NOVA - Intelligent Design On Trial

[FireFly]

Originally Posted by Burninator

Keep in mind that most of this advocacy is happening to teach ID/Creationism in public schools. The only place it belongs in public school is a religion class. ID/Creationism is entirely religious. If parents want to delude their children at home and at church claiming the earth to be 6000 years old, they are free to do so. I don't like it, but they are still free to do it.

Who says that all ID thinkers believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old? It is possible to beleive that God, instead of the big bang, set in motion evolution, and it's possible to believe the world is billions of years old while beleiving in evolution.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

religion is older than christ.
religion didnt start with the bible.
just look at the native americans and their belief systems
and hey maybe i should seperate ethics/morality from religion..i dunno they always have seemed to go hand and hand

To say religion and ethics/morality go hand in hand would be kind of like saying a pizza is made of sauce and flour.

In other words, you're missing a giant piece of the puzzle. Yes, religious institutions do influence the ethics and morality of a certain society, but the thing is the same is true of ALL Social Institutions. Politicial institutions, Kinship institutions, Economic institutions, power structures all play a role in development and upholding of the framework within a society.

See if you wanted to simplify it based strictly on religion, how would you explain the commonality between certain beliefs? Most civilizations/societies have Taboos against killing someone else. The thing is the idea of not killing someone else didn't come from any certain religion, but a basic human desire to survive. In order to support that morality, institutions were designed to reinforce that belief.

No, if you to say it more correctly, you'd say "Ethics and Morality is a product of Civilization". Not just Religion, which does play a part, but they do not go hand and hand any less than the other parts of the social system.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by FireFly

Who says that all ID thinkers believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old? It is possible to beleive that God, instead of the big bang, set in motion evolution, and it's possible to believe the world is billions of years old while beleiving in evolution.

The 6000 year old earth belief is the one that is the most pushed by the creationists. Like in this case. Either way, saying that evolution was started by a god, or is guided by a god does nothing for science. In fact it's a detriment for science. I'll let this cartoon explain why it doesn't work.


I'm not saying you can't hold the belief that evolution is influenced/guided by god. But I am saying that the belief hurts the science, when it's used as such.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

However, when you have pollsters asking incredibly general questions like "Was the US founded on Christian principles?" it's pretty hard to answer NO to that question. A YES answer doesn't necessarily equate to all that you have suggested it does though I am sure it does in some cases.

Since no-one in this thread really asked that question, we may be getting slightly off-track. But my point was that I WOULD answer no to that question. The framers were enlightenment humanists. They founded the nation based on enlightenment humanism--and because they were either implicitly or (in many cases) explicitly not even Christians, to claim that somehow religious principles of any kind were in the backs of their minds is absurd.

This is the true irony: as it's written, the U.S. is one of the oldest countries in the world that is founded on purely secular principles. Yet you wouldn't know it sometimes, the way a few people on the Christian right talk about their ideology as though it were somehow justified by a strict reading of the constitution.

What's weirder is that as hard as those Christians (they're by no means ALL Christians--or even good Christians, IMO) work to claim the framers as scions of Christian principles, they are unwilling to claim the famous and brilliant American thinkers who really WERE Christians: Emerson and Thoreau. Add to that William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and a number of others and there are plenty of Christians to choose from. Why doesn't Pat Robertson (as a for instance) associate himself with Emerson? Why does he try to claim people like Franklin and Jefferson, both of whom found religion pretty irrelevant to their lives?

It's a puzzle. But one thing is for sure. The U.S. was not founded on "Christian principles," however you care to define the term. It was not even--and this is important--founded by Christians at all.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Since no-one in this thread really asked that question, we may be getting slightly off-track. But my point was that I WOULD answer no to that question. The framers were enlightenment humanists. They founded the nation based on enlightenment humanism--and because they were either implicitly or (in many cases) explicitly not even Christians, to claim that somehow religious principles of any kind were in the backs of their minds is absurd.

