Ben Stein is EXPELLED

To maintain an orderly society, certain rules must be followed. We cannot go about killing each other at random and expect society to exist in any coherent fashion.
Says who? Sounds like survival of the fittest to me. Can't say it is right or wrong. It was that person's choice to kill folks.

Saudi Arabia condemns outright murder as well. It condemns stealing. Etc.
Outright murder? We are qualifying murder now? I would say that when they stone a woman because she was raped, that is outright murder. They don't condemn it. They celebrate it.

Is it such an insane idea to hold faith in the human capacity for creating just laws?
Yes it is. We see societies who reject God and rely on human beings as the sole arbiters of what is right and wrong. Look at Soviet society. Look at China. Look at Cuba. Would you really want to live under the laws of those societies? Marx et al got rid of that "opiate of the masses" in government. They were some of the most murderous regimes in the history of the world. In Rome, where Caesar and the Roman senate were chief lawmakers, murder and debauchery were common. Anytime a society has gotten away from biblical morality, they have gone down hill. It is historically provable. The moral laws you cherish are the ones that the Bible teaches. You don't want to say that is where it comes from, but you would be wrong.

I have clear ideas what constitute right and wrong. Others have different ones. I believe mine are superior. No doubt others believe theirs are as well. Law in America is an aggregation of individuals' perceptions of what is just.
Without God, you lost the ability to say just or unjust, right or wrong. You merely have the ability to say like and dislike.

So the basic issue here is that evolution has resulted in different conceptions among people as to what is right and that really irks you?
No. It doesn't "irk" me at all. It merely validates Scripture in Romans 1:20-32. You should look this up and read it sometime.

As I said before, social interactions (the "nurture" part of the nature-nurture debate) inform moral beliefs as much as any inborn conceptions of right and wrong.
Inborn conceptions of right and wrong? Where did that come from? Even Evolutionists concede that objective concepts such as right and wrong can not exist within the evolutionary framework. For example, Discover Magazine had an article by an evolutionist named Joshua Green who was postulating the existance of a biochemical process in our brains due to evolution. In that article, he stated "‘Once you understand someone’s behavior on a sufficiently mechanical level, it’s very hard to look at them as evil,’ he says. ‘You can look at them as dangerous; you can pity them. But evil doesn’t exist on a neuronal level.’2" Green is right. Once you cut out God, you cut out the ability to use terms such as "right" and "wrong". Again, you merely have "like" and "dislike".

When I see Europe with progressively more liberal social laws. I do not say "OMG they have deviated from the word of God." I consider that their society for whatever reason permits these sorts of behaviors. If this is a bad idea, the law will be repealed. That conceptions of morality work is the ultimate justification for their existence.
That is because you are an atheist. I see a society that because they have turned from God are about to abort and dhimmi themselves out of existence. In terms of what we actually see, this belief reflects the truth much greater than a wistful hope that their evolutionary instinct will kick in and they will right it.

Finally, you made a statement regarding law in America being a collection of what other people thought was just, or someting to that effect. On this one you are walking around with evolutionary blinders on. American law is what it is because it has a foundation of Scripture. Period.

James Wilson, a signer of the Constitution and an original supreme court justice said:""Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine....Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other."

James Madison said,""We've staked the whole future of American civilization not on the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us . . . to Govern ourselves according to the commandments of God. The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded."

Noah Webster admonished,""It is extremely important to our nation , in a political as well as religious view , that all possible authority and influence should be given to the scriptures , for these furnish the best principles of civil liberty , and the most effectual support of republican government. The principles of all genuine liberty , and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by it's authority.The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be accessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer...." and ""The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws...."

And Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, ""Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."

And there are so many more quotes directly from the pages of the founding Fathers that show that our nation's legal system is based upon the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. For goodness sake, even the central figure on the fascade of the Supreme Court of the US is Moses holding the 10 commandments! We are a nation that is great because we were founded on our belief that God rules in the lives of men and we are accountable to His moral law which is perfect and good.

Moses at the SCOTUS.

I am incorrect. It does not irk you. It angers you.

You ask me to believe a supposed word of God (incidentally please do not refer to me as an atheist) that has remained in human stewardship for thousands of years of translations, politics, intrigue and all the rest.

I find it much more compelling to draw God's truth about the universe from what I can see, from what is right before me and from what I have learned.

If the universe is God's work as well, if He works through evolution, are you saying it is not a reliable guide? Does believing in the Bible allow you to say what is right? The King James Version? What about the Epistle of James and Epistle to the Hebrews? Are they authentic?

I don't blame you if you say I don't know what Right and Wrong truly are. You'll have to excuse me if the feeling is mutual.

I am incorrect. It does not irk you. It angers you.
No. It really doesn't. It angers me when I see people harm others in the name of ANYTHING, be it Islam, Atheism, or so called Christianity. But, a mere belief in something does not anger me.

You ask me to believe a supposed word of God (incidentally please do not refer to me as an atheist) that has remained in human stewardship for thousands of years of translations, politics, intrigue and all the rest.
First, considering you deny a Creator, I think it was a fair assessment that you are indeed an atheist. If your god did not in the very least create things, what exactly is his purpose??? Second, I didn't ask you to believe anything. I am merely pointing out that you have no foundation for moral truth claims other than personal preference. Period. You can not say "right" and "wrong". You can only say "like" and "dislike." Because truth is bigger than individual opinion. But, with human beings being the arbiters of that which is true, terms like "right" and "Wrong" lose their meaning. Right and wrong are universal truths. In terms of morality, there really isn't a right for you but not for me. It just is. Abortion is wrong. Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. Caring for a child is right. Loving your spouse is right. Why? Because a Moral Law Giver - outside of our own opinions- declares them to be right and wrong. Our believing that something is right or wrong doesn't make it thus. It just is.

I find it much more compelling to draw God's truth about the universe from what I can see, from what is right before me and from what I have learned.
Romans 1:20 affirms that you can see God's truth in the universe. However, since you believe that evolutionary processes brought all of this about what on earth did God do in your construct? Are you a theistic evolutionist?

If the universe is God's work as well, if He works through evolution, are you saying it is not a reliable guide?
That is a false hypothetical. The Bible states how God created the universe. His creation shows the evidence of design. Our own bodies are so irreducibly complex that evolutionary processes could never have brought them about no matter how much time you throw at it.

Does believing in the Bible allow you to say what is right?
Believing the Bible is irrelevant as to what is right. True, the Bible is God's revealed Word and in it He revealed to us what He wanted us to know. So, where it speaks about creation, it speaks truthfully. Whether we believe it or not doesn't make it more or less true. If I make a truth claim that comes from Scripture, my authority doesn't rest in my belief. My authority rests on what is in the written Word.

The King James Version? What about the Epistle of James and Epistle to the Hebrews? Are they authentic?
If you are asking me if I believe the KJV is God's Word, yes. God has preserved His Word for english speaking people in the KJV. The claim to inerrancy rests in the original manuscripts as sometimes an English word may not fully convey the meaning of the Greek or Hebrew and occasionally you will see translation issues (such as telling Adam to replenish the earth) that are attributable to changes in the English language. Are James and Hebrews authentic? Yes. Not sure what it is relevant to our conversation, though. How do I know? Because God said He would preserve His Word and I believe Him. Regardless if I believed Him or not, however, it wouldn't make a single letter in the Bible more or less God's.

I don't blame you if you say I don't know what Right and Wrong truly are. You'll have to excuse me if the feeling is mutual

I didn't say that you didn't know what right and wrong truly are. What I have said is by taking moral truth claims such as right and wrong out of the hands of a moral Law Giver you have undercut any meaning to such terms and have destroyed any foundation for those beliefs. You have "like" and "dislike" since your belief concerning right and wrong may be different that the person in Russia, or a democrat in America, or a Jihadist in Sudan. You believe what some of these people do is wrong. But your belief rests only in yourself and your claim to knowing truth is no more valid than theirs. So, you may say it is right and wrong - but based on your construct it would be more proper for you to say "I don't like that."

I do believe you know what right and wrong are by the way, because I believe God placed that knowledge within you and you can clearly see it in His creation.

Are you a theistic evolutionist?

