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Author Topic:   Separation of church and state
Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 301 of 313 (584686)
10-03-2010 2:12 PM
Reply to: Message 287 by marc9000
10-02-2010 10:14 PM


Re: Federal funding = ????
So the only private schools are the ones that take NO federal or state funding?
The only true independent research is that done with NO government funding?

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This message is a reply to:
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marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 302 of 313 (584736)
10-03-2010 9:37 PM
Reply to: Message 296 by anglagard
10-02-2010 11:27 PM


Re: Which Religion? Which Denomination? Which Bible?
As an advocate of teaching religion in the schools, I am curious as to which religion you would insist be taught?
Not completely sure if you’re referring to me, or yourself as an advocate of teaching religion in schools, but as for myself, I’ve never advocated it. I support Christianity’s promotion, in an equal way to the way that atheism is currently promoted, to balance it.
And if the answer is Christianity, which one of the 30,000 denominations, and which one of the 30,000 versions of the Bible would you demand?
Do you have a source for your 30,000 number, or do you use it as just a somewhat sarcastic reference to many different Christian denominations? If so that’s okay, I can easily clear it up for you. Christianity is the largest religion in the world, and has two main divisions, Eastern and Western. Western Christianity is the only one that has any historical significance to US foundings. It has two basic divisions, Catholicism and Protestantism. The differences in Biblical canons in all of Christianity (even including Eastern Christianity) is very slight. The first five books (instruction books, including Genesis) are all the same, the historical books, wisdom books, major and minor prophets, all very similar. The important thing is that Christianity can be promoted in a general way (without being established) without any notable conflict between the traditional denominations. New, dishonest denominations and claims for Christianity, that’s another story of course.
If you refuse to answer, your position automatically becomes unrealistic for the simple fact the details have not been addressed.
You ask a good question. In the Bible of most any traditional Christian denomination, God reveals his character, gives us highlights of the beginnings of human history, unveils his plan for our future salvation, and instructs his people to love himself and others. These things are non-controversial among denominations, so much so that detailed ministries like those of Billy Graham, and Ravi Zacharias can promote Christianity under a non-denominational status. It is possible to promote Christianity without getting anywhere near any kind of establishment.

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marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 303 of 313 (584738)
10-03-2010 9:40 PM
Reply to: Message 298 by dwise1
10-02-2010 11:57 PM


Re: No True Scotsmen fallacy again?
Dr. Miller is a practicing Catholic. And a self-described creationist, since, as a practicing Catholic, he does believe in a Divine Creator.
No evidence of that in his book. He opposes creationists and creation all throughout the book, he certainly doesn’t refer to himself as one.
Now, there are those self-described "Christians", mainly of the fundamentalist or "conservative" persuasion, who absolutely deny that Catholics are Christians. I personally know one at my work place.
I think they’re pretty rare. As a Protestant (Lutheran) I think Catholics have a few pretty serious misconceptions, but still believe they’re sincere Christians, and my view on that seems common among Protestants. Catholics need to work on their compromises with atheists, but all that is largely political.

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marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 304 of 313 (584741)
10-03-2010 9:55 PM
Reply to: Message 300 by subbie
10-03-2010 1:50 PM


