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EDITOR'S CHOICE: As in earlier Gnostic religion, resurrection
On Valentinus, the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Thomas, and a sensibly mystical interpretation of resurrection. By Harold Bloom, I think.
Tags: gnosticism, christianity, valentinus on 2009-06-29 -All Annotations (1) -About
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The Gnostic Jesus of The Gospel of
Thomas, a wayfaring Jesus, closer to Walt Whitman than to the Jesus
of the Churches, speaks to us as if each of us is a passerby
Transcript 10 - Biblical Law: The Three Legal Corpora of JE (Exodus), P (Leviticus and Numbers) and D (Deuteronomy) — Open Yale Courses
The Bible's 3 _different_ versions of the "Ten Commandments". Why do fundamentalists think they know which one is the "real" one?
Tags: judaism, fundamentalism, christianity, literacy on 2009-06-24 -All Annotations (3) -About
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It's important to realize
that the Pentateuch contains three versions of the Decalogue. And there
are differences among them. The Decalogue is going to be repeated in
Deuteronomy, chapter five. And there are some minor variations.
Specifically you'll see that the rationale for observing the Sabbath is
different. God's name in Deuteronomy 5 is not to be used in a vain oath
as opposed to a false oath. There are differences in the meaning. And
there are some more differences too in language. So what are we to make
of this?One scholar, Marc Brettler, whose name I've mentioned before, he
says that what we learn from this, these variations, is something about
the way ancient Israel preserved and transmitted sacred texts. They
didn't strive for verbatim preservation when they transmitted biblical
texts. And they didn't employ cut and paste methods that might be
important to us in the transmission of something. Texts were modified
in the course of their transmission. Verbatim repetition was not valued
in the way that it might be for us. So that even a text like the
Decalogue, which is represented as being the unmediated word of God,
can appear in more than one version.There's a more surprising variation that occurs, however, in Exodus
34. After smashing the first set of tablets that were inscribed with
the Decalogue--the tablets in Exodus 20, those are smashed after the
golden calf incident--Moses is then given a second set of tablets. And
the biblical writer emphasizes in the story at that point that God
writes on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets that
were broken. The same words. So we expect now a verbatim repetition of
Exodus 20. And yet we don't have it. The Decalogue that follows in fact
has very little overlap with the earlier Decalogue. There's really only
two statements that even have the same content. -
It's important to realize
that the Pentateuch contains three versions of the Decalogue. And there
are differences among them. -
There's a more surprising variation that occurs, however, in Exodus
34. After smashing the first set of tablets that were inscribed with
the Decalogue--the tablets in Exodus 20, those are smashed after the
golden calf incident--Moses is then given a second set of tablets. And
the biblical writer emphasizes in the story at that point that God
writes on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets that
were broken. The same words. So we expect now a verbatim repetition of
Exodus 20. And yet we don't have it. The Decalogue that follows in fact
has very little overlap with the earlier Decalogue. There's really only
two statements that even have the same content. And even those, which
do overlap in content, vary in wording. This Decalogue, which is often
called the ritual Decalogue, so it's listed on there [the handout] in
Exodus 34, bans intermarriage with Canaanites less they entice the
Israelites into worship of their gods. It has other terms that give
commandments about the observance of the festivals, various festivals,
the dedication of first fruits to God, the dedication of first born
animals to God and so on; things that were not in the Exodus 20
Decalogue.
This Week In God: Conservatives Attack the Capital | PEEK | AlterNet
More "Christian nation" agenda from the GOP.
Tags: religion, politics, usa, christianity on 2009-06-01 -All Annotations (1) -About
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Some religious right activists and far-right lawmakers, led in large part by South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), are outraged that the visitor center is largely secular. For example, near the center's entrance, there's an engraving: "We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution." The quote comes from Rufus Choate, who served in the House and Senate in the 1830s, and DeMint described the quote as "offensive."
This week, Roll Call reported that some GOP lawmakers are pushing a bill that would spend $150,000 in taxpayer money to etch a reference to "In God We Trust" as the national motto into stone, and placed prominently in the Capitol Visitor Center.
