riptide4070

Secularist Humanism is a new age religion born centuries ago by atheists and evolutionists. Some fear they are the leading people in our government trying to globalize all countries under a one world government.
I recently read a book "Mind Siege" by co-authors Tim LaHaye and David Noebel. Many issues of humanism are described as well as plans these people have for the future of the American nation and perhaps the world.

Am I paranoid or is this an actual problem the people of the world will have to fight against to keep what freedom we still possess?

__________________
"the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was making the world believe he didn't exist" -Kevin Spacey 'The Usual Suspects'

Fibrosa

You are just paranoid. There isn't really an evil atheist agenda.

Johnny Rotten

Tim LaHaye isn't exactly a "disinterested party," as his Amazon bibliography reveals. I suspect this is nothing more than the usual rhetoric. He has a vested interest in perpetuating Christian-centric thinking, as it is that customer base that makes him so financially successful with his Left Behind fiction series. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with Christian thinking, mind you. But he isn't in the position to be an objective researcher/historian, which is what this kind of topic needs, rather than an airport novel-level sensationalist.

riptide4070

What about the arguement of public schools only teaching evolution and not creationism as well? Especially when the big bang hasn't been proven. How can the "chance" of everything starting the way we learn it in school be true?

__________________
"the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was making the world believe he didn't exist" -Kevin Spacey 'The Usual Suspects'

tecoyah

It seems to me we are simply seeing the natural progression of this society, away from the limitations imposed for centuries by the mind drain of christianity. Before the faithful get the perverbial panties in an uproar, understand that I do not mean to degrade your beliefs.
As the collective intellegence of the people increases, questions must be answered in order to better ourselves and our society. The majority of these answers come from experiment and theory. In other words, a scientific approach. Historically, and indeed to this day, Christianity has been a hinderance to inquisitive thought and has therefor become its own worst enemy.
You could certainly look upon this as a conspiracy, and in fact it would be a perfect fit to the christian pattern for you to do so. This does not however, make it any more real than the Big Bang,(which by the way, is but a theory, as is the creationist view).
I would recommend you ignore the distraction from your worship of God , and let the world continue to evolve, without you.

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

notnemor

big Bang is not "just a theory" in the same way that Creation is.
Big Bang is a hypothesis, chosen from among possible explanations for what is observed by science, and variously supported (mostly) or contradicted by further observation.
Big Bang is not proven, but is widely accepted by people who know something about what there is to see and how to see it.
Creation is a myth. It arises as a hokum story to explain the very least of what one observes.. that is<"Well here we are."

:::OshnSoul:::

Sidetracking here, but Why don't they either STOP teaching it all together, OR-- teach all the different theories to a child (at an age where they can comprehend it) so that they can draw their own conclusions and ideas about it. freedom of the mind-freedom to believe-
Now that's a free country.

notnemor

i really love humanism... the adjectival distinction 'secular' is entirely irrelevant.
i'm kind of superstitious, and love to twirl with sufi or wait patiently with quaker, or observe the flow of consciousness with sangha.. but i love humanism...
Asimov was humanist.. he was president of American Humanists for a while.. honorary.. then it was vonnegut..
i love Asimov and I love Vonnegut..
When Asimov died, Vonnegut was speaking to the Humanists, and he said<" Isaac is up in heaven now."
that is really funny!
do you like links and things to read that weren't written by me?

i hope you don't hate them i'm making these two here:
<a href = http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0514-05.htm >Strange Weather</a>
and how about
<a href = http://www.jcn.com/humanism.html >God is entitled to his own opinions!</a>

Fibrosa

Creationism is a narrow Christain position, the theory of evolution is the best theory we have, it has loads of evidence and no strikes against it.

Creationism was disproved 40 + years before Darwin was born, geology disproved it, geology by Christians who were trying to prove a young earth BTW.

The big bang is a totally seperate theory from evolution. IF the big bang was discredited tomorrow it would have absolutely no effect on evolutions validity. In addition, science does not work on 'proofs', math does. Science works on reasonable certainty.

Furthermore 'chance' isn't how evolution works, natural selection is the opposit of chance.

