Down with Creationism!

[_JS]

No one at all takes every word of the Bible absolutely literally ,to do so would make the Song of Solomon into gibberish.

I had a good friend who was an "independent Baptist" of some sort. They supposedly took the Bible literally. They were also teetotallers to an extreme. So, I always wondered about the parts of the bible where Jesus drank wine. The response was that it wasn't really wine, it was "grape juice."

Literal interpretation is still an interpretation. To me, it is a very anti-intellectual view of the Bible. It fails to comprehend a great deal of the beauty and context that are a part of the written word of the time. A good example of the failures of literal interpretation are in John 21:15-19 where if one does not understand the Greek, then one misses a very powerful set of verses.

[Plane]

It their a limit to the lies that parents have a right to teach their children, or do you draw the line at Bible-based crap?

Plane raises a very interesting question, does the government under current interpretation of the first amendment, have the right or the authority to show favoritism to one religious belief over another?

I noticed no one has taclked this question yet.  I wonder why.  Too politically incorrect?

Perhaps it is worthy of deep consideration beore replyng.

I would give greater weight to Parents because with rare exception parents have the good of the child central to their consideration , states do too but the exceptions are not as rare.

[Amianthus]

The response was that it wasn't really wine, it was "grape juice."

Actually, I've always thought that was funny. We have evidence that not only was wine fermented, it was stronger than current wines.

Open fermentation (which was used at that time in the Middle East) tends to produce a stronger wine or beer than closed fermentation (used in Europe). One of the open fermentation products from Europe, Kriek ales, typically have 5.5% alcohol in comparison to closed fermentation ales which are around 4 - 4.5% alcohol.

I don't know of any open fermentation wines currently available.

[Plane]

The response was that it wasn't really wine, it was "grape juice."

Actually, I've always thought that was funny. We have evidence that not only was wine fermented, it was stronger than current wines.

Open fermentation (which was used at that time in the Middle East) tends to produce a stronger wine or beer than closed fermentation (used in Europe). One of the open fermentation products from Europe, Kriek ales, typically have 5.5% alcohol in comparison to closed fermentation ales which are around 4 - 4.5% alcohol.

I don't know of any open fermentation wines currently available.

Yes, I consider the evidence strong that the wine was wine , grape juce has a very short shelf life without pasteurization.

This interpretation seems to be a fairly recent thing , mostly an artifact of the temprence movement.

[Lanya]

The temperence movement was very strong when my mom was little.   And, her dad was a Methodist minister.  No wine or sprits in their house.   
I asked her about the passage in the Bible where Jesus turns water into wine, and she said it was because of the lack of potable water in those days.  Yeah....that sounded kind of iffy to me too, but that was her story!   ;-)

[Xavier_Onassis]

So, the question remains: Do parents have some sort of inherent right to teach their children nonsense that flat-plant is not true in the name of religious freedom?
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I suppose that teaching children that Jesus just changed some bug-infested water to wine so as to purify it, but the purification ingredient in wine is alcohol, and perhaps other compounds resultant from fermentation. Jesus is rather a one-shot phenomenon, and his wine-creating abilities are unlikely to cause anyone harm unless he comes back and goes ape with his miraculous talent.

But a majority of Americans seem to believe that the Earth was created 4000 odd years ago and that the End of the World is likely to come really soon. It is also true that this country needs a much larger number of scientists and engineers than it currently produces. The deficit used to be made up for by immigrant students, but it's harder for them to get into the country on an I-20 Visa than it was before 9/11.

I suggest that the anti-science bias is harmful to this nation.

If people have the right to teach their children bullsh*t in the name of medieval religious views, the rest of us need to be aware of the consequences.

[Amianthus]

But a majority of Americans seem to believe that the Earth was created 4000 odd years ago and that the End of the World is likely to come really soon.

I suggest that this statement is bullshit.

[The_Professor]

Speaking as someone who successfully homeschooled their child, I embraced BOTH sides of this issue. Specifically, I taught Intelligent Design and evolution. My daughter, who is currently an A student at college and received almost a 1400 on her SAT, therefore learned both positions on this issue. Answering some of the questions posed here, I felt, and still do feel ,that it is NOT the Government's right to tell me, in specific terms, what my child should learn. Of course,They felt differently and I had to accede to their demands and therefore she learned the proper amounts of math, science on a macro level. On a micro level, I felt free to use conservative-leaning but highly-acclaimed academically texts. The Government School Hierarchy didn't like it and at one time I had to get HSLDA involved. Once their lawyers explained THE LAW to the Government Schools, they backed off. See,they wanted to tell me what TEXTS to use.  I felt that as long as I covered the academic ground they required, that should be sufficient. A key question here is where is the line of power in this issue between parents and the Government? In my case, I and the Government Schools differed on where this line is. In this case, I won. In other states of the union, I probably would not have since many other states are more strict on homeschooling issues.

[The_Professor]

But a majority of Americans seem to believe that the Earth was created 4000 odd years ago and that the End of the World is likely to come really soon.

I suggest that this statement is bullshit.

Actually, you can argue that it is only 60,000 years old if you add up the generations in the Bible. Do I personally believe this? No, but I do not believe we crawled out of primordial slime either. Was the Earth created in six days? Six LITERAL days? I dnot believe so, because, if you are into linguistics, this could really mean six thousand or six million or six...anyway, you get the point here. However, if you came up to me and said "I believe the wordily was created in six literal days." I would say "Great!' Let's go get lunch!" The implication here is that sometimes people argue over minutia instead of majoring in the majors, not the minors. So, why demonstrate your argumentative nature and jump down their throat? After all, there are Christians who believe in any number of variations on this theme, and guess what, in the end analysis, it means zip because JESUS CHRIST is really all that matters. Eveything else is but a shadow.

[Michael Tee]

    <<I do not mind that Evolution be taught in a comparitive religion class or something but to present it as uncontravertable to children of people who do not agree, is a crass imposition on the rights of a citizen.>>

I studied evolution at University and it was never presented as incontovertible to anybody.  Evolution is a theory, an attempt to explain known facts in accordance with scientific method.  Like any other scientific theory, evolution stands ready to be modified or discarded completely if new facts surface which cannot be accommodated by the existing theory.

Nobody can be forced to have their children study science.  But if a child IS going to learn science in a public school, the teachers MUST teach what the students are signed up to learn - - that is, science, not theology and certainly not Christian theology.  Science proceeds according to the scientific method - - observation, hypothesis (theory) to explain the observations and finally, testing the theory. 

The theory of evolution was developed in strict accordance with scientific method.  The theory of intelligent design was not.  Scientists, therefore, are prepared to teach the theory of evolution to those who want to study science and are not prepared to teach the theory of intelligent design to those same students.  The reason is simple:  evolution theory is science, ID theory is not.

Every scientific theory can be countered with a religious theory: God can be used to explain the existence of phenomena just as easily as science.  To those who wish to study how God created the world in six days and whether Jesus Christ is a god or  not, I would say, fine, go study religion.  Scientists cannot prove you are wrong and you may in fact be right.  Maybe the world WAS created by God in six days and anyone who says different will fry in hell.  We don't say, "Science is right, the rest of you guys are all fulla shit."  But if you want to study science, then you must learn science.  You are not going to come into a science class and learn how God created the world in six days - - learn that elsewhere and good luck to ya.

[Amianthus]

Actually, you can argue that it is only 60,000 years old if you add up the generations in the Bible.

Regardless of adding up the generations in the Bible, most Americans do not believe that the world is only 4,000 years old. Which is the claim that I was calling bullshit.

[Xavier_Onassis]

After all, there are Christians who believe in any number of variations on this theme, and guess what, in the end analysis, it means zip because JESUS CHRIST is really all that matters. Eveything else is but a shadow.

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The reason one is supposed to believe that Yeshua bin Yacob, aka Jesus Christ, was the Son of God and the Savior of Mankind is that his story is found in the Bible, which declares itself to be the Word of God. Jesus Himself, though allegedly capable of returning from the dead, has not done so recently, and despite his religious heritage, which gave major importance to the Written Word, Himself wrote not an account, nor a paragraph, nor a sentence nor one word.

If any part of the Bible is not true, then all of it is suspect, and subject to actual scholarly analysis, which is not the same as the baloney known as "Bible studies", which merely analyze HOW it is true. Stating that Jesus drank grape juice rather than wine is one example of this sort of silliness.



As for a majority of Americans believing that the world was created around 4000 years ago, I personally did not poll them, but I did read this in a popular magazine. I shall amend this by saying that far too many believe the "young Earth" theory to be true.

It was a Church of England priest and 'scholar' who in fact did add up the ages of all the lineages of the begats mentioned in the Bible and arrived at the first man (Adam) having been created in the year 4004 BC on a Thursday afternoon, I believe. So that would have been not 4000 years ago, but 6011 years ago, give or take a year. Not that it matters, because it is patent malarkey.

In any event, the number of people who believe Biblical nonsense surely causes many young Americans from becoming scientists, though probably not so many as an aversion to mathematics, which is at least partly due to the fact that people who are really enthusiastic about math can find far more gainful employment and higher status in jobs outside the teaching occupation. My daughter did not meet one adequate math teacher in 14 years of education, nor did I meet even one in high school, either.

[kimba1]

if christ is the one true path.
how can people be doomed to hell for not beinmg christians if they never hear of christ.
missionaries are stranger who come to your house and say everything you know is a lie and you have to follow everything they say.
I have friends in vietnam.
they`re not too crazy about christians.
pretty much all religions that follow the one true path criteria is not very well thought through.
quite insulting

[Amianthus]

In any event, the number of people who believe Biblical nonsense surely causes many young Americans from becoming scientists, though probably not so many as an aversion to mathematics, which is at least partly due to the fact that people who are really enthusiastic about math can find far more gainful employment and higher status in jobs outside the teaching occupation. My daughter did not meet one adequate math teacher in 14 years of education, nor did I meet even one in high school, either.

That's a shame. I had several in high school and one in college. A few really excellent chemistry, biology, physics, electronics, and one excellent english teacher as well. History teachers were pretty uniformly bad, even in college.

[Amianthus]

As for a majority of Americans believing that the world was created around 4000 years ago, I personally did not poll them, but I did read this in a popular magazine. I shall amend this by saying that far too many believe the "young Earth" theory to be true.

If you're talking about this poll, then you'll note that the wording of the question was not "do you believe the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago" - it was "do you believe that humans were created by God less than 10,000 years ago." There are a large number of people who believe the Earth is older than 10,000 years, but humans were created by God a relatively short period of time ago.

Regardless, the number was 46% for this question - not "most Americans."