The Supreme Court vis-a-vis the Supreme Being (or not)

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
YEAL9
”JESUS”

IRT:
“Analyses of Jesus’ life by many contemporary NT scholars (e.g. Professors Crossan, Borg and Fredriksen, On Faith panelists) via the NT and related documents have concluded that only about 30% of Jesus' sayings and ways noted in the NT were authentic. “

ANS:
One of the Faith Panelist Jewish Rabbi, David Wolpe claimed the that the Exodus more than likely never took place and it didn’t matter. Then why do Jews celebrate the Passover. Sorry but it does matter.

Moreover, another Jewish Rabbi
Arthur Waskow, said, "Abortion is not murder. So another physician has been murdered for making it possible for women to actually use their constitutional right to choose an abortion.

"All honor to Dr. George Tiller, who joins the list of martyrs for ethical decency and human rights, killed for healing with compassion." Here is a Rabbi condoning murder, because the unborn is human and there are no rights to murder.

To use them as a reference doesn’t lend much credibility to your defense.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13635b.htm

“The authenticity or authority of Holy Writ is twofold on account of its twofold authorship. First, the various books which make up the Bible are authentic because they enjoy all the human authority that is naturally due to their respective authors.

"Second, they possess a higher authenticity, because invested with a Divine, supernatural authority through the Divine authorship which makes them the inspired word of God. Biblical authenticity in its first sense must naturally be considered in the articles on the several books of Sacred Scripture, in its second sense, it springs from Biblical inspiration.”

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08045a.htm

“The testimony of Flavius Josephus (A.D. 37-95) is still more characteristic; it is in his writings that the word inspiration (epipnoia) is met for the first time. He speaks of twenty-two books which the Jews with good reason consider Divine, and for which, in case of need, they are ready to die (Contra Apion., I, 8).

"The belief of the Jews is the inspiration of the Scriptures did not diminish from the time in which they were dispersed throughout the world, without temple, without altar,” without priests; on the contrary this faith increased so much that it took the place of everything else."

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
YEAL9
“TRUTH OR FICTION?”

IRT:
"The rest being embellishments (e.g. miracles)/hallucinations made/had by the NT authors to impress various Christian, Jewish and Pagan sects."

ANS:
Matthew 7:15 RHE
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08045a.htm

“The testimony of Flavius Josephus (A.D. 37-95) is still more characteristic; it is in his writings that the word inspiration (epipnoia) is met for the first time. He speaks of twenty-two books which the Jews with good reason consider Divine, and for which, in case of need, they are ready to die (Contra Apion., I, 8)." People don’t die for myths and fairytales.

"The belief of the Jews is the inspiration of the Scriptures. Their belief did not diminish from the time in which they were dispersed throughout the world, without temple, without altar,” without priests; on the contrary this faith increased so much that it took the place of everything else."

In other words, 70% of Scripture is a delusion and hallucinations, viz. the beliefs of around two million Jews, freed from the Egyptians was a delusions, their 40 year walk in the desert, a delusion, all but 30% of the events of the NT, witnessed by the Jews as well as the pagans including the Jews’ enemies were 70% hallucinations.

Consequently, some 2,000 years later these astute erudite scholars discovered that what all the Jews, Gentiles, and Pagans witnessed was only 30% true, not to mention that the Jews were some of the most knowledgeable people in the world. The Jews were tossed out of Spain because they were too smart. Hitler tried to obliterate them from the earth, because they were the industrial giants in Germany.

The great scientists, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, the great Jewish philosophers like Maimonides, the Church, it multitude of Counsels, and all the Jews and Christians throughout the centuries of time weren't astute enough to figure out they've been had, but your elitist professors did.

What profound priggery, what nihilism and incredulity!

N REPLY TO (IRT)
YEAL9
”JESUS”

IRT:
“2. Jesus was an illiterate Jew...”

ANS;
Luke 12: “Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”

Do not believe the idiot who told you that? Surely you aren’t so gullible as to believe everything that every imbecile tells you, are you? That would make you one of them. You should read the Scripture before you criticize it.

Obama, his Attorney General, and his Home Security Chief are running around like chickens with their heads cut off putting down Arizona’s illegal alien law, attempting to take Arizona to court and none of them has even read the law. Do not be fools like they are. Don’t copy these facetious frauds who, when thinking beyond their noses, reveal their ineptitude.

First, Christ didn’t need to read anything. Everything that exists He knows because He is God. Every hair on your head is counted, every sparrow that falls to the ground He knows it. The Old and New Testaments, even before they were written, He knows them. God doesn’t exist in time, as Aristotle has demonstrated. He is the First Cause, the Prime Mover. Jesus, as man, existed in time, but He did not cease to be God.

Luke 12:1cf.
“Yea, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: you are of more value than many sparrows…. Matthew 10: 29 “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father knowing.“

Jesus knows all things. On this link below are three pages of Jesus and the things He read. Instead of consulting these loony professors, try reading the Scriptures sometime and you won’t look as foolish as these professors.

Now Jesus read in the Temple to the Pharisees and Sadducees for their benefit. They were amazed at what He told them. Throughout Scripture He has quoted the Scriptures and told the Jews what they meant. The Jewish scholars asked, “How does this man know all these things?”

http://www.biblestudytools.com/search/?q=read&c=nt&t=rhe&ps=10&s=Bibles

Luke 4:16
“And He came to Nazareth, where He was brought up: and He went into the synagogue, according to His custom, on the Sabbath day: and He rose up to “READ”

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
YEAL9
“AUTHENTICITY OF SCRIPTURE”

IRT:
"Realization that the Jews are not god's chosen people."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20E1EFE35540C7A8CDDAA0894DA404482

"Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, PROBABLY never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible PROBABLY never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, WAS MORE LIKELY a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation."

