posted
If our Government is permitted to pay for a Christian symbol, like the "Ten Commandments" to be erected in the lobby of a public courthouse, it must also pay for and permit any and all other Religious symbols to be similarly placed, (such as a gigantic gold Statue of Buddha, for example). Otherwise it will be seen as discriminatory.
Therefore, it makes sense to allow NO religious symbols of any kind in public buildings.
The same goes for public funding of "Faith-Based" organizations. Unless you support ALL equally, (which this administration clearly doesn't), it will be perceived (quite rightly) as favoritism.
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Most of the artwork, Ten Commandments, etc on the walls of government buildings are there because of private donations. If a group of people want to display a giant golden buddah in the lobby of the local courthouse, more power to them. It is their right under the Constitution.
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USA, Sep 25 (VNN) — Commentary by Bill Press - September 03, 2003 Thank God for the people of Alabama. They make the rest of us look normal.
A band of Alabama zealots, led by Chief Justice Roy Moore, are determined to keep a monument of the Ten Commandments prominently displayed in an Alabama judicial building.
Under orders of a federal judge, the 5,300-pound monument known as "Roy's Rock" was moved out of the building's rotunda - where it had been installed by Moore in the middle of the night two years ago. Moore has been suspended as chief justice for refusing to obey the law. But he and his deluded followers insist they will continue their protests and legal battles until Moore is back on the bench and the giant granite tablets are back in their place of honor.
In the latest USA Today poll, four out of five Americans say they agree with Moore. But the conservative Wall Street Journal chastised him for making a federal case out of displaying the Ten Commandments.
Moore claims that, by ordering him to take down the monument, federal courts are violating his First Amendment right of freedom of religion. They want to take God out of this country, he and his supporters charge. They won't let them practice their religion.
Nonsense. They've got it backwards. These Christians can pray, worship, sing hymns or read the Bible all they want. They just can't plant a two-ton monument to their particular religion in a government building - and, in effect, turn that building into a religious shrine. Why not? Because it amounts to an official endorsement of one religion over others.
Don't believe it? Ask the Montgomery protestors. I did, on Buchanan and Press . Since he defended religious displays in state buildings, I asked Bob Jewitt of the Christian Defense Coalition if he would support a group of Hare Krishna members erecting a shrine of their own in the state courthouse - in front of which they would dance around in their saffron robes, sing Hare Krishna and burn incense. No way, he said. They didn't deserve the same right as Christians because they weren't around when this country was founded.
Bingo. In other words, Moore's band of Alabama Christians believe in freedom of religion but only for themselves. Christians can erect a monument to the Ten Commandments, but Buddhists can't put up a statue of Buddha. Don't these dingbats get it? That is nothing less than establishment of a state religion - the very evil the First Amendment was designed to protect us against.
Moore makes one other argument: The Ten Commandments belong in the courthouse because they're the foundation of all Western law. Honestly, how did this guy get through law school? He's wrong on that one, too.
There's a big difference between God's law and man's law. It's against the Commandments to dishonor your father or mother, but not against the law. And you won't get sent to jail for not going to church on Sunday either. The Ten Commandments are but one of many sources of our legal legacy, stretching from Hammurabi's Code to King John's Magna Carta. Poor old Hammurabi. No monument to him in the rotunda.
Speaking of religion, what I wonder is: In all of his phony frenzy, did Moore ever stop and ask himself, "What would Jesus do?" In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us: "When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that people may see them. Believe me, they have all the reward they are ever going to get. But when you pray, go into your own room, shut the door and pray to your Father in private. And your Father, who sees all private things, will reward you."
One thing for sure: Jesus would not be flaunting his religion in the rotunda of the Alabama state courthouse.
Bill Press is co-host of MSNBC's Buchanan and Press.
Actually, I am among the 4 out of 5 that support the 10 commandments in the lobby. It doesn't really give the breakdown of those that would favor a buddah in the lobby, but I would be among those that would allow it under the Constitution. I also recognize that my view may be in the minority in allowing the buddah.
I draw the line at sacrificing goats in the endzone however as that would be a definate violation of the delay of game rule.
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posted
I think my interpretation makes more sense for the common good.
If our Government permits the display of a Christian symbol, like the "Ten Commandments" to be erected in the lobby of a public courthouse, it must also permit any and all other Religious symbols to be similarly placed, (such as a gigantic gold Statue of Buddha, for example). Otherwise it will be seen as discriminatory.
Therefore, it makes NO sense to allow any religious symbols in public buildings.
