The Foundations of the Debate

You have to consider history. A watershed moment was the Scopes trial in 1927. H L Mencken covered that trial for the Baltimore Sun. Mencken had a notoriously acid pen. He held up the creationists (most of whom were liberal Democrats in that day, as he was) to ridicule. Naive churchgoers, who were not much accustomed to media attention in the first place, suddenly felt scorned and humiliated in the eyes of the world. They withdrew.A boom in the formation of rural Bible colleges followed. Fortress-like school buildings were erected in remote places. Newsletters proliferated with titles like 'Guardian' and 'Fortress.' There, the Scopes generation of evangelicals, bitter and smarting, instilled in younger generations the idea that on the issue of Darwin's theory there could be no compromise. It was the source of every evil. It was the source of everything anti-God, anti-Christian, outside, alien, other. It was the fundamental ill of society. The young were told that no accommodation with science on this point could be made. If they gave ground on evolutionary theory they were giving up their faith, and Jesus, and heaven.Polarization takes practice, a desire to settle a score, and a loss of all sense of proportion.And it takes training.The students learned their lessons well. Many became preachers, and passed the lessons on. You see the results in this forum.

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The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.

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Jeremiah 31.29

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Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

from what i've read of fundies views of others, part of it is a fear that they won't be going to heaven if the bible isn't right and they can't lord it over others in this one well look at some of the biblists, they believe in such black and white terms that if one thing they believe is history isn't, the rest of the bible is useless or wrong.
it is a basic belief in life. some like the bible are: if you arn't with us you are agenst us. if you don't agree with the war, you are with the terrorists. disagreeing with the goverment or president is unamerican. etc etcpure black and white

The difference between Europe and America are possibly best accounted for by the events that led to the Scoops trial. There have never been any great religious revivals in Europe that have been able to gather momentum enough to get self propelling power. In Europe religion had been institutional in a very formal sense and more often than nor aligned with the state. So in the age of the great revolutions there was always a speck of, if not atheistic, so at least antireligious zeal. The popular sentiment thus became irreligious and religion itself banned from public life.In America religion have a central place in public life; it is there in symbols and rituals, even in the constitution! Indeed, many of those who in Europe were ignited with spiritual fewer fled to America thus fuelling the religious sentiments oversees and depleting them back home.
In America there were fuel enough so set alight a religious bonfire and the Scoops trial provided the spark.My general point would be that the US like some Muslim states have an unhealthy mix of religion and state that provides good breeding ground for religious movements, that want to impose their worldview on the public arena simply because they really can’t see a fundamental difference between public life and private (and communal) spiritual aspirations.

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/Jerker
*Religions most formidable opponent has always been reality therefore it strives to monopolize truth*

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In America religion have a central place in public life; it is there in symbols and rituals, even in the constitution!

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Actually, religion does not have a central place in the US Constitution. In fact, the only mention of religion is in the First Amendment:

Sorry, I was thinking of the declaration of independence!
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable Rights"

Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? However, what the fundamentalists who attempt to use that as a basis for their declaration (heee, unintended) that the US is a "Christian" nation always forget is that the "creator" referred to is a Deist construction - a non-personal, non-interventionist, very "unitarian" kind of creator. In the context of the times, and especially the place (remember where the odious Brit Puritans ended up?), it was an extraordinarily brave and non-religious statement. That the Religious Right is in control of the country today has nothing to do with the history of the nation OR the founding documents.

Have you forgotten about Martin Luther?

I was wondering about that. I know even Americans who can't keep the two seperate.On the other hand, note that at the beginning of the Declaration we have the phrase: Notice how they invoked Nature and Nature's God. That is a key that the god they were referring to was the Deist god, and similar to the anti-clerical nature worship that the leaders of the French Revolution tried to institute.Toward the end we have: The phrase "Providence" is another code word usded by the Deists.In short, the so-called religious phrases were just the usual boiler-plate rhetoric (the Declaration of Independence was, after all, polemic). I wouldn't say that religion or religious sentiment was a central theme of the Declaration of Independence either.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

Luther’s revolution was one of the burgers and princes, not of the common man. But sure, during those days we have the iconoclastic Zwingli, the Zwickau prophets and a whole bunch of other Jons and Sams who stirred public sentiment among the gentry and rural populace. What I had in mind was the period 1600 and onwards.

As a matter of fact I think it is a bad thing that any form of deity is referred to in legal code and in hindsight even more so. I always get an uncanny feeling when references are made to god outside churches; it tends to be a slippery sloop. A general reference there, some public praying there, some talk about being in pace with tradition, and woops the spirit jumps in as a sticker in biological textbooks.

Although not so important as the comforting security they provide I think another thing people get from these preachers is a feeling of being special (no pun intended ).Humans were specially created by God and are different to every other creature on Earth.Christians - well Americans - well people who send me money - are the new Chosen People of God and are really special.

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Oops! Wrong Planet

I agree completely. Interestingly, so did many of the US's founders - including those who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and the group who wrote the Constitution. The very LAST thing they wanted in general was to bring religion into the mix. Both are very interesting documents. Worth a read if you have the time.One of the reasons we have so many problems in the US today - the "foundation" of the debate (or at least the philosophical underpinnings) - is that the Religious Right US has forgotten the critical principles on which the US was founded (or choses to ignore them). Indeed, although they call themselves "Republican", they have even forgotten the roots of what they claim is their own party. A very bad time to be a gringo...

Another very important document that almost nobody knows about is James Madison's A Memorial and Remonstrance. Important primarily for three reasons:
1. It directly and clearly addresses the issue of government and religion.
2. It presents the wall of separation between church and state, calling it "the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people."
3. Madison wrote it a few years before he drafted the First Amendment.I've posted a copy of it at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/rel_lib/memorial.html.