ANS:
“Probably”, “probably” and “more likely,” are not icons of astute scholarship, moreover, they seem to be superficial opinions, and speculation for a particular anti-Christian end. The link is no proof at all in face of over 2,000 years of Jewish history. The link has no more authority then me saying that they probably and more likely do exist.

The authenticity of the Scripture is evidenced in its effectiveness. Denial by any civilization, nation, or society of the principles and the dictates Scripture proffers is an invitation for the likes of the Four Horsemen, Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death.

These visitors of tragic consequences are witnessed in N. Korea, China, Russia, Hitler’s Germany, the contrast of East and West Germany and the turmoil in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, America has chosen to take the same tragic course as the atheists led nations have taken. Two of the Horsemen have already descended on America—"Death," (Abortion and the Culture of Death personified in the slaughter of some 52 million unborn, the death of victims of AIDS and STDs) and "Pestilence" (AIDS,STDs diseases). The specter of "Famine" is at our doorstep if the Market collapses.

All the more importance is it that we nominate and elect people who have a belief in God. Anything else is a contradiction of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
YEAL9
“MOSES”

IRT:
"The mythical Moses, the "Tablet-Man" who talked to burning bushes and made much magic in Egypt."

ANS:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080621225502AAEOuDM

The two schools of thought on the Exodus are often called 'Minimalist' and 'Maximalist'

The Minimalists point to a lack of specific evidence in Egypt, Sinai or anywhere else. They believe that, the stories in the Bible are merely myth and folklore and unreliable and inaccurate.

"The Maximalists on the other hand, who comprise the majority view, believe that the biblical narrative retains a considerable amount of accurate historical information, collected from various oral and written sources.

The Maximalists point to a large body of circumstantial evidence indicating both the presence of Semitic people in Egypt, and the arrival of a new population in the central highlands of Judah in the 13th-12th centuries BC. using the known facts of Egyptian history they demonstrate that from the 19th century BC and perhaps earlier, groups of Semitic nomads ere coming to Egypt to trade, buy food and some to settle if they could, usually in the eastern part of the Nile delta. Among these immigrant groups were the ancestors of the Israelites, the patriarchal clans under Jacob's leadership.

"So although direct proof for Moses and the Exodus is lacking, there is a considerable body of circumstantial evidence that is hard to ignore.
'
Source(s):
'Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World' edited by Brian M. Fagan

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
YEAL9
“MOSES”
POSTED MAY 18, 2010 10:13 AM

IRT:
“The mythical Moses, the "Tablet-Man" who talked to burning bushes and made much magic in Egypt.”

ANS:
Since God created all things, the Big Bang, the Universe, and man, controlled the skies, the seas, and all that occupied them, notwithstanding He even rose from the dead, why would it seem so profoundly absurd for the voice of God to emanate from a burning bush not being consumed by the fire?

The very fact that the “Ten Commandments,” were unique and unlike anything ever written (viz. their monotheism, their ultimate perfectibility of man, their flawless consort to the Natural & Moral Law, the profound wisdom contained in them, their impeccable effectiveness, efficiency, and skillfulness in their command of the fundamental principles of human behavior, and from the deriving of their practice and familiarity in their effect in the governance of man), they evidence the authenticity of Moses, and the authority of the source from which they came, who is God.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08193a.htm

Moses was anything but a myth. An extensive and thorough history of Israel, Moses, and the Pharaoh, is documented on the link above.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10596a.htm

“To deny or to doubt the historic personality of Moses is to undermine and render unintelligible the subsequent history of the Israelites. Rabbinical literature teems with legends touching every event of his marvelous career: taken singly, these popular tales are purely imaginative, yet, considered in their cumulative force, they vouch for the reality of a grand and illustrious personage, of strong character, high purpose, and noble achievement, so deep, true, and efficient in his religious convictions as to thrill and subdue the minds of an entire race for centuries after his death. The Bible furnishes the chief authentic account of this luminous life.

"He is the type of Hebrew holiness, so far outshining other models that twelve centuries after his death, the Christ Whom he foreshadowed seemed eclipsed by him in the minds of the learned. It was, humanly speaking, an indispensable providence that represented him in the Transfiguration, side by side with Elias, and quite inferior to the incomparable Antitype whose coming he had predicted." (Ibid)

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
YEAL9
“JESUS”
POSTED MAY 18, 2010 10:13 AM

IRT:
"1. Abraham founder/father of three major religions was either the embellishment of the lives of three different men or a mythical character as was mythical Moses, the "Tablet-Man" who talked to burning bushes and made much magic in Egypt.”

ANS:
If Abraham was a myth, than two million Jews were living in a dream and their religion is nothing but fantasy. To the contrary, Jews weren't dying for a fantasy; they knew the truth and they didn't need history revisionists over two thousand years later telling them Abraham was a pipe-dream.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01051a.htm

“There are extracts recorded from numerous ancient writers, but no historical value can be attached to them. In fact, as far as ancient historians are concerned, we may say that all we know about
Abraham is contained in the book of Genesis.

"Taking archaeology as a whole, it cannot be doubted that no definite results have been attained as to Abraham. What has come to light is susceptible of different interpretations. But there is no doubt that archaeology is putting an end to the idea that the patriarchal legends are mere myth. They are shown to be more than that. A state of things is being disclosed in patriarchal times quite consistent with much that is related in Genesis, and at times even apparently confirming the facts of the Bible.

“Accordingly the traditional view of the life of Abraham, as recorded in Genesis, is that it is history in the strict sense of the word. The generation of Jesus Christ is traced back to Abraham by St. Matthew, and though in Our Lord's genealogy, according to St. Luke, he is shown to be descended according to the flesh not only from Abraham but also from Adam.