Yes, that's probably the closest thing to what I am. I never said I denied the existence of God but I should have made this clearer and I apologize for that.

We still don't know what happened before the Big Bang and what caused it to occur. Astrophysics claims time was simply not defined, though I can't quite wrap my mind around that abstraction, though I've tried. Who is to say that force was not God? However, that is a religious question to me, not a scientific one.

I very clearly try to delineate science from theology and philosophy, perhaps at the expense of the latter.

We certainly got a bit off topic but I think it was a fruitful discussion and I'm not just paying you lip service when I say you've given me some things to think about. Thanks.

It has been a good conversation.

I think one difference is the idea that it can’t be scientific if it was God. We will just have to disagree on that one (and probably a bit more) :)

True, you can not “prove” the supernatural with Science. But I do not believe that a supernatural origin procludes a scientific conclusion. It may be that the origin question may be one that science will never know. Their biases are so great sometimes that someone like Francis Crick would rather postulate alien life forms “seeding” the planet than to consider there is a God. I think Stephen Hawking may have also spoken of the possible existence of aliens. So these atheistic scientists see the evidence of design; but, rather than ascribe it to something beyond the natural they just pull a hypothesis out of their rear ends and continue on with their denial of where that evidence leads. If they said that since there is strong evidence of design and it isn’t all random chance mutations, that we can not exclude the possibility of there being a designer (be He God, aliens, or whatever) I probably would have had a little more respect for them. But alas, they have blinders on in that area and I think that taints how they view the evidence.

Soliton said:
Why can’t believers teach their children religion at home and at church? Why insist that their own religious views be tought in public schools?

Well lets say some of these kids have you for a parent Soliton...are you going to tell them about Jesus? No

So if they don’t have a chance to hear the “good news” about Jesus where do you think they’ll end up spending eternity?

And as they’re suffering for all eternity...they’ll be asking “you” Dad/Mom why didn’t you tell me we had eternal life in either Heaven or Hell?

Why didn’t you give me a chance to decide for myself?

Well lets say some of these kids have you for a parent Soliton...are you going to tell them about Jesus? No

You arrogant *******. Both of my children were baptised as Catholics, attended CCD, one year of which (5th grade) was taught by my wife and they had their first holy communion complete with their pictures taken with the Bishop of our diocese. My wife had her feet washed by the same Bishop. I am not religious, but I am not anti-religious either. We agreed that our children would be raised Catholic and they have been. They both are now in College and I can stop attending mass at St. Bernard's. It has been a constant surprise to me over the last 22 years that after mass, I would try to speak to others about the homily, but they hadn't paid attention. They had made their sacrifice in money and time (Catholics get really pissed when the mass goes long)and hadn't really paid attention.

I will argue chapter and verse with you. I was raised in Sunday school and vacation Bible school and can do Bible sword drill like I did when I was 8.

>>Science is based on observation, experimentation, theories, and testing.<<

This is a narrow definition of science for 2 reasons. First, it assumes man has the perfect ability to acquire all knowledge. In other words, man can know, at some point in time, ALL things and that is likely untrue. If it were true, man would be the only object in universal history, for example — as it relates to design, to explain how he was made. Name me one other object that can objectively and correctly do that. Second, its narrow because what is considered observable, testable, etc., is based on tools and techniques we have NOW, and ignores what we could have in the future. In other words, its one thing to say, “we can’t test or observe that now, so it falls outside of what we are defining as a scientific method.” But its quite another to universally say “that isn’t science.” What if, in a century or 5, we have the technique to test some of the questions ID presents? I defy you to show me the complex nuclear weapons tests, computer simulations, and calculations from 1900. Didn’t exist? Hmmm. They do today. Does that mean that nuclear weapons theory just magically appeared from nothing sometime after 1942 (or whenever the Man. Project started) or was it our understanding of it came about then?

The whole problem here is evolutionists are constantly sidestepping the issue now that they know they can’t refute what was once referred to as creationism and now is grouped under ID. So, they ridicule it. Then, they say, as Sagan did, evolution is fact. When that creates problems, they call it science and say any idea of ID isn’t. They use all this stuff to keep ID out of schools, in large part because they just don’t like it.

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