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Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Kansas ... AGAIN! | |||||||||||||||||||
MangyTiger Member (Idle past 6376 days) Posts: 989 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
Do you mean we would become more like the english? (They exported all their religious fanatics after all). Whohoo! Trouble is the bastards are starting to creep back. The dirty fingerprints of Oral Roberts showed up in a recent controversy about a local Conservative Party association being hijacked by Christian fundamentalists. Even worse we're starting to see our own home-grown ones again. A family who own a famous car dealership chain have been taking advantage of one of Blair's loonier policies to sneak in creationism into state-funded schools. It's all very depressing I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then
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coffee_addict Member (Idle past 499 days) Posts: 3645 From: Indianapolis, IN Joined: |
wiseman writes:
Personally, I think an island or another planet is better.
1. Christians and every other kind of relgionist should be locked up in some prison where they can practice their beliefs but can't bother anyone.
2. They want legal action to be taken against missionaries across the world. Total destruction of religious aid efforts, like Christian Mission efforts in Africa to feed starving people. Now, I totally disagree with this whole equation that some African missions have been practicing: Bible+Love of Jesus=food. That's exploitation.
Look at it this way, would you agree that holding a piece of steak out to a hungry dog and make it do all sorts of tricks before giving it the steak helping or taking advantage of the dog? People in third world countries are some of the most vulnerable people simply because a life time of poverty. I'd feel better if religious organizations just want to help without the intention of converting. If they're going to try to convert, at least wait till these people could fly on their own and know enough about the world. Educate them. Offer assistance. Don't hold out a piece of steak and then say if you convert now you'll have the steak.
Well that's all I have to say. Just wanted to justify myself in front of the recent crticism I've recieved. Note: I did not want to imply that secularism is a bad thing: just too much of it (in a public forum) is a bad thing. Same thing with religion.
My grandma once said that too much of anything is bad. Just look at chocolate. Sure, it's good but I wouldn't want to have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is, of course, an exception to that. I don't think we could ever have too much secularism around.
[qs]
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nator Member (Idle past 2192 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: No liberal politician that I am aware of is interested in making America a secular nation. More freedom for every religion, not just power and protection for Protestant Christianity, is what they want. What is wanted is to remove the fundamentalist Christian stranglehold currently upon our government. This message has been edited by schrafinator, 11-15-2005 08:35 AM "History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."--Thomas Jefferson There is no greater threat to civil liberties than an efficient government. -jar
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wiseman45 Inactive Member |
Oh well, let's move on...
Meanwhile, as part of an organization I'm in, I will soon get to speak to Kansas Board Member Sue Gamble on December 1st. Keep reading my stuff, and I will post anything I get out of her. I promise! The reason I said that I thought a swing back to the mainstream in Kansas was imminent, well, because it is. Here, now all 6 members who voted for the new standards now have challengers. The people of Kansas who are not fundamentalist airheads are outraged over this whole thing. I read the Kansas City Star regularly, and I haven't seen a fundamentalist-supporting letter in days. That is a good sign, and a bad sign for the current board members. "For evidence that evolution works very slowly, ponder the Kansas Board of Education and its electorate. In 1999, a board majority that had been elected as conservative but not specifically anti-evolution pushed creationism into the state's science curriculum. The next year, an appalled electorate voted the anti-evolution zealots out, and the anti-science "standards" were scrapped. End of issue, right? Not exactly. Here we go again. Gulled anew, Kansans elected another conservative slate two years ago and, sure enough, it has now ordered "intelligent design" - a re-gimmicked version of creationism - into the state' science classes. And this time, the board went further. The board answered the awkward criticism that intelligent design fits no definition of science by simply redefining science, scrapping the phrase "a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena." If unadmittedly, that was to make room for God - specifically, if only implicitly, the Christian God - but it equally opens the way for magic, gremlins and things that go bump in the night. This is the common pattern. Voters sucker for conservative candidates, often running as champions of back-to-basics schooling and traditional values, and find they have installed anti-science activists. If the courts don't get to the resulting anti-evolution hustles first and bar them as patently unconstitutional efforts to bootleg religion into the public schools, the voters typically vote the scoundrels out at the first opportunity. That happened again this November in Dover, Pa., where the school system was hauled into federal court after a board majority added intelligent design to science classes. All eight of the anti-evolution incumbents were booted. Kansas voters will have another crack at a reversal next year, when four of the six state school board members who ordered the schools to teach specific anti-evolution arguments are up for re-election. But there is more at play here than just the comings and goings of local school board candidates. The so-called family values crowd - have even declared against approval of a vaccine that would prevent cervical cancer, on the grounds that it would encourage folks to have sex. Better 5,000 or so dead women a year than fewer virgins. It turns out the Know Nothing Party didn't die with the 19th century after all."--Article on Tallahassee Democrat if you want verification. Well, there you go. Come around 2006, that Board will be gone, and the new people in there, (as they have already been promising) are going to change these standards back. The Evangelicals have been blowing thousands of dollars on PR campaigns using tax-free, donated money, but now that people have seen logic, science will win. No matter how long this debate goes on, science will win, because there's no logic behind creationism, just belief in miracles. And that cannot be allowed to stand up to science. (Message to the ADMINS: you may notice that I modified this article. I left out those parts which I thought didn't make a good point. However, I did not add anything to it, and those who want to see the whole thing can follow the provided link, though if you're a republican, I probably wouldn't beacause it has a bunch of liberal political jargon.) Wiseman45 This message has been edited by wiseman45, 11-15-2005 11:47 AM This message has been edited by wiseman45, 11-15-2005 11:49 AM This message has been edited by wiseman45, 11-15-2005 11:58 AM
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AdminJar Inactive Member |
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bkelly Inactive Member |
Chiroptera writes: Well, then, let me rephrase: suppose that the US was a completely secular nation: religious belief was a matter of personal conscience; the religious beliefs, or lack of them, of our politicians were completely irrelevant in the elections; no state institution made reference to any deity or any religious mythological history, and so forth. What problems do you see in that? I think that would be the ideal situation. I don't know if you were serious, rhetorical, sarcastic, or other. Please advise.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1489 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I think that would be the ideal situation. For reasonable people, it is. I believe that Chiroptera was responding to someone who accused such secularism of being a slippery slope to perdition and all around bad times; his question is why leaving religion as a matter of personal conscience and not enforcing purely religious outcomes would automatically have negative consequences, as many conservatives imply that it would.
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bkelly Inactive Member |
Hello crashfrog,
Lets just throw that question out loud and clear (again) and see if anyone has an answer. I ask, does anyone have an answer for Chiroptera's question in this message Message 22 Would that completely secularist government be bad? If the answer is that it would be good, I think that I and others such as crashfrog, Chiroptera and others agree. If the answer is that it would be bad, please tell us why it would be bad.
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