Separation of church and state

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Cornell's 2005—06 research expenditures totaled $605.3 million ($419.1 million of this funding was from federal sources;

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University Facts | Cornell University419.1 million, FEDERAL funding? The slipperyness of the term "private institution is another thread.

A few years ago I read his book Finding Darwin’s God — A Scientist’s Search For Common Ground Between God And Evolution, and found it to be about 90% Darwin and 10% God. He showed practically no knowledge of BASIC Christianity, and any of it he did refer to was gap filling. But whenever he saw any kind of conflict, Darwin was king, God came in a distant second.Matthew 7: 15, 16 says Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. (The words of Christ himself)I know him by his fruits. I don’t judge him, and I’m not an arbiter of him. I know to avoid his teachings personally, and non forcibly point out what I consider to be his unacceptable compromises with atheism.

Federal funding involves state. In separation of church and state issues, Message 272 suggested to me that private institutions, are exempt from separation of church and state issues. I don’t think the term private institution defines an entity well if it is funded in any way by tax dollars.

You're trying really hard to get this thread closed by administration, aren't you? Just like you successfully did here, in messages 129 &130. Good luck with that.

I think it’s relevant because separation of church has been the cause of the inconsistency, not the actual wording of the first amendment. Separation of church and state has been an ADDITION, a confusing addition to US government that wasn’t there, wasn’t applied by the courts, before 1947. Though it’s been shown in this thread that Reynolds happened long before 1947, Reynolds wasn’t a prominent reference to it, to anywhere near the extent that Everson (1947) has been. I have, but you'd claim that I haven't no matter what I do. Apparently it's the only alternative you have to any kind of actual open-mindedness, something I'm often accused of not having. No matter how clearly I show it, you’ll always automatically deny it. That much is clear. But 10 Commandment displays on government property were seldom, if ever, questioned or taken to court before 1947. Did you know that Thurgood Marshall once said, concerning his judicial philosophy; "You do what you think is right, and let the law catch up." That is a real good introduction to what the courts are doing, and have been doing since the mid 20th century. You made up the grade school part. I’m actually talking about biology on a high school and college level here. Since I’ve gotten at least 10 posts worth of grief for not having the critical thinking skills to understand that a person who used the term states was actually referring to foreign countries, I’d have to ask you to have the critical thinking skills to understand that I wasn’t referring to a grade school textbook. The problem of the entire scientific community, it seems, (as well as the entire secular, humanistic worldview) is that it doesn’t understand that there are sources of truth other than those based on only the scientific method.I heard the other day that polls show that 59% of the US population believe that the US is on the wrong track. Much of today's high level political debates show that more than a few believe that scientism and separation of church and state are largely behind that wrong track. There is much the scientific community doesn’t know about the origin of life. But since it presupposes a conclusion of only naturalism (purposeless, blind, happenstance, random processes), it will avoid studying any troublesome complications that raise more questions than answers. Not telling everything is important when dealing with something that has unexplainable gaps. Would you be on my side if teachers are permitted to say, When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth. According to the following WorldNetDaily story, the courts have decided that’s alright.Teacher's rant on Christians draws court rebuke(That link is, ~evidence~) So here’s what separation of church and state have done for us; It’s religious — violates the law - to address details, pathways, information coding, and continuous (vs discontinuous) development of biological systems, because it could look problematic for the random happenstance of naturalistic development, yet when it’s said when you put your Jesus glasses on, you can’t see the truth , it’s not anti-religious, it doesn’t violate the law. I think it’s obvious that for every James Corbett that is caught, hundreds or thousands more just like him go scot-free. I linked some evidence in several messages, including numbers 118, 184, and 274. If what evidence I’ve presented isn’t enough for you, I’m sorry. These are discussion forums about opinions, largely about projections about how good something is for a society. Philosophical discussions go beyond evidence. Do you demand evidence after every line of the Humanist Manifestos?

The actual title God, The Failed Hypothesis, is similar to many other book titles by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc. I just go directly to the subtitle because it’s a LIE. When pressed on it, most anyone in the scientific community will acknowledge that it’s a lie. But if not pressed, they’re happy to just wink and nod at it.

MY thoughts are that if a church gets public funding for a drug rehab program or any similar program, THAT PROGRAM and all church administrators involved with it become public, (including taxing and reporting) and its funding and activities stay separate from the rest of that particular church’s activities. Any administrators involved in both that program and other church activities would be required to file reports that would make clear that the two activities are completely separate. It would be possible to do, and it wouldn’t be hard to do without the separation of church and state metaphor legally getting in the way.

No different than assertions that ID violates separation of church and state. It's opinion, nothing more. See Message 274. As a textbook author, he speculates on origins of life in a purely naturalistic way, just like an atheist would. He leaves things out, things that are basic in Christianity. He wouldn't have to directly speculate on them, but he goes far enough with naturalism to disregard them. And no one else's in this thread, only mine? Guess it depends on which side you're on. Have I asked anyone if they're "insane", or told them "their brain doesn't work"?

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

You yourself have put fourth plenty of claims in this thread without evidence. Let’s look at some of your Message 217; Evidence? Evidence? Evidence? Evidence? So Victor Stenger’s book is in fact a lie? Evidence? 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? 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. 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. Do you think I’d be more likely to present evidence if you didn’t play kidde games with the names of my sources?

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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.

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So the actual opinion of the case is all that’s relevant? The WorldNetDaily story started out like this;

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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.

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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?