Posted on 08/13/2008 9:44:45 AM PDT by Sopater
A federal judge has ruled the University of California can deny course credit to Christian high school graduates who have been taught with textbooks that reject evolution and declare the Bible infallible, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles ruled Friday that the school's review committees did not discriminate against Christians because of religious viewpoints when it denied credit to those taught with certain religious textbooks, but instead made a legitimate claim that the texts failed to teach critical thinking and omitted important science and history topics.
Charles Robinson, the university's vice president for legal affairs, told the Chronicle that the ruling "confirms that UC may apply the same admissions standards to all students and to all high schools without regard to their religious affiliations."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I’ve gotta say, your posting your own posts to other websites comes off as pretty self-aggrandizing.
Please explain how this is significantly different.
Explain how a pair of dice that is "truly random" is different from a pair of dice that is merely random with respect to winning or losing.
There might be a philosophical difference, but not a difference that can be detected by mere mortals.
All the philosophizing is irrelevant, because what experiment shows is that mutation produces all possible combinations of change. Even if mutations occurred in some kind of alphabetical order, the outcome would be the same. Those that are neutral or favorable will show up more frequently in subsequent generations.
We are all works in progress. If you’ve decided that trying to insult me makes you feel better, I won’t discuss this with you anymore.
If you had an inking of biology, you would know that mutations are not random. As in the output of a dice that has sides numbered 1 to 6, ONLY 1,2,3,4,5,6 are possible outcomes. Nine is not a possibility.
Implying that you go to creationists' websites is an insult?
Insult? I merely observed that you got your info from a creationist website since what you had posted as coming from the Bible does NOT come from the Bible but comes from creationist websites that represent it as coming from the Bible.
Mutation does NOT produce all possible combinations of change.
You should read Benjamin Franklin's treatise on public education. There is nothing even close to that today. The atheistic Secular Humanists would be in court in a nanosecond if anyone tried to get government funding for it. I expect Jefferson felt similarly about education. .
And,.. yes,.. you are correct that there were scattered communities that did compel the education of children but homeschooling was also completely acceptable and the standard for education was basic literacy and very basic arithmetic. Two to three years of education ( sometimes only a 2 or 3 months out of the year or attendance at Sunday school after church once a week ) was sufficient to fulfill the law. Most often those community schools were church owned and staffed.
The modern system of compulsory (police enforced) government owned and run schools, as we know them today, did not get a solid foothold in the U.S. until the mid 1800s. It was not established in every state of the Union until the first decade of the 20th century.
Harvard, as you might know, was once a church school, as was many of our earliest universities and colleges in the U.S.
As for Cambridge and Oxford...I bet the publicly funded Catholic Church and later the public funded Church of England had absolutely nothing to do with it. ( yeah right!) (sarc with eyeroll)
I love the way you submit hyperbolic arguments that leave only one logical conclusion, and then distance yourself from that conclusion.
The assumption that phenomena are constantly being "stirred" by forces from beyond, does not, by itself, render such stirring as necessarily capricious, if capricious is defined as determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason.
For the naturalist, though, in a constantly changing, contingent universe, what is the rational basis for assuming the uniformity of nature, that the future is going to be like the past?
Cordially,
You are right. That is why I don’t rely on the bible for scientific knowledge. So much of it is written as poetry. For instance, does God have a face or wings? There are people that feel he does. I’ve actually heard part of an old sermon where a preacher took an obscure verse that measured the span of God’s hand, and thereby inferred God was 6 foot 4 tall, or some such. And please, I don’t want to get into that conversation!
Now there are places that hint at science; for instance here, many people think the Bible is describing the water cycle years before scientists truly understood it.
“He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind” (Job 36:27-28).
And in many cases thinking men, pondering on verses like this, were inspired to look for the truth. So I guess if you like, you might look at some of these things like a starting hypothesis.
Do you have a sense that your casino/dice/gambling metaphors/analogies may be incomplete or even false?
Maybe flesh those metaphors & analogies out a little more.
What is your point?
The following is the only logical conclusion and action of a Christian who is living their faith:
1) They do not break the Commandment about stealing. They do not use government and its policemen to **force** their religion on other people. This would be stealing their freedom of conscience, and stealing their physical freedom as well.
2) Christians who live their faith do not take the Lord's name in vain. Using government and its police to **force** their religion on others is doing evil (stealing freedom) in God's name. That is the essence of using God's name in vain.
But...As well all know atheistic Secular Humanists have no such scruples. They use government threat of police action to steal freedom all the time.
Government compelled attendance at Secular Humanist government schools is a perfect example. Keeping Christians from earning their Ph.D. and getting professorships is another. Making illegal for the Catholic Church to work in adoption placement is a very good example. Forcing pharmacists, nurses, and doctors to assist with abortion is a freedom of conscience abomination. Blackballing Christian and conservative actors comes to mind.
Everything in the above paragraph is using the false god of atheist Secular Humanism to steal freedom from others.
Come to think of it the reason Secular Humanists break the commandment about stealing ( stealing freedom) is that they break the Second Commandment. They are worshiping the false god of Humanism, materialism, and atheism.
Your ramblings are why credit will not ever be given for creationist courses. That is dis-information of the highest degree. What evern happened to not bearing false witness? It’s OK to lie for the Lord?
The Second Commandment is about idol worship - the make of graven images.
Before you're done I expect there's no Commandment that everyone except those people you consider "Good Christians" doesn't universally break on a daily basis.
That is pretty much the stupidest bit of mathematical reasoning I've ever seen. You failed to mention other possibilities. How about 1A, 1B, 1C, etc.
When point mutations are observed in actual experiments, they produce all combinations, favorable, unfavorable and neutral. Can you cite an experiment that contradicts this?
No more so than you saying mutations are totally random when they are controlled by chemical processes which are NOT random.
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