florida considers christian license plateby jessica gresko,apposted: 2008-04-24 08:22:10 miami (april 24) - florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the miami heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion.. .
james moore, faith in teaching / ap.
the florida legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words "i believe.".
Hope4Others:
Why whatever do you mean, I thought those were still made by the prison system, got to keep them employed for 5 cents a day.
The government runs the prison system of course, but I meant specifically the absurdity elected representatives of the people debating which designs are appropriate for something that should be completely free of personalisation.
that's an 'ever so slightly' adapted quote from tophat on another thread; http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/108341/2880755/post.ashx#2880755.
i've been really dismissive of god/s, religion, faith and the abandoning of reason but when it comes to the 'argument from design', well you just have to give it a bit more .
respect?
nicolaou:
FD: Spot on. You do know I was making an opening statement, not for myself (I'm an evoultionist/atheist after all) but for the sake of the argument?
But of course. And you did well - the argument has flourished!
It's difficult to maintain patience with individuals who promote the idea of a God/Creator "because that's what the Bible says" but the so-called argument from design is at least an argument that can be made. You and I would agree it's also an argument that can be overturned and refuted - it's been done many times on this forum alone. I was just trying for a more humble approach from both camps.
Well, the argument from design was never more than superficially appealing due to the infinite regress it requires. However, it's persistence was excusable given that nobody had come up with a viable alternative - but that excuse hasn't been valid for a century and a half. There is a viable alternative to design and it's called natural selection.
Aleman:
The illnesses out there that every day kill people are also so complex in design, althogh there are cures to many of them, there are those that make people suffer and die due to them if they don't get treatment. Cancer, Aids, Leprosy, Black death, spanish flu, the comon cold, etc. and we can't get rid of them. There has been so much research against these illnesses and yet they can't stop them from existing.
Good point. The bacteria and viruses that cause these horrible diseases are every bit as complex as any other life form so if there is a single designer it is obvious that he is a brutal sadist. Otherwise, the alternative is multiple designers. Neither of these is a problem for design theory per se although many believers would be uncomfortable with either of them. Of course, in reality, these diseases evolved by the same process of natural selection as every other life form on earth. In fact, because of their short generation times we can see them evolving, most notably and worryingly in direct response to the selection pressure provided by the use of antibiotics.
AuldSoul:
And yet, we supposedly share a common "eye" ancestor. Odd. Maybe, instead, we just have similar code that was rearranged for variations on a single theme.
We (humans and octopuses) don't have similar code for our eyes. They developed independently of one another in a fine example of convergent evolution. The eye is such a useful tool and so trivial for natural selection to improve upon that it has developed independently upwards of 40 times. Of course, the types of eyes various animals have - and indeed the code for them - can be accurately predicted by their place in the evolutionary tree. If there was a designer, he only seemed to reuse code within (apparent) clades and never, ever, ever outside them. He even reused faulty and non-functioning code. Now that's odd.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416104320.htm.
the world's oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the dalarna province of sweden.
the spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.
Perry:
How old do you think the tree is, and why?
florida considers christian license plateby jessica gresko,apposted: 2008-04-24 08:22:10 miami (april 24) - florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the miami heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion.. .
james moore, faith in teaching / ap.
the florida legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words "i believe.".
How about they just do things like the rest of the world and put nothing on a license plate except the registration number? Let people who want to decorate whatever part of their car they want, but leave the license plate plain with a high-contrast colour scheme so it can better serve its intended purpose. What a ridiculous waste of a government's time!
that's an 'ever so slightly' adapted quote from tophat on another thread; http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/108341/2880755/post.ashx#2880755.
i've been really dismissive of god/s, religion, faith and the abandoning of reason but when it comes to the 'argument from design', well you just have to give it a bit more .
respect?
nicolau:
Complicated things do look designed. The human brain does seem to suggest an intelligent creator.