“Abraham may be looked upon as the starting-point or source of Old Testament religion. So that from the days of Abraham men were wont to speak of God as the God of Abraham, whilst we do not find Abraham referring in the same way to anyone before him.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SHORINBJ
“CREDIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE FROM REASON”
POSTED -MAY 16, 2010 7:50 PM

ANS:
Here is a brief logical explanation on the link below of why Scripture is authentic from reason alone. It's to long to post on this forum. It is short enough on the general forum. Try figuring out how you can dispute it. I don't believe you can.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05752c.htm

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SHORINBJ
POSTED -MAY 16, 2010 7:50 PM
“TRUTH”

IRT:
Isn't pride supposed to go before a fall? Admitting that you don't know for sure is the humble thing to do.
You sure aren't going to convert anyone the way you're going. Why don't you rethink your approach?

ANS:
No one can love another more than he who gives up his life for the good of man.” Man is held responsible for knowing.

God came to earth as the Son of Man that all men may know the truth.

John 18:37
“Pilate therefore said to him: Art thou a king then? Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.”

Jesus gave up His life for the love of man and that man may know the Truth. To believe you cannot know the will of God is facetious. God would be unjust to create you to be in heaven and not give you the means to get there.

Moreover, an Omniscient and Prescient God, knowing the frailties’ of man, would not spend some 33 years on earth, suffer and die an ignominious death for your salvation, leave His Church till the end of time for all men, after He ascended into Heaven, then leave it to fall into teaching error.

No one is trying to convert anyone. Again, it is said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. What I am doing is setting you up for a fall. You have been given the truth and therefore have no reason not to know it except for your predispositions that obscure the truth.

You should be worried that in the darkness you have not been given the ability to see the light. Only you should know why. Thus it is written, John 3:21: “But he that doth truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest: because they are done in God.”

Thus, what is the purpose of the State but that it may succor man’s achievement of his purpose in life, and not be an obstacle to it? Consequently, all government officials who deny the existence of God are a detriment to man. They are an obstacle to his end in life. Kagan appears to be an anthropocentric materialist, not a theocentric theorist and consequently, she, as all materialist, is an adversity to man’s destiny in life.

But then we have this summary from many contemporary historical Jesus, OT/Torah and NT exegetes: (one assumes the current Supreme Court Justices have read analogous summaries)

1. Abraham founder/father of three major religions was either the embellishment of the lives of three different men or a
mythical character as was mythical Moses, the "Tablet-Man" who talked to burning bushes and made much magic in Egypt.

Many of the 1.5 million Conservative Jews and many of their rabbis have relegated Abraham to the myth pile along with most if not all the OT.

Current problems:

Realization that the Jews are not god's chosen people.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20E1EFE35540C7A8CDDAA0894DA404482

2. Jesus was an illiterate Jewish peasant/carpenter/simple preacher man who suffered from hallucinations and who has been characterized anywhere from the Messiah from Nazareth to a mythical character from mythical Nazareth to a mamzer from Nazareth (Professor Bruce Chilton, in his book Rabbi Jesus).

Analyses of Jesus’ life by many contemporary NT scholars (e.g. Professors Crossan, Borg and Fredriksen, On Faith panelists) via the NT and related documents have concluded that only about 30% of Jesus' sayings and ways noted in the NT were authentic. The rest being embellishments (e.g. miracles)/hallucinations made/had by the NT authors to impress various Christian, Jewish and Pagan sects.

The 30% of the NT that is "authentic Jesus" like everything in life was borrowed/plagiarized and/or improved from those who came before. In Jesus' case, it was the ways and sayings of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, OT, John the Baptizer and possibly the ways and sayings of traveling Greek Cynics.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

For added "pizzazz", Catholic/Christian theologians divided god the singularity into three persons and invented atonement as an added guilt trip for the "pew people" to go along with this trinity of overseers. By doing so, they made god the padre into god the "filicider".

Current problems:

Pedophiliac priests, contaminated holy water fonts, "bloody" wafers, atonement theology and original sin, all-male "celibate" hierarchy.

3. Luther, Calvin, Joe Smith, Henry VIII, Wesley, Roger Williams, the Great “Babs” et al, founders of Christian-based religions or combination religions also suffered from the belief in/hallucinations of angelic visits and "prophecies" for profits analogous to the myths of Catholicism (resurrections, apparitions, ascensions and immaculate conceptions).

Current problems:

Adulterous preachers, "propheteering/ profiteering" evangelicals and atonement theology.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SHORINBJ
POSTED -MAY 16, 2010 7:50 PM
“TRUTH”

IRT:
“You seem to have pulled that 90% statistic out of your ass. The actual number is 78%, from the latest Gallup poll.”

ANS:
God would be a fool to create man for an end and not let him know how to achieve it. However, God is Omniscient.

The 90 percent was from HHS and reported by the A/P during the ‘90s. Considering the things that cause abortions such as peer pressure, parents, husbands, embarrassment, money, ridicule, and boyfriends, 90% isn’t absurd. These stats are averages, not an exact science.

IRT:
“You are the arrogant one, claiming to have access to some ultimate truth that no human being can know until his time comes or God himself shows ….”

ANS:
God created man for a purpose; He made man because He loved man. His love is not fickle; He loves all, even the sinner who rebukes Him. When Adam sinned against God, Heaven closed and Hell opened. Man screwed himself up so badly, the time had come to redeem man.

Sin made perfect man imperfect. Man’s preternatural gifts, viz. life without pain and suffering, no wants, infused knowledge, concupiscence subjugated to perfect reason, were all forfeited. Man became vulnerable to error and concupiscence. Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden; when expelled, they covered themselves with fig leaves because reason was now vulnerable to concupiscence.

