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Author Topic:   When Will The End-Times Be And How Will We Know?
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 139 of 794 (876297)
05-16-2020 6:16 PM
Reply to: Message 134 by Phat
05-16-2020 2:04 PM


Re: Billy Graham Represents Apologetics
I suppose you would rather trust Trump and the WHO to take care of humanity. The curent global news is more confusing than ancient scripture.
Sorry, but just what has your god ever done to help us that we should trust him/her/it completely over our own best efforts (even to the point of just giving up and not even trying to save ourselves)? To quote from Steve Martin's fourth feature film (in which he starred), The Man with Two Brains (1983):
quote:
Inspector: You are playing God!
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: Somebody has to.
As much as I hate to use popular catch phrases (almost as much as using emojis or Clippie), it is what it is.
Until your god starts picking up the slack, we cannot rely on him/her/it and instead we need to fend for ourselves. To paraphrase somebody's recent remark about Trump wanting to wish the virus away: "Hoping for a miracle should not be Plan A."
(feel free to insert that apologetic joke about the stranded flood victim so certain that God was going to save him that he refuses all other rescue attempts only to be informed after his death by drowning that they were God's attempts to save his life)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 134 by Phat, posted 05-16-2020 2:04 PM Phat has replied

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


Message 142 of 794 (876307)
05-16-2020 10:19 PM
Reply to: Message 141 by AZPaul3
05-16-2020 9:55 PM


Re: Calamity of calamities.
That is precisely why those who have calculated the End Times so precisely and had their followers sell off all their worldly goods make damned sure to lock up their followers in order to give themselves a lot of leeway to make their getttaway.

This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 205 of 794 (876780)
05-28-2020 4:02 AM
Reply to: Message 204 by PaulK
05-28-2020 3:49 AM


Re: Truth Honesty & Creativity
I’m getting tired of being told to watch videos you won’t even talk about. It’s just a pointless waste of my time and contrary to the purpose of this forum.
If you won’t talk about them don’t post them.
It is possible that this is a replay of Phat's great enthusiasm from watching that anti-atheist, anti-Muslim, anti-Truth propaganda hack job, God is Not Dead. It had the desired propaganda effect of firing him up, but when called upon to present or discuss any details of the movie's arguments, he completely fell apart and was incapable of doing either.
These videos may well be yet another situation of emotional and fallacious appeals to prejudices that have no rational basis. He knows that he likes watching them and they get him fired up, but he cannot tell us why nor discuss any of it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 204 by PaulK, posted 05-28-2020 3:49 AM PaulK has not replied

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


(1)
Message 481 of 794 (887380)
08-01-2021 4:16 PM
Reply to: Message 479 by candle2
08-01-2021 2:43 PM


We have now observed that many dinosaur
fossils have significant amounts of C-14 in
them. Being generous to a fault, C-14 should
be undetectable after 100,000 years.
Refer to my reply on this to mike the wiz: Message 2369
Basically, you need to keep in mind how radiocarbon dating actually works! There are many different ways that C-14 can be formed, including from radioactive sources in the ground surrounding the sample. Of those many different ways of producing C-14, only C-14 produced in the atmosphere and incorporated into plants which then enter the food chain have anything to do with dating methods.
My message to mikey linked to above goes into far more detail.
Please learn something about what your claims are supposed to address in order to determine whether there's any validity to your claims.
As long as you and the rest of the creationist community fail to engage in proper and honest scholarship, nobody will take any of your flimsy false claims seriously. And as long as you (plural) tie your creationist claims to your religion and make the validity of your religion dependent on those claims, then nobody will take your religion seriously and even find very valid reasons to reject it as false and ridiculous.
Your move.
Instead of changing their beliefs to fit the facts,
evolutionists insist that iron is responsible for
the C-14 amounts, even after 75,000,000 years.
What are you talking about? Please cite your source on that.
For that matter, do you have an actual scientific source? Or is this nothing but yet another bogus creationist claim that you are repeating blindly?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 479 by candle2, posted 08-01-2021 2:43 PM candle2 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 482 by candle2, posted 08-01-2021 4:42 PM dwise1 has replied
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 484 of 794 (887383)
08-01-2021 6:08 PM
Reply to: Message 467 by candle2
08-01-2021 9:53 AM