This is the true irony: as it's written, the U.S. is one of the oldest countries in the world that is founded on purely secular principles. Yet you wouldn't know it sometimes, the way a few people on the Christian right talk about their ideology as though it were somehow justified by a strict reading of the constitution.

What's weirder is that as hard as those Christians (they're by no means ALL Christians--or even good Christians, IMO) work to claim the framers as scions of Christian principles, they are unwilling to claim the famous and brilliant American thinkers who really WERE Christians: Emerson and Thoreau. Add to that William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and a number of others and there are plenty of Christians to choose from. Why doesn't Pat Robertson (as a for instance) associate himself with Emerson? Why does he try to claim people like Franklin and Jefferson, both of whom found religion pretty irrelevant to their lives?

It's a puzzle. But one thing is for sure. The U.S. was not founded on "Christian principles," however you care to define the term. It was not even--and this is important--founded by Christians at all.

Wow, where to begin!

We're not off track at all. You stated that you can't believe how many Americans believe that America was founded on Christian principles. I'm not arguing your history at all, I know it well. The problem is that when people make the statement that America was founded on Christian principles they may not mean what you think they do. If I'm asked that question, and you totally missed this I guess, I would answer yes. Not because the founders were Christians, they weren't. Not because morality was born the same day as Christianity, it wasn't. Simply because the vision set forth by the founders adheres, whether by design or not, to basic principles of morality that are held in high regard by Christianity and any number of other faiths. The term Christian principles can be interpreted in a number of different ways and the important interpretation in this discussion is the one for each specific person that you referred to as believing the country was founded on Christian principles. Your interpretation is irrelevant! Do you understand my point?

As for Pat Robertson, who cares? The guy is a fruit. The answer to your question is simple....Robertson can influence politics by falsely claiming 'Christian brotherhood' with Frankling and Jefferson. Yeah a lot of evangelicals follow him and his ilk, but I guarantee that number is far less than most of the people on this forum want to believe. I look at some of the things posted here about the makeup of America and it makes me laugh. So far off base. Yes, there is an element. No, we are not teaching creationism in school even if some loon proposes it and gets a vote on it in the state school board. I'm in the middle of it, I would know!

Your last paragraph, well....I don't know what to tell you. If someone says they believe the US was founded on Christian principles they aren't necessarily wrong...whether you like it or not. If they say it was founded by Christians, that's another story. Finally, the fact that the founders were not Christians did not prohibit them from forming a nation based on principles that most Christians hold as their own.

[MelBridgeman]

Guess what the reality is...for lack of a better term, the majority of people are simple...it would takes years of education to even start to understand the complexity of evolution and even that and 100+ years of research isnt going to give you all the answers to your questions on the subject, so it just a lot easier to believe in what you have been brought up with in most cases, which is pretty simple, a higher power is responsible for all this complexity, not chance! Even for the most educated person, it should be easy to see that...people are always looking for answers, not neccesarily the right one, but maybe the easiest to understand or accept...and as much as i agree with richard dawkins that is the one thing he fails to understand, human nature...which makes his arguments so incredibly biased its not even funny, he doesnt even attempt to explain the hold that religion has on society and history...cause he doesnt understand it...he just calls it stupid ( i agee! But i understand it)..which IMO makes him look like an idiot.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

1. Yes and thanks for the absurb examples, just helps prove my point.

Those examples are no more absurd than believing or teaching that the earth is 6000 years old and that human beings and dinosaurs were alive at the same time.

How exactly did I "prove your point"?

2. Its true..[/quote]

Maybe, but like I said, it's not exactly an endorsement of religion to say "well, we'd be doing all this terrible stuff in the name of _____________ if we weren't doing it in the name of some religion".

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Those examples are no more absurd than believing or teaching that the earth is 6000 years old and that human beings and dinosaurs were alive at the same time.

