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the biggest problem with allowing religion in schools is that christianity is heavily emphasized over other religions. how many americans out of 100 would know who Lao Tzu is or what famous text he wrote? how many americans would know what the basic concepts of shintoism are? can you say that more than 10 out of 100 would know that the Dhali Lama is thought of as a false prophet by the majority of buddhists? these things are only taught at high school senior level electives at best, mostly one would need to take an asian studies course in college to even find out these simple facts.... but christianity and your "God" (and seriously how uncreative can you be when naming a diety) is promoted via almost every aspect of public schooling in some way; the pledge, the observance of christian holidays only, the convenient lack of information about how christian churches caused/condone many atrocities...(ex. the holocaust, slavery, the slaughtering of "heathens" by the "benevolent" missionaries, etc)
Hmm, I can see this will never be resolved by simple fact-stating. How about this: Take my school for an example. We have almost 1500 kids from 7th to 12th grade. Our school did a random poll of 500 kids and found that 84% of them were Christian. There was no minority religious groups, it was either Christian or Atheist. So - there is a 4-1 ratio here.
Well, if you want so badly to tell kids about all these great religions they are missing out on, how about a ratio? 4 out of every 5 theological classes will be Christian-based, and the last one can be Atheistic, Bhuddist, whatever you want.
I can almost see the veins popping out of your forehead now. Why? This is a perfectly fair way of educating students. In fact, it's better than you would get in a democracy, where the 84% would get what they want and the remaining 16% can go shove it.
The simple fact is, you have a double standard. You want very much to educate kids about religions like Bhuddism and Taoism and all that jazz. BUT as soon as Christianity is mentioned, you wail like a banshee about the separation of church and state. Double standard.
And not to mention the fact that an atheist has no religion at all, so IMO should shut their hole about the issue.
If you think Christianity is being overemphasized in schools, obviously you don't spend much time in school. My mother teaches the young, impressionable 5th grade, and she got in some serious trouble because she had a Christmas tree in the room around December. BUT what gets me so mad is that if it had been a mock Islamic temple or a model Bhuddist shrine, she would have been commended for giving the kids some culture.
A double standard is one of the worst fallacies, and before you can change my opinion on anything at all, you need to apply your logic to yourself as well as me.
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you mean like the forced conversion of people by missionaries (upon the penalty of death)
Oh, so now the sins of the fathers are transposed upon the children? Then why don't we talk about the Nazis, who threw an entire world into war and strife in the name of evolution. (Their thinking was that war and struggle weeded out the weaker ones, creating their Ultimate Race.)
The government, under an Evolutionist rule, burned books, censored information, spewed propaganda like an incinerator, and any opposition to their ideas was quietly killed in their sleep.
Nazis also exterminated gypsies, homosexuals, Jews, and about any race other than Germans. They even turned on their own allies in about the very worst strategic decision ever.
So don't even start with me about how missionaries were so bad - or I'll tattoo a swastika on your forehead.
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yes there were forgeries, but not as many as the amount of religious forgeries created to protect the church over the years... also most of the fossils found post 1960 were CARBON DATED... now if you want to argue against the validity of carbon-14 dating... well good luck.
Argue the validity of carbon-14 dating? I can and will. Carbon-14 dating rests on flimsy assumptions, one of which states that conditions in prehistoric times had to be similar to the ones at present day. This is contradicted by evolution's own timeline, which spans Ice Ages and a bubbling hot ball of magma that will (Over miilliions and biilliions of years) eventually turn into earth.
Carbon-14 dating rests on these conditions: The amount of carbon in our atmosphere must be the same as it is now. The amount of carbon isotope in relation to its daughter elements must be the same as it is now. The rate of decay must be EXACTLY the same as it is now, and absolutely nothing can come into contact with the sample until the point of dating.
Now, think of a critter. It dies. Luckily, the amount of carbon-to-lead ratio is exactly as it is today, because otherwise the whole thing will be off, sometimes by up to a hundred million years. This little guy dies, then flops into a sterilized glass jar, one that is lined with up to an inch of inert lead to stop the interaction of it and the outside world. (Electromagnetic waves can alter the reading, as can ambient radiation and imbalances of it.) Then a lid to the jar just happens to fall onto it, and the forces of random chance tighten it. Then the jar is buried deep into the earth, waiting for some dunderhead evolutionary geologist to come and misdate it.
There are records of live seals being carbon-dated and seen as almost a hundred thousand years old. There are also files and records of tests done between carbon-dating labs. A bit of the same sample was sent to each of four labs, and the dates returned differed by almost a million years. Hmm, and this is what we base our geological theories upon?
Carbon-14 is also easily leached from rocks when the water table rises or when rainwater filters down from above. The daughter products of Carbon-14 decay, however, stay in the rock much more - thus causing the rocks to appear much older than they really are.
There are also Neon, Argon, Radium, Polonium, and several other forms of testing. All of them are jsut as flawed as Carbon-14, and I can outline each one if you must. However, my hands are tired so I hope you will believe me for once.
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so basically what you are talking about is the moral superioty of christians?! hmmm.... then why were more wars and atrocities commited by christians than any other group, even though they are NOT the majority globally and have NEVER been. why is that almost no christian land has ever declared non-civil war? also why is that the strife in africa didn't start till the arrival of christians? same is true of the pre- euro-imperialist nations of asia... yes damn those wicked heathens and their peaceful non-christian ways...
Peaceful Non-Christian ways? Like the Nazis?
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again: READ A BOOK!!!
Actually, I have a most excellent book you should read: You can buy it online for $2.00, and about $1.00 for S&H. It's called The Evolution Cruncher, and systematically debunks every 'scientific' principle that evolution called into being.
However, the book is 2000-some pages, so I don't know if you could struggle your way through it. But never fear! The Internet contains a website version of the book, slightly condensed and divided into chapters. You can find it at:
http://www.evolution-facts.orgClick the link above the fossilized hammer, the one that says 'Evolution Cruncher to C'. It will list every chapter that has been digitized. I recommend you read these ones first, they are the most crucial to your argument:
http://evolution-facts.org/Ev-Crunch/c02a.htmhttp://evolution-facts.org/Ev-Crunch/c06a.htmhttp://evolution-facts.org/Ev-Crunch/c10a.htmAnd now I say to you: READ THREE CHAPTERS!! (Unless that's too much for you, that is.)