Re: Let It Go, Phat! Do Something Useful For Yourself
It is observable science (since recorded history) that
an animal will have offsprings of the same kind. The
same goes for humans. Human mothers will always
have human babies.
Yes, that is exactly what science says, because that is how life operating in reality does work. That is also why evolution, which is based on how life operates in reality, says the same thing!
You seem to be trying to misrepresent evolution as saying something entirely different. What false words are you trying to put into evolution's mouth? Please be as specific as you can be. That would include your explanation of why you are coming to the false conclusions that you appear to be pretending to reach.
Professors cannot give an observable example where
one animal evolved (macro) into an entirely different
kind of animal.
Of course, because that is not how life works. Nor is that what evolution teaches! Why are you misrepresenting what evolution teaches? Because if you told the truth then your anti-evolution position would fall apart? So you end up having to support your position with no other way than one falsehood after another.
I know that you have been told the term, "nested hierarchies", but apparently you do not understand what that means. It's also called "clades" or monophyly -- the graphics there are much better than I could create via ASCII art.
Basically, offspring will always be in the same clade as their parents, what in your muddled terminology caricature would be a "kind" (BTW, "Kind" is the German word for "child", as in Kindergarten). They will never ever jump into a different clade. Yes, closely related clades may be able to still interbreed with varying degrees of success, but only if they are in the same next-higher clade.
Remember that a child will be very highly similar to its parents, yet slightly different. Over many generations, those differences between the n-th kid and the ancestor n generations ago will accumulate. Isolated populations of a species can, through the lack of remixing into a common gene pool, become noticeably different from each other, thus having become two different species. Both new species can go on to form newer species, but all of them will still be a part of that original clade.
You will complain that that is only micro-evolution, but that is also how macro works. Except you do not understand macro, but rather you undoubtedly have a massive wrong idea about it. And also apparently about how speciation happens, which does not happen in a single generation (as your "argument" implies) but rather over many generations.
Dr. Eugenie Scott recently gave a presentation: "What People Get Wrong--And Sometimes Right--About Evolution." I have posted it in Message 111 preceded by a message in which I presented my notes on it just immediately before finally finding the video.
Part of creationists' misunderstanding of evolution is that they are caught in the millennia-old idea of The Great Chain of Being, AKA "The Ladder of Life", in which species progress up the chain (or ladder) from more primitive to more advanced until they reach our position at the top. Thus, according to that absolutely wrong model, evolving involves jumping up the chain (or ladder) to become something completely different. Absolutely wrong and that's why you don't understand anything. We have so often seen that kind of misunderstanding leading to creationist "proofs against evolution" by pointing out that we do not see dogs giving birth to kittens. Absolute rubbish that only a creationist would be ignorant enough to say.
Rather, Darwin's idea was a branching tree or bush, which is the right idea. An ancestral species splits into two or more daughter species which then go on to branch out even further. Every single branching is still on the same earlier branch, there's no jumping over to another branch like you would jump from one link in a chain (or rung on a ladder) to another. No dogs giving birth to kittens is possible, yet it can lead to dogs being ancestral to later species of "doggish" (definitely related to dogs, yet different).
Let's try to draw a picture of that since I have a feeling that you are not much for reading:
Tree:                       A
                               |
           +-------------+---------------+
           |                                          |
           B                                       C
           |                                          |
    +---+--------+           +----------+------+
    |                    |            |                        |
    D                 E           F                        G
                                      |
                             +---+--------+
                             |                  |
                             H                 I
A through I are species. Time flows down-screen. A is the common ancestor of B and C. B is the common ancestor of D and E, neither of which have daughter species of their own. C is the common ancestor of F and G. F is the common ancestor of H and I. G has no daughter species of its own.
What can we say about the relationships of these species?. First, we can classify B and C as being A-ish, which is to say that they are in the A-clade. Furthermore, D and E are B-ish so that's the B-clade, F and G are C-ish and in the C-clade, and finally H and I are F-ish and in the F-clade.
However, because their ancestors are in the A-clade, we can also say that the members of the B-clade and of the C-clade are all also members of the A-clade. H and I, being in the F-clade, are also in the C-clade and in the A-clade.
But, we can also say that D and E are not in the C-clade; that ship branched off and sailed a long time ago (mixing metaphors there). Nor are H and I in the B-clade nor, if G should ever spawn its own daughter species, would they ever be in that G-clade.
In essence, that is how nested hierarchies work. Descendant species are in the same clades as their ancestors, but not those of their cousins.
So, dogs and cats are in two very different clades, so dogs cannot have kittens. However, they, along with bears, are in a same clade because they all share a common ancestor, a carnivore. That carnivorous ancestor was also placental (carrying its fetus longer thanks to having a placenta as opposed to what marsupials need to do). Not only that, but it was also ( ... wait for it, wait for it ... ) a mammal! Going further back through the cladistic levels, it was also an amniota (egg bearing), and a tetrapod (basic body plan including four limbs), and a chordate (AKA vertebrate), as well as being a member of Animalia.
I'm sure you've been fed that BS argument against Peppered Moths: "BUT THEY'RE STILL MOTHS!" Are you starting to see the error in that non-argument? Of course they're still moths! And even though speciation did not occur in that study, when they do eventually speciate their daughter species will still be moths, just a different kind of moth!
 
Please learn something about evolution so that you can oppose it with truthful arguments that actually address actual problems with it, not with false claims based on abject ignorance.
You've been trying ignorance for about a century now and it still does not work! You might consider trying a different approach, like actually learning what evolution actually is.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 467 by candle2, posted 08-01-2021 9:53 AM candle2 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 492 by candle2, posted 08-02-2021 9:47 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 485 of 794 (887384)
08-01-2021 6:30 PM
Reply to: Message 482 by candle2
08-01-2021 4:42 PM


I know how carbon dating works.
Obviously you do not, since you are relying on such complete and utter bullshit.
So show me that you know. Describe how carbon dating works, including where the C-14 comes from and how it gets into organic specimen. Then explain what that is supposed to have to do with dinosaur fossils; ie, how is that C-14 supposed to have gotten into inorganic mineralized material which is what those fossils are.
So if you know so much about radiocarbon dating and all that, then why don't you demonstrate to us just how much you do know. Oh, yeah, you already have. Nothing.
Until you do so, we can arrive at no other conclusion than that you are deliberately lying to us. And that your god is The Lord of Lies. Pleased to meet you, can you guess his name?
If I can observe something, such as "kind"
reproducing the same "kind," then I can
accept that.
That is exactly what evolution teaches. So why don't you accept it as you just promised?
Oh yeah, you just told us yet another lie.
BUT, if I am being asked to believe that
variations in a "kind" can over long periods
of time turn one "kind" into a totally
different "kind," I won't do it.
That doesn't happen. Nor does evolution say that that would happen. Why would you think such a ridiculous thing? Only a brainless creationist would even come with such total nonsense. So you've been fooled by yet another creationist lie.
Read my Message 484 for some good gouge on that.
How long do you think I would have to wait
for my 24 speed mountain bike to evolve
into a Harley?
That is not how bikes work. And that is not even remotely close to how evolution works. Your nonsense is so completely wrong on so many levels.
Do you really believe such complete and utter nonsense? Only a brainless creationist would.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 482 by candle2, posted 08-01-2021 4:42 PM candle2 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 494 by candle2, posted 08-02-2021 10:03 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 496 of 794 (887406)
08-02-2021 10:20 AM
Reply to: Message 494 by candle2
08-02-2021 10:03 AM


Re: candle2 & C-14
This is why I stated that after 100,000
years (probably closer to 50,000) no C-14
is detectable in fossils. The soil has nothing
to do with this.
It is ludicrous to believe that significant
amounts of C-14 is still present in 75,000,000
year old fossils, regardless of the soil or the
presence of iron in the soil.
SO WHATEVER DOES C-14 IN FOSSILS HAVE TO DO WITH RADIOCARBON DATING METHODS????? Stop evading the question!
Any C-14 incorporated into the organisms through the means that radiocarbon dating is based on would indeed all be gone after 50,000 years. In addition, in most fossils all the organic material has been replaced by minerals (including any C-14 that had been incorporated in that organic material through the means that radiocarbon dating is based on). You are familiar with what fossilization is, aren't you?
Rather, the C-14 to be found in those fossils (as well as in all kinds of non-fossils) has not decayed away yet because it is of recent origin. And that recently formed C-14 has nothing to do with radiocarbon dating.
 
Now, answer my question/request! What possible significance can teh presence of that recently formed C-14 have on radiocarbon dating?
In order to answer that, you need to understand what radiocarbon dating is based on and what it depends on. You claim to know that, so demonstrate your knowledge!
If you have no clue, then simply admit it and allow yourself to learn something for a change.
Otherwise, you are lying not only to us, but also to yourself. Do you really believe that lying is the Christian thing to do?
Edited by dwise1, : added subtitle for visibility

This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 498 of 794 (887410)
08-02-2021 12:41 PM
Reply to: Message 497 by Tangle
08-02-2021 11:45 AM


unlight candle writes:
In any event, couldn't a bicycle evolve into a
Harley if we allowed it tens of millions of years
to do so?
It actually took about 100 years.
It isn't nice to poke a brain-dead body with a stick.
He has no clue what the word "evolution" means. In fact, not only have creationists created a bizarre delusional conspiracy-theory boogeyman which they call "evolution" to scare themselves with, but they keep using the confusion they generate by conflating definitions in order to deceive both others and, far more importantly, themselves .
So let's engage in this evolution (as we use it properly in the US Navy -- the US Navy could not possibly function without evolutions, even though that has nothing to do with biological evolution).
The word "evolution" first appeared around 1620 (give or take a couple decades; I'm doing this from memory). It means "turning out" as refers to such things as the unfolding of a flower.
IOW, the evolution of something is tracking and examining its development over time. Thus we speak of the evolution of a river valley, stellar evolution (ie, how a star forms and goes through the changes of its lifespan), evolution of a particular city, evolution of economic systems, evolution of political systems, evolution of trade routes, evolution of military doctrine, evolution of languages, evolution of Christianity, evolution of bicycle design, etc. Including but not restricted to biological evolution which is how life develops over time.
Note that it was more than two centuries before Darwin used the term modified as "biological evolution", thus marking his ideas as something special and different from all the other kinds of evolution (same as we have specially modified words like "paper towel", "tomato catsup", "motor coach", "needle gun", "gauss rifle", "military intelligence").
In contrast, creationists (especially Kent Hovind and his wanna-be followers) use a tired old obfuscating argument of (reconstructing from memory):
quote:
You want to talk about evolution, but which one do you mean?
  • Cosmic evolution?
  • Stellar evolution?
  • Chemical evolution?
  • Biological evolution?
You fool! You don't even know what you are talking about.
As far as we can determine, creationists misunderstand/misrepresent evolution as being some kind of all-inclusive monolithic philosophy that includes all of those and that the whole thing is anti-God! Why they would think something so incredibly stupid, nobody can say. It would help if they would talk with us about what they think and why they think that, but they refuse to even try. Frankly, I think that even they don't know what they think nor why they think that. In short, there's no thought involved in what they're doing.
 