How exactly did I "prove your point"?

2. Its true..

Maybe, but like I said, it's not exactly an endorsement of religion to say "well, we'd be doing all this terrible stuff in the name of _____________ if we weren't doing it in the name of some religion".[/quote]

Jesus! That whole 6000 year old theory is over blown by the media, it is a fundamentalist ideology, hardly popular amongst most christians...

My point is people kill people guns dont...people oppress people religion doesnt..

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by Calculon

DFF...

Could you give a few examples of "Christian principles" that the United States was founded upon? What sets these Christian principles apart from the principles of other philosophies? Where did they get these Christian principles from? A concensus of Christians at the time? Church doctrine?

Sorry to bombard you with questions, but I'm curious.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Basic laws that govern most nations. Laws against theft, murder, rape etc. Man's inherent right to freedom.

All of these things are expoused by Christianity and other religions. Are they exclusively Christian principles? No. I made that clear earlier.

But if you ask someone if the US was founded on Christian principles and they think of the principles I listed above would you not expect a portion of them to say yes without even considering the religion of the founders? I would.

What sets them apart? Nothing. That's my whole point really.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Jesus! That whole 6000 year old theory is over blown by the media, it is a fundamentalist ideology, hardly popular amongst most christians...

..

I've never heard of it or seen anything about it outside of this very messageboard!

[jammies]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Basic laws that govern most nations. Laws against theft, murder, rape etc. Man's inherent right to freedom.

"Life" - well maybe, "life" is pretty vague to begin with.
"Liberty" - nope. Liberty (as set forth in the US Constitution) derives from the Greeks originally, then philosophical movements in the 17th and 18th centuries. If anything the relationship is the other way around - Christianity has gained a veneer of liberty due to democratic and egalitarian thought, not vice-versa.
"The pursuit of happiness" - Again, no. Not in this world, anyway, which is what the phrase refers to. Christians suffer in this world in order to be happy in the next.
"Basic laws" - the US legal tradition comes from the Romans, British common law, and philosophy of the 17th/18th century (again), not the Bible or Christianity. There is no Xian equivalent of Koranic law that operates in the USA.
"Laws again theft, etc" So the Chinese, for example, didn't ban murder before they heard of Christianity? Sure, ok. These are common to the vast majority of societies, and thus cannot be called "Christian".
"Man's inherent right to freedom" You're killing me here. The Bible was explicitly used by the slave states to support their "peculiar institution". Again, Christianity has changed in response to changing values in society, not the other way around.

The USA was not founded as a Christian nation. Those Christians who claim it is, are either deluded or lying. In any event, "Christian" values don't even exist - the variation in beliefs between different denominations makes the idea ludicrous. The US founding fathers understood this, too bad their inheritors do not.

[flamesfever]

If most of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence were religious men, and their religion was Christianity. Would it not follow that the ideas which constitute the Declaration, stem either directly or indirectly from Christianity?

[evman150]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Guess what the reality is...for lack of a better term, the majority of people are simple...it would takes years of education to even start to understand the complexity of evolution and even that and 100+ years of research isnt going to give you all the answers to your questions on the subject, so it just a lot easier to believe in what you have been brought up with in most cases, which is pretty simple, a higher power is responsible for all this complexity, not chance! Even for the most educated person, it should be easy to see that...people are always looking for answers, not neccesarily the right one, but maybe the easiest to understand or accept...and as much as i agree with richard dawkins that is the one thing he fails to understand, human nature...which makes his arguments so incredibly biased its not even funny, he doesnt even attempt to explain the hold that religion has on society and history...cause he doesnt understand it...he just calls it stupid ( i agee! But i understand it)..which IMO makes him look like an idiot.

So because it's easier to be ignorant, that makes it okay?

Jeez, why don't we all just give up and go back to the dark ages?

So tragically backward...

