Prove it... My take on religion.

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NOG, while I mostly agree with what you say and I certainly think that no one should be prevented from speaking their mind, be it about religion or anything else, there have been cases in very recent history where pointing out the logical flaws did not prevent a pro-religion (specifically pro-Christianity if we're talking about the USA) law from being passed. The most blatantly obvious I can think of is the teaching of creationism as a scientific theory in schools. There is nothing logical about this and yet it passed. Even having a religion course would have been more logical, but because the US Constitution (or was it the Declaration of Independence? I can't remember which) prevents teaching religion in schools and because Americans seem to be terrified of changing anything in the Constitution (funny considering a lot of things people get crazy about are in the amendments, but that's another story), they sneaked it in as a scientific theory, which let's face it it's not. There's a difference between religious argument having a bearing (which it maybe should; I'm not convinced but it could still work) and religion taking over, and there are example of the latter that simply shouldn't have happened.

 

And those cases were properly struck down by judges. This is what I was saying: the risk of silencing voices is far greater than the risk of inconveniencing people for a court case or two.

Actually, by my understanding, as long as they offered courses in any religion students asked for (which may have been beyond feasability), they should have been allowed. So long as the State doesn't favor one religion over another, or no religion over any religion, it has the right to act.

And there are appropriate checks and balances for those cases. The reality is, there are TONS of things that should never have been allowed to happen in ANY legal system more than a year old. The question is, which is the greater risk: allowing them to happen and handling the consequences, or not allowing anything like them to ever happen at all?

 

As NOG also noted, in every case where such a law passed and it was challenged, it was overturned in the courts. I'm not sure that the law was challenged in every state, so it is possible that there are some schools that still teach ID/creationism, but it is not part of mainstream public schooling across the country. Also, the court rulings in most states only affected teaching ID/creationism in science class. I'm sure that there are parochial schools all over the place that are still teaching ID/creationism in their religious education classes.

Getting back to the original topic, I think the ultimate question Kitrax is really asking can be paraphrased as such: "What is it about religion that makes you accept/believe in it, when a lack of evidence would make you extremely skeptical about virtually any other topic?" I don't think Kitrax is attacking religion, he is merely pointing out something he sees as an inconsistency.

On a related note, while I don't believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, I think a significant portion of the characters, wars, etc., are historically accurate. I'm just not convinced in the specific events. For example, I believe that Joshua was present at the Battle of Jerhico (and by corralary that the battle actually occured). However, I do not believe that sound waves caused the walls to crumble.

 

That said, court challenges take time. During that time, ID is getting taught as "science" to impressionable young minds. We shouldn't need to waste money and resources challenging laws that should have never been passed in the first place where we can avoid it.

 

Thanks for stealing the words out of my mouth Drew

Seriously, I do agree that it should have never got this far to begin with. And in response to NOG's question, I do think there's a middle ground between allowing anything to go through and then constantly having to deal with the consequences (which, as Drew pointed out, is both a waste of resources and could be dangerous depending on what does pass through) and creating a rigid system where nothing can ever change. I certainly don't think never allowing anything like this to happen is good, but I think that once something has been put to bed it should stay there. To come back to my example: Creationism is not science, and we've known this with certainty for a century; there's no excuse for it managin to get into science class and then having the whole debate about whether it should be there happen. This should have been dealt with much earlier. And changing the name to "intelligent design" shouldn't have been enough to make it a new issue needing to be looked at again.

 

So you'd prefer to silence the opinions of citizens? I do understand your point, Drew, but we live in an imperfect world. It's like the courts erroring on the side of caution: we must choose to either let criminals go free or let innocents be imprisoned. Neither is a good choice, but one must be made. Our society has decied to let criminals free, and to let voices be heard, even if that does harm, because the opposite would be a harm we see as worse.

If that is the question, it does make sense. My response is that I have seen evidence, I have experienced God. I can't give you any evidence any more than the early sighters of great apes could, but I have my proof.

Also, as a simple correction, I'm not going to immediately disbelieve something simply for lack of proof. Lack of proof, as I have repeatedly said, is not proof of a lack. I don't believe in aliens, but that's because I don't believe the feasability and practicality of mastering interstellar travel simply to anally probe a few random primitive critters every few years (sorry for the cliche, but it's cliche for a reason), not because of the lack of proof. I am uncertain on the existince of Big Foot. The "proof" is far from concrete, but there's plenty of room in the US for a great ape to live mostly unseen.

The problem is, if we never revisit things, corrections are never made. There was a time when evolution was the radical idea that was shunned by the establishment. Sure, it has merrits, but that's just why it stuck around. There was a very long fight, with lots of backs and forths, before it was accepted at all. If we never allowed old topics to come back up, evolution would still be a fringe idea of the looneys.