Posted on 08/19/2010 1:19:28 PM PDT by TheConservativeCitizen
Documentary educational television would have us believe that the single greatest scientific achievement of the past millennium was Darwin’s theory of evolution. Many religious fundamentalists have serious issues with this assertion. Many legitimate scientists with both secular and religious perspectives do as well. Darwin himself recognized serious shortcomings with evolution. A new sort of “scientist,” the evolutionary biologist, has come on the scene. These folks are specifically dedicated to supporting and proving a theory. Previously science did not work that way. Scientists used to look for evidence of disproof, only accepting theories that prove unassailable.
On the other side we have unscientific religious fundamentalists. These folks are willing to describe their search for proof of their scriptures as basic science. They study scripture and seek evidence to support what it says.
Both sides’ methods are troublingly reminiscent of case law: by carefully selecting your precedents or evidence one can prove anything. Mathematicians and philosophers long ago concluded that “proving” a general hypotheses about the real world is a logical impossibility. That is, no one can find every possible exception to any assertion about the real world.
(Excerpt) Read more at constitutionclub.org ...
Godlessness is a religion ( although not formally incorporated into a church). Why?
Answer: A godless worldview is based on religious belief just as much as a God-centered one. Why? Because the existence or non-existence of God can not be proven.
So?...When government schools promote a godless worldview they are not being neutral to the many God-centered sects. No, indeed! Instead they are promoting the religious belief of godlessness and teaching children to think godlessly.
A religious vacuum is impossible and it is impossible to have a religiously neutral school.
Solution: We must begin the process of getting government out of the education business.
1+1=2
What a godless concept to teach that, destroying our children. Correction required:
God says 1+1=2.
Whew, that's better, we put God back into it. Now we're not teaching godlessness to the children.
False premise. You know how Christians are the silent majority in this country? Likewise, most atheists aren't out there suing to get God removed from everything. We realize the general concept of the Christian god is part of the culture. You think the few fanatics you see on TV represent the majority. You are wrong.
Likewise, I don't think Fred Phelps represents most Christians. Feel free to correct me if you think that is incorrect, and I may reexamine my above assertion.
Do you support school choice?
Would you be in favor of complete privatization of K-12 schooling?
Would you support privatizing our state colleges and universities?
It has been my experience in reading these evolution threads that the evolutionist are the fiercest defenders of compulsory-funded, compulsory attendance, socialist, godless, government owned and run schools.
It is the creationists on these threads who support privatization of K-12 schooling and letting parents choose the best school for their child.
If it weren’t for government schooling, evolution wouldn’t even be on the radar as a hot button issue. The **ONLY** thing government schools do well is make groups of citizens furious with each other.
I guess you missed the part where I support vouchers as a way to break the effective government monopoly. I do not support forced privatization since I'm not an authoritarian. But if the public schools can't adapt in the face of private competition with the playing field evened with vouchers, then so be it.
What did the Constitution directly say when it mandated the Military? What did the Constitution directly say when it mandated the Public School?
That actually was the comparison you used!
In your next comparison, you might ask me if I would abolish the military since I think the leftwing cesspool of PBS should not be publicly funded.
You mean when it tried to prevent the establishment of a permanant standing army as we have now? The Founders absolutely distrusted standing armies. The Constitution only supported militias and a standing navy. I believe what is done to get around that is that a portion of the Militia (the collection of able-bodied men) was "called forth" long ago, and per the Constitution Congress re-appropriates money to keep it called up every two years.
What did the Constitution directly say when it mandated the Public School?
Although the Founders individually promoted public education, they appropriately chose not to make it a federal constitutional mandate. Instead, they wrote education into most of their state constitutions, and that has spread so that all state constitutions now have mandates for public education.
So you do then agree that it is okay for the Public Schools to tell children that ‘we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights’?
With the emphasis that our rights are given by our Creator
After all, that is what the founders wrote was our foundational principle.
You are not biased against that are you? You would consider the neutral teaching of the founders to be neutral wouldn’t you?
That IS a very core foundational principle -
if rights don’t objectively come from our Creator,
then they are granted by men and governments,
and can therefore be legitimately taken away by them.
George Mason wrote most of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (now part of the Virginia Constitution). In the first line he wrote that all men "by nature" have "certain inherent rights," particularly to "life and liberty" and "pursuing and obtaining happiness." Sound familiar? It should. Your above famous line from the Declaration of Independence is based on Mason's earlier work. The federal Constitution's Bill of Rights is also based on this work (Mason is considered the "co-father" with Madison), as are the declarations of rights in most state constitutions. THIS was the landmark document that framed our relationship with our government. Mason is far too underappreciated, as most people probably can't remember him as one of the Founders although he was one of the most important.
