Posted on 01/16/2013 4:41:13 PM PST by EveningStar
For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest — and most feared — advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he's making a difference.
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
Wrong. I responded to post ten that brought up the Nazis.
Hitler was a creationist who believed in fixed kinds, a fox will always be a fox, etc. He thought Germans were created in the highest image of God. But what arguments do creationists have other than ignorance lies and false equivalency?
Nicely done!
What a blessing to be free of those man-made "chains", and to be free to fully appreciate and attempt to understand ALL that our amazing God has provided!
And what a relief it is to be able to stand apart from either of the two polarized factions that inevitably infest these threads!
That which we call a rose by any other name....
I guess I was wrong about your age estimate. Ten?
Grow up.
Heresy is like fire, it burns all around. It was the Orthodox Christian persecution of “heresy” that made Islam a worldwide religion. But for the persecution of the Ghassanids Mohammed’s religion would be a quaint tribal anachronism constrained to the Saudi Arabian peninsula.
Of course, it was the persecution of heresy that gave us America and religious tolerance; later clearly enumerated in the First Amendment.
Tragically, it was the persecution of Catholic’s as heretics that gave us our government school system. Something we’re suffering for today. So it’s a mixed bag.
Your mockery of the handicapped is seen and noted by all.
If that's the fruit of the humanistic, scientific self-appointed elite mindset, give me creationism.
My Dear GW, your geometry is impeccable. You get an “A+”, but our topic is chronology.
Perhaps you can give me the current date and time in Heaven? I’d like to set my watch by it.
I find it endlessly amusing that those so called objective scientists who pass themselves off as intellectually superior to the rest of us peons are such believers in magic.
How ignorant to label anything they don't understand as *magic*.
As an aside, a chiropractor once told me that the pelvic region on blacks is most similar to that of monkeys, hence the more muscular gluteal areas on blacks.
I wasn’t interested in that at the time as I don’t see people that way, but your comment reminded me of what he said. Do you know if he was right or wrong? I’d like to know whether it can be refuted or is correct.
When Moses returned from speaking with God and receiving, by the finger of God, the 10 Commandments was it the establishment of a new law from God or simply the reestablishment of an old one?
Were idolatry, adultery and murder not sinful and/or even unlawful until Moses arrived with the 10 Commandments to set Israel straight?
What religion were the Hebrews practicing from Adam down to Moses? How did they manage a religion without a functioning priesthood? a written Bible? How did they repent and atone for their sins before Moses? Who lead them prior to Moses?
I’m asking you as a seminary-trained scholar, erudite in the original languages of the Bible. I’m not being facetious. I really want to know. It may change my life.
There is only One Christian faith, though it is true it gets refracted differently in minor ways by different confessions or denominations of the faith.
leads me to wonder if you've ever been on the religion thread. You'd never guess there were only "One Christian faith" as in One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Some don't even believe in baptism anymore.
LOL
An interesting but extremely odd point of view, IMO.
I quite agree that science is often perverted in today's world into scientism, in which proponents of various ideologies attempt to use science to promote their ideas in realms where science is not applicable.
But the scientific method is the only method we (presently) have for knowing anything on the "fact" level, as opposed to the speculation or faith level.
I can (and do) believe in things that aren't demonstrable facts, as such, but I cannot really have any logical reason for expecting others to do the same. And science is the only method we have available for demonstrating facts to be such.
IOW, we can demonstrate by repeatable experiment that gravity is a fact. We cannot demonstrate the existence of God or his nature to the same level of factual certainty.
While I don't rank these various types of belief, I think it odd to claim that the only one we can demonstrate to be true is the "lowest" on the scale, while those supported solely by mental gymnastics are the "highest."
Not sure what exactly you mean by this. If you mean that the idea of "more highly evolved" is meaningless in evolutionary theory, you are quite correct.
If you mean that evolutionary theory does not allow for the possibility that some "races" or sub-species of humans will develop average characteristics that differ from the average characteristics of other "races," then you are quite incorrect. In fact, such differentiation is exactly what separates one "race" from another.
Given the fact that races differ from each other, there is no evolutionarily valid reason for assuming in advance that such differentiation cannot include intellectual and character aspects. In fact, a logical person would expect such differences.
Careful measurement has the potential to prove or disprove that such differences exist, but saying in advance that they cannot exist is an act of faith, not of science.
I went back to Jim's statement on the home page and found nothing about FR being Christian-based or opposed to "heretical" Christian doctrines.
FR is fairly obviously based on Christian values. Doctrine, to my knowledge, not so much.
It is entirely possible for Hindus, Buddhists and atheists to agree with the basic goals of FR. Some branches of Islam, even, though that is more difficult.
Absolutely. The extraordinarily rapid Muslim conquest of Syria, Egypt and North Africa correlates exactly with the areas where Christian "heretics" of various types were being severely persecuted by the "Orthodox" Christians in control of the Byzantine Empire. These sectarians, logically and accurately, decided they would have greater religious and personal freedom under the Muslims than the Byzantines. They at minimum stood aside, and apparently often covertly or overtly supported the Muslim conquest. Same for the Jews in these areas.
In the long run, it turned out they did not choose wisely, but there was no particular way for them to know this at the time.
Even the complete collapse of the Visigothic Spanish kingdom as the consequence of a single battle may be related to religious dissension and persecution. It took the Romans two centuries to conquer the same territory, and the Christians seven centuries to reconquer it.
I am always particularly amused by Protestants who "know" what constitutes heresy. Catholics, with their single source for approved doctrine, at least have a logical basis for pronouncing those who differ as heretical. (Some) Protestants, with no such authority, confidently denounce Catholics, Orthodox and other varieties of Protestants as heretical. Which means they have set themselves, as individuals, up as infallible interpreters of God's Book and Will.
Poor me. I'll never be able to understand how people whose ultimate reality is oblivion feel so motivated to combat "evils" and solve "problems."
The hydrology and other sciences involved in this issue would seem to have little directly to do with biology or other sciences where evolutionary theory is important.
LOL
Differences do not imply superiority or inferiority, and especially not that one group has more of that evolution stuff and the other less. Europeans are evolved to live in Europe, drink milk and absorbe sunlight in northern climes. New Guineans are evolved to filter out excess sunlight and better dispose of heat rather than conserve it. Both are regional adaptations brought about by evolution to each particular environment.
“We cannot demonstrate the existence of God or his nature to the same level of factual certainty.”
Spirited: Neither can you demonstrate your dreams, memory, and thoughts, yet you accept their existence.
Furthermore, facts, principles, theories, suppositions, presuppositions, etc. are of the unseen realm, they occur within mind which is spirit. They are not things we can see, touch, smell, weigh, measure, etc.
How very bizarre that on one hand, empiricists deny things of the unseen realm while on the other they are forced to utilize mind to make their utterly absurd claims.
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