"There are number of references or appropriate religious references in the Capitol Visitor Center, but this is something I think is important," said Rep. Dan Lungren (Calif.), the bill's lead sponsor and the top Republican on the House Administration Committee. "We do have 'In God We Trust' over the rostrum in the House ... [and] it has a relationship to the Founding Fathers' documents."
Actually, Lungren's wrong; "In God We Trust" doesn't appear in any of the "Founding Fathers' documents." Literally, not one. In fact, the nation's founders chose "e pluribus unum" as a national motto -- a reference to the nation's unique diversity -- and Lungren, the Heritage Foundation, and other conservatives want references to it replaced.
Lungren's bill, submitted last Wednesday, currently has four co-sponsors in the House. Expect that number to grow.
Salon.com | America is not a Christian nation
Tags: history, usa, christianity on 2009-05-27 and saved by 3 people -All Annotations (9) -About
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Desperate to obscure the actual intellectual roots of the Declaration of Independence in Greek philosophy and Roman law, Christian apologists have sought to identify the "Creator" who endows everyone with unalienable rights with the revealed, personal God of Moses and Jesus. But a few sentences earlier, the Declaration refers to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." Adherents of natural rights liberalism often have dropped "Nature's God" and relied solely on "Nature" as the source of natural rights.
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In his "Notes on the State of Virginia," he wrote: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
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Most of the world's stable democracies are in Europe, where the population is largely post-Christian and secular, and in East Asian countries like Japan where the "Judeo-Christian tradition" has never been part of the majority culture.
The Santa Barbara Independent: Reading, Writing, and Original Sin
Excellent article, esp. the legal context.
Tags: religiousright, religion, christianity, education on 2009-05-23 -All Annotations (13) -About
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The afterschool world at Cold Spring had hitherto consisted of basketball, karate, dance, and other physical fitness activities. In this context, a sectarian religious group that seeks to recruit the very young stuck out like a barstool in a bunny cage. And so, I confess, I became just a little paranoid. Was a group of parents plotting to turn our public school into a religious school? A rumor that a teacher had volunteered her classroom for the group particularly disturbed me. Was she part of the plot?
I had already discovered that at least some other parents shared my concerns. But the stories I heard back only made things worse. I learned that some kids had exchanged nasty, religious-themed emails, and that others had not been invited to certain birthday parties because they belonged to the “wrong” faith.
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“Had we rejected [the Good News Club’s] application to use the facilities, we would have exposed ourselves to a potential lawsuit by the sponsoring organization,” he wrote. In subsequent conversations with him and other members of the school board, I found no one willing to say that they had invited the group into the school. Everyone assured me that the sole motivation for the decision to allow them in was, just as our principal indicated, the fear of litigation. But could this really be true? How exactly could things come to such a pass — that a 190-student public elementary school should tread with fear before a group that calls itself the Good News Club?
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Other people drink tea or go jogging; I like to deal with my obsessions through research. In my research, I discovered that Good News Clubs are sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), a worldwide organization founded in Warrenton, Missouri, more than 70 years ago. The declared mission of the CEF is to produce conversion experiences in very young children, and thus to equip them to “witness” for other children. “I was told that a child at five, if properly instructed, can as truly believe as anyone,” said Mr. J. Irvin Overholtzer, who founded CEF in 1937. “I saw that if there was any truth in this statement, there was a door of opportunity lying open before us.” As of 2008, according to CEF Vice President of U.S.A. Ministries Moises Esteves, there were approximately 3,410 Good News Clubs in public K-6 schools around the country.
The CEF labels the Good News Club program as “Bible Study,” but the term “study” in this context is a euphemism for indoctrination in and practice of a particular religion. Once class begins, there is no pretense of analyzing the bible as a literary, cultural, or historical document. The program moves directly to the CEF’s stated purpose, which is “to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, disciple them in the Word of God, and establish them in a Bible-believing church for Christian living.”
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Often, instructors arrive on campus before the bell rings. When young children exit their regular classrooms, they find the instructor outside the door bearing treats and trailing balloons. In Valencia, California, a parent of a kindergartener reported that the Good News Club actually started 15 minutes prior to the end of her child’s school day. The instructor, she said, would enter the classroom as kindergarten was winding down and perform a roll call — effectively segregating the children by religious affiliation.
