We all know the real reason you don’t like Obama.
If you want to start a thread to debate whether or not George Will (PhD, Princeton, Pulitzer Prize winner) is an intellectual, I’ll be happy to participate.
Until then, I’d like to see Docta G tell us who he thinks is a conservative intellectual.
That would require an investment of time and effort for a subject about which I have no philosophical investment. I dismiss Will as unpersuasive, unoriginal and uninteresting, but don’t care enough to convince others to do the same. His bloviations can be dealt with without denigrating the man himself.
Feel free to consider him highly, but I’d advise you to apply extra intellectual rigor to any of his arguments you adopt, because you’ll find little enough provided by the author.
The Roman Catholic Church accepts the theory of evolution, and I think you will find most protestant denominations, in America and around the world, do too. St Augustine, the greatest of the “Church Fathers,” and almost certainly the most influential Christian thinker since St Paul and Jesus himself, argued, in the 5th century AD, that the creation and Eden stories in the Book of Genesis were not intended to be read literally. People who believe literally in talking snakes are, in fact, out of line with mainstream Christian tradition. Modern American fundamentalism, of the sort that has become associated with modern Republicanism, is something very different from what Christianity has been at most times in its history, and what it is still in most of the world (including in very many churches in the USA). If anything, it is the right-wing fundamentalists who are not “proper Christians” by comparison with what Christianity has traditionally been (and indeed, by comparison with how the Bible depicts the early Christian movement).
So yes, it is very possible to be a sincere Christian who believes in evolution and does not believe in talking snakes, and even to be a sincere Christian of very liberal and even socialist political views. Plenty of European Christians think that their Christin moral principles pretty much require them to be socialists. American Democrats will have no problem at all with being Christians.
Matt, the problem is not that FOX is biased right, but that the mainstream media is so incredibly biased left. FOX is pretty much moderate, but given where everyone else is on the far left of the bar, they seem to be way to the right.
“Way to the right” and “far left of the bar” really depend on where one places the center
You misspelled “lamestream”. :rolleyes:
Fox, moderate? :rolleyes: Only if your definition of “moderate” is “doesn’t actually have a Nazi flag hanging in the background”.
Never mind the Bible, read David Icke.
Here’s a good place to start if you want to find the center. Registered voters are 25% “Mostly Republican”;40% “Mostly Democratic”; 35% “Mostly Independent”.
I’d say all that puts the center a lot nearer to CNN than to Fox, and maybe somewhere between CNN and MSNBC.
The thing is, I would hold that Christianity, at least in a metaphysical context, is incompatable with Evolution.
If there were no Adam and Eve committing the original sin of eating the apple, there would be no reason for God to Father Himself and Die to redeem the curse he initially placed.
Okay, I’m an agnostic and find the whole thing to be rather silly, really. If Jesus was just a man, then what you describe is Christianity as a philosophy, not a religion.
On a more practical level, they have ministers making their point and rallying their faithful. The left wouldn’t be caught having a drink with a clergyman. Hense why you can get a Palin or a Huckabee out there saying they want to bring the country back to Jesus, and getting away with it.
You can make an argument that Jesus’ philosophy lent itself far more to the left’s point of view than the rights. Sorry, I’ve read the Bible, and I missed the part about big tax breaks for rich people that Jesus was all for. But there’s no minister or priest or rabbi who wants to make that point.
But you do have the ones who are out there claiming that Jesus was all against Abortion (although abortion is never specifically prohibited by any bible verse) and homosexuality, even if they give a total pass on Divorce (which Jesus was dead set against.)
Is there some significance to the capitalization of Abortion and Divorce, and the relatively pedestrian status of homosexuality?
If President Obama largely supported what NDD supported but simply had black skin I don’t think he’d be objecting as much.
But you like the “old money” elites who look down on self-made men?
Incidentally it should be noted that up into the 20th Century most Evangelicals held to an old earth viewpoint. However on the other hand it is argued that OT law calls for a minarchist state.
My personal viewpoint is that evolution happened but that Adam and Eve were real and were the first human beings that could be called “human” (ie sapient and conscious).
We aren’t descended from just two people, and intelligence isn’t some bright sharp line dividing human and animal. There’s no way that there was some moment where animal parents gave birth to two (and only two!) human offspring.
Tell it to the Israelis . . .
That’s a good put that I, being the atheist who started this thread, certainly agree with. However, I’m not sure if this is an important tangent worth pursuing.
Maybe we should return to a society run by a hereditary aristocracy? You would probably like that. Since your words echo the sentiments of every tyrant, dictator and hereditary monarch throughout history.
I can’t possibly fathom what in your mind separates multi-generational prep school Ivy League types from the CEOs, investment bankers and business executives you purport to dislike. I too am pessimistic about human nature. I believe the type of leaders you describe will profess to reperesent a “higher standard” but in reality would simply ennact a form of self-serving elitism that punishes success and discourages innovation.
Politicians should feel intimidated by businessmen. It is the successful ventures of businessmen and entrepreneurs that allows Americans to enjoy a high standard of living. Not the generosity of government.
Not really. I just sometimes have a bad habit of capitalizing nouns. I think it’s a vestigal German thing. I usually catch it and correct when I do it.. this time I didn’t.
it speaks to the logic of right-wing Christian culture, or the lack thereof, which is the topic of this thread, right? If their whole belief system is based on Jesus saving us from Adam and Eve’s sins (!?) and Adam and Eve can be demonstrated to the more rational among them to be a figurative metaphor for some vague idea that isn’t very important anyway (unless they want to claim that He was into saving primitive apepeople’s souls, for some bizarre reason), then the whole basis for infusing the US government with Christianity kinda goes out the window, doesn’t it?
There are 19 entries in Table 3, of which 11 have ADA score between 61 and 67. There are 4 above this mode, and 4 below. I would call this a unimodal curve; my post was in answer to the claim that it was bimodal.
The report’s own interpretation of Table 3 includes: