Religious Conservatives Gather to Discuss 'War Against Christians'
"The message of 'V for Vendetta' is that Christians are plotting to seize the reins of power."
No, the message of 'V for Vendetta' is that fascist, totalitarian governments can only control the people for so long until someone stands up and refuses to be put down. It only features your uber-corrupt version of Christianity as the antagonist because it's something familiar to the target audience. And why is that? Because you've been forcing this Christofacist ideology down our throats for years, and screaming about how we're attacking you when we choke on it.
"...a self-described progressive evangelical..."
Well hole-e-shit. What is that? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? (Sir, a self-described progressive evangelical, sir!) Not a self-described pagan, but a self-described progressive evangelical. Of course, this is to be expected. Anyone who falls outside the "mainstream" can only be "self-described", and therefore, not legitimate.
Because no one who is anything ever calls themselves that.
"I'm the President of the United States." ~ George W. Bush, 12/17/2005 - George W. Bush, self-described President of the United States. How come we never see that from the goddamned liberal media?
I digress.
This so-called "War on Christianity" is a fabrication. It's a smokescreen and a strawman. "We're under attack!" they scream. "Gather to our banner and help us! IF YOU'RE NOT WITH US, YOU'RE AGAINST US!" Sounds like the same tired old rhetoric. Newsflash: Christianity is not under attack. Simply because you perceive it to be does not make it so. Liberal Judges are not trying to erase you. In fact, the judges that have made decisions that you don't like (i.e., activist judges) tend to be overwhelmingly conservative. Hollywood is not out to get you. In fact, most of the battles in this so-called war are battles that you, the Religious Conservatives have started!
Gay marriage is not an assault on Christianity. Christians trying to ban it, that's an assault on homosexuals.
Evolution is not an assault on Christianity. Intelligent Design is an assault on science.
Abortion is not an assault on Christianity. Bombing abortion clinics in an assault on women.
It's not a "War on Christianity", it's a "War for Ideology". Right-wing Christians believe, despite being the priviledge majority, that they are the repressed minority. They want their ideology pushed on everyone else, and recoil in horror when everyone else objects. They started this war, and labeled it a war against them. Sounds like a kid getting his hand caught in the cookie jar and then complaining that there weren't enough cookies in it.
-pb
"The message of 'V for Vendetta' is that Christians are plotting to seize the reins of power."
No, the message of 'V for Vendetta' is that fascist, totalitarian governments can only control the people for so long until someone stands up and refuses to be put down. It only features your uber-corrupt version of Christianity as the antagonist because it's something familiar to the target audience. And why is that? Because you've been forcing this Christofacist ideology down our throats for years, and screaming about how we're attacking you when we choke on it.
"...a self-described progressive evangelical..."
Well hole-e-shit. What is that? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? (Sir, a self-described progressive evangelical, sir!) Not a self-described pagan, but a self-described progressive evangelical. Of course, this is to be expected. Anyone who falls outside the "mainstream" can only be "self-described", and therefore, not legitimate.
Because no one who is anything ever calls themselves that.
"I'm the President of the United States." ~ George W. Bush, 12/17/2005 - George W. Bush, self-described President of the United States. How come we never see that from the goddamned liberal media?
I digress.
This so-called "War on Christianity" is a fabrication. It's a smokescreen and a strawman. "We're under attack!" they scream. "Gather to our banner and help us! IF YOU'RE NOT WITH US, YOU'RE AGAINST US!" Sounds like the same tired old rhetoric. Newsflash: Christianity is not under attack. Simply because you perceive it to be does not make it so. Liberal Judges are not trying to erase you. In fact, the judges that have made decisions that you don't like (i.e., activist judges) tend to be overwhelmingly conservative. Hollywood is not out to get you. In fact, most of the battles in this so-called war are battles that you, the Religious Conservatives have started!
Gay marriage is not an assault on Christianity. Christians trying to ban it, that's an assault on homosexuals.
Evolution is not an assault on Christianity. Intelligent Design is an assault on science.
Abortion is not an assault on Christianity. Bombing abortion clinics in an assault on women.
It's not a "War on Christianity", it's a "War for Ideology". Right-wing Christians believe, despite being the priviledge majority, that they are the repressed minority. They want their ideology pushed on everyone else, and recoil in horror when everyone else objects. They started this war, and labeled it a war against them. Sounds like a kid getting his hand caught in the cookie jar and then complaining that there weren't enough cookies in it.