So, we can indeed discuss the evolution of bicycle design and even examine the processes involved. But unlike the benighted unlit candle2, at least we are fully aware that the evolution of bikes has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Darwinian evolution.
But as long as these brain-dead creationists refuse to learn what evolution actually is, they will continue to blather nonsense.
 
BTW, a Navy evolution is where the crew or part of the crew turns out to work together on a particular task (eg, sallying the ship). In the reserves, we applied the term mainly to training evolutions. Like I said, the US Navy could not possibly function without evolutions.
Edited by dwise1, : added creationist's conclusion in the quote section

Edited by dwise1, : change in second paragraph adding " which they call "evolution" "


This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 521 of 794 (887842)
08-23-2021 4:27 AM
Reply to: Message 516 by Phat
08-23-2021 2:28 AM


Re: Hypothetically Speaking
We send ourselves to hell by denying Jesus.
To quote very early Steve Martin (like early SNL, late 70's if even that late): "Well EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEEEEEEE!"
That sounds just like the rubbish that the Boy Scouts of America, Inc, would say during their religious discrimination pogrom of circa 1991.
I personally suffered under Boy Scouts of America, Inc, religious discrimination circa 1991. They were supposed to be absolutely nonsectarian and yet they arbitrarily imposed sectarian standards for allowing membership. Earlier around 1985 they had implemented a new standard requiring belief in a Supreme Being which they claimed somehow made them more "absolutely nonsectarian".
It didn't! Immediately a Unitarian Scout striking for Life was expelled for not believing in a Supreme Being. Hundreds of letters of protest cause BSA, Inc, to reverse its decision and Chief Scout Exec Ben Love (remember that name!) explained to the nation that that "belief in a Supreme Being" was a mistake and would not be repeated. Problem solved, ... or was it?
Ever hear of Scout's Honor? Well Chief Scout Exec Ben Love, the highest rank in BSA, Inc, clearly had no honor whatsoever. In 1991, he abruptly turned around and used that same "mistake" (according to him himself) to justify expelling many members from Scouting. IOW, rabid religious discrimination.
In my own case, I had researched the BSA Bylaws and Rules and Regulations, Advancement Requirements, etc; ie, their officially published policies. I was able to satisfy myself that my being an atheist did not violate the membership requirements. But then suddenly BSA was expelling members for religious reasons all over the place. So I went to CompuServe to see just what the hell was going on! Not only was everything BSA was doing a total bloody mess, but BSA had a spy operating on CompuServe who printed out huge folders of message transcripts to submit in federal court as evidence.
I was expelled with no recourse -- sure, we had the "right" of a board review and to appear before that board, but the board met and deliberated long before I was ever informed of any such meeting. In my letter of expulsion, they "had determined that [I] could not do my 'Duty to God'." That is a very interesting point as per officially published BSA policy.
OK, BSA does have very definite policies regarding religion. First, they had added "A Scout is Reverent", which does not appear in the original Scout Law and also not in many if not most Scouting organizations -- that one appears to peculiar to the American variant. Furthermore, that Law only specifies that you perform your religious duties according to the teachings of your religion and to respect the beliefs of others. (Rather ironic since the BSA leadership was doing the exact opposite) Second, they have acknowledged from the very beginning that, since they are themselves not experts on all religion, then they must always defer to each member's own religious leader in the decision of whether that member has done his "Duty to God" in accordance with that religion. I should also add that BSA even forbids itself, through their own officially published policy, not only from not specifying what any member's own "Duty to God" must be, but even from even defining what 'God' must mean. Remember that one now even as you are remembering their new-fangled requirement which defined "God" as "a Supreme Being" -- which is the exact opposite of being absolutely non-sectarian Has the scent of hypocrisy started wafting in yet?
My minister, UU, wrote a letter to BSA certifying in writing that I do indeed perform my "Duty to God" in accordance with Unitarianism. Which is what is required by officially published BSA policy. BSA ignored his letter. So he wrote a second letter to the same effect. Also ignored. Then BSA arbitrarily decided in completely disregard for my own minister's letters as required by officially published BSA policy, that I couldn't do my "Duty to God" in accordance with my religion.
I never had any chance to address the problem with them except through a single phone call. When I was informed of the CompuServe spy and then was told that my case was being reviewed, I called the Council Exec myself to see what was going on -- you see, they were planning on eliminating me behind my back as they had done to everybody else -- next time you call somebody a "Boy Scout", that could have an entirely different meaning now. My attempts to discuss the issue with him led to me having to ask him for the BSA's official definition of "God" -- timeline-wise, I didn't learn about their bogus "Supreme Being" definition until later through my UU minister in documents regarding the Paul Trout case. Here is what it devolved to:
  • "So how do you officially define 'God'?"
  • "'God' is whatever you say it is."
  • "So then 'God' could be that tree."
  • "No, it couldn't. "
  • "So how do you officially define 'God'?"
  • "'God' is whatever you say it is."
  • "So then 'God' could be that tree."
  • "No, it couldn't. "
  • "So how do you officially define 'God'?"
  • "'God' is whatever you say it is."
  • "So then 'God' could be that tree."
  • "No, it couldn't. "
  • etc
Finally I summed it up as "So 'God" is defined by your own particular personal religious beliefs and nobody else's." Though that is not what was actually said, which was more like: "So you're expelling me simply because my own religious beliefs don't agree completely with your own personal beliefs?" And he basically said, "Yep!", and ended the conversation. So I was expelled because I didn't measure up to an individual BSA pro's own personal religious beliefs? How much more narrowly sectarian could it ever get than that?
 
Getting back to the lead-in, each letter of expulsion that I know of includes the wording of "we are not excluding them, but rather they are excluding themselves". Uh, no, to the best of my knowledge I met all the membership requirements, even ones that they were violating at will. Furthermore, BSA lawyers would repeat that same stupid claim of "they are excluding themselves." So then, I guess it's one of my buttons that you just pressed.
How did they all deny Jesus? Simply by not converting? But when we see so many negative qualities attributed to "true Christians" can you wonder why we turn our backs to such a negative religion? Why would anybody want to convert to such a negative and destructive religion?
But were they "denying Jesus", or were they denying Christianity? Basically, the entire religion mess is about definitions and how your enemies can redefine what you believe in order to turn it against you.
So then, God & Co. could follow BSA's lead and lie and cheat all they want to and violate their own sacred rules in order to exert their own arbitrary bigoted will, then what chance would anybody have? As per the BSA model, many of those who "denied Jesus" had actually accepted him but the formulation was not "just so" (eg, maybe the wrong number of fingers used in the blessing). The problem is that they are arbitrarily and summarily judged and damned with no defense and no appeal.
Like I said, I've been through that kind of BS with BSA: "you have damned yourself to Hell for making the wrong religious decision" and "you are excluding yourself by having failed to meet the high standards of Scouting".
Are we getting a square and fair deal from God? Or is he yet another hypocrite like the BSA?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 516 by Phat, posted 08-23-2021 2:28 AM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 531 by Phat, posted 08-25-2021 3:12 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 538 of 794 (887899)
08-25-2021 11:44 AM
Reply to: Message 531 by Phat
08-25-2021 3:12 AM


Re: Hypothetically Speaking
Personally, I think that society-at-large and public organizations such as BSA should be secular.
Agreed, but then it BSA perverted that and hid behind legalistic sophistry. They have been ruled to be a private organization (albeit open to the public) and as such they have been ruled to have the right to establish their own membership requirements.
Of course, when an organization does that then we should expect them to publish those requirements and to abide by them. BSA did publish those requirements but then violated their own policies.
For that matter, you used to be able to go in and buy copies of BSA's Rules and Regulations and Bylaws (which I did), but then as soon as their own policies started to be cited against them in court those publications disappeared from the store shelves and you had to go through the professional staff for access to that information (assume that they would allow it).
BSA conducted itself in bad faith and, like Trump has done his entire life, used an army of lawyers to make specious arguments to allow them to get away with it. Officially, they are not a religious organization but rather they claim to be "absolutely nonsectarian" whose only actual religious requirement is that they urge members' families to pay definite attention to the families' own particular religion in the upbringing of the member -- as such, BSA officially has no power to define just exactly what that must entail, including that they cannot define "Duty to God" nor even determine whether a member does his "Duty to God" (nor even define what "God" is supposed to mean), but rather only the members' own religious leaders are authorized to do that (I already covered that).
However, since religious organizations are given extra leeway in religious discrimination cases, BSA kept claiming in court that they were a religious organization (with a secret religious purpose at that!) and they had always been one from the very beginning. Except in another case which challenged this "religious organization's" free access to a public elementary school as violating church-state separation in which case suddenly BSA was proclaiming that they were not in any imaginable manner a religious organization and they had never been one.
IOW, they were ready and more than willing to tell whatever lie would benefit them. For example, when I got involved in adult leadership, they had just instituted their Youth Protection Program (YPP) for adult leaders. Part of it was to expose excuses that offenders will use (eg, "the child invited it", which is yet another instance of the "blame the victim" mentality you had expressed and which triggered my reply). But then I learned in a special news report on BSA's history of sexual abuse cases that in the preceding decade BSA would use those exact same excuses and blaming the victims in court. No wonder the YPP training materials writers knew exactly what to write. Now, I still believe that the Youth Protection Program is a very good idea, but the only reason it was ever created was for BSA to cover their collective @$$ (and especially the dollar signs part).
Beliefs should not play a role in membership.
Which would not apply to a private religious organization, depending on their bylaws and membership requirements (there's a cautionary tale that a new church drafting its bylaws needs to keep in mind; see below).
As I already covered, BSA was supposed to be an "absolutely nonsectarian" organization whose only religious component was to emphasize an importance that members' families should attend to in accordance with their own religious traditions. But then they started to arbitrarily imposing sectarian religious requirements.
After all, If Jesus had been running the place, would He let everyone join or only the Southern Baptists!
They would have very likely kicked him out, mainly in response from such churches as the Southern Baptists. BSA has Religious Awards whose programs are developed by those churches and BSA's only role is to recognize and promote them -- I would promote it in our Cub Scout pack since I personally believe that every member of a religion should at least be aware of what their religion teaches. In the early 1990's, neo-pagan units (who could possibly be more in tune with Nature, the essence of Scouting?) developed their own religious award, The Hart and Crescent, and submitted it. It was rejected because Baptists got all bent out of shape over "witches" -- I forget whether there was even a move within BSA to kick the neo-pagans out. So much for being "absolutely nonsectarian."
 
Scouting is a very good program which teaches good values: Lord Baden-Powell has been quoted as saying that the Scout Law is superior to the Ten Commandments because it is filled with what to do instead of what not to do (DWise1 NOTE: trying to break bad habits by concentrating on "don't do it!" only keeps you thinking of doing that bad habit). Quite literally when I had become an atheist and was questioning what to base morality on (having been raised with that Christian fallacy that without God there's nothing to base morality on), I concluded that Scout Oath and Scout Law would work well. And it did and does.
But BSA is a different kind of beast. Rather, it appears to be based on power and money. Power for religious groups to impose their will on the public and money from many sources. Membership in 1990 was $7 per member per year, both youth and adult, so income from that would be based on volume. They get that every annual enrollment (in February, as I seem to recall -- membership drives at the start of the school year is at a prorated rate, as I recall three decades later).
What does BSA do with that money? Basically, pay the professionals and write program materials. All the real work is done by volunteers. Basically, Scouting is what happens on the unit and volunteer level, not on the BSA level.
But the real money for BSA is made through charitable contributions, including direct contributions, United Way, providing facilities for free or very nearly free, sponsorship by the government and the military, church sponsorship, etc. That is actually the only reason that BSA has been trying to reform itself in the aftermath of their discrimination. Sure, part of it is because membership is declining in part because of the bad name they've given to Scouting. But a huge part is because those sponsoring organizations themselves have non-discrimination policies that forbid them from supporting organizations that do discriminate. So then ironically, BSA is excluding itself from receiving support.
I personally could never contribute to our local United Way because of this. They have/had an anti-discrimination policy and yet they continued to support the local BSA council which was very directly involved in religious discrimination. Their first excuse was that they needed to see how the Randall Twins case turned out. That judgement found that BSA did indeed discriminate, so then their excuse was that they were waiting for the appeals were done. That dragged out for years, so their interim excuse was to ignore their own policies to say "we get to choose whom we support". When the California Supreme Court finally decided in BSA's favor, what they found was that while BSA did indeed discriminate, that didn't matter since as a private organization the cited law didn't apply to them. So United Way tried to say, "See? They don't discriminate!" Uh, yes, they did and do indeed discriminate; the law simply does not apply to them. But United Way's policies do still apply. Many other United Ways have followed their own policies and severed ties with BSA, but ours (Orange County, Calif) did not and so they will never have my support. We just cannot trust them.
So why has BSA suddenly backed off from two of the "Three G's", gays and girls? Because of that loss of revenue from sources that do not allow discrimination.
Ironically, that has led to loss of another source of revenue. For many decades, the Mormons made Scouting their primary youth program. Every single Mormon boy was required to be a Scout and would conscript adult leaders (a recent Mormon convert through marriage came in one morning complaining bitterly that he had just been drafted as Cubmaster and he didn't even have any sons). Every single Mormon boy stayed in the program until age of 18, but at the age of 14 they were done with Scouting and all diverted to sports programs, but the Mormon Church continued to pay for their BSA membership. As a result, the Mormons had a lot of influence with BSA (Penn and Teller did an episode on that).
And a recurring disingenuous argument in court was that BSA really really really did not want to discriminate, but the Mormons were forcing them to do it by threatening to pull out. During the religious discrimination of the early 90's, the local council which was in the thick of it took out a full page ad in the newspaper proclaiming loudly that "Our values are not for sale!" My reaction was, "Of course not, because you have already sold them to the Mormons." Hypocrites!
Well, now that has come to pass. Because of changes that BSA has made to try to restore their streams of income close to them because of their discriminatory actions, the Mormons have decided to drop Scouting and create their own youth program. I have never watched even a single episode of that show, but I love it when a plan comes together.
 
So BSA's hypocritical "we're not excluding you; you're excluding yourself" is no different and no less evilly cruel than your "We send ourselves to hell by denying Jesus."
Creating the situation to turn people into victims and then systematically blaming the victims for their own victimhood is what we would expect from rapists and child molesters and racists.
And that is how you would choose to describe your god? That says a lot.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 564 of 794 (887942)
08-26-2021 12:44 PM
Reply to: Message 531 by Phat
08-25-2021 3:12 AM


Re: Hypothetically Speaking
But getting back to the hypotheticals...how would a UU perspective chime in?
First, keep in mind what Unitarian Universalism is: a non-credal organization in which we are unified by a shared search for spiritual growth guided by a dynamic, "living tradition". UU was formed in 1961 through the merger of two denominations: the American Unitarian Association established in 1825 and the Universalist Church of America established in 1793.
Unitarianism has its roots in Christianity, but it was founded on a rejection of Trinitarianism in favor of a unified view of God; ie, only one God, not three. Jesus came to be seen as a Great Teacher rather than a god in his own right (ironic that "true Christians" choose to worship him as a god while rejecting or just ignoring his teachings). Over time, Unitarianism became increasingly rational (eg, rejecting superstition) and philosophical.
Universalism stressed a loving God in reaction against the standard Christian portrayal of a wrathful God in which the only goal was to avoid Hell (which they would describe at great length with devilish glee). Basically, in Universalism Hell does not exist (same as in Judaism as I understand). In one sermon, our minister attributed the decline of the Universalist church to its message being so successful, since most mainstream churches ended up adopting the idea of a loving God instead of fire and brimstone.
In 1961, life-long Unitarians did not receive the news of merging with Universalists well, since they viewed that as injecting superstition into their churches. Ironically, UUs form such a wide tent that neo-pagans have also found a home with us. Or would those old Unitarians have viewed the neo-pagans as the slippery-slope result of letting the Universalists in?
I think it was Thomas Starr King, who observed: "Universalists believe that God is too good to damn us and Unitarians believe that they are too good to be damned." Thomas Starr King (1824-1864) had first been a Universalist minister and then a Unitarian minister later to be called in 1860 to a Unitarian church in San Francisco. As an orator, Starr King spoke zealously in favor of the Union and has been credited with keeping California in the Union during the Civil War. Every state has two statues representing them in the National Statuary Hall Collection displayed in the United States Capitol. Thomas Starr King's statue was proposed in 1913, but sadly was replaced by Ronald Reagan in 2006.
And a frequent sermon anecdote is of a Baptist youth doing her Sunday School assignment of speaking with ministers of other churches in order to learn the differences. When she asked the UU minister about Hell and he responded that they don't believe in that, astonished she asked, "But then why be good?" "Because it is the better way."
 
So then regarding all these hypotheticals about non-issues like Hell that we don't even believe to exist (except as metaphors), a UU perspective would range from them being tempests in teapots, to tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, to just good old-fashioned mental masturbation to be filed away with wondering how many angels could dance on the head of a pin (none, since Baptists know that dancing is evil).
 
Speaking of Hell being a metaphor, here is a common metaphor of Heaven and Hell (I think it might come from Buddhism). We are shown two round tables both with a pot of nourishing stew in the center. Everybody sitting around the tables have a spoon with a long handle so that it can reach the pot, but it's longer than the arm so nobody can feed himself. One group is starving to death because they insist on trying to feed only themselves, not caring for anyone else; that is Hell. The other group is well-fed and thriving because they cooperate and feed each other; that is Heaven.
To tie this in with another topic, which table would you think applies to the America First crowd?

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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 573 of 794 (887954)
08-27-2021 1:44 PM
Reply to: Message 569 by Phat
08-27-2021 12:12 PM


Re: Hypothetically Speaking
What you guys don't understand is that God is under no obligation to save human lives.
Then what good is he?
Humans are.
That's right!
God is useless and depending on any of the gods for anything is far more useless. We are on our own and we have to depend on each other for everything. For that matter, depending on the gods only makes matters far worse.
Welcome to atheism!

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 631 of 794 (888046)
08-31-2021 2:58 PM
Reply to: Message 630 by ringo
08-31-2021 12:09 PM


Re: Tangled Up Hypotheticals
You lump the "liberal" Christians who agree with me in with the Hindus and the Mormons and the other heathens, don't you?
I have a copy (recorded on cassette tape) of Orson Scott Card's classic "Secular Humanist Revival Meeting" presentation from the 1980's, a classic exposure of Radical Religious Right hypocrisy. The format is a Southern Baptist fire-and-brimstone sermon (he's from one of the Carolinas) sprinkled liberally with calls of "Can you hear me? Am I speaking loud enough?" (punch line at the end is that he cannot possibly speak loud enough for those hypocrites writing their anti-America laws to hear him, "But they can hear you!" as a call for the audience to rise up and let their voices be heard).
He is a Mormon science fiction author (eg, Ender's Game). Sadly, he has since then disowned the "Revival Meeting", saying that it is no longer needed. Word is that church elders had gotten to him and pressured to silence him.
In that presentation regarding school prayer, he said something like all the Protestant schools would have those little children saying Protestant prayers, and all the Catholic schools would have them saying Catholic prayers, and all the Mormon schools would have them saying Mormon prayers, and all the New York City schools would have them praying all day to every god you ever heard of. And every single prayer would be a blasphemy! To support that, he cited an Old Testament story by name which I'm not familiar with, but I had once killed all "Letters to the Editor" debate about school prayer for a full two years by citing that Jesus had taught against such a practice of public displays of prayer as being nothing but hypocrisy (see that letter here -- re-reading that letter, it is not the letter which quoted Jesus from the Gospels, so apparently not the letter that killed school prayer advocacy for two years; sorry, it's been about four decades after all).
Around that part, Card pointed out that, despite the fundamentalists saying that Mormons are not Christians, Mormons are Christian -- they just believe in a different version of Jesus. Mormons really live their faith and they give far more than any fundamentalist ever would, far more than any fundamentalist preacher would ever dare ask for.
No, I am not a Mormon nor am I particularly sympathetic to them beyond basic Scouting respect for the beliefs of others -- though they have earned antipathy for their intimate role in the virulent religious discrimination committed by Boy Scouts of America, Inc. But the "true Christian" attitudes toward the many "not really Christian" denomination is nothing short of hypocrisy. And anybody who has actually read the Bible (or even nothing more than the Gospels) knows full well what Jesus thought of hypocrites. Surely, in the wording of the Gospels, those hypocrites "shall have their reward" (ie, Eternal Damnation).

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 632 of 794 (888047)
08-31-2021 3:38 PM
Reply to: Message 612 by Phat
08-29-2021 11:36 AM


Re: Diabetes
9.8% last time I checked as I had a toe amputated Friday.
A couple we knew in later college (after our first BAs (in German and French, respectively), I enlisted and we both went on to earn further degrees, Computer Science and Elementary Education, respectively). She befriended an instructor who lived in married student housing (crowded quonset huts -- they had a Christmas party in which guests had to arrive and leave in shifts). He had diabetes and he had done a presentation on diabetic foot care in which he wore a foot costume with a hole for his face. That was the first that I had ever heard of that issue for diabetics. Fast forward to the 1986 comedy, Nothing in Common, teaming young Tom Hanks with Jackie Gleason. At the end, son Tom looks down at father Gleason's feet and sees the black of the gangrene setting in; Gleason's character was diabetic and wasn't taking care of himself.
My mother developed diabetes later in life. She had had polio as a child, so she had a lifetime of pressing ahead and being active and doing what everybody else would despite her polio. When she had had a series of minor strokes and was found to need by-pass surgery, her inherent bravado from polio mislead the surgeon into thinking that she was stronger than she actually was. She survived the actual surgery, but died in recovery. The surgeon was genuinely surprised at how fragile her body actually was despite her strong presentation.
My older sisters blame diabetes for our mother's death. The disease attacks the entire body, all the organs. It weakens everything. It is not something to be shrugged off, especially now that you're minus a toe.
 
In the meantime, here's a sea shanty from Acapella Science about Dr. Banting, the Canadian doctor who developed insulin therapy. Nobel them all!
BTW, the student who has produced a series of Acapella Science videos (Watch them! You'll like them! I cannot hear the originals without substituting in his words.) is himself Canadian.
Despite your recent echoing of white supremicist "white replacement theory" in which nefarious forces (ie, "the Jews) are trying to replace whites with non-whites -- refer back to that early-Trump neo-Nazi demonstration with tiki torches shouting "The Jews will not replace us!"), do please take in this piece of Jewish wisdom from the Pirke Avoth, the Sayings of the Fathers:
quote:
If I am not for myself, who will be?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, then when?
Be for yourself now. Nobody else can be.
Edited by dwise1, : changed the subtitle

This message is a reply to:
 Message 612 by Phat, posted 08-29-2021 11:36 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

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


Message 633 of 794 (888048)
08-31-2021 3:45 PM
Reply to: Message 612 by Phat
08-29-2021 11:36 AM


Re: Daffy Duck
Duplicate of my Message 632 somehow happened. So I have myself initiated cleanup protocol.
Edited by dwise1, : Duplicate. Cleanup protocol.

This message is a reply to:
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