Re: Evidence redux
Instead, again and again, you present claims. More often than not, you present what others claim, apparently not even having seen the original source yourself at all.
You yourself have put fourth plenty of claims in this thread without evidence. Let’s look at some of your Message 217;
Science follows the principal of methodological naturalism.
Evidence?
This simply means that it restricts its areas of inquiry to what can be found in the natural world.
Evidence?
If we cannot perceive it with our senses, science doesn't deal with it.
Evidence?
This doesn't mean that science says the supernatural doesn't exist.
Evidence? So Victor Stenger’s book is in fact a lie?
It means science doesn't address it.
Evidence?
Science is against religion the same way that chess is. In other words, not at all.
Evidence? Did Bobby Fisher write a NY Times bestseller entitled; How chess shows that God does not exist? No? So there really could be difference between chess and science?
In all your assertions above, are you simply presenting what others claim? Can you show original sources for these claims?
All of this has been explained to you so many times by so many people that it's become very difficult to believe you are debating in good faith.
Someone who claims to have taken con-law courses and plays dumb about Thurgood Marshall’s statement you do what you think is right and let the law catch up accuses ME of not debating in good faith? The scientific community, or its supporters on forums such as these, are not the only arbiters of exactly what good faith debate is.
Either you don't have the wit to understand the distinction between evidence and claims, or you're ignoring it.
What is the distinction? The forum rules don’t list a percentage requirement for claims with evidence, vs claims without. Is your percentage of claims with evidence better than mine? If yes, evidence please.
I'll likely continue to follow this thread in the unlikely event that you do get around to providing actual evidence. As far as the article that you linked from World Nut Daily,
Do you think I’d be more likely to present evidence if you didn’t play kidde games with the names of my sources?
here is the actual opinion in the case. You can read to see what the Court approved what it did approve and why it rejected what it did reject. I'll leave with this point. The Court held as follows:
quote:
Corbett states an unequivocal belief that creationism is “superstitious nonsense.” The Court cannot discern a legitimate secular purpose in this statement, even when considered in context. The statement therefore constitutes improper disapproval of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.
So the actual opinion of the case is all that’s relevant? The WorldNetDaily story started out like this;
quote:
In what apparently is a first-of-its-kind decision, a federal court has ruled that a California teacher violated the rights of a student by making fun of Christianity.
Apparently a first-of-its-kind decision — and it’s dated 5-4-09. (not long ago) Could this mean that this is the first time a teacher did something like this, or was this simply first time one was caught? Since the word apparently was used, concrete evidence for whether or not this was actually a first-of-its-kind decision may be impossible to come by. Does that mean we can’t discuss it? Your position would probably say it’s never happened before, the court ruled against the teacher in this case the very first time it’s happened, and everything’s peachy. My position would be that it’s probably happened several times between 1947 and 2009. The problem was, no student brought a recording devise to school and got the evidence without getting caught and severely disciplined for it. Or had parents that didn’t go to the time and trouble to get an attorney and take legal action on it. Maybe we could find something on the net about when something similar happened before 2009, with a different outcome. Or maybe not. In other words, a debate/discussion.
But since the word apparently was used, since it doesn’t start with evidence, since it wasn’t in this particular court opinion, we have to just kick our minds into neutral and forget any further discussion?

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 305 of 313 (584745)
10-03-2010 10:18 PM
Reply to: Message 304 by marc9000
10-03-2010 9:55 PM


Re: Evidence redux
Who do you think that "Victor Stenger" is, that whatever he says must be our Holy Writ?
Did you read the book? Just curious.

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Nij
Member (Idle past 4889 days)
Posts: 239
From: New Zealand
Joined: 08-20-2010


Message 306 of 313 (584755)
10-03-2010 11:29 PM
Reply to: Message 302 by marc9000
10-03-2010 9:37 PM


Re: Which Religion? Which Denomination? Which Bible?
I support Christianity’s promotion, in an equal way to the way that atheism is currently promoted, to balance it
Hahaha, which is funny, because atheism is not promoted in the classroom any more than Christianity is, and likely a lot less since a majority of teachers in the US (and the western world in general) are Christians themselves.
You may have confused atheism (the lack of belief in a god) with secularism (the idea that government should act without undue influence from a single religion), a standard mistake of people who understand neither.
And this causes problems for your desire to promote Christianity without even discussing the establishment clause: no religion may be promoted above any other by the government.
That means if you want Christianity promoted to "balance atheism", you must also desire promotion of Islam, of Hinduism, of T/Daoism, etc. Then and only then have you actually balanced anything. Otherwise all you do is tilt the balance in a new direction. One which, by the way, would be entirely opposed by substantial numbers of people because, you know, other religions do actually exist.
Maybe you want to think your idea through once more?

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Nij
Member (Idle past 4889 days)
Posts: 239
From: New Zealand
Joined: 08-20-2010


Message 307 of 313 (584758)
10-03-2010 11:58 PM
Reply to: Message 304 by marc9000
10-03-2010 9:55 PM


Re: Evidence redux
subbie apparently writes:
Science follows the principal of methodological naturalism.
This simply means that it restricts its areas of inquiry to what can be found in the natural world.
marc, in response to the above, writes:
Evidence?
Kind of part of the definition, actually.
Science follows the principle -- by the way subbie, you used the wrong homonym there -- of methodological naturalism (i.e. the scientific method). Which means it can only deal with things in the natural world.
subbie writes:
If we cannot perceive it with our senses, science doesn't deal with it
marc writes:
Evidence?
This one takes a little more than simply knowing what science is, but hey, why not:
If you can't perceive it, you can't test it.
If you can't test it, it can't be falsified.
If it can't be falsified, science can't deal with it.
Leaving us transitively with:
If you can't perceive it, science can't deal with it.
subbie writes:
This doesn't mean that science says the supernatural doesn't exist.
It means science doesn't address it.
marc, once again, writes:
Evidence?
See part 1 above: science deals only with the natural world.
See part 2 above: if we cannot perceive it, science does not deal with it.
Either of these would probably be enough to support subbie's statement. Together they're basically a juggernaut on coke.
I'm sure you've figured out the deal by now writes:
Science is against religion the same way that chess is. In other words, not at all.
Evidence? Did Bobby Fisher write a NY Times bestseller entitled; How chess shows that God does not exist? No? So there really could be difference between chess and science?
I'll simply repeat what I said to another paranoid antiscience theist. Ignore the language and personal stuff, just get the gist of it:
"Hey fucktard, maybe if you actually knew something about science, you'd know that it does not and can not say anything about God, because God is supernatural and science does not deal with any of that shit".
I'll make a pass at the last point you make, to try and salvage entertainment from doing this:
"Apparently first of its kind" just means the reporter who wrote the story couldn't find any similar or related cases after their brief perusal of an internet site providing SCOTUS opinion records and/or a Google search. You seriously thought a journalist would have known about every case ever decided?