The club’s best promoters, as the CEF well understands, are the children themselves. Participating students are instructed to invite their classmates to join the group, and prizes are often given to those who succeed. The group’s focus, indeed, is concentrated on the “un-churched” children more than it is on those already in the fold. “If every public elementary school student in the United Sates could join a Good News Club,” the CEF Web site states, “we could revolutionize our culture in one generation!”
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According to the Constitution, however, it is also true that there are only nine people in the world whose interpretation of that document makes any difference. In 2001, in Good News Club v. Milford Central School, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that to exclude the club on the grounds that it is a religious group is to discriminate against its particular religious viewpoint, in violation of 1st Amendment protections on the freedom of speech. The court also went out of its way to say that it could conceive of no basis for concern about a possible violation of the clause of the 1st Amendment that prohibits the establishment of religion.
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The author of the court’s majority opinion was Clarence Thomas. It is perhaps interesting to note, in that respect, that in a recent speech before a school group, Justice Thomas reminisced fondly about his own school days when he would see “a flag and a crucifix in each classroom.”
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In order to give the court’s judgment in Milford some semblance of logical coherence, Thomas was compelled to re-imagine the activity of the Good News Club. The club, he said, was best viewed not as a religious group but as a discussion group engaged in speech about moral issues. Its exhortations on behalf of a particular morality, he reasoned, are no different from the encouragement to teamwork on the soccer field, for example. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Souter, who all wrote dissenting opinions, found this logic preposterous. Of course the Good News Club teaches morals; but it also teaches doctrines, such as the notion that if you don’t believe in Jesus you will go to hell — the kind of thing that soccer teams tend not to teach. If taken seriously as a way to analyze religious cases, Souter concluded, the Milford decision “would stand for the remarkable proposition that any public school opened for civic meetings must be opened for use as a church, synagogue, or mosque.”
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Schools routinely exclude from their programs entire categories of activity — dancing, martial arts, whatever — for a variety of compelling reasons. In the wake of Milford, however, the one category that cannot be excluded for fear of litigation is religion. In other words, if your school lets in a lacrosse group, it will see itself as practically bound to let in the Good News Club; but if it lets in the club, there is nothing to stop it from excluding lacrosse.
The CEF has been able to achieve this enviable result thanks to the support it receives from a team of aggressive lawyers. CEF is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a powerful legal arm of the Evangelical movement. The ADF organization is extraordinarily active, interceding in the moral hot-button issues favored by the religious right. In the first three months of 2009, ADF was involved in more than 30 legal actions pertaining to its opposition to same-sex marriage and reproductive freedoms, its support for Christian groups and prayer in the schools, and other causes linked with a right-wing religious agenda.
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With ADF’s backing, the CEF has sued school districts in New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, California, and other states, not only arguing for the right to assemble but also seeking, among other things, the right to send flyers home with students and to avoid paying usage fees. “CEF is very aggressive from a legal standpoint,” said Ira Lupu, professor of law at George Washington University. “I’ve been following this issue for 20 years, and I hear stories all the time. If they get turned down for something or if the school says ‘no’ to something, they talk to their lawyers right away, who write a letter and say, ‘We’ll give you 30 days to change your mind or else we’ll see you in court.’”
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If the legal juggernaut of militant Evangelism makes the prospect of opposing the Good News Club daunting, the personal politics can be even more troubling for concerned parents. “I earn a living from my business in this community, and there are a lot of religious people here,” said the Wisconsin father who objects to the club’s activities in his school. “But I know that if I were to go public with my objections, I’d lose a lot of clients and my kids would get targeted.” A California mother added: “My kids are going to be in this school system for many years. I don’t want them getting blowback from their peers. And I don’t want them to be discriminated against by their teachers.” Another parent in New York said, “As a member of a religious minority, there is an additional sense of burden. You feel like your behavior is being scrutinized, you are worried about stereotyping. So you don’t speak up.” Even Emma’s parents wished to remain anonymous.
