There's an important case coming before the US Supreme Court next week brought by Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). Gaylor will argue that President Bush's Faith Based Initiatives is a government promotion of religion and therefore unconstitutional.While news reports about the case aren't very optimistic about Gaylor's chances of winning, they do concede that she and the FFRF have been successful over the last few years at whittling away pieces of the initiative.
Religious legal groups argue that "real people with real problems are no longer getting help because of some of their [Gaylor and the FFRF] lawsuits," but don't mention that money given to these Church groups could be just as easily given to government programs that are forbidden by law to discriminate.
Whether Gaylor wins her case or not, it helps me have some hope for my children's futures to know that there are people out there with the time and resources to fight the good fight.
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6 comments:
Speaking of fighting the good fight...
Atheist’s test
Your opinion?
The fore-runner of the banana fits this criteria for most all new world primate species in its original habitat. It evolved that way because such plants had their seeds spread and fertilized by primate feces, and therefore survived the processes of natural selection.
Yes I said seeds, because what we know as a banana is a seedless human cultivated plant. I.E. created by humans for humans.
The answer to test one is A, because an intellegent person would be able to research the creation by man of Coca Cola, and see it being produced (I have it's cool) or at least see the recipe (minus secret ingredient that some people know) and chemistry involved written out in non-contradictory scientific form.
The eye evolved along with everything else in the human body--there are many well written or spoken lessons on this process: here is one.
Test two a)-no, b)-no, and c)-no, but the names of the painters of the cave paintings in France, 10's of thousands of years ago (and thereby 10's of thousands of years older than the Genesis Earth) are unknown, as are the names of artists who created many sculptures, drawings, and paintings before the universe was supposedly created.
According to the laws of physics and statistis the orange rows are possible, but not likely without millions of years of trial and error.
Test 3--a)-yes, b)-no, c)-no, d)-answered above.
The universe is ordered by the laws of physics, chemistry, etc.
Test 4--not worded right. The only possible answer for the question as stated is--"for there to be no gold in China." To answer with the given answers the question should be--"In order to make the statement 'There is no Gold in China' I need..."
I can easily say that no known God exists, based on the refutation of the reliability of the evidence given for them (holy texts). Given no reason to believe in anything that doesn't fit the laws of nature, I can therefore say there is no god. However, if scientists were to find irrefutable proof I would have to change my mind. I also don't believe in mermaids, ghosts, mole-men, and many other things for the same reasons.
Test five-the person may not have knowledge of the art and science of building therefore has no reason to believe the building was built, until someone comes along and shows him empirical knowledge of the art and science of construction. This scenario better fits what Kirk and pals are trying to show.
From here on the so-called "test" is merely a sermon that is designed to make believers feel better about themselves. In fact nothing in this test is logically aimed at an atheist, so appears to be more of a self-stroking test for believers.
My opinion.
As for the attempt at comparison--When was the last time you heard of an organized group of atheists preach about love, and then have it revealed that they were engaging in the sexual abuse of those most trusting of them? Or, of an atheist psychiatrist killing his assistant by starvation, or of an atheist foster parent locking his foster children in cages.
I know that these people aren't good representatives of Christians, but they were all trusted "Good Christians" before people found out what they did with the consent of their god.
It is this type of abuse that needs to be avoided by the keeping religion and government apart.
Typo error sorry
People failures are a reason God reviles to us that we need him and not to count on mankind.
I found this and of course its cut and paste, but I value your opinion (as an atheist that is)
"It’s not easy to be an atheist
An atheist assigns himself to life without ultimate purpose. Yes, atheists enjoy many smaller meanings of life-- like friendship and love, pleasure and sorrow, Mozart and Plato. But to be consistent with his atheism, he cannot allow for ultimate meaning. Yet, if the atheist is honest, he will admit to feeling that there is something more to existence -something bigger. Someone said, "The blazing evidence for immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution." According to Scripture, God has, "set eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). To maintain his position, the atheist must suppress the feeling that there is more to life than temporal pleasures. But the atheist encounters many other difficulties.
The atheist must also suppress the demands of logic. He is like the man who finds an encyclopedia lying in the woods and refuses to believe it is the product of intelligent design. Everything about the book suggests intelligent cause. But, if he accepted such a possibility, he might be forced to conclude that living creatures composed of millions of DNA-controlled cells (each cell containing the amount of information in an encyclopedia) have an intelligent cause. His controlling bias against God will not allow him to accept this.
Yet, ironically, the atheist has to believe in miracles without believing in God. Why? Well, one law that nature seems to obey is this: whatever begins to exist is caused to exist. The atheist knows that the universe began to exist and since the universe is, according to the atheist, all there is, the very existence of the universe seems to be a colossal violation of the laws of nature (i.e., a miracle). It's hard to believe in miracles without God.
An atheist must also suppress all notions of morality. He is not able to declare any quality to be morally superior to another. Such admissions require an absolute standard of goodness and duty. Without this, there is no basis for an atheist to declare peace better than war or love better than hate. These are simply alternative choices without moral superiority. The atheist is stuck believing that morality has no claim on you or anyone else.
In fact, the atheist must conclude that evil is an illusion. For there to be evil, there must also be some real, objective standard of right and wrong. But if the physical universe is all there is, there can be no such standard (How could arrangements of matter and energy make judgments about good and evil true?). So, there are no real evils, just violations of human customs or conventions. How hard it would be to think of murderers as merely having bad manners.
The atheist must also live with the arrogance of his position. Although he realizes that he does not possess total knowledge, his assertion that there is no God requires that he pretend such knowledge. Although he has limited experience, he must convince himself that he has total experience so that he can eliminate the possibility of God. It is not easy to hold the arrogant assertions required by atheism in a society that requires blind tolerance of every ideology.
The atheist must also deny the validity of historical proof. If he accepted the standard rules for testing the truth claims of historical documents, he would be forced to accept the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The account of Jesus' resurrection is strongly validated by standard rules for judging historical accuracy. The extensive manuscript evidence of eyewitnesses to the resurrection is presented in an unbiased, authentic manner. It is the atheist's anti-supernatural bias that keeps him from allowing history to prove anything.
Finally, the atheist must admit that human beings are not importantly different from other animals. According to the atheist, we are simply the result of blind chance operating on the primordial ooze, and differing from animals by only a few genes. Yet, the wonders of human achievement and the moral dignity we ascribe to human beings just do not fit with the claim that we are no different than the animals. The realities of human creativity, love, reason, and moral value seem to indicate that humans are creatures uniquely made in the image of God.
Always remember that the atheist's problem with belief in God is not the absence of evidence but the suppression of it. This is what scripture teaches. "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:20-22).
Steven W. Cornell,
Senior Pastor
Millersville Bible Church"
For an answer to the above comment go to: Debate With Dan-Part Four
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