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by flamesfever

If most of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence were religious men, and their religion was Christianity. Would it not follow that the ideas which constitute the Declaration, stem either directly or indirectly from Christianity?

This is the idea that I was talking about.

Most of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence were not Christians. Not even close. I covered this in the posts above, but I'll stress it again. The U.S. was pretty much founded on secular humanist principles.

But even if they had been, your claim wouldn't follow--and this is where I suspect Dis and I are not that far apart. Christians can hold enlightenment principles. Enlightenment thinkers can be Christians. But to say that Jefferson was a "religious man" or that Franklin was a "Christian" is to use definitions of those terms that I for one don't recognize.

Dis: I can see what your point is re: the term "Christian principles," but I think that we may be quibbling a little over how the term is used. For me, part of the value of the real foundational principles of the U.S. is their roots in enlightenment thought. To me, describing them as "Christian" gives the false impression that somehow these beliefs derived from Christianity when in fact they were basically secular beliefs. I agree that Pat Robertson is a loon--but I think the perpetuation of the notion of the founding fathers as Christians is potentially damaging to the political conversation, because it runs the risk of justifying the agenda of theocracy that Robertson and the Christian right fairly explicitly state as their goal. One of "his ilk" in my opinion is the born-again George W. Bush, whose apocalyptic view of the intersection between religion and politics is well known.

That's not to minimize the role of Christianity in U.S. history: as I've said before, the U.S. was founded by secular humanists, but slavery was more or less ended by evangelical Christians, to give just one example.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Jesus! That whole 6000 year old theory is over blown by the media, it is a fundamentalist ideology, hardly popular amongst most christians...

My point is people kill people guns dont...people oppress people religion doesnt..

Hey, I have a friend who is christian. Never bothered me until about a month ago when I discovered that he indeed believes the earth is 7000 years old.


And as for the 'people oppress people, not religion', I respectfully disagree. The catholic church is entirely based on oppression. Whether you want to discuss their systematic oppression of women or whether you would rather discuss how they force their own priests into celebacy to retain their estate. How about the fact that they take and take and take from their often very poor followers to build giant buildings with with very little use or versatility. AND they all send money to a central organization (vatican) to pay for what exactly? Bibles? Ok.

So what is your argument here? That because it is people doing it, it is not religion's fault? So what is the point of religion? A moral guideline? A sense of hope? How can religion be good when it's good, but the fault of men when it is not doing good? That's a total cop out.

[photon]

Interesting thread, and I'm looking forward to seeing this series. Currently on vacation in California though, so will check it out when I get back next week.

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

I've never heard of it or seen anything about it outside of this very messageboard!

On the other hand I was taught it and raised to believe it since I was seven years old, and I'm from the less religious Canada! These groups do exist, and in some places they have quite a bit of power and influence. And while that one creation museum gets all the press, there are many similar ones out there that talk about the 6000 year old earth, there's even one in Alberta.

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Guess what the reality is...for lack of a better term, the majority of people are simple...it would takes years of education to even start to understand the complexity of evolution and even that and 100+ years of research isnt going to give you all the answers to your questions on the subject, so it just a lot easier to believe in what you have been brought up with in most cases, which is pretty simple, a higher power is responsible for all this complexity, not chance! Even for the most educated person, it should be easy to see that...people are always looking for answers, not neccesarily the right one, but maybe the easiest to understand or accept...

I tend to agree with this. I read an article recently that made a pretty good argument that most people that disbelieve evolution don't really do so on the basis of their faith, but more simply because evolution is counter-intuitive. It requires work to understand.

Of course anything that's worth knowing takes work to understand. And that just further illustrates the failing of the education system; they have to do a better job of teaching it. That the earth isn't flat used to be counter-intuitive, but it isn't anymore.

and as much as i agree with richard dawkins that is the one thing he fails to understand, human nature...which makes his arguments so incredibly biased its not even funny, he doesnt even attempt to explain the hold that religion has on society and history...cause he doesnt understand it...he just calls it stupid ( i agee! But i understand it)..which IMO makes him look like an idiot.