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The only other faith-based group I could find that sponsored programs in the public schools is the Kabbalah Centre International, the organization popularized in the media by Madonna and her former husband, Guy Ritchie. The programs, called “Spirituality for Kids,” are said to be nondenominational; last year, there were nine of them in the Los Angeles area, while CEF has more than 400 groups in the L.A. area, according to the Liberty Counsel, a legal defense organization with a right-wing agenda. Nevertheless, the presence of the Kabbalah Centre’s programs in the public schools has sparked widespread outrage, and was the subject of a front-page article in the L.A. Times last March.
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As far as I could discern, it was basically the Evangelicals alone who organized religious groups in the public schools on a large scale. The question remained: Why?
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In the microcosm of the Cold Spring School District, circa 2009, in any case, I was certain that any notion that the CEF was battling satanic forces of secularism was just plain false. The opposition to the Good News Club in our little town wasn’t coming from liberal government or activist judges. To the contrary, the club had Justices Thomas and Scalia, the ruling majority of the Supreme Court, and a phalanx of lawyers at their back. The Good News Club wasn’t defending itself in the context of an ongoing war. It had picked a fight right out of the clear blue sky of Santa Barbara. And the people with whom it picked that fight were the very people whom it claimed to represent. Just as our school board had realized at the outset, it was we who were powerless, and the CEF — notwithstanding its sense of victimhood — that could do as it wished.
Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt | World news | The Observer
Tags: africa, religion, christianity on 2009-04-21 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Jason Mannino: Homophobia Is Killing Our Youth
The sadness in this video. The sadness.
Tags: sexuality, hate, christianity, students, video on 2009-04-19 -All Annotations (1) -About
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If a child is taught to hate and fear diversity, then the next place he or she expresses that hate is at school. Ten percent of all hate crimes occur at schools and colleges. If hate is learned, then it lies on the shoulders of our schools, church officials, parents, teachers, and communities to teach our young kids acceptance before they continue hurting each other, and before they become adults who will likely pass their hatred to the next generation.
Salon.com Life | What would Jesus do on spring break?
Poignant and hilarious undercover journalist's account: " In the middle of Daytona's annual season of sin, I went undercover with a group of evangelical Christians trying to convert drunk partygoers. God help me."
Tags: christianity, culture, usa, humor on 2009-03-19 and saved by 2 people -All Annotations (9) -About
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Evangelizing to secular spring breakers in Florida might sound like an enormous waste of time. Why not go somewhere where Jesus would be an easier sell? Like Islamabad? Or a Christopher Hitchens dinner party? But Daytona Beach's bacchanalian atmosphere is part of the allure for domestic missionaries -- it's what's called "battleground evangelism."
"Be warned: This is going to be 24/7 spiritual warfare," explained the Liberty Mission coordinator. "We're talking about Satan's home turf here."
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As I listened to him speak, I knew I had to go. After all, one of the things I haven't seen yet is Liberty students living outside their ideological safe space, in real-world settings where they're forced to interact with people like, well, me. So a short application, two weeks, and a $600 trip fee later, I was in a white Ford panel van, quickly dubbed the "Jesusmobile," making my way down I-95 with 14 Liberty students.
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the "Great Commission," the verse that serves as the architectural frame for all missionary work. It's found in Matthew 28:19, when Jesus says to his disciples, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
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The best witnessing tactic, Scott says, is beginning conversations subtly, so strangers don't grasp your intent immediately. Then, they'll be less likely to walk away. Scott's favorite technique is the "Way of the Master" evangelism program, formulated by a New Zealand-born pastor named Ray Comfort and marketed by "Growing Pains" actor and evangelical pitchman Kirk Cameron. It is based on a four-question sequence designed to demonstrate systematically to a non-believer that he or she is not, in fact, a good person -- that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
The four questions, Scott says, can be remembered with the mnemonic "WDJD." ("What Did Jesus Do?")
W -- "Would you consider yourself to be a good person?"
D -- "Do you think you've kept the Ten Commandments?"
J (Judgment) -- "If God judged you by the Ten Commandments, would you be innocent or guilty?"
D (Destiny) -- "If you're guilty, where do you think you will spend eternity -- Heaven or Hell?"
