Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

[cidbahamut]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

And don't say big bang theory as where did the stuff for the big bang come from?

If you want to follow that road we can skip a few steps and go straight to the "where did God come from" argument.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

If you want to follow that road we can skip a few steps and go straight to the "where did God come from" argument.

Which, at that point, ultimately becomes a case of nihilism versus existentialism, regardless of whether you add the extra God step or not.

[Takelli]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

If you want to follow that road we can skip a few steps and go straight to the "where did God come from" argument.

He has always been, and always will be. XD

But yea, its all a big question as to how we got here in the first place anyways.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

He has always been, and always will be. XD

Which is more or less how I see existence. If God has to create everything, then he has to have some sort of context himself beforehand, so existence is always there.

[Takelli]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

Which is more or less how I see existence. If God has to create everything, then he has to have some sort of context himself beforehand, so existence is always there.

I believe that too. But something had to give god the idea of how we should look and so on.

[Ziero]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

Not like it or anything else that we discover to likely be the case with science would be beyond the capabilities of, well, omnipotence . . .

Question: Can god create a stone so large not even he could move it?

Which, at that point, ultimately becomes a case of nihilism versus existentialism, regardless of whether you add the extra God step or not.

The point is Religion stops asking the questions and just accepts something as fact with no real basis behind it. Science keeps asking the questions even after they get their answers, because they know answers only bring more questions.

However, regardless of whatever personal beliefs I have, the fact remains religion has no scientific basis what-so-ever. Since this was in regards to a Biology class, Christian Creationism had no place in it at all. Since every single religion has their own version of how things came to be. How can one scientifically state one version is more accurate then the other when all of them are based on nothing but simple and pure faith?

Creationism is a theological, philosophical discussion, not a scientific one.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

Question: Can god create a stone so large not even he could move it?

Yes. And should He want to move it, He'll either give Himself the ability to move it, or just change the stone itself to a movable state.

Omnipotence really isn't that difficult a concept . . .



I like how you define everything in terms of questions asked, though. It just explicitly spells out the logic of a place for everything, and everything in its place.

[Estya LeGhoneun]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

Like with so many things, it depends on who you ask. It seems pretty simple, they didn't meet their educational requirements. The rest after that gets messy.

On a basic level, biological evolution is not inconsistent with (Catholic) Church teaching. Evolution (capital "E")/Darwinism that doesn't include God in the equation doesn't jive. Mike Ghedotti, Associate Professor of Biology at Regis College has a page that gives a brief interpretation of Church opinion. There is also short descriptions of other faiths' views regarding evolution and religion, even Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

Mike Ghedotti's Evolution Page

For the rock thing, setting aside that the question doesn't make sense, I refer to C.S. Lewis.

"His omnipotence includes power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense."

He can do anything that is possible.

If you believe in the Trinity, God the Father could make a rock that God the Son, Jesus (fully human and fully God) can not lift. There ya go :3

The religious are actually called to constantly question and use our reason and logic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ers_in_science

[Karinya]

Re: Supreme Court and Separation of Church and State

Edit: I found the following map interesting. It shows only two states with a higher than average population of Protestants.

File:Religions by State.PNG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yeah, if you don't count the Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, and Pentecostals. For some reason those are all listed as *separate* categories from "Protestant", and then there's also "Christian" which is listed separately from "Catholic", "Protestant", "Mormon", AND all the more specific sects.

It's a weird map.

Anyway, only some of the founders were Christian -- Paine and Jefferson were particularly critical of Christianity IIRC -- and despite the large number of Christians in the country, the founders explicitly denied the idea that the nation was only, or even primarily, for Christians. Too bad we've lost touch with those principles today.

With the Supreme Court we have now, I was honestly half expecting to see that they had declared the First Amendment dead and allowed tax money to be given to whichever church the politicians currently in office feel like giving it to. Glad to see we're not quite THAT screwed. Yet.