I don’t think it means what you think it means.
All this will do is cause the evolution of a stronger, stab-resistant strain of biologists. Which I suppose will be handy for research in the field.
Ah, yes, but they will still only be a different kind of biologist.Show me a biologist turning into a fireman or a trapeze artist and then I’ll be impressed.
The concept of “Original Sin” is a Roman Catholic one, and is thus only held by a percentage of Christians out there. Not all of us believe that the reason we need Christ to save us is because we were born sinful–the rest of us believe that we need Christ to save us because we are sinful. There’s a difference. Where we came from doesn’t enter into the equation at all, is irrelevant.
I myself am a Mainstream Christian (Conservative Protestant), and I do not believe in a literal Six-day Creation, and I do believe in evolution as a concept. And the concept of evolution does not threaten my faith at all.
I still don’t see why this isn’t in GD.
But will they have eyes? The key is all in the eye…or something. And watches. I distinctly remember that there is something about watches buried in the sand…
-XT
And Kirk Cameron playing with bananas. You can’t forget about Kirk and the bananas.
Creationists issue death threats – where’s the debate? I doubt anyone on this Board would defend their tactics, including those who share their beliefs.
What I mean is, your OP didn’t express much Pitting rage–it didn’t express much at all, beyond a “Here’s a link”. And subsequently a debate of sorts, or at least a discussion, seems to have emerged. I actually expected you to come back in and say, “Oops, wrong forum, could some kind mod please move this…”
[shrug]
The way you say this it implies that Roman Catholicism isn’t mainstream Christianity. I thought it was the largest Christian denomination in the world, and also the largest or one of the largest in many regions. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, Roman Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination in Illinois, representing 30% of all Christians in the state. That seems pretty mainstream to me.
Enough of the philosophical debate, I have a real question.
Why is God picking Charles Darwin’s nose?
Do you have anything with his nipples?
It’s not universal, but most non-Catholic Christian churches do believe in some variation of Original Sin. It’s in the Augsberg Confession, for example.
There have been several pieces following the Colorado story on (or in) The Panda’s Thumb over the last few weeks. Seems reasonably clear that the threats originate from a specific, identified - and probably mentally ill - individual. Not that that makes it any less scary for those who’ve received them.
Read the Old Testament. The reaction of fundie fanatics to winning has always been to exterminate those they disagree with. The ultimate goal of these people is to see everyone converted, or dead. So, the more they feel they are winning, the more aggressive they will get. As well, given how right wing and Christian America is getting, they may simply have felt that the cops are less likely to seriously chase them, or to get cooperation from the public if they do. Wasn’t there a recent case where the cops had trouble catching an anti-abortion bomber because the local people wouldn’t cooperate ?
I know and love people who have been targeted by ALF wannabees, and it’s scary as hell. One prof had people sending him pics of his kids at school, weird shit in his mailbox… then part of his lab “caught” fire.
The ALF appears to be a terrorist or criminal organization, trying to control the behavior of others through intimidation and threats of harm (FTR, I am unaware of any connection between the ALF and this particular incident- I couldn’t open any links).
I’d like to agree, but I can’t. They might well be dying out, but I don’t think there’s a good correlation between the strength of a movement and the vitriol toward opposition. As an extreme example, once the Taliban took power, they didn’t start becoming less oppressive; just the opposite.
There is a movement to intellectualize Christianity in this country. I’ve met people working inside their evangelical churches toward this end. It’ll happen eventually.
Just keep reminding nutjobs like this that Murder is a sin. The best defense is quoting scripture back at fundamentalists. Often the bigotry of the fundamentalist is an equal or greater sin than the one they are decrying.
Except that largely the Middle-East is doing what it’s doing precisely because it’s culture is so fucked up. It doesn’t necessarily mean the end of an ideology, but the ideology is so anti-rational that it brings the country down with it. Islam’s heyday was when they accepted science. It was its rejection of science that started its slow downward spiral. Most Muslim nations are completely dependent upon foreigners to maintain their infrastructure. They are ruled by kleptocrats that are propped up by foreign governments. One of the reasons why Iran and North Korea are the ‘Axis of Evil’, is because they have governments that are not in the pockets of the west. Saudi Arabia is far worse than Iran, so is Pakistan, but we support them because they both have friendly kleptocrats at the top. Libya is starting to play the game, so we’ll be friendly with them too soon enough.
I am very interested to see what happens in Palestine. Hamas did the world such a huge favor by allowing us a side by side comparison of the two paths that Islam can go down. Hopefully Fatah will grab the opportunity by the horns and truly make something of it. Islamism cannot work because their war depends on weapons that we design, that we make, they coordinate with technology that we invented, that runs on technology that we maintain.
A Sunni friend of mine said, “Arabs don’t do maintenance.”, and it’s true, Saudi Arabia would fall apart without western technicians fixing the technology we continually sell them.
But for something like this why would people have any reason not to say what they think? Answers to certain kinds of questions, like “How many alcoholic drinks do you consume in a typical week?” tend to be fudged, but I see no reason why somebody would do it with this.