I don't think he fails to understand it at all, I think he does a good job of showing he does understand it in his books.. I don't think he has any patience for it though and he thinks we have to grow up and move past that human nature.

Anyway, sorry to drive-by the thread, back to the sun and fun for me

[metal_geek]

More then half the people in this world belive that christianity is as big a joke as Creationists think Evolution is..

Normally I could care less about religon. I sent my kindergarden age child to a catholic school, because my wife was baptised catholic, and the school was 2 blocks away. Safest thing for my family. They had this think called "Thanking Time", great idea right?.. Was a great idea, untill my child who loves space talk and astronomy concepts was corrected during "Thanking time" when he said "I'm thankful for Aliens" and the teacher said "sorry, there are no such thing as Aliens"... We promtly REMOVED him from that school..

Religon based intollerance is EVERYWHERE, not just "Bible belts" and Cults. It lives in and stinks up Calgary Suburbs too..
________
Arizona Medical Marijuana

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by evman150

So because it's easier to be ignorant, that makes it okay?

Jeez, why don't we all just give up and go back to the dark ages?

So tragically backward...

Never said it was ok it did use the word reality is

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by 4X4

Hey, I have a friend who is christian. Never bothered me until about a month ago when I discovered that he indeed believes the earth is 7000 years old.


And as for the 'people oppress people, not religion', I respectfully disagree. The catholic church is entirely based on oppression. Whether you want to discuss their systematic oppression of women or whether you would rather discuss how they force their own priests into celebacy to retain their estate. How about the fact that they take and take and take from their often very poor followers to build giant buildings with with very little use or versatility. AND they all send money to a central organization (vatican) to pay for what exactly? Bibles? Ok.

So what is your argument here? That because it is people doing it, it is not religion's fault? So what is the point of religion? A moral guideline? A sense of hope? How can religion be good when it's good, but the fault of men when it is not doing good? That's a total cop out.

1. I pay money every pay cheque to a central organization, in fear of jail time for what? Sponorship scandals? A war? Give me a break..

2. If anything the church does a good job on not being hyprocritcal for the most part...If you don't want to be celebate than don't be a priest, no one is forcing you to be. And if you do become a priest than you must agree with that rule...again how is that oppression? How do they oppress anyone? Everyone one has the right not to follow their rules, with no fear of punishment. I could go to a mass tommorrow and not even put any money in the collection bowl and no one would bat an eye..i am not forced to do anything..trust me as someone who grew up in a catholic family and went to church until i was old enough to decide it wasnt for me...it was nothing but a positive experience, wouldnt change it for anything...Let me tell you, my mom and her mom aren't being oppress by the church.. You are a catholic woman and want to have an abortion? No one is stopping you..remeber its all about forgiveness..


It is not a total cop out champ, the point of religion is different for everyone...take out religion you will still have oppression...it isnt hard to understand that humans oppress humans...and justifications for that oppression isnt always religion...just like guns dont kill people, people do..same idea

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by metal_geek

More then half the people in this world belive that christianity is as big a joke as Creationists think Evolution is..

Normally I could care less about religon. I sent my kindergarden age child to a catholic school, because my wife was baptised catholic, and the school was 2 blocks away. Safest thing for my family. They had this think called "Thanking Time", great idea right?.. Was a great idea, untill my child who loves space talk and astronomy concepts was corrected during "Thanking time" when he said "I'm thankful for Aliens" and the teacher said "sorry, there are no such thing as Aliens"... We promtly REMOVED him from that school..

Religon based intollerance is EVERYWHERE, not just "Bible belts" and Cults. It lives in and stinks up Calgary Suburbs too..

Are you kidding? There are no such things as Aliens? Talk about an overreaction here...how did that have to do with being in a catholic school? What was even the problem?