Letters to the Editor
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We need more Nina Burleigh's to appreciate the ignorance of the left
Thanks Nina. Your ignorance is eloquent and so authentic. Who better than yourself to proclaim the non-patriotic values of a discontent Marxist trapped in a country founded on Christian values? Cuba, China, North Korea and others maintain the depraved systems you long for. You might even prefer the Middle East, where your self-hatred can be truly realized in the context of the misogynistic culture. Oops, I almost forgot, they might offend you because they do have alternative religous values. On second thought, you might like those values.
Nina - you're not bound to stay in the US and the depraved systems in those other countries are already in place for your added convenience. Have a great trip! And could you take the ACLU with you? Please?
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Richard
Faith is not believing the unseen, it is believing in something without any proof of its existence. That's a huge distinction. I'm going to employ Justice Scalia's favorite tactic here, using the dictionary:
2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs
You draw a invalid analogy between god and gravity. Gravity (not a scientific theory, it's a law) is describable by equations and is completely predictable. results of gravity can be replicated again and again. The existence of god is not even close to being testable like that.
Once again, when you find a watch on the ground, although you were not there when it was made, you know that it was assembled at some point in time by a logical being.
Well, statistically, it could have assembled itself randomly. That's what statistics is all about. It may take millions of tries over billions of years, but statistically, nothing is impossible.
Which brings me to the existence of God. Bertrand Russel has an excellent essay on the topic of "technical agnosticism," by which he means that he accepts that there is a remote chance that there is a being out there like god. but, this being has absolutely on influence on his present life or any time beforehand. I would subscribe to that -- yes, technically, maybe there is a god out there somewhere in another parrallel universe or just hanging out not doing anything at all, but for all intents and purposes, from a practical point of view, that reduces to atheism, since this god's existence is irrelevant.
I see what you're saying about believing in god, but i've adopted a general rule to not believe in things unless there is evidence (statistical evidence is also evidence, like the mathematical calculations about the chances of other life in the universe). there's no evidence god is under my couch right now, so i'm not going to believe that. There's about a 20% chance someone is walking up the stairs in my building right now. bUt there are no tangible proofs or statistical evidence of god's existence. unless i see proof, i'm not going to believe in it. that's the basic premise of science.
So what would the implications be were Creationism to be accepted? What damage would it do? The only things Creationism does not attempt to SCIENTIFICALLY account for would be 1) the creation of earth and the universe-and-2) the creation of life. They also do not try to explain macroevolutionary mechanisms, mainly because of the lack of evidence/biological impossibility. So how does this negatively affect the cause of science? Weren't some of the greatest scientists of the past 400 years Christians?
First of all, it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you apply the scientific method to your investigations. Great example: it doesn't matter if you believe there is a gremlin inside your computer that makes it run. As long as you know how to program and your programs work, no one cares what you think about the reasons for them working.
But that's not the point. The problem is that your positing limiting god as an explanatory tool only for "creation of the universe" and "Creation of life." My question is, why stop there? If we say that is valid (without any proof), can't we say "cancer is caused by god, so we don't need to do any more research." More scarily, could people be excused from crimes by saying "god made me do it"?
Finally,
Yes, but I have successfully demonstrated the religious nature of Atheism. Therefore, (and I've said this before, but I'll say it again) I am not against the teaching of Evolution (alongside the mention of other viable creation theories). I am only against it being presented as fact IF origin science is to be considered in a classroom.
Schools currently don't teach "god doesn't exist" either. Teaching either way is not appropriate for schools. but since evolution has nothing to do with god, unless you're a literal creationist, it should be taught because it's SCIENCE.
anyway, i don't think that all these questions are going to be resolved on page 56 of this forum, so let's just leave it at that :)
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Memories memories ...
Boy, this article sure brought back memories of my own childhood.
I can understand Nina Burleigh's concern about what her child was being taught. My parents were concerned as well.
I was born in the late 1950s and I remember the blind, unconditional love of America I felt as a small boy. My school sounds like it was similar to hers, only maybe even more so. We had a sort of paramilitary outfit called the "Traffic Patrol" that was for the boys only with uniforms and military ranks and even court-martials.
It was the height of the Vietnam war and my friends and I were running around the back yard playing “Army” and pretending to shoot each other. We were all afraid the war would be over before we could join up and play for real and do all the cool things we saw on TV.
My parents tried to some sense into me, much as Nina did with her son. I don’t call that liberal snobbery, I call that an expression of love.