The same goes for public funding of "Faith-Based" organizations. Unless you support ALL equally, (which this administration clearly doesn't), it will be perceived (quite rightly) as favoritism.
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And like I said, the government doesn't normally pay for these symbols, they are donated by the public. If the government is paying for them, I share your view on that aspect of the discussion.
I personally don't want the government spending money on any decorations be they pictures of the ocean or the 10 commandments. I feel there are more important things for our government to be spending money on or simply spending less.
I have no problem with governmental support of faith-based organizations. They are generally going to be more efficient with the money than the governmental bueracracy will be. Which is this administration not supporting equally? I'm not saying they aren't, I'm just curious.
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I really have no idea on Roy Moore's run for Governor. I don't live in Alabama but if he does win, it is the choice of the people, same as if he loses.
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posted
The Bush Administration has made it clear that unless explicitly prohibited by Congress, it will allow religious organizations that receive federal funds to discriminate against job applicants and the needy on the basis of religion, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, HIV status or any other characteristic that the religious organization finds objectionable.
At its core, the faith-based initiative is not about providing additional social services to the needy. Rather, it is about proselytizing and advancing religion with our tax dollars.
Government can and does work appropriately with faith-based organizations. But under this initiative religious groups are not required to play by the same rules as other non-profits. This is unfair. Whether an organization is faith-based or not, there must be adequate protections in place to protect individual civil rights and religious freedom.
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Well, they are religious organizations, they are entitled to their beliefs without governmental interferance, it's that Constitution thing.
Giving them money is not passing a law which is prevented by the Constitution. Congress as always has the ability to make law, not the President.
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posted
While we're on the subject, let's talk about how Christians are pushing the government to spread their religion by trying to get intelligent design taught in SCIENCE classes of all places.
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My money goes to a lot of things I don't support either. The only remedy to that and it is a limited one is to participate in the voting process.
I don't support intelligent design in the classroom. I think it is foolish. I do support the same coverage of Christianity in History and Social Studies that is given to the other religions when studying specific regions or peoples. While you may not agree with a religion, if you want to understand the people, you need to understand their religion.
What upsets people is when the theory of evolution is taught as fact when it remains a theory. I happen to consider it a valid theory as natural selection processes continue around us and species have changed even in the short time humans have been able to document them. But the full theory is unproven, we simply have no way of doing so.
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posted
Or be rich enough to qualify for federal subsidy.
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: My money goes to a lot of things I don't support either. The only remedy to that and it is a limited one is to participate in the voting process.
posted
The Daily Dose: Smarten up and support evolution
If you’re an American who drives a luxury car and makes a six-figure salary, chances are you support evolution over creationism.
By Matt Donnelly (October 17, 2005)
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jane Eisner makes an interesting observation regarding American views on evolution, creationism and intelligent design. Citing the results of a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll that found 53 percent of Americans are creationists, she notes that income and education are the most important predictors of where Americans come down on the topic.
It may not even surprise you to learn that Protestants are way more likely to be biblical literalists than anyone else, including Catholics.
But here's the uncomfortable revelation: Opinion on evolution is broadly correlated to income. Those in the lowest income brackets are twice as likely to view the Adam and Eve story as incontrovertible fact than are those at the top of the salary scale.
You might say: This is only a poll, only a snapshot. True. But the picture here is echoed in other surveys that have found a sharp difference in views on evolution and creationism based on education level. College graduates are twice as likely as those with just a high school diploma to accept the natural-selection theory of evolution.
Polite company generally tries to change the subject when such observations are raised. We are still distinctly uncomfortable when noting the connection between class and education, but it exists: The more money you have, the more likely you are to be better educated, the more likely you are to have attained an understanding of and appreciation for scientific knowledge.
Of course, this leaves out intelligent design advocates, many of whom hold doctorates in math and science from schools such as Harvard and the University of California-Berkeley. And critics of the survey will still insist that it proves their point about the indoctrination going on in American higher education.
Nonetheless, Eisner goes on to make the important – and seemingly indisputable — point that populism has bred a certain distrust of science in America:
In one survey, for instance, nearly half of those who believe in creationism think the scientific community is divided over the evolution question. That's just plain wrong. The scientific community overwhelmingly accepts evolutionary theory, unless or until something better comes along.
"We used to have a lot more deference in this country for those who knew more than us," notes Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
"In the last 30 years, we have become less deferential, much more populist, and in many ways, I'm glad because we're more open and less elitist," Wolfe says. "But you lose something when you lose deference."
