be better than me, not follwers of me. And I want them to be thinkers, not just believers.
It just means that you lack knowledge of how evolution works
Actually, we often have the knowledge, just not the faith ;)
And I want my children to be wise and good. I want them to be better than me, not follwers of me. And I want them to be thinkers, not just believers.
Then stop teaching them to be ignorant.
Actually, we often have the knowledge, just not the faith ;)
8) Evolution is not a fact, because it is not reported in the Qur'an.
I am not an encyclopedia, I can only teach them what I know and observe. These human limitations, they are so hard to overcome unless you are an xman… :-p
I do teach them from encyclopedia's, though, and the internet is right handy. ;)
What kind of wisdom do you get from Darwin (who according to Sam's theory would be a moron)? And just how can an ignorant person become unignorant according to "secularism"? Throw away their Bible?
And you know, Darwin's grandad had a lot to do with how he came up with his theories…
This is an example of a child who has been indoctrinated into a religion. It makes no difference what the child's religious beliefs are. The fact of the matter is the kid has been brainwashed with Islam, Christianity, etc. Secularists teach their kids to decide for themeselves, they don't tell them the Koran or the Bible is fact and truth.
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To: Lawanda, Seeker, Aaron…
Psalms 14:1 – "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God" does not apply to me or ANYONE else who is intellectually skeptical about God's existence. I may have said "there is no God" in my mind but I did NOT say "there is no God" in my heart. The difference is, I am no fool.
Have a nice weekend!
Science will take other views. The key is, you have to have the ticket. The ticket? You have to have some experiments that provide data to back your claims.
Courts in the U.S. have repeatedly ruled that public schools must be open to alternative views, backed by data.
Alas for creationism and the minority American Christian view, there are no data supporting creationism that have not been falsified.