"This last step is where people realize they're hell-bound, and they make decisions for Christ to save themselves," Scott says.
A sophomore named Samantha raises her hand nervously and asks the question we've all been considering. "But what if they don't?"
"Good point. These people may not be ready to accept Christ, but we can plead with them to consider it, because Hell is a real place. So just ask them two or three times: Why would you NOT consider this? Why would you think it DOESN'T matter?" As Scott says this, 14 skeptical faces stare back at him.
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"He's tanning. We probably shouldn't disrupt him."
After a dozen of these, Claire looks a little irritated. "You know, you shouldn't be afraid," she says. "You have Holy Spirit boldness inside you."
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"Hi there," I say, trying to sound as peppy as possible. The Cornwell reader looks up from her book, eyebrows raised, and one of the iPod girls takes out her earbuds.
"I was just wondering if I could give you guys a million dollars."
When Scott was teaching us to evangelize, he gave us several gimmicky ice-breakers to use when beginning conversations. This one is a fake million-dollar bill with a message printed in tiny letters on the back that begins: "The million-dollar question: Will you go to Heaven?"
"Sure," Cornwell girl says. "I'll take one."
"But first," I say, "I have to ask you the million-dollar question."
"Shoot."
I take a deep breath. "Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?"
iPod girl's eyes bulge. "Excuse me?" She pokes her friend, who turns over onto her back, takes out her earbuds, and stares at me.
"Um ... do you guys know Jesus ... as your Savior?"
Cornwell girl says pointedly, "We're Jewish."
"I'll take that as a no?" I say. They don't laugh. Not even the faintest trace of a smile. I turn and walk away, mumbling thanks under my breath.
As I go, I hear them talking: "What a creep," one says.
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False conversions are a glaring wart on the face of Christian evangelism. In the book that accompanies our Way of the Master program, I found several sobering statistics about the percentage of apparent converts who stay involved with the church in the long term, including one from Peter Wagner, a seminary professor in California who estimated that only 3 to 16 percent of the converts at Christian crusades stay involved.
The false conversion rate is profoundly depressing if you believe in this stuff. After all, if we get ten converts during this week -- an optimistic number -- and our false conversion numbers are consistent with the average, this group has spent a week's worth of twelve-hour days, thousands of dollars, and suffered massive amounts of emotional trauma for what? One more Christian? Two?
There must be an easier way.
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Later, back at the host church, Valentina tells the group about her breakdown.
"I was just sitting there on the curb, and I started thinking about how sad this all is. How sad it is that billions and billions of people are just dying without Christ. I hate that Hell is a real place, and I hate that sin came into the world through Adam, and most of all, I hate thinking about how all we can do -- all anyone can do -- is try to tell these people that there's hope out there. They might not want to listen, but we have to keep telling them. For the rest of our lives, guys, we have to keep telling them."
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maybe this trip was never all about the Spring Breakers. Battleground evangelism, it turns out, can be just as useful for the evangelists as for the non-believers. For these Liberty students, going to Daytona is a tool for self-anaesthetization, a way to get used to the feeling of being an outcast in the secular world. The first 40 times someone blows you off, it feels awful. The second 40 times, you start reassuring yourself that all of this must serve a higher purpose. By the end of the week, you get the point -- you are going to be mocked and scorned for your faith, and this is the way it's supposed to be.
Quiverfull, the patriarchy movement, religion, Christianity | Salon Life
Tags: christianity, culture, usa on 2009-03-16 and saved by 3 people -All Annotations (0) -About
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Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds - USATODAY.com
Tags: religion, atheism, christianity, usa on 2009-03-09 and saved by 9 people -All Annotations (0) -About
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Will There Be A Rapture?
Interesting. Claims doctrine of Rapture not to be found in the Bible.
Tags: christianity on 2009-02-24 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Jerry Coyne's new book 'Why Evolution is True' presents the science that coheres into fact - Arts - Cleveland.com
Tags: books, evolution, creationism, science, christianity, religion, education on 2009-02-03 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Who Was Jesus? | Friendly Atheist by Hemant Mehta
Good comment thread suggests readings on the questions "Did Jesus even exist?" and "Who was he?"
