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When Real Judicial Conservatives Attack [Dover ID opinion]
The UCSD Guardian ^ | 09 January 2005 | Hanna Camp

Posted on 01/09/2006 8:26:54 AM PST by PatrickHenry

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To: connectthedots
"So just where did canines and cats diverge? Besides, they have a different number of chromosomes"

Dogs have 78 chromosomes, far more than humans and more than any other diploid organism. The massive increase in information in the dog genome is due to the mechanism of selection, artificially accelerated by man**. Without the selection by man, the differences between the genomes of cats and dogs would be far less.

**Note the importance is in the mechanism and not the 'who' of the selecting, any selection at all whether natural, sexual, kin, or human selection would accomplish the same changes, albeit at different speeds and possibly in a different direction. If the dog species were in the wild they would be considered a 'ring-species'.

381 posted on 01/09/2006 6:47:55 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Ichneumon; mlc9852
Selection actually slows down the variation. Without it variation would take off resulting in all sorts of unforeseeable consequences.
382 posted on 01/09/2006 6:51:25 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: mlc9852
"But they're still languages"

And all metazoans are still metazoans. What is your point?

383 posted on 01/09/2006 6:56:47 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: b_sharp

My point was clear. What is yours?


384 posted on 01/09/2006 6:58:19 PM PST by mlc9852
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To: RadioAstronomer
"There is no "before" the Big Bang since time itself started with the Big Bang.

Why are are you telling the punch line before the joke is fully set up?

385 posted on 01/09/2006 6:59:15 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Cicero

Well stated. I urge everyone to read your post again.

Another thing you could have mentioned is that the Federal government routinely subsidized the construction of churches for something like the first 150 years of the republic.

The notion that even mentioning the possibility of ID in science class somehow constitutes the establishment of religion is preposterous. That such a notion is even taken seriously is cause for alarm.

Oh, and which document was it that mentioned something about a "Creator"?

Also, I really love the implication that this judge must be right because he anticipated the charge of judicial activism! Gosh, I can anticipate all the bogus arguments of the evolutionists, so I must be right too.


386 posted on 01/09/2006 7:02:41 PM PST by RussP
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To: 101st-Eagle

Stick the ACLU and DI in a locked room with a single baseball bat hanging from the ceiling.

Just don't ask me to clean up the mess.


387 posted on 01/09/2006 7:03:32 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: xzins
"Which came first ZERO or something?"

This really is a non-question. The appearance of sequence has very much to do with time and surprisingly the 2LoT.

388 posted on 01/09/2006 7:07:24 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: RussP

Thanks for the good word. These threads can get depressing. The Darwinists never stop pasting in their boilerplate until they've beaten all signs of anyone wanting to argue with them into the ground. When the dust clears, everyone else has abandoned the thread.

It has the opposite effect on me, and I suspect on many others who trouble to read these threads. Such fanaticism, such desperate repetition of the same mantras, only reveals how stubbornly closed-minded they are.


389 posted on 01/09/2006 7:08:50 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: RussP
The notion that even mentioning the possibility of ID in science class somehow constitutes the establishment of religion is preposterous. That such a notion is even taken seriously is cause for alarm.

ID is not science, it is religion lite. To be more specific, it is the application of the wedge strategy which was designed to try to sneak creationism into schools after creation "science" was blown out of the water by the Supreme Court in 1987.

Now that ID has been blown out of the water in Dover, will there be some other strategy devised to achieve the same ends? (I can hardly wait.)

390 posted on 01/09/2006 7:10:33 PM PST by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: Buggman
"Yes. It's the inverse probability of the universe being suitable for life vs. not, multiplied by the possibility of abiogenesis occuring accidentally.

Would it be possible to see your work?

391 posted on 01/09/2006 7:13:51 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: connectthedots
So just where did canines and cats diverge? Besides, they have a different number of chromosomes.

Long time ago; the canids diverged from the rest of the Carnivora 50 - 60 MY ago. Wolves, dogs and coyotes are all interfertile; there are reports of dog/jackal hybrids; a few unconfirmed reports of hybrids with other canids, and none with other non-canid carnivores.

392 posted on 01/09/2006 7:17:20 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: b_sharp

Sequence is simply placement ordering of events. An event is a unitary isolated act entire unto itself.


393 posted on 01/09/2006 7:18:21 PM PST by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It!)
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To: Buggman
"There is no chemical property that makes it more likely for DNA to just happen to line up in just such a way as to create a living cell, let alone for the DNA to just happen to be surrounded by exactly the right materials to interact with to create a cell from scratch.

This is one of those silly initial conditions I mentioned. Abiogenesis is just that, the development of what we would consider life from self replicating non-life. No mention of DNA as the initial molecule other than by creationists.

394 posted on 01/09/2006 7:18:53 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Cicero
First of all, there is NO SUCH PHRASE in the Constitution as "Wall of separation between Church and State." That phrase was in a private letter from ONE of the numerous authors of the Constitution, is not part of the Constitution, and cannot be used to define the First Amendment EXCEPT BY ACTIVIST JUDGES.

It is true that the phrase is Jefferson's, but (like it or not) the activism was by the Supreme Court, not District Judge Jones.

The First Amendment says that there shall be no "establishment of religion" on a national level. The meaning of "establishment" historically is well known. It means a single state church, a single official church. The model the Founders were clearly thinking of was the Church of England, which at times the English monarchy had tried to foist on the American colonies as their official church.

