Also, huge stupid family crises have popped up. So, my mind has been diverted elsewhere all evening. Hopefully I’ll get to it tomorrow. It takes a lot of time to actually research and post links to stuff that explains how wrong Zdenny gets everything, and while I could just gut-react and not post any links like my last rebuttal, unfortunately between work suddenly kicking into overdrive, having to get last minute details arranged regarding Jen and Opal’s arrival, and this new crisis, I’m now officially more than swamped. I had to steal a few minutes before bed to post two comments to my own blog, is how horrible it all is; and I don’t know how much I’ll get to do tomorrow. I’ll try to throw up a few Youtube videos or something to keep the post-a-day-minimum streak going (wow, seriously, like two and a half months now!). I have three blog posts / ideas drafted but none are near ready to go.

I suppose I could just link to you folks’ awesome blogs for the day, and phone it in. 🙂

Bullshit Denny – I never said any of that. You’re either lying or just incapable of comprehending fucking English.

The more I read of the tripe on his site, and the responses to my comments, the more I think he might actually have difficulty with some words. (In which I’m trying to say that he has no idea what they really mean.)

I am not lying because DuWayne thinks that his way is the only way and that there are no other options to consider when it comes to education.

Bullshit Denny – I never said any of that. You’re either lying or just incapable of comprehending fucking English.

It might surprise you to learn that I am actually a strong advocate for homeschooling. And though I obviously believe that they are quite wrong, I also support the right of parents to send their child to parochial schools. What I do not believe is reasonable or right, is those educational choices not being held to state standards.

And I don’t even believe that said standards must include comprehensive science and sex education, though I would like to see our society move in that direction. I do believe that parents who choose to refuse their children those aspects of education should be ridiculed and shunned for it – certainly not respected for it, merely because some imaginary being tells them it’s wrong.

For DuWayne, it is the secularist worldview that is true and all others are false.

Pot, meet kettle. For Denny, it is the imaginary being created us worldview that is true and all others are false.

The fact is that home school kids are much smarter than public school kids in general and score higher on standardized test.

Which is, in fact, why I am a strong advocate of homeschooling.

The evidence though will not convince DuWayne that Home School is an option.

Such an epic motherfucking fail Denny. And the irony doesn’t escape me. Because all the evidence in the world, will not convince you to even question your fundamental worldview. Nor will all the argument and evidence in the world, convince you that you have no fucking clue what any of is secularists actually think, feel and believe.

This is what I mean by control and indoctrination. Atheist are guilty of it in a real big way; however, they are rarely honest about it. DuWayne was just being honest…

If by control, you mean holding people of faith to the same standards that the rest of society has to live by, then yes, that is exactly what I believe. As far as indoctrination – I am mostly concerned that you keep your ignorant fucking religious bullshit out of the science classroom. And outside the context of comparative religion, outside public schools altogether. If you want to send your child to public schools, you can do the same thing that all of us do, when our children come home and tell us about something they were taught, that was erroneous bullshit – you explain the reality of things to them. And if you’re smart, you use such moments as teaching tools, making it clear that just because it is said by an authority, doesn’t mean it is correct.

I don’t support a theocracy in America.

But you want Christians to be free to make laws that cement Christianity into the government and in schools. This is theocracy.

Christians does not believe in a theocracy. We believe in freedom of speech and freedom of religion and that is why we wrote it into the Constitution of the US.

YOU did what now? If your politicians want to have a little prayer before they go do the business of the American public, fine. But if they want Christianity taught in science classrooms, or they want to enter orders saying America is founded on Christian ideals, or add “in God we trust” to money or to the motto like they did in 1956, then they are saying “all Americans are Christian and only Christians are American”. Freedom OF religion means also being free to not want to participate in ANY religion, and if the pledge includes “under God” then they are forced to participate in lauding a non-entity, against their personal belief system. If they are forced to swear on a Bible, then they are having religion crammed down their thoats. If they are taught that the Bible says the Earth is 6000 years old, and not billions of years old like all the evidence says, then they are having YOUR BELIEFS pushed on them. Not just COMPETING beliefs, but YOUR BELIEF ALONE.

We support the right of everyone to have a say at the table. Since love is the foundation of Christianity, we support tolerance at the highest level. In fact, I even support your right to free speech.

You had better, given that I live in a secular country with free health care under a single payer system and I have life a hell of a lot better than you. And this ain’t just nationalistic pride talking. So when I say “you should stop listening to religion and bullshit artists trying to kill you by spreadsheet in order to get more money”, you should damn well listen. How much did it cost you to have your daughter checked out when she was sick? How much did it cost you to have her delivered? What about your wife’s ultrasounds?

If you’re insured, it probably didn’t cost you much of anything. But if you lost your job and thus your insurance, it would cost you *everything*. Here, it wouldn’t. Here, you could build a life and not have it come crashing down because of a medical happenstance while you were between jobs. And this is because our government is not controlled by corporations. Or at least, not controlled to the extent that yours obviously is. The fact your country is 80% Christian means there’s a very large vector — say 20% of you — that can be swayed by the fundamentalist leaders who are almost wholly owned by these corporations. That’s a gigantic attack vector for a cynical corporation to take advantage of. And you don’t even realize this is a vulnerability, because you’re so brainwashed!

I know the claim of theocracy is made all the time; however, I just don’t know of anyone personally in Christendom who supports that view.

And yet you vote for people you perceive as good, God-fearing Christians, and they screw you over time and again.

Christians are too concerned that politics will corrupt the truth of Christianity. Christianity cannot be forced; rather, Christ has to be accepted.

I’ll tell you what. I’ll keep a glass of water handy. If he ever comes around again, despite claiming he’d be resurrected within the lifetime of the listeners, I’ll ask him to turn it into wine, and if he does, I’ll march around this Earth with gigantic banners saying “Jesus is real, also I’m a dick and going to hell” until the end times. Seriously, you can quote me on this. I always honour my promises.

The fact is that secularists do not allow Christians to be authentic in public. It is the secularist who constantly are telling Christians to not be themselves as teachers, government workers or even as President. We believe that the individual whether he is elected or not, whether he is a teacher of not has the right to be themselves as guaranteed in the Constitution. If someone disagrees, they should be allowed to say why they disagree no matter where they are located.

You can go ahead and be authentic in public, but if we can’t be authentic in schools and say “all the evidence suggests creationism is a load of crap” without getting thrown in jail, then why do you also get to say “creationism is provable and here’s the evidence”? If we don’t get to make laws saying “religion is not allowed to interfere with science” then why do you get to make laws that say “religion should be taught alongside science”?

Separation of church and state PROTECTS YOU AND YOUR ILK. Learn it and love it and fight for it because it’s the only thing standing between us rationalists and a systematic elimination of religion. The more you fight to tear down that wall which was built to protect you from yourselves, the more agitated the barbarian hordes on the other side become. And we have all the evidence in the world to shut down the debate with finality when un-brainwashed people are presented both equally. It’s only those that are swayed by appeals to emotion, appeals to ego, appeals to ignorance and appeals to who knows what other fallacious tactic you use, that would be swayed by your lack of evidence. And maybe we don’t want to just let you have the dregs of society that are more willing to be swayed by emotions than rational logic. Because those people become the suicide bombers and the birthers and the people screaming “Obamacare will kill our grannies” without a shred of evidence and in the face of even a plain English reading of the bill.

I would just add that Christians are very much involved in science and love it. The design in nature is what makes science possible.

That’s not adding, that’s refuting. I don’t deny that there are Christians involved in science. People like Ken Miller, who has forgotten more about evolution than you’ve ever known. People like him who you’ve claimed are not really Christians because they don’t believe what you do. You’ll have to start making up your mind sometime — is their existence a blot on Christianity, or proof that Christianity and science are compatible?

There is a difference between Christians and Atheist because we are much more open-minded about the facts. For instance, I don’t believe that Darwinian or Creationism is conclusive for either worldview. Christians simply know that it happened; however, it is up to science to figure out how it happened which keeps things fun and interesting.

You’re starting from the same point we do — we know “it” happened. We just disagree on what “it” is. In our case, we know the universe exists, and we know that things follow naturalistic (what you call “materialistic”) rules. In your case, you “know” that God did it all in seven days six thousand years ago because an old book says so.

If you open your mind too much your brain will fall out. We remain open to the possibility that everything in the Bible is true, however we want actual empirical evidence — testable, verifiable evidence — that any of it actually happened. Until such evidence can be presented, sorry, it’s a work of fiction.

As support of this, almost every Christian I know supports teaching both Evolution and Creationism. The fact is that they are competing theories that should be considered as evidence exists for both of them.

Whose creationism? How many religions’ creation myths need to get equal coverage? How does it then not become a comparitive religion course rather than a science course? Considering that science is empirically testable and provable and is merely the study of the universe as it is, while religion is a set of wild hypotheses with no evidence except for foundational texts, if you’re arguing for “equal time” for “competing hypotheses”, then you’re arguing for the science classroom to show all of the evidence that contradicts religion. Just because you want us to teach the few hoaxes that were ALSO disproven using science, doesn’t mean you’re teaching any sort of controversy, or any evidence against the mountains of fossils that were discovered since Darwin’s time, or any of genetics that was discovered since Darwin’s time. I do not advocate giving equal time to the sane and the insane. If someone makes an extraordinary claim — like that Obama wants to euthanize grandparents — I expect extraordinary evidence. When the evidence does not appear, it’s because you don’t have any, and the claim should be dismissed instead of talked about ad nauseum as though it were valid. Likewise with creationism.

The fact that we are unable to reconcile all the facts means that we still have a long way to go in putting it altogether.

I trust the scientific method to be able to put it all together because it is self-correcting. It is not dogmatic. It does not have a foundational text that must not be questioned and must not be reinterpreted. Even “On the Origin of Species” is three quarters wrong, even though it pointed us down the right road regarding the speciation of life for the first time in scientific history. The one quarter that was right — that life can speciate — has stood up to almost 200 years of scrutiny and attempts at disproving it. It is perfectly falsifiable, yet it has never been falsified. Unlike individual passages in your foundational text, or the text as a whole.

I find Atheist are the ones that are dogmatic in most cases and unwilling to consider any evidence that is contrary to their worldview.

Dogma:
# a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof
# a doctrine or code of beliefs accepted as authoritative; “he believed all the Marxist dogma”

There is not one aspect of science that is accepted dogmatically. Not one! Not even evolution, your beloved attacking point. If something comes along and explains the empirical evidence better, we’ll gladly abandon evolution in favour of that explanation. But first you have to prove it explains the evidence better. And that means not dismissing chunks of evidence like the multiple ways we know the Earth is really really old. And that means not dismissing the literally hundreds of transitional fossils that have been discovered since Darwin.

Christians have no problem considering other views and just leaving it open until more discovery is made. If some evidence does not agree with our worldview, we just leave it open knowing that later discoveries may change the interpretation of the evidence.

You don’t get that luxury. If dozens of proofs of an old Earth match up with one another roughly, and don’t match up against the several, disproven “proofs” of a young earth, you don’t get to “leave the question open” as each of your proofs are systematically broken down. While, yes, we are open to evidence that shifts our estimates around somewhat (e.g. evidence that the Cambrian Explosion actually happened over MORE than five million years, like anywhere up to 40 million!), we are not open to a hypothesis derived from a two-thousand-year-old book that says that the Earth is only 6000 years old, using cherry-picked results from tests that ignore whole swathes of scientifically derived evidence.

I don’t understand people like you. You project so many of your own flaws onto “the enemy”. You constantly scan for motes of dust in our eyes while ignoring the planks in your own. Why do you hold your foundational text to any different standard?

No, I’m not letting you answer this until you go and put together five hundred words. If it helps, I promise I will never quote-mine your words for “proof” that you “believe” in what you say. And if anyone ever claims that proves you’re a hypocrite, I’ll be the first to come to your defense. This is an assignment, and if you refuse to accept it, then you don’t get a voice here. Period. You can keep publishing your craziness over on your corner of the internet, but you don’t get to lie for Jesus here any more until you prove that you are even capable of understanding what we’re saying.

I would simply disagree. If Congress wanted to regulate the health care industry further, they most certainly could with a simple vote including having price caps, etc… The problem is that health care reform is not about fairness; rather, it is about future population control. Obama has already stated on many occasions that he wants to force the private industry out and have a single payer system. Everyone knows that he is not being honest with the American people.

Why are you unable to think outside of the liberal box? You seem to buy every argument they make even when it goes against reason, the facts and common sense. I honestly couldn’t believe anyone would accept the fairness argument when I first heard it. It is a propaganda line and you took it hook, line and sinker even though it doesn’t make any sense.

As another example, since your knowledge of history is limited, you were unaware of a philosophical change that took place between Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle changed the landscape intellectually within Christianity as they had a new philosophy to consider. Without the dark ages there would have been no Enlightenment or a Modern Scientific Community. Christianity provided the stability needed to create a foundation for the establishment of universities. These universities then began encouraging modern scientific advancement under Aristotle. The pace of change was too much for society to handle in which they reacted; however, society was able to eventually recognize the positives for change.

However, rather than looking at history and seeing the pattern and the underlying changes taking place, you just swallow the liberal mantra which goes against reason, common sense and the facts.

I still contend that atheist are box thinkers who are unable to think outside the box. The beauty of Christianity is the our identity is not tied to science. Christians lives are based on faith so that we can be honest in studying science without having it control our lives like an atheist. Our lives are not dependent on the success of the latest theory. We can sit back and enjoy the beauty of science since our lives are not tied to it.

Atheist are totally different. A new theory that may interfere with their establish paradigm is an attack on atheism. They have to believe in their theories irregardless of the facts because their self-identity of being rational is tied to it. This explains why they are box thinkers who are unable to honestly look at the evidence that doesn’t fit their established paradigm.

If he was absolutely certain that he was correct, we would never have gone.

Do you know, zDenny, why Dawkins used the word “delusion”in the title of his book? Well, if you were curious, you have just answered your own question.

PZ went for fodder to mock you. He was not curious about how this all works, he was interested in learning how y’all creatonists manage to hold your beliefs in spite of geological, biological and cosmological evidence. And he discovered that there is a magical number in it all – 2348.

DuWayne in his post was arguing that everyone has to a secular school. Of course he wants to force everyone into the secular schools so they can be taught secularism which is his worldview.

I am not lying because DuWayne thinks that his way is the only way and that there are no other options to consider when it comes to education. For DuWayne, it is the secularist worldview that is true and all others are false. He is extremely intolerant of any other opinion.

I just disagee with DuWayne. I don’t think it is right for Secuarlist to force kids against the better judgement of the parents to go to a secular school. The fact is that home school kids are much smarter than public school kids in general and score higher on standardized test. The evidence though will not convince DuWayne that Home School is an option. He believes that his way is the only way and everyone should be FORCED to do it his way.

This is what I mean by control and indoctrination. Atheist are guilty of it in a real big way; however, they are rarely honest about it. DuWayne was just being honest…