random spew?

One thing I like about your blogs is that you support your ideas with facts and not just random things you heard from others; wouldn't mind sitting down with you and having a discussion with you about this.

SHUT THE FUCK UP ELLIS

Too many things exist which defy the existence of God. I STRONGLY believe in teaching Evolution in school. Creationism is just...too... far... fetched. I find it interesting that you think all science was founded on randomness and silly little accidents. Kind of insulting actually. I hate to break it to you, but no one "tripped" over a DNA sequencing algorithm one day, fell into an apple tree and thus discovered gravity to boot. Babies are made in laboratories, artificial intelligence exists, and the lack of ANY scientific evidence that supports even a single event taken out of the Christian bible just makes it too difficult to teach in the classroom. Hell, I don't even know how they can do it in Catechism! I mean, if they're going to teach Creationism, they might as well go the whole 9 yards and start convincing kids that unicorns and leprachauns exist too. Why the hell not? The "Big Bang" is at least remotely plausible. I mean, there are actual numbers which support the hypothesis that planets are moving in different directions. Also, most people believe in Math right? Why wouldn't you? Who cares if there are such things as "imaginary numbers" (which there are). My point is, just because Mathematics has it's holes, you can't say it's all a bunch of snake oils and hocus pocus. You can't quite put aside everything numbers have actually proven (like your weekly paycheck).

I think to each his own. I was taught all through school the "big bang theory", and evolution and I still think it's a bunch of CRAP! I don't think it's so much what you learn in school but what you're taugh BEFORE you even get there. I had christian beliefs instilled in me long before I started school. I do love reading your blogs because you are so educated and can support what you say instead of most people that barely know what they are talking about and yet still act like they have authority to be preaching to other people which is why I keep my own mouth shut most of the time!!

Of course if you had happened to run into a bunch of Hare Krishnas when you were down and out, you'd be selling flowers at the airport. I guess it's all relative to what appeals to your own soul at the time.

It's a bad idea to mix Church and State. The court case came up because that's what is being attempted in schools, and it's against the laws, our Constitution, and infringes on people's rights. Intelligent Design is Creationism, and therefore has no place in our schools.

alright. lots of different perspectives from these different comments so let's see if i can't address them... 1. andrew - One of the most interesting books i've ever read is a book called "My Life Without God" by William Murray. William Murray, not to be confused with Bill Murray, was/is the son of Madeleine Murray O'Hare, the infamous atheist woman who spear headed the taking prayer out of school's movement. She's the one that brought the case before the Supreme Court. Actually, Bill was the plaintiff in the case. His mom was a controlling (in his words) , borderline crazy, and very very angry woman who he (in his own words again) was trying to curry favor with as her son by going along with her "crusade." Now, little known facts about Madeleine or "Mad Madeleine" as she was commonly called are interesting. She once tried to sue NASA over astronauts reading aloud from the Bible in space, and also sued the U.S. government to stop the pope from being able to visit on U.S. soil. Now, of course that doesn't get taught in school. But it's true. So William, in his autobiography, describes life with his mother as chaotic, violent, dangerous, and ridiculous. She was a member of the socialists and also the communists, and was loosely linked to Lee Harvey Oswald when he shot JFK. She manipulated her son and her family to the point that William had to get away from her for good and distance himself from her because he firmly believed she was literally crazy. Known for her violence, "Mad Madeleine Murray" definitely has a wicked underbelly that most people who site the whole prayer in school supreme court case have no idea about. BTW - Bill, the plaintiff in the court case, later became a christian and is now president of a thing called the "Religious Freedom Coalition" - fighting from the "other side" of the argument he and his mother once championed. 2. Joe - heh. Hare Krishna's. Actually, I for awhile was definitely down with the Hare's. I had a book or two by them and was pretty intrigued by their whole deal. I think there's a certain percentage of truth in every religion, but the Hare's are interesting. Hare is a term similar to 'guru' , and in Hinduism - of which hare krishnas are a branch - there are like 7 or 8 main gurus or 'hare's. Hare Krishna was a teacher, who died, and a cult spawned up after him. Now, what you're obviously thinking is that christianity can be seen as a cult spawned after a leader that died as well. That may be true, to an extent, but considering the central figure of christianity is Christ's resurrection from the dead - we see the difference. Buddha died, Hare Krishna died, but Christ is testified to as being risen from the dead by the power of God His Father. I definitely was down with the krishnas, and definitely went through a considerable spell where i considered myself Buddhist (well, my own perception of what Buddhist was at least). I also inadvertantly was going to this thing called the "Self Realization Fellowship Temple" - a kindof mixture between scientology and eastern polytheist hindu-like religion... Not to mention before any of that i was a staunch atheist and then an active reader of Satanic and Witchcraft books... So , honestly i can't say that it would've been different for me any other way. Because it WAS different for me every other way. I've been deeper into most religions than 3/4 of the people i run into. I probably know more about Judaism than a good number of jews. But the difference is not the fact that I was convinced by some man or by some doctrine written by man, the difference is that I had a personal experience with a personal God and had a revelation of the truth in Christ..... something i can't deny even if i wanted to (and trust me, there are times when i want to). Let me put it like this: Trust me, someone seeks after Satan enough they're gonna find him - I did. And when you find him you better believe that you're only hope is going to be in the Thing you doubted all along. I can get waay into it, and eventualyl i think we're going to head that way, but for now this is where i have to leave off with this argument... 3. Tim - the man i've somewhat traded places with. I love you man, I really do. If science exists and IS universal (math, etc)....... then how'd it come into existence? It either was A) created, B) "came" "popped" "happened" "banged" into existence or C) was always there. A) creation. no argument here. B) Big Bang. A mass of energy that exploded. Mass of energy reminds me of an egg, so where's the chicken? Which came first??? What if there's something out there that exists beyond time? The chicken and egg are stuck, forever seen through the eyes of limited human perception. Man can't fathom eternity yet the Bible says (ecclesiastes 3:11) that "He (God) has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." C.S. Lewis speaks of the eternity of God in an analogy similar to the following: he says Imagine God as an infinitely long piece of paper. and imagine time as a small, short and certainly FINITE line on the paper that has a clear beginning and end. That's the eternity of God, the timeless, the outside of time God - the christian idea of ALpha and Omega, Beginning and End, one who WAS and IS and IS TO COME. all that old christianese starts to come into clearer focus... so if it banged, popped, came into existence - we have a finite creation. something with a clear cut beginning, therefore not infinite, therefore bound by time and excluded from the (potential of) eternity. if it (science, big bang, whatever) always was - then it has no clear beginning and trying to speculate what the beginning was is futile because it ALWAYS was, IS infinite, and ALWAYS will be. But the concept of science being eternal and extremely orderly and not having a Mind that made it that way is, to me, like laws and a courtroom and cases and evidence BUT NO JUDGE that presides over it - in which case, who gives a shit? we, as men, argue whether the glass is full or empty. But I want to know what's on the outside of it. To me, there's way too much intelligence inside the cup to not have an intelligent mind outside of it. Without God, man is smarter than science because only in man can science be understood and potentially mastered. No other creature that we know of has reason and consciousness enough to be able to handle such high and lofty principals. but if science is the highest and loftiest YET can't speak or think for itself, then man seemingly becomes the ultimate because he as a grain of sand has attributes that the giant and potentially all-inclusive set and system of order does not have. to me, that's like an ant vanishing in a furnace. either that or the segway into the next level of debate - the potential existence of the human "spirit"