Atheists seem to fear the consequences of rejecting God
You have that backward. Atheists are the people rejecting all gods. If you think we live in fear, you are projecting. It's the Christian (I assume that by "God" you mean the Christian god) who fears rejecting the Christian god. The entire thrust of Christianity is that one is born fit for perdition, and that the only way to avoid that fate is to submit to Christian theology - to obey commandments or be thrown into a lake of fire.
- "Religion is based primarily on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death."- Bertrand Russell
Atheism frees the former Christian from the bondage of hell theology
So just hearing anyone speak of God, seem to torment them and give them nightmares, so they wish every religious person would either disappear, or talk about anything else, but God.
We come to this forum to talk about your god.
A Christian can use the world, but not to the full. Meaning, everything in the world is not bad, including science, but one need to be able to remove the dross, or leave it where it is.
That summarizes the atheist's approach to life as well - identify the wheat and the chaff, and select the former. For me, religion was chaff (or dross as you call it).
Do not love either the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because everything in the world - the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the showy display of one’s means of life - does not originate with the Father, but originates with the world. Furthermore, the world is passing away and so is its desire, but the one who does the will of God remains forever. (
1 John 2:15-17)
I did the opposite, embracing as much of the world as was satisfying and salutary. It has worked out well. I discovered that excessive desire for wealth or control was harmful. I have long been content with what I have. If I had more money, my life would not change, and I'm not interested in controlling any lives but my own.
I believe once something can be demonstrated to be true, then it is reasonable to accept it.
The problem is that faith generates a confirmation bias that prevents its victim from seeing (much less observing) the evidence impartially. How many faith based thinkers tell us that there is no evidence for evolution or abiogenesis?
No. That's not "genuine Christianity".
Genuine Christianity is not some ideal that the religion and its adherents have never and will never achieve, but what we actually see in the world. Actual Christianity includes 81% of white evangelical Americans supporting candidates that include a credibly accused pedophile and a credibly accused adulterer and self- admitted serial sexual predator. That's genuine Christianity, too.
Except that there are no crises in science, just some unsolved problems.
As I indicated, we don't judge the merit of an idea by the reproducibility of experiments. If an experiment is performed and repeated yielding widely divergent results, we should come to divergent tentative conclusions about how reality is. The idea that works best is the one we use. This might be a good time to introduce a few useful concepts that eliminate much of the semantic quibbling about truth and proof
:
- Empirical adequacy - A theory is empirically adequate, roughly, if all of what it says about observable aspects of the world (past, present, and future) can be confirmed
- Fallibilism - the principle that propositions concerning empirical knowledge can be accepted even though they cannot be proved with certainty.
- Correspondence definition of truth - a statement is true to the extent that it conforms to / corresponds with / accurately reflects (objective) reality.
- Instrumentalism - belief that statements or theories may be used as tools for useful prediction without reference to their possible truth or falsity. Peirce and other pragmatists defended an instrumentalist account of modern science.
Consider creationism in the light of that. It fails, because it is useless.
What a strange thing to say. The rest is just opinion and defense of ideology not true science.
You've just identified yourself as a bad faith disputant. You didn't bother to try to understand what was written, and ignored most of it with the wave of a hand. Also, you apparently don't know what science or its methods are.
At this point, you have accepted with your failure to respond much less rebut that there are no crisis in science and that creationism is useless. Those are the rules on this side of the intellectual aisle - the reason and evidence based way. It's the standard for both debate and courtroom trials. Whoever makes the last feasible argument that is not successfully rebutted has prevailed. If a defense attorney makes a claim of innocence, the prosecutor successfully rebuts the defense - perhaps by discrediting the alibi - and presents compelling evidence and argument in support of guilt, the defense must successfully rebut the prosecutor's argument. If instead, the defense ignores all of that and hopes it goes away, or simply repeats what it said previously unchanged - the same refuted alibi or says nothing at all - the defendant is likely to lose his case and go to prison.
I actually think this stuff is so much of a wank that it should be left out all together. Interest in that can be pursued in later education if the child is interested.
That's a good description of religion in the public schools - it should be left out. It was also my approach to religion with my children. If they're interested, they can explore it once they have developed critical thinking skills and are able to defend themselves from indoctrination.
Should a student who answered that because God can manipulate things at the quantum level then all things are possible be graded down for such a speculation?
No. His religious comments should simply be ignored. He should be graded on the remainder of the reply. If he chooses to waste valuable test time writing out his religious beliefs only to have them disregarded, he may find himself running out of time to answer all of the questions. He will be graded down for that as well as inadequate or incorrect answers
You lot always ask for proof of the divine but when it stares you in the face you expend huge resources to explain it away as a mystery.
Neither you nor anybody else has offered proof of the divine (by which I assume that you mean deities). In your case, just some empty speculations about gods, the quantum world, and the substance of the universe. You just injected your religious beliefs into science that has no need for them and offers no support for them.
You seem to think that you can explain away mysteries with unevidenced, faith-based guesses. That's not good enough for the rational skeptic, who needs a tangible reason before believing anything.
It makes sense because if someone disagrees based on their religion that doesn't mean they don't know the "right" answer. They could answer the question in such a way that they give the correct answer for the test but still not agree with it; for religious reasons.
We don't need a new statute for that. The student is already free to reject the science. And as I've written elsewhere, his teacher is very likely uninterested in what the student believes, just what he has learned in class.
Worse, this law has the potential to lead to pointless lawsuits when students give religious opinions accompanied by inadequate or incorrect answers with the understanding that this law makes their religious opinions valid answers that need to be given equal standing relative to correct answers. This law is a very bad idea.
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