Conflict of interests

Ok, well, show us why this is a bad assumption.Pretend that I have an item, and a large stone. Your job is to get the item into the middle of the stone without leaving any marks on or in the stone whatsoever. What do you do?It's impossible to get something into a stone without leaving marks from breaking, drilling, etc. The only way that you could find a fossil in a stone is a process where soft material surrounding a fossil hardened into stone. That would make the fossil at least as old as the stone.That's not an "assumption", as you put it - it's a conclusion from simple logic.

Yes, Whatever. The fossil must predate the sediment solidifying into stone.That's what we're dating. How long ago the sediment matrix became stone. The fossil must be at least as old as that, because you can't put a fossil into the middle of a solid stone.So, where's the faulty assumption in assuming that a fossil can't get into a sedimentary rock after the sediment has solidified?

I did. At Gustavus Adolphus College, there were at least twenty or so student groups with the charter to bring people to Christ.There were absolutely no atheists groups, of any kind, whatsoever. The closest there was was when a friend of mind banded together the Buddists, Muslims, atheists, Jews, and folks of every non-Christian creed to form the "Alternative Religions Society".Here at Mizzou the situation seems comparable; there are actual organizations for all the major faith groups, many, many Christian outreach/ministry programs; and no atheist groups whatsoever.Oh, of course, many people become atheist at university; that's usually as a result of their education contradicting their closeted, blindered religious biases. In other words, the transition to atheism is usually something that you do on your own because your previous faith fails to sync with reality, not because some group brought you over for Atheist conversion. Usually your first days as an atheist are pretty lonely until you find more people of the same pursuasion.But there are no atheist recruitment groups at any university that I have attended. Contrast that to the vast proliferation of Christian ministry organizations.

...so?Pointing out that the history of Christianity has not always been a positive one, especially for non-Christians, is not recruiting for atheism.In fact, it's not really "dragging through the mud", unless you think that because you're a Christian, everyone has to sanitize Christian history in your presence.

I took a Bible class at my college, too.If the scholarly research concludes that Moses is not the author of the first books of the Bible, does he have some kind of responsibility not to tell me that, simply because my Church believes differently? Or rather, since we're in an academic setting with the purpose of finding out what is true and what is false, shouldn't he present the information the way it is, dogma be dammed?Why on Earth would I expect anyone to refrain from speaking truth just because it conflicts with my beliefs?

For belief, obviously.But that doesn't substantiate what they believed in, only that they believed.