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Replies to this message:
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subbie
Member (Idle past 1254 days)
Posts: 3509
Joined: 02-26-2006


Message 308 of 313 (584763)
10-04-2010 12:08 AM
Reply to: Message 307 by Nij
10-03-2010 11:58 PM


Re: Evidence redux
"Apparently first of its kind" just means the reporter who wrote the story couldn't find any similar or related cases after their brief perusal of an internet site providing SCOTUS opinion records and/or a Google search.
You're giving the "reporter" from World Nut Daily entirely too much credit. WND isn't a news source in any use of the word. It's a propaganda tool for right wingnuts who want to get the rest of us to believe there's a vicious war against fundamentalist Christianity. I seriously doubt the "reporter" knows the first thing about First Amendment history, he simply thought it would make things sound more dire if he said "Apparently first of its kind."

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson
We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat
It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate
...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 309 of 313 (584764)
10-04-2010 12:15 AM
Reply to: Message 303 by marc9000
10-03-2010 9:40 PM


Re: No True Scotsmen fallacy again?
dwise1 writes:
Dr. Miller is a practicing Catholic. And a self-described creationist, since, as a practicing Catholic, he does believe in a Divine Creator.
No evidence of that in his book. He opposes creationists and creation all throughout the book, he certainly doesn’t refer to himself as one.
From Scientific Creationism versus Evolution: The Mislabeled Debate by Kenneth R. Miller in Science and Creationism, edited by Ashley Montagu, 1984, pp 21-24:
quote:
The Scientific Creationists
We begin with a dilemma. Who are the creationists? Simply stated, a creationist should be anyone who believes in creation, in a universe formed by a supreme being. In other words, a creationist as someone who believes in God. By that standard of ordinary usage, I am a creationist (I'm a Roman Catholic), and so is any other scientist who professes a religious belief. However, in the context in which I must write this article, ordinary usage will not do. We will be forced to use another definition for the word creationist, the definition which has been forced on us by the current of the political debate in the United States. In this sense, a creationist as someone who believes that each and every kind of living organism was directly created by a supreme being, and that no organisms have arisen by the process of decent with modification advanced by Charles Darwin more than a century ago. In short, a creationist is an antievolutionist.
There are many groups who wear the creationist label with pride, and these groups often find themselves in agreement about little else other than the need to oppose evolution and the teaching of evolution. Some of these groups have moved so far beyond the limits of scientific inquiry as to make meaningful discussion absolutely impossible. ...
. . .
... The majority of American biologists have recognized the creationists for what they are -- a religiously motivated group -- and dismissed them. However, the creationists, realizing that the enormous weight of scientific evidence is stacked in favor of evolution, have taken a different route, one which demands that kind of response that scientists are not accustomed to giving.
The American creationist movement has entirely bypassed the scientific forum and has concentrated instead on political lobbying and on taking its case to a fair-minded electorate. And in so doing they have presented the interested and layperson with a convincing scientific case (which looks at least as good as a case that evolution is seen to be able to make), and asked, in the spirit of open-mindedness, for "fairness" or equal time in the presentation of what they call "creation-science" along with "evolution-science." ...
...
In the public forum it is important to accomplish several things at once. First of all, each of the creationist arguments against evolution should be answered in a clear and precise way. Second, the creationist scheme of natural history must be clearly exposed (something creationists avoid doing at all costs), so that the remarkable contradictions between it and scientific fact are easily seen by anyone caring to look. And finally, the attempt by creationist that can lead evolution is an inherently atheistic theory (thereby calling all Christian citizens automatically to their camp) must be exposed in refuted. A critical fact which is often lost in the debate, namely the lack of conflict between modern science (including evolution) and belief in God, must be brought out. This final point must be made in order to expose the creationist for what they are -- not scientists trying to leave a place for religion per se in the teaching of human origins, but rather people trying to inject a specific religion, Christian Fundamentalism, into the schools in the guise of science and to the exclusion of all other religions.
His essay is about 46 pages long, so I won't quote it at length. He makes a good case, but one known by everyone who has investigated creationist claims: those claims are false and deceptive.
Dr. Miller is not the only Christian who opposes "creation science". Nor is he the only one who has self-identified himself as a creationist (in the original sense) and has complained that "creation science" creationists have co-opted that term and turned it into something bad.
You seem to question how anyone who opposes creationists (in the narrow co-opted sense) could possibly be considered to be a Christian. But it certainly seems to me that one would have to ask how anyone who supports "creation science" could be considered Christian. What does truth mean to Christians? And truthfulness? And lying and deception? "Creation science" is full of lying and deception. What role is that supposed to play in Christianity? Are true Christians supposed to support and defend truth? Or are they supposed to embrace lies and deception? When Christians such as Dr. Miller speak out to defend the truth, why do "true Christians", apparently such as yourself, condemn him for it?
What role do lies and deception play in Christianity?
dwise1 writes:
Now, there are those self-described "Christians", mainly of the fundamentalist or "conservative" persuasion, who absolutely deny that Catholics are Christians. I personally know one at my work place.
I think they’re pretty rare. As a Protestant (Lutheran) I think Catholics have a few pretty serious misconceptions, but still believe they’re sincere Christians, and my view on that seems common among Protestants.
Lutherans are considered "mainstream" Protestants, meaning that they are not noted to hold to extremist views -- in general, which apparently does not speak for individuals within that faith. Fundamentalists, evangelicals, adventists, Witnesses, Mormons, and others not in the "mainstream" are known to hold such beliefs about Catholics not being Christians, whether officially held by the denomination or popularly held by the denomination's members. Even some of those who do not go that far (and even some that do) are known to identify the Catholic Church as being Revelations' "Whore of Babylon".
While not mainstream, those groups and individuals are far from rare. In fact, during the rise of the Radical Religious Right in 1980's they were being courted and raised as a decisive voting block. No, they are not at all rare. Doesn't make them any less clueless.
Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