-pb
Here's some snippets from the Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover decision on Intelligent Design:
Goddamn liberal activist Democrat judges!
Oh, wait... A Republican, [Judge John E. Jones, III] was appointed by President George W. Bush.
Of course, that hasn't stopped The Discovery Institute's Dr. John West from blurting out this jewel: "The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won't work.".
What's been proven here is that trying to ram Intelligent Design, or rather, Creationism, down our throats is what won't work. Every time someone screams that evolution is just a theory, or that they're being attacked for not supporting it, we need to remember and vocally remind people that Intelligent Design isn't actually a theory. It's a hypothesis. It's a guess, at best. People in the scientific community who claim to be ridiculed for supporting it are receiving that kind of treatment due to the fact that they're (poorly) trying to disguise an as-yet unproveable, untestable, and unreliable bit of theology as real science, when in fact it is anything but real science.
-pb
"To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions."
"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."
"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."
Goddamn liberal activist Democrat judges!
Oh, wait... A Republican, [Judge John E. Jones, III] was appointed by President George W. Bush.
Of course, that hasn't stopped The Discovery Institute's Dr. John West from blurting out this jewel: "The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won't work.".
What's been proven here is that trying to ram Intelligent Design, or rather, Creationism, down our throats is what won't work. Every time someone screams that evolution is just a theory, or that they're being attacked for not supporting it, we need to remember and vocally remind people that Intelligent Design isn't actually a theory. It's a hypothesis. It's a guess, at best. People in the scientific community who claim to be ridiculed for supporting it are receiving that kind of treatment due to the fact that they're (poorly) trying to disguise an as-yet unproveable, untestable, and unreliable bit of theology as real science, when in fact it is anything but real science.
-pb
Pennsylvania court upholds church-state separation, tells ID proponents to piss off
"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions."
~ U.S. District Judge John Jones
And that folks, is the core of the argument. Of course, the Creationists intentionally threw the Scope's Monkey Trial in the hopes of getting it to the Supreme Court on appeal, and making it the law of the land. Expect the ID nutjobs to try to work their way on up.
-pb
"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions."
~ U.S. District Judge John Jones
And that folks, is the core of the argument. Of course, the Creationists intentionally threw the Scope's Monkey Trial in the hopes of getting it to the Supreme Court on appeal, and making it the law of the land. Expect the ID nutjobs to try to work their way on up.
-pb
So, I went to a lecture about Intelligent Design (thanks to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
khrystabelle's info) at Marbar in Univeristy City last night. Tons of fun! It was a good discussion about science vs. pseudoscience, and really wrapped up a lot of loose ends in a way that only a scientist could accurately explain.
A lot of the problem with Intelligent Design Vs. Science is that people don't understand a few basic priciples:
One of the interesting points that Paul Sniegowski made was that for all the money that the ID people are blowing on this 'theory' of theirs, most of it is going to PR firms. If they were to take that money and dump it into research, they might actually get somewhere, but that's not in their agenda. They want ID to be labeled a science, but they don't want to treat it like a science. Scientists don't take their research to the public for review, they take it to the scientific community for review. The general public is not qualified to examine the ID data and make sense of it or determine if it is valid or just snake oil (which would lead me to believe that it is, in fact, snake oil).
Someone asked if there was any real damage being done by teaching it, and Michael Weisberg's answer was "yes". By teaching ID in school as a science, we would be teaching students horribly incorrect ideas about the scientific process. We would be teaching them, essentially, that dishonesty and shortcutting are acceptable to push an agenda. We would be teaching them to lie and cheat, all in the interest of teaching them about the god that 70% of the population worships, who, incidentally, condemned lying and cheating.
Another interesting point that was brought up is that ID is bad theology, and may well be damaging to the core precepts of faith itself. If god is used to patch holes in science, then the more we learn, the less we require god. These people are working so hard to push an agenda without realizing something so essential: God and religion are COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL. They have no place in science. They cannot be explained, and THEY SHOULD NOT BE. The concept of divinity needs to remain irrational and unexplained to remain divine. We need that, as humans. It's a basic drive to seek divinity. If we erase that by quantifying it, then we've lost something of our humanity. And that's what ID does. It puts god into the holes that science can already fill. Once that hole is filled, where does god go?
Edit: I'd just like to point out that ID does not just run counter to Evolution, which is only one part of one scientific discipline. It runs counter to the whole of science by dismissing the entire scientific method. It would be like trying to pass off a 2-year-old's crayon scribbling as one of Michaelangelo's sculptures. They are not created the same, envisioned the same, approached the same or made from the same media. This goes beyond apples and oranges. This is apples and golf balls.
-pb
khrystabelle's info) at Marbar in Univeristy City last night. Tons of fun! It was a good discussion about science vs. pseudoscience, and really wrapped up a lot of loose ends in a way that only a scientist could accurately explain.A lot of the problem with Intelligent Design Vs. Science is that people don't understand a few basic priciples:
- There is no 'proof' in science. That's not to say that there's faith, though. There is evidence. That the sun is going to come up tomorrow morning is NOT a proven fact. However, thousands of years of recorded observation suggests that a pattern exists to show that there's a 99.999% chance that the sun will indeed rise tomorrow morning.
- A theory as it applies to scientific study is not a guess. It's a researched idea with a set of ancillary hypotheses that can be repeated and observed. The Theory of Gravity is a great example. It's a Theory. It can be tested, and it could be disproved if you were to assume some of its primary tenents to be false. Just like Evolution. If you wanted to start with "The earth is only 6000 years old" as a given, of course you could disprove it. Of course, you'd basically be ignoring countless hours of accepted, peer-reviewed research that states with greater probability the contrary.
- Peer-review is necessary to sound science. If you can't show your work, it's not science, plain and simple. If people can't replicate your work, it's not science, plain and simple.
One of the interesting points that Paul Sniegowski made was that for all the money that the ID people are blowing on this 'theory' of theirs, most of it is going to PR firms. If they were to take that money and dump it into research, they might actually get somewhere, but that's not in their agenda. They want ID to be labeled a science, but they don't want to treat it like a science. Scientists don't take their research to the public for review, they take it to the scientific community for review. The general public is not qualified to examine the ID data and make sense of it or determine if it is valid or just snake oil (which would lead me to believe that it is, in fact, snake oil).
Someone asked if there was any real damage being done by teaching it, and Michael Weisberg's answer was "yes". By teaching ID in school as a science, we would be teaching students horribly incorrect ideas about the scientific process. We would be teaching them, essentially, that dishonesty and shortcutting are acceptable to push an agenda. We would be teaching them to lie and cheat, all in the interest of teaching them about the god that 70% of the population worships, who, incidentally, condemned lying and cheating.
Another interesting point that was brought up is that ID is bad theology, and may well be damaging to the core precepts of faith itself. If god is used to patch holes in science, then the more we learn, the less we require god. These people are working so hard to push an agenda without realizing something so essential: God and religion are COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL. They have no place in science. They cannot be explained, and THEY SHOULD NOT BE. The concept of divinity needs to remain irrational and unexplained to remain divine. We need that, as humans. It's a basic drive to seek divinity. If we erase that by quantifying it, then we've lost something of our humanity. And that's what ID does. It puts god into the holes that science can already fill. Once that hole is filled, where does god go?
Edit: I'd just like to point out that ID does not just run counter to Evolution, which is only one part of one scientific discipline. It runs counter to the whole of science by dismissing the entire scientific method. It would be like trying to pass off a 2-year-old's crayon scribbling as one of Michaelangelo's sculptures. They are not created the same, envisioned the same, approached the same or made from the same media. This goes beyond apples and oranges. This is apples and golf balls.
-pb
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
I've been waiting for The Onion to get to this.
"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
Burdett added: Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."
Of course, I woudln't be surprised if there were people out there that actually believe something along these lines.
-js?!
I've been waiting for The Onion to get to this.
"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
Burdett added: Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."
Of course, I woudln't be surprised if there were people out there that actually believe something along these lines.
-js?!
"The critics say [the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools' curriculum] ignores evolution in favor of creationism and gives credence to dubious assertions that the Constitution is based on the Scriptures, and that "documented research through NASA" backs the biblical account of the sun standing still."
"Some of the claims made in the national council's curriculum are laughable, said Mark A. Chancey, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who spent seven weeks studying the syllabus for the freedom network. Mr. Chancey said he found it "riddled with errors" of facts, dates, definitions and incorrect spellings. It cites supposed NASA findings to suggest that the earth stopped twice in its orbit, in support of the literal truth of the biblical text that the sun stood still in Joshua and II Kings."
~ From a July 31st New York Times article (Pay only)
What's disturbing is that they've already managed to get this into the curriculums of over 300 public schools.
Are they going to start teaching douching and showering after sex as acceptable methods of birth control next? Hell, maybe they should go to Snopes and just run down the list of everything marked with a red dot and add that to their curriculum. I mean, they've already started.
They've gone beyond the "well, our theory is science, even though it's not been subject to any sort of scientific review" madness of intelligent design. Now they're into the "my brother's sister-in-law's cousin's mechanic's best friend, who just so happens to work near NASA in Houston, overheard some scientist say that they had discovered a lost day. PUT IT IN THE CURRICULUM, IT MUST BE SCIENCE."
America, the stupid.
-js?!
"Some of the claims made in the national council's curriculum are laughable, said Mark A. Chancey, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who spent seven weeks studying the syllabus for the freedom network. Mr. Chancey said he found it "riddled with errors" of facts, dates, definitions and incorrect spellings. It cites supposed NASA findings to suggest that the earth stopped twice in its orbit, in support of the literal truth of the biblical text that the sun stood still in Joshua and II Kings."
~ From a July 31st New York Times article (Pay only)
What's disturbing is that they've already managed to get this into the curriculums of over 300 public schools.
Are they going to start teaching douching and showering after sex as acceptable methods of birth control next? Hell, maybe they should go to Snopes and just run down the list of everything marked with a red dot and add that to their curriculum. I mean, they've already started.
They've gone beyond the "well, our theory is science, even though it's not been subject to any sort of scientific review" madness of intelligent design. Now they're into the "my brother's sister-in-law's cousin's mechanic's best friend, who just so happens to work near NASA in Houston, overheard some scientist say that they had discovered a lost day. PUT IT IN THE CURRICULUM, IT MUST BE SCIENCE."
America, the stupid.
-js?!
"Censoring God: Why is the science establishment so threatened by the intelligent design movement?" is the title of the latest Whistleblower Magazine, the super-right wing tinfoil sombrero print edition of WorldNetDaily.
Why is the science establishment so threatened by the intelligent design movement? Because this movement is trying to force a quasi-religious philosophy down their throats and demanding that they call it 'science'. It's somewhat equivalent to forcing priests to unequivocally state that there is no proof that Jesus actually rose from the dead and that there is no real evidence that the Eucharist actually transubstantiates.
I can't imagine how a class on ID would go.
Day one: "Intelligent Design is the theory that all life was designed and created by an intelligence higher than humanity. Now, open your textbooks to chapter 1 and we'll start actually teaching you about real observable science."
If anything, it should be mentioned as "what science is not". They have a theory. They can offer no proof other than "Look at the eye! too complex MUST HAVE BEEN GOD! The bumblebee knows how to get back to the hive on its own MUST HAVE BEEN GOD!", whereas a microscope, a petri dish, and a small bacteria culture can unfold the concept of evolution in about 15 minutes, and it's available for the whole class to see.
-pb
Why is the science establishment so threatened by the intelligent design movement? Because this movement is trying to force a quasi-religious philosophy down their throats and demanding that they call it 'science'. It's somewhat equivalent to forcing priests to unequivocally state that there is no proof that Jesus actually rose from the dead and that there is no real evidence that the Eucharist actually transubstantiates.
I can't imagine how a class on ID would go.
Day one: "Intelligent Design is the theory that all life was designed and created by an intelligence higher than humanity. Now, open your textbooks to chapter 1 and we'll start actually teaching you about real observable science."
If anything, it should be mentioned as "what science is not". They have a theory. They can offer no proof other than "Look at the eye! too complex MUST HAVE BEEN GOD! The bumblebee knows how to get back to the hive on its own MUST HAVE BEEN GOD!", whereas a microscope, a petri dish, and a small bacteria culture can unfold the concept of evolution in about 15 minutes, and it's available for the whole class to see.
-pb
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