Now that you know the larger picture, the answer is of course, it is an important American historical document, so it should be taught.
With the emphasis that our rights are given by our Creator
Now there's your bias towards religion. Shall we teach the Virginia Declaration of Rights and put emphasis on how it says "inherent [natural] rights" instead of them being endowed by a creator? Do you think we shouldn't teach the Virginia Declaration of Rights?
Give me a minute to wash up after reading your last post, then I will better respond to it.
I will quote some more of the Virginia Declaration of Rights since you brought it up. And while you did bring it up, (with your nonsensical bias attached) with the clear intention to obfuscate what the words of the Declaration of Independence actually say, I will show the words you purposely left out.
Here is some more of what Mason wrote from the very same document you quoted.
That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.
As the unbiased expert that you are, surely you read the entire document, after all you humbly implied your superiority by humbly telling us "now that you know the larger picture" as any good humble (honest and unbiased, lol) teacher would do.
Your mega bias is now exposed for all to see and it reveals why you favor modern Public Schools. These schools are run by the far left which shares the same revisionist zeal to indoctrinate your world view into other people's children.
For the record, here is the same part repeated in the actual Virgina State Constitution as it exists today mentioning our Creator, and I quote:
That religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.
I know what Mason wrote. Congratulations, you avoided the trap I admittedly set. Due to your clear bias it was likely you would not like a document that appeared so "godless" being taught. But now that you bothered to read the whole thing you obviously found the reference to Christianity and therefore don't have a problem with it.
You avoided being exposed as a biased hypocrite, but remain simply proven heavily biased.
For the record, here is the same part repeated in the actual Virgina State Constitution as it exists today mentioning our Creator, and I quote:
Hmmm, that would be because, as I told you, it was integrated into the Virginia Constitution.
These schools are run by the far left which shares the same revisionist zeal to indoctrinate your world view into other people's children.
Yes, I know, the simple facts like 1+1=2 aren't religious enough. Can't just teach the facts. Gotta get some god in there or it's biased against religion.
In plainer language, you got your clock cleaned. That musta hurt. Ouch!!!
Not even close. The religious author was shown to be obviously biased for religious instruction. For example, wanting to emphasize one word in a much larger document because of bias, especially when in the larger context that word deserves no emphasis.
Meanwhile I have supported the teaching of the two documents even though they contained religious language. They should be taught because they are important founding documents, not because they have or don't have religious content. This is religion-neutral. An anti-religious bias, or "godless" approach, would have me saying those documents shouldn't be taught, or that the religious content should be removed.
All the poster did was avoid exposing his hypocrisy. His bias still clearly remains.
It is difficult to debate with someone who thinks neutrality on a subject equals being against that subject. It's a level of fanatacism reminiscent of Muslims.
Do you mean George Mason or Thomas Jefferson, since they both wrote the same thing and emphasized the same thing as the very founding principle of our nation.
We didn't write it, they wrote it. we *are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.*
How could you call it extremist to want to emphasize where our rights come from? You don't mind the document, you just want to prevent any clear authorative teaching of an important idea it was meaning to convey. Admit it!
That is why you keep tap dancing and taking several winding sentences to avoid what you could have said in five words.
You are the extremist. Your spin is the same as the liberals on all those far left web sites, same far left bias on this topic.
No, they didn't. Jefferson said rights are endowed by a creator (not in bold text as you wrote). Mason instead wrote of natural rights, not creator-endowed.
You don't mind the document, you just want to prevent any clear authorative teaching of an important idea it was meaning to convey.
The idea both were trying to convey was that our rights are not granted by a government and therefore it is not within the government's power to take them away. That is the important concept, our relationship with our government. If anything is to be emphasized, that is it. Mason first phrased this concept as natural rights, likely owing to natural rights as stated by John Locke. Jefferson later phrased this concept as rights endowed by a creator.
But because "creator" was used by one author, your bias requires you to stress that as hard as you can. Simply, if it can be described without "creator" as it was done in the first document, then "creator" is not of a critical importance to the concept, and thus there is no reason to emphasize it other than religious bias.
So both documents should be taught, with no agenda-based bias as you propose. Should the course delve further into the source of rights, then that would lead into a discussion of creator-endowed (DofI) and natural (DoR) rights. My desire to eliminate bias lets me propose teaching the creator-endowed angle. Your desire to have a bias makes you want it front-and-center even where it doesn't belong.
So I'm interested. How would you teach Jefferson's "Wall of Separation," or would you try to ignore it completely in a curriculum?
Excellent and it does smoke out the liberals. Thanks for exposing another liberal.
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