These articles were published between January 2001 and February 4, 2010.
To view more recent posts, go to The Main Blog at ExChristian.Net
These articles were published between January 2001 and February 4, 2010.
To view more recent posts, go to The Main Blog at ExChristian.Net
Comments
How many sides of the story should we teach in school? Aboriginal dreamtimes, and Intelligent design, Indian mythology, and the idea that we live on the back of a giant turtle? We don't have time to teach all mythologies. Heck, I hardly get time to teach evolution. Usually I have to though just after the 'religious instruction' teacher has had her half hour with them.
The speakes were grasping for straws on the whole behomth thing. They have been doing that forever.
Question: When I was an xtain, I felt like a minority and society was secular ran. As an athiest now I feel the same. I think it might be because there are so many fence riders that I fall outside of the group think. I have never been a gray area guy.
Riley J.
THis insanity has got to stop.
Teaching religion to children is child abuse, clear a simple. Religious people have no business being around children.
I protect my child from this kind of delusional programming, and i suggest you help me and do the same.
I would positively disrupt these class's.
simply stand up and say " your lying!" and "that is psycobabble".
them proceed to back up your claim.
For me, My 13 year old daughter is very well informed and the moment her public school starts ANY protlitizing(sp). i am at the school asap. Her school knows me very well, so much so, that i can see the dispare in their face's as i approach, even when im only there to pay for her school lunch's....lol.
im not very well liked, but i am respected and the school is kind enough to follow my request that my child be excluded from any and all activities that have a religous tone to it.
do the same.. its easy. just go to your kids school, voice your dessent, explain why you protest, and if necessary, contact your attorney.
Do it while we still have a secular constitution.
good luck, friends
Ken Ham, featured in this video is also going to open a 27 million dollar creation museum in Kentucky. Wake up america!
And by the way, a museum doesn't make creationism true. We will call it the 27 million dollar myth.
Jebus rotted in a tomb and I have the bones to prove it.
Anyone know what movie the clip actually came from? I would gladly watch the full thing.
I'm guessing from my rough reading of history that it took about two hundred years for the flat earth folks to finally dry up and go away. So we probably get another hundred years of this baloney, before the evidence finally shuts these folks up.
Actually people like Ken Ham will never shut up. We just have to wait for them to die and hope the each subsequent generation gets a little better.
But alas, my gut feeling is that we are stuck with this kind of religious thinking for the long haul. Even without the creationism they will think of some other kind of punishment to inflict on us.
I'd like to fight back directly on this issue, but that has not worked for me in the past, and the logic alarm goes off in their brains and they shut down. So I find it better to do more subtle attacks on the inerrancy of scripture, and start confusing them with obvious problems with the bible in general. We all know there are enough of those.
Most of those kids know that they will have to agree with the big adult cretin because, adults are all they have to follow for examples, hopefully most will wake up to their own common senses by the time they get in their 20's.
A: "No because a man in a hat sang a song about it"
Ken Ham sounds like he has an Australian accent. Sorry.
Brett Robson
Your stance is ridiculous. It is also tantamount to the wilful ignorance displayed by many blindly religious groups.
To encourage people to have their child "be excluded from any and all activities that have a religous tone to it" is the same as encouraging children to be ignorant of the world around them.
As an atheist Religious Studies teacher I encourage my pupils to understand religious views both from a faith perspective and an anthropological one, and in this way be better informed about the world around them and the people in it.
To deny your child any access to anything that "has a religious tone" is foolish and iresponsible of you as a parent.
Trust me, you are not "respected" for it.
Mr. McGauran
Anyone know what movie the clip actually came from? I would gladly watch the full thing.
That's a clip from the recent documentary "jesus camp". Definitely check it out, I believe there are more random clips on youtube also.
ironically, anyone notice the guy at about 2:43 very much resembles.. a chimpanzee? All he needs is a banana!
Natural selection does not produce complex molecules--"chemistry" does. Many massively complex molecules can and do self-assemble, and they are observed to do so all the time. In fact, all DNA analysis depends on this very phenomenon. There are hundreds of known self-replicating molecules. I have colleagues who make use of them in the lab routinely. What natural selection does is to favor some over others, and yes, it does do that.
Paul: "...just like it is impossible to produce a masterpiece like Mona Lisa from the mixture of colors without the Artist..."
I have other colleagues who have demonstrated just how easy it is to create images of astonishing complexity and beauty using random mutation coupled with feedback from observers--i.e. a direct analogue of natural selection. As with virtually all creationists, your analogy fails because you neglected to include any kind of feedback in the loop. As soon as you do that, two things happen: 1) the analogy becomes apt, and 2) the point you were trying to make vanishes in a puff of smoke, as it is then relatively straightforward to demonstrate that massively complex structures can identified/constructed rather quickly. (By the way, identifying the observer who supplies the feedback with the "artist" will not rescue your argument; I'll elaborate on that if need be.)
I'd like to inject a meta-comment here. Your two "observations" above are typical of creationist claptrap in that they do not indicate any desire to scratch beneath the surface. You seem to be satisfied with very shallow explanations. How is it that you expect to find anything approximating the truth in that way? If you stop the moment you find an explanation that makes you feel good about your beliefs, how can you ever see beyond your preconceived notions?
As I've said before, creationists (and religionists in general) strike me as being generally incurious people. I've seen so many who do not even bother to get basic definitions right, or to look up quotes, or to crack a single book on evolution, that their entire approach to gaining "knowledge" seems doomed from the start. How can you not be deeply curious about what science has actually discovered, and about what scientists actually say (as opposed to the caracatures found in the creationist literature)? This utterly baffles me. It's as if... as if... you really don't want to know! Perish the thought.
i'd seen it before but forgot where it came from
It's truly disturbing how these loonies use children to further their agendas of financial gain by selling them a lie that will ultimately cause nothing more in their lives but psychologial ruin.
And yet, it's possible for an un-wed mother-to-be to create a picture of Jesus in a pancake without meaning to at all...
;-)
PLEASE do yourselves (and us) a favor and stop lumping cosmology (a branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe) and abiogenesis (the supposed spontaneous origination of living organisms directly from lifeless matter) together with evolution and natural selection. They have nothing to do with one another as scientific disciplines.
All it does is make you look stupider than you are (maybe) and irritates those of us who actually study and understand a little something about science.
Funny how people like Paul or Ken Ham, who clearly don't understand (or willfully distort) evolution and natural selection feel they can tell biological scientist like myself what evolution or natural selection can or cannot do.
Sorry, Bozos! Your inability to comprehend something is not evidence of another explanation. It just means your ignorant, willful or otherwise.
(Jim Arvo, as usual, does another elegant take-down)
My Dad took me and my younger brothers to see Ken Ham and his buddies (I think back then 'Creation' magazine was still called 'ex-nihilo'). There wasn't a kids program in those days, so we had to sit in with the adults lecture.
At the time I enjoyed it, but such indoctrination was part of what kept me locked in for so long.
On one level it was exciting to have such 'scientific proof' for the bible, to know we were right, that there were biblical answers for 'everything'...
but on the other hand it only reinforced the fear that I had about hell being reality, and the guilt of all my 'sins'.
Whatever someone could say against the bible could always be dismissed because, thanks to Ken Ham, I 'KNEW' Genesis was scientifically, provably, true...
- and the whole 'Fall of Adam' and the need for Jesus to redeem us is rooted in that origins story.
Luckily I've always been a questioning person, so eventually figured out the bible is just bullshit.
My point is, although it's sickening to see kids repeating such crap, I am an example of someone who has broken out of the indoctrination (as many others here would be also).
Perhaps, if we (or someone) can force the fundies to attack Astronomy and Chemistry in addition to Evolutionary science, we can do a sort of 'divide and conquer' thing. I mean, the Discovery Institute is having enough trouble covincing anyone that they're doing legitimate research vis a vis evolution. Let's give them some more to chew on and see if they don't choke on it!
And once they've got their claws in, in rolls the money, because the parents don't honestly believe this nonsense, but they want their kids to have a moral foundation without having to EXPLAIN everything to them - because Christianity, like Sunday morning, is EASY.
I disagree. I'm pretty sure these parents really do believe what they're teaching. To claim that creationist parents really don't believe what they teach their children and that it's all a money-making con game is just like many christians claiming that atheists really do believe in their god, but "are just angry" or "want to say they don't believe so they can sin".
Dan
The statement reflects the mental disposition of someone who believes spirituality is something you can materialistically own. Makes me reflect on the statement; harvesting souls for the lord.
It is typically the secular, that believe that spirituality is a personal experience, that is not (and can not) to be bought & sold like a store item on isle 12.
Freedom of experience is that which challenges those who are compelled to own others materialistically. Sure, the religionist may suggest that they are just trying to own the spirituality/person for own good... but, if that is the case... why not just pass on the process by which one can find spirituality with free agency.
Now, why would someone/group want to suppress others from obtaining free agency, and personal spirituality... Who can that possibly benefit... And, before a religionist partakes of this discussion, please be prepared to discuss how often in church the pastor/preacher/priest, etc., has taught free agency and how to find autonomous salvation and spirituality.
What kind of numbers would a "soul economist" use to show gains and losses... Descartes' imaginary numbers?
Perhaps, when the imaginary numbers become less than non-existent, then they can run out and sell "soul stock"...
Better yet, in order to get fresh souls on the market, perhaps, they can go to the scratch and dent warehouse, at the local limbo/purgatory/spirit world, and vie for them via "soul auctioning"... Oh... right, that is already happening for some religions...
I wonder if churches get a tax credit if they show a "capital soul loss"... Oh, the things one ponders while thinking about all of those materialistic religious leaders... If I give 15% in tithe this week, do I get bonus minutes when I connect with the one and only True Christian God... Do I get to use my body, or do I have to have a "soul operator" (priest) make the connection for me...
Well, I'll watch this thread for a while, quite possibly, we may find a true Christian/religionist, who is a certified "soul public accountant", who has all the "soul laws", updated in their most Holy legal book...
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