The great exploiters:

Since you tend to place conservatives in the same camp as the ultra religious I was wondering what you thought about their role in the abolition movement in the 1800’s that led to the demise of slavery.

As you’re aware, the abolition movement was a result of the “Second Great Awakening”, which was the second great religious revival in the United States, with the first Great Awakening being the one that helped spark the Revolution.

It was these “religious nut jobs” as you would call them today that saw the immorality in slavery that got the abolition movement started. They are the same religious nut jobs that you attack today for their movement against abortion.

It’s interesting how the Second Great Awakening was a reaction to the secularism of the time that was taking place among many Americans. That secularism and the religious revival that followed is the same secularism that is happening today among the left and the religious revival on the right that has brought Republicans back into power.

No religious revival? Sounds like typical left wing denial to me. Do us a favor and keep believing it so we can pack a few more elections under our belt.

The day some scientist can explain to me how a whole universe appears out of thin air, I’ll give up on the intelligent design idea.

Science class. There still trying to figure out what came first, the chicken or the egg or how complex systems like the human body developed out of a single cell organism.

Let me helped them out. Its called God.

As someone who has taken science classes from grammar school through college, teachers should also not teach that the earth was created from exploding asteroids as if it’s law. There are very few scientific laws like the “law of gravitivity”. Most are theories, like intelligent design.

The problem that people who believe in God have is that schools teach it as if it’s scientific law how the earth and universe was formed.

So why should the “theory” you believe in be taught and the “theory” other people believe in shouldn’t?

Teaching Shakespeare doesn’t conflict with my belief that 2+2=4. But teaching the formation of the earth as if it’s law conflicts with my belief on how the earth was formed, so therefore intelligent design is relevant in science class.

Well I never said I was a scientist and don’t pretend to be. However I don’t think you need to be a science teacher to understand that things don’t form out of thin air and that there must be a greater force involved.

Does your boyfriend know of any “experiments” where something magically appeared out of nothing?

You want to believe that our universe magically appeared out of thin air, with our solar system perfectly forming with the earth placing itself exactly around the sun, so that the 1 in infinity number that it takes to make everything that has occurred, then go ahead. I would think you would be smarter than that.

As I said, your boyfriend and his buddies are still trying to figure out what came first, the chicken or the egg. You can mock the Bible about creationism but I can just as easily mock your boyfriend for teaching kids how one day the world was a big ball of molten lava and then magically we had vegetation, fish and humans.

Chicken or the egg, chicken or egg?

So are you saying that you believe a “divine being oversaw the evolutionary process”? If you do as most people in this country, then why can’t we just mention the possibility in science class when it comes to the formation of the earth along with other theories?

I’m being serious, what does your boyfriend tell that little girl or boy who is sitting there thinking that God created everything. When he or any other science teacher is forming their lesson plans should they not take that child’s belief into consideration?

The problem I have over the discussion is that I view the attempt to ignore the idea of God overseeing the evolutionary process as a greater overall attack on the church, which includes attempts to have children stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because it references God.

Churches to mark Darwin’s birthday
Hundreds to join `Evolution Sunday,’ organized by a Wisconsin academic

By Lisa Anderson
Tribune national correspondent

February 11, 2006

NEW YORK — Nearly 450 Christian churches around the country plan to celebrate the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin on Sunday with programs and sermons intended to emphasize that his theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.

“It’s to demonstrate, by Christian leaders and members of the clergy, that you don’t have to make that choice. You can have both,” said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, who organized the event.

Darwin’s theory holds that life on Earth, including humans, shares common ancestry and developed over millions of years through the mechanisms of natural selection and random mutation. The concept is repugnant to many conservative Christians because it conflicts with their belief that man was specially created in the image of God.

“Evolution Sunday” has drawn participation from a variety of denominational and non-denominational churches, including Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Congregationalist, United Church of Christ (Meghan’s denomination!) , Baptist and a host of community churches, including at least 16 congregations in Illinois.

The event grew out of Zimmerman’s The Clergy Letter Project, another effort to dispel the perception among many Christians that faith and evolution are mutually exclusive.

Clerics’ affirmation

Since its inception in 2004, the project has drawn 10,000 Christian clerics to sign a letter that concludes, “We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.”

Zimmerman said the letter project and the Sunday event were designed to educate Americans about two things.

“The first part was to demonstrate to the American public that the shrill fundamentalist voices that were demanding that people had to choose between religion and science were simply wrong,” he said.

“The second part was to demonstrate that those fundamentalist leaders that keep standing up and shouting that you can’t accept modern science were not speaking for the majority of Christian leaders in this country.”

However, “Evolution Sunday” drew sharp criticism from the Discovery Institute. The Seattle-based think tank funds research into non-Darwinian concepts such as intelligent design, which posits that some complexities of life that are yet unexplained by evolution are best are attributed to an unnamed and unseen intelligence.

Contradictory view

In a statement issued under the title “On Evolution Sunday It’s Give Me That Old Time Darwinist Religion,” Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman said, “Evolution Sunday is the height of hypocrisy.”

“Our view is not that pastors should speak out against evolution,” he added, “but that the Darwinists are hypocrites for claiming–falsely–that opposition to Darwinism is merely faith-based, and then turning around and trying to make the case that Darwinism itself is faith-based.”

Zimmerman, a former biology professor, said, “Science is limited under what the scientific method allows you to do. I fear the Discovery Institute and these other fundamentalists have science envy. They want science to ratify their faith and beliefs and, by definition, you’ve got to take faith on faith.”

Rev. Mike Southcombe, pastor of St. John’s United Church of Christ in semirural Brighton, Ill., near St. Louis, said he joined Zimmerman’s campaign over concern about what he perceives as the growing conflict between religion and science.

“We have become a very divided culture in this country, and there are people out there who say people of faith should deny science. And I believe that, in the great tradition of the church, science is one more way that God reveals God’s self and God’s will for us. I think to ignore scientific findings and theories is simply unfaithful,” said Southcombe.

“I find deep spirituality in the truths of evolution.”

Rev. Brett McCleneghan, senior minister of the Park Ridge Community Church in Park Ridge, Ill., already has preached sermons on evolution and creationism, he said. He also noted that the adult education group at his church just completed a five-week series of lectures and discussions on evolution, creationism and intelligent design.

Although, he said, most of his members express no incompatibility between evolution and faith, he understands why many Christians find evolutionary theory threatening.

“I think it might be a part of the larger issue of how do we find certainty in the modern context, where all meaning is up for grabs,” he said. “I think it’s a brave effort by folks . . . a way of saying no to secularization.”

Took all of 10 minutes while I spent the snowy afternoon ding dirty laundry.

I felt both tasks went hand-in-hand.

Loser dittoheads.