That's true but not quite in the sense I think you mean. The way our brains have evolved causes us to infer design where we see complexity. Humans are designers, makers, creators, tinkerers and toolmakers. Much of the world we live in only works because it has been consciously designed and manufactured. It's not surprising that most humans have imagined the rest of the world works so well for the same reason. It was not until Darwin's discovery of natural selection that we had a better explanation than design for the complexity we see.
For matters of science, it's vitally important not to assume that what our intuition tells us is correct. Our intuition and superficial observation tell us the earth is flat, and that the sun orbits it. But rigorous investigation and the gathering of evidence has shown otherwise. The same is true of the apparent design of living organisms. The Argument from Design turns out to be the Argument from Incredulity. I can't believe that wasn't consciously designed, therefore it was designed.
i've always had serious doubts but now that i am @ a point in my life were my parents have helped me to purchase my first place and now that i am no longer under their wing i feel like i am in a position to start doing something about it.
nothing drastic but just the beginnings of a gradual fade b/c i don't want to humiliate them in the circuit b/c they r very well-known and admired in the circuit, plus i owe them alot and am still a little financially dependent on them.
so my dad is an elder and conducts the bookstudy.
As far as I recall I only had to do it once while fading. I said more or less a standard prayer but I didn't say "Jehovah", just "Our heavenly father", hoping that someone would challenge me, whereupon I would point them to Matthew 6 where Jesus instructed his followers in how to pray, and of course never said Jehovah.
But nobody noticed. I think I was the only person who ever paid attention at meetings.
Good news on this case:
The High Court has granted an order permitting the Health Service Executive to give blood transfusions to two severely aneamic babies after they are born.
See http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0424/breaking44.htm for full details
carla:
Two questions- is it normal in the UK to refer to 'mother and her partner ' ? to me it reads they are not married but could be just a language thing?
Ireland is not in the UK.
But it's likely the paper simply didn't know the details of the relationship, as their identities have not been disclosed. The man could not be referred to as the baby's father as he would have no such legal status until they are born and their births registered.
also, what the heck?-"she believed an alternative remedy of coca-cola and tomatoes should have been given to her when she refused the transfusion."
That's referring to the woman at the centre of the last blood transfusion case. She was an immigrant from (I believe) the Congo, and so may not have been up to date on the latest medical developments (to say the least). That was a rather different case as the woman, not the baby, was the one needing the transfusion, and because she lied and said the father was not in the country, the court ruled that she should not be allowed to commit suicide leaving her baby a ward of the state.
There's not too much to worry about here. Recent precedent in Irish law means that the babies will temporarily be made wards of the state until the necessary medical treatment is administered, at which point they will be returned to their parents. The Watchtower and the parents will make only the most cursory of objections to this.
i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.
in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.
(intellignet design).
BurnTheShips:
(pre-edit)
I claim no therefore.
I'm glad you thought of something better. You've put a lot of effort into arguing for a proposition you believe to be irrelevant.
"therefore the application of Darwinism to human society without regard to the sacred dignity to the human person is evil".
Except of course that "social Darwinism" is about applying the idea of "survival of the fittest" to human society. That does not involve exterminating those believed to be an underclass but rather letting them fend for themselves. Those who are better suited to living in such a society will be the ones who survive, thrive and reproduce. In a supremely ironic twist to this thread, that seems to more closely align with your political beliefs than with those of the Nazis.
I would hope you would concede the point. The evidence is strong.
So far I've seen none. Nothing that Darwin wrote provides a justification for eugenics, and nothing about eugenics requires the existence of Darwin's theories. I will concede that it's possible that some Nazis may have pointed to some horrible misinterpretation of Darwin's theories to justify their actions, but you've certainly provided no evidence of that.
i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.
in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.
(intellignet design).
BurnTheShips:
Hmm, we don't seem to be getting anywhere so let me try a different tack. Let's say I concede your point. Can you then complete the following sentence in a useful or interesting way?
"The Nazis' eugenics programme was made possible by the discoveries of Charles Darwin, therefore..."
