Evolution Sucks!
POSTED BY: dougp59
UPDATED: Monday, July 27, 2026 16:36
VIEWED: 32323
PAGE 8 of 20
I wouldn't go that far. I think every faith has the right to advertise itself, just as companies, non-profit organizations and governments routinely do. The problem for me comes when a religion makes itself law, thus enforcing the rules of their own theological doctrine on those who have not yet willing accepted the faith.
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You do have a point. My attitude comes from some overzealous followers of certain faiths and their demonstrated inability to stay within the bounds of what I consider acceptable behavior. The "give them an inch, they take a mile" syndrome. Evangelists must either learn to keep from being obnoxiously forward, or their behavior must be moderated by outside control. Freedom of religion does include freedom FROM religion, and my right to be free of it is a Constitutionally protected one.
ETA: I should clarify: by freedom from religion I don't mean I should never have to see a church, or someone wearing a star of David, or get offended if someone says, "god bless you" when I sneeze. That would be excessive. What it does mean is I have a Constitutional right to be free of laws imposed on me which are based on someone else's religion. For example, in New York I can't buy a beer before noon on Sunday. Why? Sure, buying a beer at 10AM on Sunday morning is far from a critical need, but there should be no law preventing me, unless that law serves a demonstrable public need and has no basis on religions which hold Sunday to be different from other days of the week. To me it's just a day off from work, and that's all it should be. If someone wants to honor their faith by abstaining until the sun's over the yard-arm, that's wonderful--just don't force (or even expect) me to do the same.
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"That's what governments are for, [to] get in a man's way." -- Malcolm Reynolds
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Jefferson was NOT a Christian. Altho he believed that a moral teacher named Jesus existed, he stripped away all miraculous attributions in his own "corrected" version of the Bible. He thought the Bible was written by men and that it justified willful ignorance, charlatanism, bigotry, and tyranny.
Quote:www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
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Please don't think they give a shit.
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Interesting. That seems to jibe with the way he references Jesus in this quote:
Quote:
But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer {Jesus} of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State. (Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1810; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 370)
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"That's what governments are for, [to] get in a man's way." -- Malcolm Reynolds
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Ultimately we're all in search of the truth right? Some choose to Evolution, and some choose Religion....
Fact is it's all acquired knowledge therefore equal leaps of faith in light of insuffiecient evidence.
The
Somnambulist
www.cirqus.com
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Quote:
Originally posted by heb:
I always assumed that 1+1 equalled 2 by definition but apparently here is the proof for it:
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/51551.html
No mathematician, but I find it odd that if the complete proof for 2+2=4 involves 2,109 subtheorems and 22,607 steps that 1+1=2 would be so short and succinct. I was under my assumption because when I was in college (over a decade ago), my calculus teacher mentioned the proof being hundreds of pages long and disputed.
Gödel supposedly showed that it is impossible to prove consistency of Peano arithmetic while assuming the axioms themselves.
As I am not mathematically inclined the arguments themselves go over my head, but I think the proof you linked assumes Peano's axioms to be a given and that may account for its brevity.
It is possible that it has not only been solved but that an easy solution was discovered (the universe was only 5 billion years old when I was in college, now its 10) and it is possible that I am mixing up recollections, cause I am almost as old as the universe (Ok, maybe not that much).
Quote:
Regarding the whole debate over whether ID is science:
The definition of science, as defined by Richard Feynman, is that the only test of knowledge is experiment.
From Wiki:
"Empiricism is therefore the philosophical doctrine (-ism) of "testing" or "experimentation," and has taken on the more specific meaning that all human knowledge ultimately comes from the senses and from experience. Empiricism denies that humans have innate ideas or that anything is knowable without reference to experience.
It is generally regarded as the heart of the modern scientific method, that present theories should be based on our observations of the world rather than on intuition or faith; that is, empirical research and a posteriori inductive reasoning rather than purely deductive logic."
Knowledge is sorrow; they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
-- Byron
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No idea about the 1+1 thing sorry. I just googled it. Whoever's original point it was though is still valid seeing as you can prove 2+2= 4 even if you can't yet prove 1+1=2.
Sorry I'm not sure I follow what your view is on the science thing?
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Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
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I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
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Quote:
Origianlly posted by Dreamtrove:
I wouldn't go that far. I think every faith has the right to advertise itself, just as companies, non-profit organizations and governments routinely do. The problem for me comes when a religion makes itself law, thus enforcing the rules of their own theological doctrine on those who have not yet willing accepted the faith.
Just because it's gettin' all philosophical:
What makes a religion forcing its rules on other people any different to a Government forcing its laws on people?
Smoking in public places is illegal in some places, what's the difference between forcing a smoker not to smoke and forcing someone to adhere to another religions rule?
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.
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I think I can defer to Thomas Jefferson to answer that one, citizen:
Quote:
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 42-43. )
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"That's what governments are for, [to] get in a man's way." -- Malcolm Reynolds
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I'd agree, but Governments don't just enforce laws that are about injury to others, and religous laws aren't solely about only worshipping that religion.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.
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