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Nij
Member (Idle past 4889 days)
Posts: 239
From: New Zealand
Joined: 08-20-2010


Message 310 of 313 (584768)
10-04-2010 1:05 AM
Reply to: Message 308 by subbie
10-04-2010 12:08 AM


Re: Evidence redux
Benefit of the doubt, I guess.
So, WND is just another kind of Conservapedia? Oh great.

This message is a reply to:
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Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 311 of 313 (584801)
10-04-2010 8:45 AM
Reply to: Message 309 by dwise1
10-04-2010 12:15 AM


Lutherans are very diverse
Lutherans are considered "mainstream" Protestants, meaning that they are not noted to hold to extremist views
When most people think Lutheran they think of the ELCA. This is the classic mainstream Lutheran church.
There are some extreme fundie Lutheran churches which would not be considered "mainstream". Basically, a Lutheran is not a Lutheran is not a Lutheran.
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod are infallible, inerrant churches.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This message is a reply to:
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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 313 of 313 (855664)
06-21-2019 10:58 AM


SCOTUS allows cross on public property
Thread necromancy!
Sorry for bring this old thread back, but I was about to create a brand new thread with essentially the same title. But I prefer using existing threads rather than create new ones.
If people object to this, I can copy my post here and paste it into a different thread.
From the New York Times:
Supreme Court Allows 40-Foot Peace Cross on State Property
In the aftermath of WWI, a monument honoring the fallen soldiers was built on public property.
The monument, known as the Peace Cross, sits at a busy intersection in Bladensburg, Md., near Washington, and commemorates 49 fallen soldiers from Prince George’s County. It was built in 1925 using contributions from local families and the American Legion....
The state took over the monument and the land under it in 1961. Since then, Maryland has spent more than $117,000 to maintain and repair the memorial.
The monument is shaped like a large cross. There are objections to the monument based on the feeling that the cross is a sectarian Christian symbol and so violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Counter-arguments are... complicated it appears. The Court ruled 7-2 that there the cross is allowed, but there are several concurring opinions, and a tangled list of which justices signed onto which opinion.
I haven't yet read the opinion - I will, since the First Amendment is one of my interests - but I'm going to guess there are going to be a mix of several ideas:
The monument has been there for so long that it is now just part of the cultural heritage of the area;
crosses are such a common symbol for war dead that it has now been secularized in that context; and
the Christian religion should have special privileges in the US.
Ginsburg and Sotomayor were the two dissenters.
Edited by Chiroptera, : Weird typo; autocorrect?

It says something about the qualities of our current president that the best argument anyone has made in his defense is that he didn’t know what he was talking about. -- Paul Krugman

  
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