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 Sunday, August 7, 2005
More on the secular
The Times remembers Kennedy's speech at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
(my emphasis):
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absoluteñwhere no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to voteñwhere no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preferenceñand where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewishñwhere no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical sourceñwhere no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officialsñand where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
"For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jewñor a Quakerñor a Unitarianñor a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom.
Today I may be the victimñbut tomorrow it may be youñuntil the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
"
Compare that to the position of
the Student Ambassadors of Jim Ryun
, discussed yesterday: "
the shrinking religious influence in the U.S. and Europe is empowering the terrorists."
So, who do you want to believe? A guy who could run fast a few decades ago, or the war hero and President who stared down Castro and Khrushchev?
It's not just Ryun's people who seem oddly unaware of our nation's history or the secular tradition that has guided the West
since the 1500s
. The Discovery Institute's famous
Wedge Document
states (my emphasis):
The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.
Yet
a little over a century ago
, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality
eventually infected
virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art.
The same rhetoric was a staple of
the Board of Education "hearings" last spring
.
Again, this idea that a secular society is a novel development of the 20th Century. Ignore the fact that people said these same things of Galileo. If the planets had moons orbiting them, what would become of the celestial spheres? Were these divinely created structures perforated with holes, so that moons could pass through? Impossible. Undoubtedly, the three popes who specifically endorsed geocentrism all said that teaching heliocentrism would lead to a decline in morality, victory of the Moors, and a materialistic society unconcerned with morality.
Some people
even say that today
:
As we know, modern man has continually used the Copernican model and its variant forms (Galileo, Kepler, et al) in an effort to weaken both the authority of Scripture and the authority of the Church to hold them accountable for the way they live their lives. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times: "We don't have to take the Bible literally because, as we all know, the sun doesn't go around the earth, but Scripture says it does. So why should I trust the Bible?"
If Scripture can be dismissed by claiming that it is mostly a collection of myths and fables from ignorant and primitive people; and if the Church can be faulted for siding with an aberrant view of cosmology; then modern man thinks he has found the ultimate excuse for relieving himself of being bound by either Scripture or the Church.
Scripture is very clear that the earth is stationary and that the sun, moon and stars revolve around it. (By the way, in case you're wondering, "flat-earthers" are not accepted here, since Scripture does not teach a flat earth, nor did the Fathers teach it). If there was only one or two places where the Geocentric teaching appeared in Scripture, one might have the license to say that those passages were just incidental and really didn't reflect the teaching of Scripture at large. But the fact is that Geocentrism permeates Scripture. Here are some of the more salient passages (Sirach 43:2-5; 43:9-10; 46:4; Psalm 19:5-7; 104:5; 104:19; 119:90; Ecclesiastes 1:5; 2 Kings 20:9-11; 2 Chronicles 32:24; Isaiah 38:7-8; Joshua 10:12-14; Judges 5:31; Job 9:7; Habakkuk 3:11; (1 Esdras 4:12); James 1:12). I could list many more, but I think these will suffice.
Isn't there also something in the Bible about the truth setting something free?
- Josh Rosenau [Thoughts from Kansas]
UPDATE (8-8-05 2:20 PM): Figures. When I write something late at night and forget to spellcheck, that is the time I get linked to. Sometimes my fingers have a mind of their own. It is kind of like having underwear with holes in them when they get you into surgery after an accident. Their presence does not change any of the facts, just makes them a little more embarrassing. At least I am embarrassed by one of my favorite bloggers Pharyngula.
People whose faith requires them to disregard facts are deluded. The delusions of faith have resulted in millions of deaths throughout history. One would have hoped that the Enlightenment and the following centuries would have lessened the power of these people. Looks like they are a strin strain of humanity that will always be with us. God did not provide the natural world around us to fool us or to decieve deceive us. We do not have the intellect we have to waste it on idiotic delusions about a geocentric solar system. Anyone who choses to believe the multiply-translated words of a document whose provenance is not wholy wholly known while ignoring the facts of the world we live in is a waste of humanity. 11:28:58 PM 
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Fla. Sex Offenders Barred from Hurricane Shelters. Why don't we just call out the firing squad and shoot all sex offenders? That's what it's coming down to. Latest example: Florida has banned sex offenders from hurricane shelters. Instead, in the event of a hurricane, they are to report to prison, where they will be held in the visitor's waiting room (so they know they are free to leave.)
Sex offenders have to sign a form that outlines instructions, wear an ID badge, and they can be searched by authorities at any time.
An ACLU official makes the appropriate point:
the more steps you take to isolate and ostracize them ... there are very few options for them to live their lives and not reoffend," he said.
[TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]
Nothing to add. I have chosen to never travel to Florida again anyway. They continue to be a state run by aliens. 11:10:56 PM
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Could be that Roberts was involved in Iran-Contra. Read more about the greatest irelevant scandal in America's History. Not irrelevant because nothing was done. Terrible things were done and the Constitution was severely damaged. Irrelevant because many of these guys are still in the Adminsitraton and still thumbing their noses at the law. Bush I pardoned people to prevent them from testifying. Yep, he pardoned them before trial so that they could not testiy against him and to prevent Bush I from appearing at the trial under oath. Now Bush II will do anything to prevent these papers from seeing the light of day. His Administration has already put a hold on the transfer of many Bush I documents. I wonder why?
Watergate was a personal abuse of power. Nixon largely followed his own paranoid nature and was caught. Iran-Contra was much worse, since the Executive branch directly ignored the will of the Legislative, went behind its back to fund indedependent warfare and actually working against our best interests. All those criminals protected each other because they held the reigns of power. Who could stop them? Well, Walsh almost did but the extraordinary use of pardons got them off.
I do not doubt that the latest group will use their presidential get out of jail free card. Iran-contra is THE reason Reagan should not ever be in a top 10 list of Presidents. He abused his power, or allowed others to abuse it, to the detriment of the United States. Our government was severely hurt by this disregard for the Constitution.
What is it with Republican Presidents? Nixon had Watergate. Reagan/Bush had Iran-contra. Now this Administration. I voted for Ford in 1976 because i thought he was a good man, trying to do a tough job. I did not like the fact that Carter had little experience with national politics. Running as an outsider was not a good way to get Washington to work with you.. I refused to vote for Reagan in 1980 because his campaign in 1976 had severely damaged Ford. Turns out that he had little experience also, permitting the widespread destruction of the Constitution. Abscam, Iran/Contra, Savings and Loan Bailout. I have never voted Republicanfor a President again and I probably never will. They do too much to this country and its Constitution. 10:16:56 AM
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