For more on the intelligent design debate, see the November issue of Science & Theology News.
posted
"Intellegent design" isn't science and it isn't any kind of scollarly endevor, which is what school is all about. "Intellegent design" is a religious doctrin. If you first ammend the Constitutuon, removing the phrase "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...", then it would be legal.
To require the teaching of a religious doctrin, which is what "intellegent design" is, in a Government funded school, without first ammending the Constitution, violates the limitation that declares that Congress can not do that.
The provision of the Constitution that guarantees you may practice whatever religion you choose does not extent to practicing it in such a way as to force others to participate.
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I can see learning about the Intellegent Design concept in a Social Studies class, as long as they made it clear it was only one of many theories, and they covered other odd religious practices and beliefs as well, like voodoo and female circumcision.
It has absolutely no place in a Science class.
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posted
Intelligent design can very well be a scientific theory. There people that believe that the earth was populated or "seeded" by extraterestrials. These same people sometimes treat these extraterestrials as "god" and the Bible as a "how to manual".
So we and everything on the earth could conceivably have been created in the lab of some more advanced species.
It that is the case, the theory of evolution is incorrect.
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posted
natural selection is proven correct tho....
that could also be a part of intelligent design...
the problem with presenting intelligent design in science class In My Opinion is that we have no evidence at all... evolution? we do have a lot of evidence....
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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I agree that natural selection has been proven correct, at least to the point we can measure and see it. The proponents of intelligent design argue that the natural selection process is too slow or to inefficient to have led to the huge diversity of species the planet has. In that, they are correct as we understand science today.
Then again, we may simply not have advanced sufficiently. There's a quote out there that is something to the effect that magic is simply science which we are incapable of understanding. A flashlight for example would have been magic to someone living in the middle ages.
The same theory can be applied to intelligent design, we do not understand it, yet that lack of understanding does not invalidate it.
I don't think it has a place for serious study in science. It does not have any substantive evidence proven through scientific research. It can however be offered as it is being attempted to be offered today as simply an alternative. That the theory of evolution is not the only possibility.
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When they told us in Sunday School that God is everywhere, they could have been talking about the recent news cycle. With Harriet Miers, we see that God lives in the politics of the US Supreme Court nomination process. In a culture defined by the separation of church and state, President Bush and his allies have mastered the use of religious affirmation as a deflection not only of criticism, but of critical thought. God is thus a trump card, a free pass. If the president, senators, and members of Congress can justify their decisions by appeals to God, why not judges?
''Acts of God" is the phrase applied to staggering natural disasters, from Katrina and the Pakistan earthquake to the coming avian flu. At the same time, survivors of such catastrophes credit God for having saved them, as if God callously let all those others die. Humans are perplexed when wanton suffering occurs, especially among children, and assumptions about God are overturned. The question becomes, How could God let this happen? Today, in Pakistan, where fatal disease, hunger, and thirst go unabated, the very ones who praised God last week for sparing them are pleading with God now, to no avail.
In the argument between creationists and scientists, those aiming to defend God make absolute claims about mysteries of the deep past as if they themselves were there. Air Force flyers have thought of God as their co-pilot in the past, but in today's Air Force, God sits atop the chain-of-command. At the US Air Force Academy, which was rocked by sex scandals not long ago, God is now the designated dean of discipline, but this jeopardizes infidel careers. Unit cohesion requires conversion. Indeed, displays of faith can be a prerequisite for promotion throughout a government where the White House itself is a House of God. In Iraq, meanwhile, someone will turn his body into a bomb today, killing others by blowing himself up while saying, ''God is great!"
Who is this ''God" in whose name so many diverse and troubling things take place? Why is it assumed to be good to affirm one's faith in such an entity? Why is it thought to be wicked to deny its existence? Most striking about so much talk of ''God," both to affirm and to deny, is the way in which many who use this language seem to know exactly to what and/or whom it refers. God is spoken of as if God is the Wizard of Oz or the great CEO in the sky or Grampa or the Grand Inquisitor. God is the clock-maker, the puppeteer, the author. God is the light, the mother, the wind across the sea, the breath in every set of lungs. God is the horizon. God is all of these things.
But what if God is none of them? What if every possible affirmation that can be made of God, even by the so-called religions of revelation, falls so far short of the truth of God as to be false? Who is the atheist then? The glib God-talk that infuses public discourse in contemporary America descends from an anthropomorphic habit of mind, dating to the Bible and beyond, that treats God like an intimate friend or well-known enemy, depending on the weather and the outcome of battles. But there is another strain in the Biblical tradition that insists on the radical otherness of God, an otherness so complete that even the use of the word ''God" as a name for this Other One is forbidden. According to this understanding, God is God precisely in escaping and transcending comprehension by human beings. This can seem to mean that God is simply unknowable. If so, humans are better off not bothering about it. Atheism, agnosticism, or childish anthropomorphism -- all the same.
But here is where it gets tricky. What if God's unknowability is the most illuminating profundity humans can know about God? That would mean that religious language, instead of opening into the absolute certitude on which all forms of triumphal superiority are based, would open into true modesty. The closed creation, in which every question has an answer, would be replaced by an infinite cosmos where every answer sparks a new question. If what we mean by ''God" is the living pulse of such open-endedness, then God is of no use in systems of dominance, censorship, power. God is everywhere, yes. But, also, God is nowhere. And that, too, shows in America, especially in its fake religiosity.
posted
strider, there is a new discovery (30 yrs or so) that helps (only HELPS) explain the high speed of diversity...
plasmids/transposable elements....
circular DNA that has the ability to "migrate" from one individual to another... some liken it to "parallel evolution, but i'm not sure that is a proper "analogy"...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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You have a website that goes into detail on that, it sounds interesting. I did a brief search and only found very basic references to the connection. It seemed for the most part that the scientific work in that field is for genetic engineering in the lab and not that of naturally occuring instances.
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they are showing up almost everywhere we look now that we know how to find them... a useful one ( or even a non-useful one) is patentable, but it is so early in the game that getting a patent instead of keeping it secret until you know how to make it profitable is kinda silly...
they are modified and used to "do what they do"....
dogs took us inly 10,000 years or maybe 20k? to get some high variability.... i don't know if you can call what we did with them "intelligent" tho
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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In the case of dogs though they remain the same species. If we stop selective breeding, they will all eventually revert to the same "mutt" dog.
I watched a great show on pigs a few weeks ago. It was primarily about "hogzilla" that supposedly huge wild pig shot and then buried somewhere in the south.
A domestic "pink" pig will turn into something that looks like a wild boar in a matter of months if it is removed from its farm existence. They don't fully understand why this occurs.
As the pigs reproduce in the wild, they eventually turn into the more ancient form of boars with long snouts and tusks.
Hogzilla was not a pure wild boar, one parent was first generation farm pig. All wild boars in the United States are descended from escaped domestic pigs, some as far back as the Spaniards.
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He who believes "intellegent design" can be made to be scientific either lacks a very much knowledge of and about science, is enguaged in wishful thinking, or is talking about something different from what the phrase "intellegen design" is usually intended to convey.
As to the notion that "intellegent design can or should be offered along side of evolution as an alternative "theory":
1) evolution is not a "theory", just as gravity, (refered to in it's formal study as the "theory" of gravity) is not a "theory". The term "theory" as use in "the theory of gravity" the "theory" of evolution, or "quantum theory" refers not to the concept itself, but to the the structure of the description of the mechanisms of the concept. For example, in the "theory of gravity" one may be working with Newton's equations or with those of Einstein. Either provides a mechanical and mathematical model to "calculate" the actions of gravity (not the fact of the reality of gravity, which exists independently of any theory of it's mechanisms.) In other words, the "theory" in these studies involves how to describe the actions and effects, not the existance or reality of gravity.
2)the "intellegent design" that is being proported for indoctrination of children declares that it is fact, [I]rather{/I] than evolution! There is no room left to say it is left to the children to consider them together or equally.
3)"intellegent design" is proported to be beyond human concept and incapable of scientific testing, thus beyond scientific investigation, making it not an area of scolarly study, but, in fact, a dogma. It is religious.
4) according to "intellegent design", within it's fundamental claim is the demand that evolution be false (it assumes that the universe as it exists is too complicated to have come to that existance through any humanly describable and humanly understandable process), i.e., it is an advocacy not a conceptual entity, thus, in this sense, it is a political tool instead of a scolarly consideration.
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Gravity is measurable, it is proven. It is not a theory.
Evolution is not measurable beyond the capabilities of science to do so. It has not been proven, it is a theory. It is taught as a theory.
What evolution can we measure through the capabilities of science? Man getting larger, faster, stronger through time? Not really. That can be the direct result of intelligence, better diet, exercise, etc.
What scientific study has shown the creation of a new species through evolution? This is the problem. There is no absolute proof that any species evolved from another. Human attempts to create new species by cross breeding etc have resulted in new animals, such as mules, but they are sterile. They remain nothing but a cross between a horse and a donkey.
That is why evolution remains a theory, not a scientific fact.
I happen to believe in evolution but it still remains a theory.
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