Fibrosa

I don't understand why you are against the teaching of what has stacks of evidence behind it.

Why confuse the children and teach them creation myths? Religion is for a religion class-not a science class, in addition, you do realize that the entire year would be utterly wasted if we allowed other creation myths into the science class room, for two reasons:

1. None of them have any sort of scientific evidence to support them.
2. The entire year would be spent going over the 3,000 + different creation myths.

Slims

That's simple. Schools are supposed to teach the truth, and by teaching evolution they do so.

The creationist argument that their theory's should be included simply because they cannot be 'proven' to be false is patently flawed.

Some opinions, theories, and ideas are more grounded and worthy of acceptance than others.

For instance (Stealing from Douglas Adams) if I were of the opinion that the moon was made out of Norwiegen Beaver Cheese, my 'theory' would not automatically be entitled to a place in the classroom simply because we can't 'prove' that it isn't (Notice that the standard of proof in this sense will always be higher than is obtainable).

In the real world, when we are confronted with several possibilities, we have to evaluate all the available relevant evidence, and choose the most likely possibility. Since every single scrap of evidence in every single major scientific discipline (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geology, Anthropology, Geography) points towards evolution, then that is what deserves to be taught.

The assertion that creationism is a competing theory to evolution is just flat out false. As a scientific theory it is dead. It is no more valid than my assertion that the moon is made out of Norwiegen Beaver Cheese because they both fall into the category of untestible (by test I mean personally set foot on the moon and attempt to eat a moonrock). Theories that are untestable are not theories, they are....conjectures:

Conjecture
1 obsolete a : interpretation of omens b : SUPPOSITION
2 a : inference from defective or presumptive evidence b : a conclusion deduced by surmise or guesswork c : a proposition (as in mathematics) before it has been proved or disproved

Contrast this to the definition of a scientic theory:
Definition: [n] a theory that explains scientific observations; "scientific theories must be falsifiable"

Notice that it must 1: Explain scientific observations, which creationist theory fails to do spectacularly, and 2: It must be falsifiable, meaning it can be tested.

Since the theory of creation can't really be tested, it isn't actually a theory.


And to answer your original post, I do not think there is an athiest agenda.

I think that schools should concern themselves with matters of fact, and that the presence of religion in schools should be restricted to quiet observance of ones personal beliefs. In other words, people should be able to believe whatever they want, but they shouldn't be allowed to force their religious agendas into the curriculum.

It is probably worth noting that the official position of the catholic church on this issue is pro-evolution. In fact, they just recently reaffirmed this stance. And we can't really accuse the vatican of being a big bunch of athiests with an agenda

__________________
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

Slims

Oops, I seem to have missed the big-bang part of the discussion altogether.

The big bang is a theory, but it is also known to be not-entirely true.

Scientists use it because it provides a very good explanation for why the universe is the way it is, but that doesn't mean that it actually formed in exactly the way the big bang predicts....

In fact, the uniformity of the universe pretty much invalidates the big bang theory, but that doesn't remove it's usefullness as an explanation and a scientific tool. Just because it is not technically 100% true doesn't mean that it isn't 'almost right'.

However, the modern competing theories to the big-bang are no more creationist-friendly. They are even wierder. They also serve to indirectly support evolution because they lay a natural framework for our eventuall existence on this particular planet.

When I say that there are several competing theories, I should note that they are all very similar as far as end-results, i.e. a big-bang like phenomena resulting in the formation of the universe.

We can draw many parallels betweent he big bang theory and the theory of relativity. For instance, we know that the theory of relativity is not 100% accurate (it breaks down at really small scales), but it is very good at explaining macro-scale observable phenomena, and nobody has been able to suggest a better theory, so it is still used extensively by the scientific community.

The big bang is the same way. We know that it is not the ultimate explanation, but it comes pretty close.

__________________
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

Sun Tzu

well said, it just seems that nasty element called greed seems to be increasing right along with the intellegence.

tecoyah

Too true. greed and human failure are the bane of our times. One can only hope that our evolution has moved towards eliviating this and the many other weaknesses in our collective natures.
baby steps.

At least with the eventual fading of religious blinders, we may have the chance to see these failures and correct them.

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha