magimangr : It is pretty off topic there, since we are not talking about weaknesses of some schools, nor does this topic relate to how well or how poor a school is doing.

Crawldragon : You ignored what txgangsta was telling you earlier which you supposedly agreed with him. He was telling you that in terms of truth, the teachings are either true or false, but it can't be only true for some people and false to other people when the claim is referred universally. Just because people don't believe in it doesn't mean that it's false for them. If it is true, it doesn't need imposing, it will affect them whether they believe in it or not, and it would be right to educate why it's true. That's why he gave the example: " Either Christianity is true or it is not. Either Islam is true or its not. And certainly, they are not both simultaneously true." You cannot say that it's only true to certain people. It's either true or not true.

play4fun : I don't believe that you don't know what I meant when I said that, and I again invite this site's Christian community to vacation in the Middle East where they can be told that their religion is wrong and they're going to Hell for opposing almighty Allah.

Crawldragon : Now that you say that, I don't know what you meant now. If you are saying that it is only true for magimangr, a Christian? because that would logically make no sense because it breaks down the universality of the claim itself. If you are saying that it's wrong to tell and reason with other people that Christianity is true, that's also wrong because reason to people that they are wrong is not the same as forcing someone to change their belief.

You do realize that there are churches there, right? Whether they are out in the open or underground churches, they are still there and they do teach there, regardless of how oppressive the government or the extreme Muslims are. And those churches don't force those who are against them to believe what they believe, but they still proclaim that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light, and they get persecuted for it. Just recently we got a news report from someone who was about to get a death sentence for not renouncing Christianity and for marrying a Christian (in fact, news reports say she was released due to condemnation from other countries and then rearrested after the condemnation was done). That's why it's a blessing to have freedom to practice religion here. I don't know why you are mentioning this like we don't know how hard it's like in places like in the Middle East, also in light of the topic that we have here since the topic is on whether it's ok to teach Creation science as a plausibility along with evolutionary theory and not forcing creation science to the students.

Crawldragon :

If I were to go to school in the Middle East, I would undoubtedly be told that I am an offense to Allah and will be obliterated. That is untrue, so it doesn't bother me much. Certain religious truths can be taught in public school, although I agree that the large majority should not because that is the job of the Church.

Religious truths that can be taught in school are fairly basic, although probably controversial. "There is one truth" is an easy one. If there wasn't, there a person could be on fire and not on fire simultaneously. "Not all things are physical" is another. The number "2" cannot be found in nature. You can find 2 trees, 2 people, and helium has 2 protons. However, you cannot take the "2" out of the Helium. Moreover, you cannot paint "2" green and throw it at someone. "2" is non-physical.

play4fun : When I say that your religion is "only true to you," what that means is that your religious group (say Christianity) are the only people who presuppose that your religion is true. In that sense, it is "true to you." If I were to come here and tell you that your religion is wrong, that you should repent of it, and that you're going to Hell if you don't, you would likely find that extremely offensive, probably morally reprehensible, and arguably oppressive depending on how strongly I enforced it. Even if you didn't, I guarantee you there's someone on this site who would. If we took that kind of religious dogma and put it in schools, it would be a big problem, because you're institutionalizing a religion.

This is why the debate becomes scientific rather than religious or political. As I said in the original post, there's no way to justify actually teaching religious dogma in schools, so the creationist hypothesis is passed off as scientific rather than theistic. As I've said to you, it doesn't work that way, and the hypothesis is panned pretty much universally by people who have looked over the evidence.

Txgangsta :
The 'religious truths' are basic science.
That being said, "helium has 2 protons. However, you cannot take the "2" out of the Helium".
Thats untrue, it is perfectly possible to change the atomic number of atoms, which in turn changes it into a different element.
You can argue you cant have helium at 1, but you can certainly take 1 out of helium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation

For instance, plutonium is created by uranium having its atomic number altered.
This is a case of scientific knowledge changing too, because for the longest time we had no idea how to change elements like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium

thenumberone :

The "basic religious truths" are supposed to be easy like that. Its intentional. But they don't necessarily have to be scientific.

However, I think you misunderstand what I mean by "2" (AND ITS TOTALLY OFF TOPIC). Helium has 2 protons. Where is the "2"? I know where this proton is and that proton is, but it has "2" protons. What is a "2"? Quantity is non-physical. There are 2 protons in Helium, 2 trees at the house I live at, 2 tires on the front of my car and 2 tires on the back. What is a "2"? What does a "2" look like, smell like, taste like, etc?

Crawldragon : Ah, ok, I see what you are getting at. So, I need to say that "no, it wouldn't bother me if someone were to come in and tell me stuff like that, because it only matters if it is true. If all he said was false or he can't at least reason through it, it wouldn't matter at all and there's no reason to be upset or offended at something that doesn't matter. Of course, if what they say is true, then it would matter and as a human, I would obviously have emotional reactions to it. I know that there would be people who would quickly react if something like that happen to them, but it wouldn't reasonable for them to. It's more of an overreaction because at that moment, they are actually considering their statement to have equal weight without reasonably thinking about whether what he says has any weight at all. It's more of a premature emotional reaction.

I do have to still bring back the correction that I gave to you earlier is that the reason why the Creationist groups are pushing for their position to be taught with some plausibility because they are the only ones in terms of religious affiliation that are actively doing all of this. You don't see or hear other religions actually devoting scientists to promote their creation story scientifically because they aren't or can't really find evidence that supporting that narrative. And if you look at the separate group, the Intelligent Design group, those people don't necessarily say that the creation of the world follows the Young Earth Bible Creation model. They just suggest that from the evidence that they see, they see that there has to be some intelligence to design the universe. (That's why there are some who also go on a limb and suggest aliens as the intelligent source). That's why you really only see 3 major groups in this whole issue, the Evolutionary model (Christian or non Christian), the intelligent design model (non Christian), and the Young Earth Creation model (Christian). There's going to be some mix up in between, but overall, you don't see other religions actually looking or finding evidence that literally support their story of creation, so it's not necessarily hypocritical on their part. And I'm sure that if there are such organizations who devote in doing that as well as actually providing some evidence support their model, the Creationist camp wouldn't have a problem in letting them to be included in the plausibility debate as well.

Again, I have to bring up the question that I asked before. Do you think that it is possible that there are some scientists in the community who closes out the idea of the creation model, not because of looking at the evidence, but because of what they believe? I am open to either side being a possibility, and I personally think that there is still not enough discussion in the Creation model to actually consider it to be taught openly in schools as a plausible scientific theory, but I also think that there's a discriminatory attitude of not actually looking into some of the numbers and data that the Creation camp have and written. And they are actually scientists, they know the standards and they are required to abide by the standards and ethics of scientific research. Are there evolutionary scientist who actually look through the data and concluded that it's not possible? Of course. And every theory in history has encounter such things. I just think there is a clear avoidance from a good number of scientist of letting the scientific process to do its work and let the invalid to be invalid while letting the valid to show up. Just let the scientific process do its own work.

Txgangsta :
Ah, I see what you're getting at. Numbers are an abstract notion, not a physical present thing.
(And coincidentally I said this reply before seeing plays opening sentence).

Crawldragon : Actually one of the points of Christianity is to go out and spread the good news to all the people who don't believe about Jesus Christ and what he did for us. So they can be saved and have eternal life. If as a Christian I just sit there while my friends follow whatever they want then what kind of friend would I be? I don't want to force my faith on people, but if it's real to me and to millions of others, why not share a good thing with the people I love and care about?

play4fun : So basically your argument is "it's okay if I impose my religion on other people and have it institutionalized because I'm right and everyone else is wrong."

I answered your question about hypocrisy in the evolution science community before when I told you that creationism is not rejected in the scientific community for being different to their belief system, but because the evidence doesn't hold it up as a scientific theory. I'm sure there are many scientists who offhandedly rejected the entire theory without considering it, but that's usually because they have to deal with it a lot and are done refuting it over and over again.

Crawldragon : No, I said that their position of teaching Creationism as a plausible scientific theory is not institutionalizing a religion because you are only teaching it as a plausible theory. Students have a choice to believe it or not, but they put out the evidence the same way as the evolutionary theory puts out the evidence as well. And I said that it's not imposing against other religions either because it's only the Christian groups that are using the scientific process to show that the Creation model fits, so it's not really denying the other Creation stories if they don't even bother to do the same thing for their Creation model as well. 

And when I said complete reject it, I mean people who don't even look at the evidence before saying that they reject it, meaning they never actually bothered to go in and refute it. I see some of that going on as well.