No. The founders knew the history all too well. -- and much better than you.
They were quite aware of the strife of England's religious history:

Initially Roman Catholic, to Anglican Church, briefly Roman Catholic again, Anglican (again), Protestantism in the north, Charles I executed and the rise of Scottish Presbyterian, suppression of the Catholics and Anglicans, Charles II restored and the Anglican suppression of Roman Catholics and the Protestants (Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers and Methodists), ... and eventually the Act of Toleration that permitted the Protestant church(es) but still excluded Roman Catholics and Unitarians.

In light of this history, and hoping to avoid it; during the Convention in 1787, Charles Pinckney proposed the article to the Constitution:

. . .The Legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion, nor touching or abridging the liberty of the press [n]or shall the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus ever be suspended, except in case of rebellion or invasion.

The proposal was accepted without debate and sent to the Committee of Detail, but only the "writ of habeas corpus" clause was incorporated into the Constitution.

Two years later in the debate on the the "Bill of Rights", the subject came up again. Madison (who initially opposed any "Bill of Rights") offered:

"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed."

Mr. Sherman thought the amendment altogether unnecessary, inasmuch as Congress had no authority whatever delegated to them by the Constitution to make religious establishments; he would, therefore, move to have it struck.

Mr. Benjamin Huntington said that "he feared, ... that the words might be taken in such latitude as to be extremely hurtful to the cause of religion. He understood the amendment to mean what had been expressed by the gentleman from Virginia; but others might find it convenient to put another construction upon it."

After objection to the word "national" and more debate, Mr. Samuel Livermore revived Gen. Pinckney's article:

"Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience."

Mr. Madison withdrew his motion, and the question was then taken on Livermore's motion, and passed in the affirmative, thirty-one for, and twenty against.

The House committee merged the language of both Madison's and Livermore's proposal:

"Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience."

And in the Senate:

"Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion."

After conciliation in the conference committee, we got our present:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Thirty years later, in his commentaries, Justice Story wrote:

"The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and of the subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age. The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head; and even New England, the land of the persecuted puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, would furnish out a chapter, as full of the darkest bigotry and intolerance, as any, which could be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals."

And we have Benjamin Franklin:

"When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support, itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one,"
and

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England"

The debate was over shifting sectarian favor depending on which faction was in power. Distrusting future politicians, rather than allowing the possibility of support of any religion, The founders thought it best to exclude the subject from Congress altogether.

... and people who didn't like it were welcome to move to Rhode Island and Connecticut with Anne Hutchinson.

In other words, exiled. Interesting.

But there is nothing in the Constitution that would prevent them from reestablishing a religion in any state in the unlikely event that they chose to do so.

Other than the Fourteenth Amendment.

... and ARE CLEARLY NOT CONSERVATIVE on any of these issues.

One TRUE Scotsman ...

395 posted on 01/09/2006 7:22:17 PM PST by dread78645 (Sorry Mr. Franklin, We couldn't keep it.)
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To: PatrickHenry

"It's also one of the dumbest. The entire purpose behind the construct of ID was to somehow slip creationism past the First Amendment radar detectors of the federal courts, while at the same time it would be enthusiastically supported by creationists' buying the books and tapes."

The evolutionists who sell this crap are the very same ones who cry foul if you point out that evolution has been identified by Marx as the scientific foundation of communism.

Here's their so-called logic:

Given: creationists argue for ID

Deduction: ID is creationism in disguise

For all you evolutionist geniuses out there, the same logic applies here:

Given: communists argue for evolution

Deduction: evolution is communism in disguise

There, I spoon fed it to you. Do you get it yet?


396 posted on 01/09/2006 7:23:49 PM PST by RussP
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To: Cicero
The Darwinists never stop pasting in their boilerplate until they've beaten all signs of anyone wanting to argue with them into the ground.

Translation: try as I might, I can't figure out how to rebut their arguments.

It has the opposite effect on me, and I suspect on many others who trouble to read these threads.

That's OK. I have a feeling changing your mind on anything requires a trepan.

397 posted on 01/09/2006 7:26:16 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: xzins
"Sequence is simply placement ordering of events. An event is a unitary isolated act entire unto itself.

Indeed, but only as long as time exists in which to place the ordered events and entropy gives the appearance of direction. One event will occur before another if and only if the flow of time is in that direction, if time is reversed in direction the event will come after rather than before. If there is no time, or time is directionless, then the concept of ordering or sequence has no meaning. This assumes that events can indeed occur at all without the existence of time. All events as we know them occur in a period of time, no matter how short. There are no events that take no time to occur (other than possibly the BB).

398 posted on 01/09/2006 7:32:54 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: RussP
Given: creationists argue for ID Deduction: ID is creationism in disguise

How about this one?

Given: In a textbook on creationism, the word creationism was replaced everywhere by ID, with no other significant changes; the result was a textbook on ID.
Deduction: ID is creationism in disguise

399 posted on 01/09/2006 7:33:53 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Irontank
The Establishment Clause of the US Constitution has been so perverted since the 1947 Everson case that most people do not know that it applies to Congress and the federal government only.

The 14th Amendment and "incorporation doctrine" (like it or not) puts any government actor under the Constitution.

Not to mention that the Pennsylvania Constitution prohibits any preference to any religious establishment.

Applying the Constitution's prohibition on federal establishment of religion to state and local issues is judicial activism in every sense of the phrase

Maybe you ought to take that up with the US Supreme Court or the State of Pennsylvania, they think otherwise ...
Judge Jones is following the law as established (again, like it or not).

400 posted on 01/09/2006 7:34:49 PM PST by dread78645 (Sorry Mr. Franklin, We couldn't keep it.)
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