Because of reason’s vulnerability to the wiles and vanities of the world, an Omniscient God in his perspicacity established His Church and crowned it with infallibility and arrant certitude in its universal teachings.

God sent the Holy Spirit to guard the Church's integrity to keep it from error when it teaches its universal truths.

His truths are not hidden, but open for all to see, though obscure to the willfully blind. Hence, no one has reason to not know these truths except the arrantly foolish who, because of their recalcitrance and implacability, close their eyes to truth.

God, out of His love and mercy, gave man an intellect that man may reason to the truth and gave His grace to overcome man’s ignorance and propensity to sin. However, man must sincerely ask for it. Thus, it is asked, "Who will be saved." Thus it is written, “With man nothing is possible; with God all things are possible.”

Sister TTWSTYED:

"Thus, there is historical, sociological, geological, and meteorological evidence to support the Flood account.'
_______________

Total hogwash - there are more flood myths than you can shake a stick at. Myths pervade all religious traditions.

Religion = mythology. There are even some grade school children that know this. Not so for a good many adults.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_myth

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SHORINBJ
POSTED -MAY 16, 2010 7:50 PM
“EXISTENCE”

IRT:
I can cite numerous examples of proof that contradicts the Bible. The great flood didn’t happen.

ANS:
It did happen. The Creator who created the Universe also created the lightening the seas and the storms and all humans, and rainbows; He is God.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Bible-Studies-1654/Noah-ark-great-flood.htm

"Babylonia and Egyptian accounts record that a man was told to build an ark in order to save himself and the animals! This is not surprising since these cultures would have been closest to source of the flood account, but look also at the mythology of the ancient Aztec and Inca cultures of South America. Although separated by thousands of miles from the Middle East, even these cultures have an account of a worldwide flood!

“There is geological evidence for a flood. At a certain level of the continental crust, there is a very fine layer of soot that has physical traces of seawater. This layer is consistent across all the land masses, even under desert areas.

“We also believe that all the land masses of the earth were once all connected together into one large island. If so, then the place where the continents would have come together would have been in the middle of this island. Something major happened to break this island apart, and the only force in existence at that time with the strength to do this was water.

“The earth was once surrounded by a plasmatic water vapor similar to the planet Venus, blocking out the view of the sun, and would instead have spread sunlight and heat evenly over the entire earth. This envelope would also keep the atmosphere stable. That would explain why there was no rain over the earth.

"The Bible tells us that there was a mist that used to rise from under the ground and water the whole earth. This would have been caused by a huge amount of water being trapped under the land.

"During the Flood, the Bible tells us that floodgates were opened both above and under the earth (Genesis 7:11). A major disaster must have happened to release the water trapped below the earth and to turn to water trapped above the earth in the plasma envelope into liquid water.

"Thus, there is historical, sociological, geological, and meteorological evidence to support the Flood account.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SHORINBJ
POSTED -MAY 16, 2010 7:50 PM
“EXISTENCE # 3”

IRT:
“Your other argument is a familiar one to anyone who has tried to wrap his or her head around the fact that something must have always existed. It's hard to let go of the idea that an effect must have a cause. But nothing about this says that what is eternal must be God.”

ANS:
That’s true if you can’t understand that all created things start from potency to act, or that potency, or potential beings do not start themselves. Therefore, there comes a point when for things to exists there must be a being who is not caused. A being not caused means it has no beginning or end.

Hence, you have no sense of what Aristotle or Aquinas are saying and it all seems Greek to a neophyte.

Consequently you can’t have an infinite string of beings moving from potentiality to actuality without something moving them into actuality. Consequently there must be a ultimate cause, namely, Aristotle’s Unmoved Prime Mover.

Aristotle did not get all things right about God, however, he did get it right that their had to be a Creator and this Creator by necessity always existed.

Moreover, Scripture had already known this before Aristotle was born. Thus, it is written, “I Am Who Am,” which means He has no beginning or end.” Hence, Aquinas had all the advantages over Aristotle because Aquinas had the Revelation of Scripture. Aristotle only verified the Truth encapsulated in the Wisdom that is embedded in Scripture.

The proof of God’s existence is all there in logical demonstrable sequence that is in conformity with reason. Reasonable minds can understand it, unreasonable closed minds will never see it. Thus, it is said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible, not even with reason.”

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SHORINBJ
POSTED -MAY 16, 2010 7:50 PM
“EXISTENCE”

IRT:
“This example has nothing to do with whether life could or could not have evolved. Regardless, all the evidence says it could have indeed. You are making an Argument from Incredulity, also know as Argument from Lack of Imagination.”

ANS:
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? What’s said is “order” requires an intelligence," not that human life evolved. Subsequently, the Universe is ordered and God is the intelligence who ordered it.

Yes, there is no lack of ideation in you. If you cannot reason that “order presuppose an intelligence” and that all those pages “could” have collated themselves is quite an imagination. To believe a 747 could just assemble itself on its own is incredulous.

Yes, it takes real imagination and incredulity to believe that if a dictionary could sit long enough it could morph into the greatest novel ever written.

IRT:
“You are making an Argument from Incredulity.... The idea of life evolving naturally makes a lot of sense if you look at the fossil record and have a basic understanding of genetics.

ANS:
Really. Genetics are governed by the Natural Law, not chance. So show from genetics and fossils how an intelligence evolved, how matter created love, fortitude and prudence.

How about explaining how a mass of material beginning at the Big Bang, forms life, and then forms an intelligence and consequently ideas when ideas and intelligence have no quantity, or are anti-matter and immeasurable. Namely, ideas are spiritual.

Explain how a spiritual entity evolve from the Big Bang, which has no intelligence, cause an intelligence. That is some imagination and some incredulous ideation. If you can believe that, would you be interested in buying a truck load of last years New York Times at half price?

Second, things do not evolve by changing their nature, if their nature changes they cease to exist. Only their accidental properties change. Consequently, monkeys did not evolve into humans. Monkeys have no intelligence and man does. Hence, it’s simple, you cannot give something you do not have. Try thinking about it.

@ TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1:

"First, Order requires an intelligence. You walk into a room and the room is scattered with pages. The next day you enter the room and the pages are collated and in order. How did they get in order? Either the pages ordered themselves, or someone ordered them. Was it a bird, a squirrel, the dog, the goldfish, a monkey? No! it was a being with intelligence. The Universe is ordered; the one who ordered it, we call God."

This example has nothing to do with whether life could or could not have evolved. Regardless, all the evidence says it could have indeed. You are making an Argument from Incredulity, also know as Argument from Lack of Imagination; you find it difficult to imagine life evolving absent an intelligence. But turn it around. Just because someone finds it hard to imagine God speaking from a burning bush doesn't make it impossible, does it?

The idea of life evolving naturally makes a lot of sense if you look at the fossil record and have a basic understanding of genetics.

Your other argument is a familiar one to anyone who has tried to wrap his or her head around the fact that something must have always existed. It's hard to let go of the idea that an effect must have a cause. But nothing about this says that what is eternal must be God. That brings up the question of who created God, who created God's creator, etc. By the same token, if the universe exists on its own, we wonder what triggered the birth of the universe. Current theory suggests it was a chain reaction begun by the death of the last universe. But then what created that last universe, the one before that, and on and on. And no matter what, there has to be a concept of infinity. But nothing about this says that infinity must be intelligent.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SHORINBJ
POSTED -MAY 16, 2010 7:50 PM
“EXISTENCE”

IRT:
“What proof are we drowning in?”

ANS:
I give you a book and tell you in this book is the greatest novel ever written. It is a dictionary. It will never be a great novel unless the words are ordered by an intelligence.

First, Order requires an intelligence. You walk into a room and the room is scattered with pages. The next day you enter the room and the pages are collated and in order. How did they get in order? Either the pages ordered themselves, or someone ordered them. Was it a bird, a squirrel, the dog, the goldfish, a monkey? No! it was a being with intelligence. The Universe is ordered; the one who ordered it, we call God.

Second, you see a 747. How did it become a Jumbo Jet? Did all the raw materials just by chance happened to process themselves and come together, or did some intelligent being design and build it? Order requires an intelligence; the Universe is ordered by an intelligence that we call God who orders all thing with the Natural Law.

Third, either a thing’s existence is caused by another or it is its own cause, or it always existed. If it caused itself, it would have to come from nothing to something, an impossibility. Hence, that which doesn’t exist cannot cause anything, it must first exist to cause something.

Change or motion, always requires the existence of a potentiality which can be actualized. Consequently, all essences that change are composites of potency and act, and are capable of not existing or existing. All essences, to exist, are caused or moved from potency to act. Nothing in potency can cause actuality. Potential essences are given existences from that which exists. Now since all things that come into existence are caused, they must be caused by another, or given existence.

However, there cannot be an infinite string of potential beings coming into existence. This cannot be unless there is an uncaused being with no beginning or end that is not caused but is infinite, a being with no beginning or end. No matter how far back we go through a chain of caused beings there must be an existing being causing their existence because non-existence cannot cause something. Hence, there needs be an uncaused being we call God, whose essence is His existence.

http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/aristotle_prime_mover.htmc

Sister TTWSTYED dissembles in her usual lunatic fashion:

'It is the lunatic who believes everyone is a lunatic but him. Some 90 percent of Americans believe in God, as did the Founding Fathers (FF); 200 of the top scientists in history, from Copernicus to Einstein and Oppenheimer, believed in God and theodicy. Further, the first University ever created was by the Catholic Church, who is the vanguard of all knowledge. Additionally, there are more Catholic Universities in the world than all the other Universities combined.'
_____________

Copernicus was a Catholic priest, among other things - his heliocentric theory was completely passed over, almost unnoticed, until Galileo later sought to publicize the Copernican theorem - and was quickly suppressed by Cardinal Belarmine...the infamous Grand Inquisitor. Galileo spent the rest of his days in lockup after being forced to recant in order to spare his life.

The Founding Fathers were non-trinitarian Deists and products of the Enlightenment. They firmly believed that men had complete responsibility over their own destiny.

Neither Oppenheimer nor Einstein were religous, much less theists - anti-religion Einstein quotes are plentiful, while Oppenheimer expressed great admiration for the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, and read it in the original language.

The Catholic Church and her apologists are simply unable to successfully hide, conceal, or otherwise obfuscate her nefarious past.....happily persecuting all that would disagree with her delusional doctrines. The Church's numerous contemporary conflicts are already the stuff of legend. That's some fountainhead of knowledge.

And it makes the lifestyle of the bohemian libertine sound downright inviting by comparison.

@ TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1:

What proof are we drowning in? In point of fact, I can cite numerous examples of proof that contradicts the Bible. For example, the fact that there isn't enough water on the entire planet to cover the entire surface of the Earth. Not to mention that a storm on that scale would have had lightning beyond what you can imagine. I'm talking here about massive amounts of energy flying around destroying everything, including arks floating on the water.

How about this nonsense that God made the first rainbow after the flood? This might have seemed reasonable to people back then who didn't have a clue about science, but there are exactly three ways there wouldn't have been rainbows before.

One, it never rained until the flood. Of course it rained, and the Bible mentions rain earlier on.

Two, there was no sunlight. All life would have died under those circumstances. Plus there was the line of "let there be light."

