I feel sure that within the next 100 years or so, atheists will being outing Christians. The shoe will be on the other foot.
From several of your latest posts, PJ, I am beginning to understand why you feel little sympathy for religious people. It sounds like some religious people have done you some serious wrong in the past.
At least they won't be torturing you and killing you like Christians historically did.
Fair enough. I've got nothing against atheists except for when they force their atheism on us, like in the public school system. But that is another argument for another day. I don't feel like getting into it today.
You mean like how Christianity forces itself onto our laws and politics and insists on fighting for it's own theocratic values to invade our governments?
Well, I have a history with several other posters on this site from another site and they know what I'm talking about. I have no problem with prayer and the Bible stories prohibited from being taught in class.
My problem is that the big bang and macro-evolution are taught as absolute fact when they aren't absolute fact. I feel that an optional class in which the Biblical perspective should be available and that the science classes teach the above as theories only and not as fact.
You seem to not understand that atheism is not equivalent to Evolution or the Big Bang.
Both have a lot of evidence behind them, unlike the Christian bible. And Evolution actually is a fact in that it's a fact that it happened and is happening. Admittedly we don't always have a complete picture but denying Evolution would be like denying that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Also I noticed in a lot of your other posts in this topic that there is a recurring theme of you seeing the Big Bang as anti-creation. Actually, the truth is much different. Atheists at the time beleived in the Steady State theory. It was actually a Jesuit Priest that thought up the Big Bang, and it first gained traction decades later when
evidence began to accumulate.
The Steady State theory held that the Universe was eternal and so therefore needed not be created. The Big Bang threw that out the window and stated that time and space both had an original moment. Thus it's actually much closer to creationism than you might think.
Personally, I have a hard time tolerating atheists: I class them as fundamentalists, like US evangelical Protestants or Salafi Muslims.
Because not believing in something is the same as all the terrible things done in Christianity? When have you ever heard of someone killing in the name of atheism?
Probably because atheism cuts to the core beliefs of theists.
If atheism were always passive, I doubt it would be a noticeable problem, but because some atheists are noticeably on the offense with regards to their position, it perhaps seems better to just avoid atheists who may not hold back in disparaging remarks or ridicule of one's core beliefs.
I don't get why any atheist on this site would see that as new. Seems to occur on the site (both ways) rather frequently, as in every other thread has it going on. IRL the desire for open debate is probably a lot lower, and so avoidance is likely the normative behavior.
Atheists being upset at the corrupt misdeeds and wolf in sheeps' clothing that is theocratic politics rearing it's ugly head in the developed world is far from irrational or unreasonable. It is simply responding to a threat which has historically commited genocide, rape and murder in the name of the Abrahamic God for justification.
Well, you already know how I feel about what children are taught in science classes so we won't go into it.
That you are against well tested models backed by centuries (or decades) of evidence because it's inconvenient for your beliefs and you do not wish that others would be educated on this least they question your religious worldview?
Well, it is the atheist crowd that insists that religion not be in schools at all. Atheists were the ones who got the Bible thrown out, prayer, etc.
Actually I'm fairly sure it was religious people who didn't want the government to teach their kids religion let alone possibly a denomination they didn't agree with. I don't think there would of been nearly enough atheists even then to really do anything about it.
You know what I'm talking about. Teachers can't teach the Bible and they can't pray in class. That's what I'm talking about.
Would you be okay with a Satanist teacher making her students pray to Satan and study Satanism?
The truth as I perceive it matters more to me than acceptance.
But why teach evolution from the big bang as fact when there is no way it can be shown to have happened that way for sure?
So your beliefs matter to you more than the truth? More than evidence? More than reason? More than knowledge?
I didn't say it should be taught as fact, did I? What I said is that it should be taught in an elective class.
The only things we should be teaching as factual science are facts.
"Evolution from the big bang" should be taught in an elective class as theory, not fact in science class. It isn't fact.
Evolution doesn't come from the Big Bang, they are totally different processes. I would implore you to at least have a very basic understanding of that which you claim isn't fact.
Though as a quick reference for you just a few of the countless pieces of evidence for the Big Bang:
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE420.html said:
- Einstein's general theory of relativity implies that the universe cannot be static; it must be either expanding or contracting.
- The more distant a galaxy is, the faster it is receding from us (the Hubble law). This indicates that the universe is expanding. An expanding universe implies that the universe was small and compact in the distant past.
- The big bang model predicts that cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation should appear in all directions, with a blackbody spectrum and temperature about 3 degrees K. We observe an exact blackbody spectrum with a temperature of 2.73 degrees K.
- The CMB is even to about one part in 100,000. There should be a slight unevenness to account for the uneven distribution of matter in the universe today. Such unevenness is observed, and at a predicted amount.
- The big bang predicts the observed abundances of primordial hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and lithium. No other models have been able to do so.
- The big bang predicts that the universe changes through time. Because the speed of light is finite, looking at large distances allows us to look into the past. We see, among other changes, that quasars were more common and stars were bluer when the universe was younger.
The site can also refute/answer many of your questions about Evolution as well. It's a handy site, but only a good one for starting I suppose.