Tags: atheism, non-theism, christianity, history, books on 2008-12-26 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Leaked Obama Transcript Explains Rick Warren Decision (with Draft of Warren's Invocation) | Election 2008 | AlterNet
Satire. Drives home the offenses of Rick Warren effectively. BHO really blew it with this one. Honoring a bigot on inauguration day?
Tags: obama, religion, christianity, usa, elections08 on 2008-12-20 -All Annotations (0) -About
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BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigeria 'child witch killer' held
The slippery slope of supernatural beliefs. Demons and witches justify priests killing children.
Tags: religion, culture, christianity, africa on 2008-12-07 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Romania removes theory of evolution from school curriculum
Shocking. Romania is the Texas of Europe.
Tags: christianity, religion, evolution, science, education, europe on 2008-12-03 -All Annotations (0) -About
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New Humanist Blog: Obama answers Nature magazine's science questions; McCain declines
Tags: change, obama, evolution, creationism, science, christianity on 2008-12-01 -All Annotations (1) -About
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"Do you believe that evolution by means of natural selection is a sufficient explanation for the variety and complexity of life on Earth? Should intelligent design, or some derivative thereof, be taught in science class in public schools?"
Obama: I believe in evolution, and I support the strong consensus of the scientific community that evolution is scientifically validated. I do not believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental scrutiny.
The Atheist Experience: Crippled dogs and one-trick ponies
Eye-witness report on the Texas BOE hearings about "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution language for Tx science standards.
Tags: change, creationism, science, evolution, christianity on 2008-12-01 -All Annotations (9) -About
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I left the whole charade with two key observations: 1) That the big pitch the creationists are using isn't merely the weasel phrase "strengths and weaknesses," but their defense of that phrase as an expression of support for "academic freedom" that the scientific community apparently opposes; and 2) that the pro-science side, at least as I saw it today, is singly unaware of how to respond to that rhetoric properly and forcefully.
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This cannot be understated: Just as the anti-gay contingent of the Christian right sells its opposition to gay marriage as a "defense" of "traditional" marriage that can in no way be compared to opposition to interracial marriage or anything of that sort, so too are the creationists now abandoning the overt, lawsuit-bait language of "intelligent design" for "academic freedom" language that makes them seem like the ones encouraging students to use their minds to think about and evaluate ideas that are presented to them in class on their merits. Conversely, the pro-science side wants to shut this kind of inquiry down, and just require students to be obedient little sponges soaking up whatever the textbooks say.
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Why this is a misrepresentation and gross misunderstanding of the opposition to such terms as "strengths and weaknesses" was, to his credit, appropriately explained by Texas Citizens for Science spokesman Steve Schafersman. But he didn't make the point forcefully enough, and even he seemed taken aback when challenged by one of the creationist board members after giving his alloted three-minute address.
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Now, after a speaker has done his three minutes, board members can ask questions of that speaker if they wish. I saw it coming even before it started. The instant the bell chimed on Dr. Bernal's address, creationist board member Terri Leo leapt out of the phone booth with her Supergirl costume on and hit the ground faster than a speeding bullet.
Her first agenda: discredit the recent survey, cited by Dr. Bernal, that showed 98% of biologists and science educators in Texas support evolution. "Who funded that study? Wasn't that study funded by the Texas Freedom Network?" Dr. Bernal admitted it was, but stated calmly that whoever funded the study was beside the point. He actually got in a good comeback to Leo, noting that even the science teachers selected by the SBOE to review the science standards voted in the majority. But Leo wasn't finished. "I always thought that taking polls wasn't how you do science." Well, of course not, and the poll wasn't an exercise in doing science. The science is already done. The point of the poll was simply to get a show of hands among professionals in the relevant fields as to what theory is appropriate to teach in classrooms. But this is the kind of dishonest rhetoric that creationists will throw out there to get the pro-science side on the defensive.
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Note that Dr. Bernal only brought up religion in passing in his speech, pointing out that it's a private family matter and not fit for science class. Leo leapt on this like a hungry tiger, railing that the phrase "strengths and weaknesses" was not religious language, and that the only people making a big deal about religion supposedly being shoehorned into science curricula are "militant Darwinists."
I am not shitting you. She actually used that term, out loud, in front of a packed room, in her questioning of the very first speaker of the day.
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Dr. Bernal responded quite impressively by bringing up — and I'm so glad he was the first speaker, which is when it needed to be brought up — that the SBOE had themselves enlisted known anti-evolutionists affiliated with the Discovery Institute, who have not exactly been secretive about their own religious and creationist agendas, to be among those assigned to review science standards. Specifically he asked (to the delight of the crowd), "Why is someone from an institute in Seattle being asked to review Texas science education standards?"
And here we saw, for the first time, the depth of the SBOE's egregious dishonesty they were going to display today. The presence of the DI's Stephen Meyer, and creationist textbook writers Charles Garner and Ralph Seelke was brought up many time by many speakers, and no one on the board would defend or even address it. They simply were not going to justify their actions in this regard to the public, or at least, they didn't in the hour I was there.
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Unlike 2003, when Terri Leo (working hand in hand with the Discotute) front-loaded that day's speakers with creationists, I only heard one creationist speak today, some idiot who sleazily brought up the DI's long-ridiculed "list of 700 dissenting scientists" as if it represented some kind of major controversy within science over Darwinian evolution. (As Ken Miller pointed out hilariously in his talk back in the spring at UT, this number represents barely a single-digit percentage of the total number of professionals in the relevant fields, and the list includes a number of names of non-biologists and similarly unqualified people who happen to have Ph.D.'s.)
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In one corner, a sincere collection of educators and science activists simply trying to ensure that the state's educational standards aren't diluted by trojan-horse language that, while non-inflammatory on its face, still leaves room for religious teaching to be slipped into classrooms by unscrupulous teachers (like, oh, John Freshwater); in the other, a board dominated by ideologues who aren't the least bit interested in understanding the views presented to them (all the while hypocritically claiming to promote freedom of inquiry), and who made every effort to obfuscate, misrepresent, and lie about those views.Add Sticky Note
- Okay, so the TBOE is all creationist. They hire DI folks to come down to pollute the standards. They place religion over science. Got it.posted by cburell on 2008-12-01
My questions:
1. Are BOE members elected or appointed?
2. How frequently are elections/appointments?
3. Why the language of "science standards for the NEXT DECADE"?
4. What's the best way to organize to elect educated BOE members, or else restrict candidacies to qualified (educated) people?
Creationism v science: school on report - National - smh.com.au
Tags: creationism, religion, evolution, change, australia, christianity on 2008-11-28 -All Annotations (2) -About
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The head of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, said his organisation had found no reason for Pacific Christian School to lose its registration. "The whole thing is a complete furphy," he said. The school did not teach intelligent design or "creationism" - creation as scientific theory. He said the school had met the Board of Studies syllabus requirements in teaching evolution theory as science.
"It doesn't breach Darwinian theory to ask who set up the world to work in this way or even to say who was there before the big bang," he said. "We are not arguing for the ability to replace science with some other theory."
Chris Bonnor, the former head of the NSW Secondary Schools Principals Council, made the original complaint about Pacific Hills after viewing a television clip that briefly showed how a science class was taught.
He said he did not believe the school had implemented the Board of Studies science syllabus in its teaching of evolution.
"The science lesson in the school was not balanced," Mr Bonnor said. "It is fine to teach God behind evolution, but not in a science class.
"Notwithstanding the integrity of the organisation, I would question whether Christian Schools Australia is the appropriate body to investigate a complaint of this nature for the body that frames the syllabus."
Mr O'Doherty said Mr Bonnor was "whistling in the wind".
"The school does not teach creation as science or intelligent design," he said. "When they talk about faith-based perspectives on creation they tell students that it is not part of syllabus.
"We invited Mr Bonnor to look at the teacher programs and to look at the documentation and he declined."
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A state Greens MP, John Kaye, said no private school in NSW had been disciplined for "pushing creationist propaganda in science classes".
"That's not surprising given that the board handed over its only investigation to Christian Schools Australia," he said. "The fox has been put in charge of the hen house."
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