Three, light did not refract. If light did not refract, sight would be impossible. It is light refracting in the lens of the eye that allows sight by focusing the light onto the retina.

You seem to have pulled that 90% statistic out of your ass. The actual number is 78%, from the latest Gallup poll. No, I don't believe that ALL of them are lunatics. Some people are simply willfully blind.

I am a Pagan and a secularist. You are fighting a straw man. No rational atheist/agnostic will claim to know 100% for sure that there is no god. I know one that does, and he drives me crazy. You are the arrogant one, claiming to have access to some ultimate truth that no human being can know until his time comes or God himself shows up and introduces himself. Isn't pride supposed to go before a fall? Admitting that you don't know for sure is the humble thing to do.

You sure aren't going to convert anyone the way you're going. Why don't you rethink your approach?

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND”
POSTED MAY 15, 2010 8:06 PM

IRT:
“We often wonder how religionists can speak with such conviction, when there is simply no real evidence supporting their theism.”

ANS:
Unfortunately there is no proof of God for the morally and mentally blind, and subsequently they eschew the unequivocal evidence they are being drowned in. They can't see the forest because of the trees.

They essentially substitute the absurd for reality. Thus, Pilate asked Jesus, “Truth, what is Truth?” He was standing before All Truth” and could not see it.

To the bohemian libertines all knowledge is subjective. In this contradiction of reality, they grope for anything that will justify their felonious intents, their undisciplined passions, and their absurd aberrations.

It is the lunatic who believes everyone is a lunatic but him. Some 90 percent of Americans believe in God, as did the Founding Fathers (FF); 200 of the top scientists in history, from Copernicus to Einstein and Oppenheimer, believed in God and theodicy. Further, the first University ever created was by the Catholic Church, who is the vanguard of all knowledge. Additionally, there are more Catholic Universities in the world than all the other Universities combined,

According to the Secularists, all of these Universities, Scientists and some 90 percent of Americans, including the FF, are suffering from hallucinations, and only these apostate cynics, similar to the lunatic, are capable of knowing the truth, there is no God.

Hence, to convince themselves, in face of all the profound evidence that confounds them, they devise cockamamie schemes to defend their irrational refute of God. Hence, they manufacture this lamebrain machination, "Confabulation," essentially a denial of reason, as a defense for their undeniable misconceptions.

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

You can always identify a Secularist by their ridiculous subterfuges to achieve and defend their denial of truths. Since they have no rational basis to contradict truth, they present truth as a delusion.

Confabulation is the absurd buffoonery that attempts to explain thought as a material entity, and is a preposterous attempt to defend their anti-socialist disbelief in a True God.

Ironically, a libertine claims immunity to his own contrivances which on their own are manifested delusions themselves. Consequently the Secularist is himself a contradiction.

We often wonder how religionists can speak with such conviction, when there is simply no real evidence supporting their theism.
Their ability to talk all around the issue without offering an iota of concrete proof is downright mystifying.

But an emerging theory of confabulation is a new area of brain science, and finds confabulation a normal feature of human brain function and a necessary part of life. Confabulation has always been seen in the context of delusional thinking brought on by an organic malady i.e schizophrenia or some form of psychosis, Korsakoff's syndrome, dementia, etc.

The complexity and inner coherence of religiously inspired grandiose delusions found with schizophrenia are well known.

However, one does not have to suffer from an organic brain syndrome in order to to be utterly convinced of otherwise unprovable and imaginary assertions.

It's crystal clear to the believer, and as clear as mud to the unconvinced.....

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Confabulation_theory_(computational_intelligence)

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
FREDERIC2
POSTED: May 13, 2010 10:25 Am
“THE GOVERNED”

IRT:
"So they constructed a representative democracy based on GOVERNMENT BY CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.”

ANS:
The "people" are authenticated by the Declaration that declared "all men are Created equal", authorizing the people to govern themselves, and not a tyrannical government that abuses these God given rights. Free countries recognize God. Communist governments do not; they have no God and therefore, claim to be the sole giver of man’s rights.

These nations who do not recognize God, are plagued with totalitarian regimes that trespass on man’s inviolable rights, and are self-destructing by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Famine, Pestilence, War and Death. The Horsemen are the messengers from the Natural Law that seeks recompense for those who violate the precepts of the Natural Law (NL).

Hence, Justices who do not recognize the NL are not fit to sit on the bench. It appears for now, Kagan is an agnostic, a proponent of Judicial Activism, and impervious to the meaning of inviolable rights, since she has donated to abortion advocates, and her decision against the Military on campuses was not Constitutional. Moreover, she is an advocate of Homosexual rights that are opposed to Natural Rights and the NL.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
FREDERIC2
POSTED: May 13, 2010 10:25 Am
“Only To The Morally Blind Does Truth Contradict Truth”

IRT:
It seemed funny Jefferson was an atheists.

ANS:
Jefferson was a mass of contradictions. He was said by most historians to be a Deist; he even wrote his own Bible. However, he wrote “"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul.

“I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is."—SOURCE: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820. What ever that means?

Besides the Declaration, Jefferson also wrote "I have sworn upon the altar of GOD, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."— SOURCE: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800.

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God."—SOURCE: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826. This was the last letter Jefferson ever wrote.

Hence, what ever he was, Deist, Agnostic, or Atheist, he authored the Declaration, and he wasn’t the only one, 56 all together signed it and all had some belief in God and religious affiliations.

Moreover, their presence is witness to the importance of God. For without God, inviolable rights were empty, fleckless and valueless. Hence, materialistic nations give rights that are vacant and vacuous. But, with a God, there is an authority other than Man who will enforce them.

