Posted on 12/21/2005 6:22:46 AM PST by truthfinder9
I did a LOL when seeing this in today's Star
They forgot to tell that judge.
Well... them freakin' MUSLIM's have invaded our math departments, for they absolutely REFUSE to use anything other than Arabic Numerals!!!!
OH?
Why not???
In giving up his "Christian faith", narby says: "It's just that I found it impossible to fool myself any longer."
Nope.
Given your comments...you are still in full fooling yourself mode.
By the way, to assist in curing your false notion that Christianity led to the "Dark Ages" and an anti-scientific mindset, please read Rodney Stark's (professor at Baylor University) How Christianity (and Capitalism) Led to Science (current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education):
"Why was it that, although many civilizations had pursued alchemy, the study led to chemistry only in Europe? Why was it that for centuries, Europeans were the only ones possessed of eyeglasses, chimneys, reliable clocks, heavy calvary, or a system of music notation? How had the nations that had arisen from the rubble of Rome so greatly surpassed the rest of the world?
"A series of developments, in which reason won the day, gave unique shape to Western culture and institutions. And the most important of those victories ocurred within Christianity. While other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guides to religious truth...But from the early days, the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme gift of God and the means to progressively increase understanding of Scripture and revelation. Consequently Christianity was oriented to the future, while other major religions asserted the superiority of the past."
"Only Christians believed that God's gift of reason made progress inevitable--theological as well as technical progress. Thus, Augustine flatly asserted that through the application of reason we will gain an increasingly more accurate understanding of God..."
"Fra Giordana preached these words in France in 1306: "Not all the arts have been found; we shall never see an end to finding them."
Stark argues that the "Dark Ages" "were not so dark after all, and that during these centuries European technology and science overtook and surpassed the rest of the world...Christian faith in reason and progress was the foundation on which Western success was achieved."
"So why should a scientist try [to look for God]?"
Because that is the history of science.
Only evolutionary scientists, especially the current day variety, make comments that science is uninterested in, and separate from, God (but their comments about evolution being unguided, natural and random reveal their religious bias as science can not make those conclusions).
Maybe PatrickHenry will archive Stark's article on the list-o-links as to prevent those from Darwin Central, or others, from, again, inaccurately linking Christianity with the root cause of the "darkness" of the "Dark Ages".
The author is conflating the culture of Christian nations a few centuries ago with the culture of Christian nations of the third century. The particular deity worshiped at the time was secondary to the actions they took.
The cultures of those two eras were entirely different.
Just as the teachings of the "fundamentalist" church I grew up in around 1970 didn't have a problem with evolution, but now that same church does, is a short term example of how religious doctrine can change.
The incredibly advanced culture of the Romans was ignored and abandoned around the same time as the adoption of Christianity. And the evidence is that if a minority of Christians have their way now, the field of science will be poisoned with the philosophy that some subjects are "too hard" for humans to find the answer, and we will give up and declare that "God did it". That is the end of science as we know it, and if you can't recognize it, then you are part of the problem.
[Everyone has known for years that Humans aren't DESCENDED from Neanderthals, but we're clearly RELATED - two different evolutionary branches, with a common ancestor at some point, of course. Genetic studies have confirmed this.]
Absolutely. The reason for this is that God created all life as it now exists.(Some might say, same designer, but they are as wrong as the Darwin Fundamentalists). "Disregard the opposition of science, falsely so called."
And cultures change but underlying truths do not. Stark argues that it was the unique Christian belief in a God-given ability to reason that led to Europe's scientific domination in the world during the "Dark Ages".
And no other world civilization, or culture, advanced technically/scientifically like those with Christianity (Europe). Stark gives the evidence. Read it.
If you choose to ignore the evidence that it was all other world religions and their associated cultures/civilizations that led to an anti-science mindset and "darkness" during the "Dark Ages", and not Christianity, then your evolutionary faith provides you with a reckless tendency to revise history to favor your beliefs (and this is how evolutionists give us false feathered dinosaurs and HOX gene mutations creating limbs with hands from lobe-finned fishes).
You are speaking of strawmen, not real people...Name a Christian someone who says that "if the subject is too hard, then we will give up and declare "God did it".
Your above-mentioned personal opinion relative to Christians encountering intellectual/scientific rigor is unsupported...although I do believe that God did do it. It is just interesting to see a glimpse, via science, of just how He did it.
You, however, do make a very good religious evolutionist and Darwin Fundamentalist.
Thus far this ruling only affects Dover. However, we live under the 'precedence' of a ruling, so won't be long till somebody finds commonality of descent from this case and the gnat strainers will use this case as precedence in what ever school they can.
People who don't understand how science works are quick to call science merely another form of faith.
(Forgive them. They know not what they do.)
Good. I hope it does spread.
Creationism should not be taught in public schools. If parents want their kids to learn about God, then they can pay for private schools.
No creationist will take note of the fact that Fazale Rana (and Hugh Ross, his boss and associate at Reasons to Believe Ministries) disagree here with virtually all other antievolutionists.
Rana only accepts fully anatomically modern humans as human; only they are descendants of Adam and Eve, the first humans created. All others (even if they made and used tools, buried their dead, etc) are merely beasts created by God with the other beasts. For example see this article by Rana.
To nearly all other creationists and antievolutionists, "archaic" sapients (including Neanderthals, but also any other forms more advanced than Homo erectus but not quite anatomically modern) are unquestionably human.
Although there is considerable if unacknowledged vacillation and inconsistency, most creationists draw the line between mankind and beast either before, somewhere within or after Homo erectus. Some would even incorporate as human a few more advanced members of Homo habilis (a species intermediate between Australopithecines, which nearly all creationists consider non-human, and Homo erectus, about which creationists usually can't decide).
Thus Rana's book vastly extends the range of disagreement among creationists over where the boundary falls between humans and non-humans. As a result EVERY hominid after the Australopithecines and right up to Cro-Magnon falls into this realm of creationist indecision. And remember that creationists simultaneously claim that humans are a separate "created kind" clearly distinct from all others!
LURKERS NOTE that while evolutionists gleefully highlight and debate their theoretical differences, creationists here (if I've predicted correctly) eagerly defended and promoted Rana's book even though it flatly and drastically contradicts nearly every other creationist screed attacking human evolution. Creationism is all and only about being antievolution. Consistency, rigor and positive research don't matter.
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