Put your faith in man and you are destined to die; put your faith in God and you are destine to live for ever, for He is the “pursuit of happiness” God endowed on man in the Declaration.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
FREDERIC2
POSTED: May 13, 2010 10:25 Am
“Only To The Morally Blind Does Truth Contradict Truth”

IRT:
“However, I believe you're confused. The Declaration of Independence had a single line about "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." This was written by Thomas Jefferson, which is funny because if any of the Founders was an atheist it was him.”

ANS:
First, you should read the Declaration before commenting on it. It mentions the presence of God more than once and His Natural Law which you deny exists.

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the "LAWS OF NATURE AND OF NATURE'S “GOD” entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT [therefore UNIVERSAL TRUTHS], that all men are CREATED [A CREATOR] equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR [GOD] with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness [these are dictates of the so described the NML].”

Second, the authoritative power of the Declaration over the Constitution and government:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,[EMPOWERED BY THE DECLARATION and the self evident Natural Law] — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Moreover, the people are empowered by the Declaration, and not the Constitution. Hence, “that all men are CREATED (God the Creator mentioned above) equal. The people's authority is from their CREATOR who is the basis for the Bill of Rights.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
FREDERIC2
POSTED: May 13, 2010 10:25 Am
“Only To The Morally Blind Does Truth Contradict Truth”

IRT:
"If I were a Catholic, I would pray to god to save us from these fellow humans. His Catholic "Natural Law": Preposterous."

ANS:
First, the Natural Law is universal, not of Catholic origin, or drummed up by Catholics; it is the sole domain of God. Thus, Catholics didn’t make either the Natural Law or the Natural Moral Laws; God did. Therefore, Catholicism, the Court, or anyone but God, can change it one iota. Unfortunately, the Court has tried, and over 52,000,000 unborn are dead because of it.

Through the centuries, dissolute men and governments have thought these laws were their domain, and the disasters that ensued were nefariously horrendous. Mao, Stalin, and Hitler tried and some 200,000,000 died. Worldwide, some 43,000,000/yr. unborn are murdered by abortion, 26,000,000 have died from AIDS, 35,000,000 are infected with HIV, and double that are with STD infections. Hence the NL and NML does exist; it cannot be compromised, and cares not whether the foolish believe it or not.

IRT;:
“In the first place, the Founders were far from perfect, and should not be appealed to as the final authority.”

ANS:
No, they weren’t perfect, and no one said they were, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore them and authorize Justices to write laws violating the 5th Article of the Constitution. Moreover, that seems to be the problem with our aloof Court today.

It is the majority of the standing Court that is claiming they know what the Constitution says, not the Founding Fathers (FF) who wrote the Constitution or the people. That seems to suggest that the FF didn’t know what they wrote, but these elitist injudicious liberal Secularists do, which is pure priggery.

Who is more authoritative to say what the Constitution meant if not the “FF" who wrote the Constitution. Why listen to someone hundreds of years later tell us what the FF said and intended when they contradict what the FF and all the Courts before them?

However, that is what is happening. Today, the liberal Justices are telling America they know what the Constitution says not the FF including all the previous Courts before "Roe".

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

I know what common sense is; and you seem to know what it is in, by giving a good definition. So? Why don't you have any?

I think there is nothing much wrong with you that a good, swift kick in the pants couldn't cure.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
YEAL9
“ELIMINATIONS”
POSTED BY: MAY 14, 2010 9:35 AM

IRT:
The law schools attended by the Supreme Court Justices should eliminate any religious influence on their decisions

ANS:
"You might note that if there were no religious influence when America became independent and wrote the Constitution, we may have been another Communist nation. Of course, to the Obama apparatchiks and quislings that would be perfectly fine."

http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html

The religious affiliations of these individuals are summarized below. Obviously this is a very restrictive set of names, and does not include everyone who could be considered an "American Founding Father." But most of the major figures that people generally think of in this context are included using these criteria, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and more.

Religious Affiliation of all signers of the Declaration of Independence:
signers #
Episcopalian/Anglican 32
Congregationalist 13
Presbyterian 12
Quaker 2
Unitarian or Universalist 2
Catholic 1
TOTAL 100% 56

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO DID ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING:

- signed the Declaration of Independence
- signed the Articles of Confederation
- attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787
- signed the Constitution of the United States of America
- served as Senators in the First Federal Congress (1789-1791)
- served as U.S. Representatives in the First Federal Congress

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION
OF U.S. FOUNDING FATHERS
FOUNDING
FATHERS # %
Episcopalian/Anglican 88-54.7%
Presbyterian 30-18.6%
Congregationalist 27-16.8%
Quaker 7,-4.3%
Dutch Reformed/German 6-3.7%

Lutheran 5-3.1%
Catholic 3-1.9%
Huguenot 3-1.9%
Unitarian3-1.9%
Methodist 2-1.2%
Calvinist 1-0.6%
TOTAL 204

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
FREDERIC2
POSTED: May 13, 2010 10:25 Am
“Only To The Morally Blind Does Truth Contradict Truth”

IRT
“So how do we minimize subjectivity and impulsiveness in U.S. law? Ditching the sky fairy is w conclusion: The fact that somebody knows Greek letters is no shield against utter stifling stupidity.”

ANS:
The stifling stupidity? What does that have to do with Greek unless you’re speaking of our ignoramus perverse consummate prevaricator president bailing out Greece. That is stifling stupidity typifying the Secularist iconoclasts.

Justice Kennedy said if one could prove that the “conceived” was human, abortion would be unconstitutional. Well it has been proven by credible Eugenicist, Embryologist, and Microbiologist, but Kennedy still defends abortion.

Why use "witless?” Justice Blackmun, in “Roe” created new beings—partial humans—part thing and part human. His Trimester Theory was so ridiculous that its final conclusion was that woman is never with child. If you can believe that you will believe anything and you will be an ignoramus, as was Jacoby’s icon, Justice Warren, whose Court overturned more Supreme Court decisions than all the previous Courts combined.

Since, according to Blackmun and the Court, woman was never with child, a butcher could take a child being born and plunge a surgical scissors into the back of its skull and suck out its brains while it was flailing and struggling for its first breaths. That might be perfectly copasetic to the Secularist, viz. murdering little children, violating your inalienable rights, and legalizing murder. However, that is why the Court is abominable, absurd and asinine.

The bigots are the pro-abortionist who can see a child being born and claim it isn’t human until it is free from the mother. However, if an abortion is botched, the butcher performing it may strangle the child or drown it in its own mother’s blood.

Pro-Abortionist are pretentious paragons of virtue, who claim they show compassion by allowing the murder of a mother’s unborn, irrespective that according to Health & Human Services 90% of women who abort wanted to keep their child. In addition, teens and adolescents who abort are highly receptive to breast cancer.

Back to the topic:

The law schools attended by the Supreme Court Justices should eliminate any religious influence on their decisions

To wit:

Harvard Law School

Harry Blackmun
Louis Brandeis
William J. Brennan, Jr.
Stephen Breyer
Harold Hitz Burton
Felix Frankfurter
Melville Fuller - did not graduate
Ruth Bader Ginsburg — graduated from Columbia Law School
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Anthony Kennedy - current
William Henry Moody - did not graduate
Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr.
John Roberts - current
Edward Terry Sanford
Antonin Scalia - current
David Hackett Souter - current

Yale Law School

Samuel Alito - current
Henry Baldwin
David Davis
Abe Fortas
George Shiras, Jr.
Sonia Sotomayor - current
Potter Stewart
William Strong
Clarence Thomas - current
Byron White

Columbia Law School

Benjamin N. Cardozo - completed two years, did not graduate
William O. Douglas
Ruth Bader Ginsburg - also attended Harvard Law School - current
Charles Evans Hughes
Joseph McKenna - studied at the law school, did not graduate
Stanley Forman Reed - also attended University of Virginia School of Law, did not graduate from either
Harlan Fiske Stone

Should we be concerned because most of the current Supreme Court Justices attended either Harvard or Yale law schools?

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
FREDERIC2
POSTED: May 13, 2010 10:25 Am
“Only To The Morally Blind Does Truth Contradict Truth”

IRT:
[They [the Court] made law subjective, relative, and based on the impulsive authority of man. They proffered an anthropocentric world that should be theocentric one.]

"Since god is a human construct (and an infinitely malleable one), your theocentric law is also [subjective, relative, and based on the impulsive authority of man] - far more so than the secularism you decry."

ANS;
Subjective, yes, to the Perfect One, who made them, but not made subjective by an impulsive Court, but universally applicable to all men.

If Morality is not objective and universal, then morality becomes subjective and meaningless. Thus, the classic secularist who laments, “Don’t force your morality on me,” believes he is the sole judges of morality.

However, if everyone has his own moral laws, there is no meaning to morality because morality can be what any one wants it to be. Hence, if your neighbor believes arson is morally permissible, than just as the Court justifies murder, he can justify burning your house down.

Stalin, bin Laden, Saddam and Mao had no scruples about determining what was moral or immoral. Nor does our Supreme Court who also believed morality was subjective and therefore could not be a basis for Civil Law. But, the Natural and Moral Law (N&ML) are the cornerstone of all Civil Law because the N&ML is based on human nature.

Therefore, if morality is subjective, what makes these tyrannical dictators moral beliefs any more justified then America’s beliefs. The answer is, the belief of the despots violate the N&ML.

Thusly, stealing, murder, and lying are all universal precepts proscribed by the N&ML. They are binding on all men and governments. Those who deny the N&ML suffer the consequences of the four horsemen-Famine, Pestilence, War and Death. Two are here now, viz. Death (the Culture of Death, a.k.a. Abortion) and Pestilence (AIDS and STDs).

Hence, it is of immense importance that any Justice who does not believe in the God of our Judeo-Christian Heritage, who endowed man with his inalienable rights should not be qualified to sit on the Court because they are an anathema to the Constitution that basis man’s inalienable rights on the N&ML and the God who made them.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“PROBLEMS”
POSTED MAY 13, 2010 11:52 AM

Irt:
“Well then, if you know what common sense is, then what is your problem?”

ANS:
Why are you seeing problems. The problem apparently is yours. Weren’t you the one who having a problem with what Common Sense was? Didn’t you asked what does common sense means? Is the problem that you still don’t understand what it means?

Common sense tells me not to give you a link that explains it; apparently what has been explained has already confused you, and a link might confuse you even more.

@ TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1:

"However, the Founders, who were not foolish, recognized God's existence and our inalienable rights. They were correct and they produced the greatest nation in History by recognized our inalienable rights were endowed by God and not man."

In the first place, the Founders were far from perfect, and should not be appealed to as the final authority.

However, I believe you're confused. The Declaration of Independence had a single line about "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." This was written by Thomas Jefferson, which is funny because if any of the Founders was an atheist it was him.

But the Constitution deliberately omits any mention of God. Don't believe me? Go read it. Including the signatures there are 4,543 words, and not one of them is "God." Closest you can get is "Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven," which is a fancy way of saying 17 September 1787 A.D.

The Constitution doesn't talk about God, but it does say "We the People." As in, the new government's power came from the people, not from God. This makes sense in historical context -- the American people had just plain had it with monarchs who claimed to derive their power from a deity. So they constructed a representative democracy based on GOVERNMENT BY CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

Your assertion is completely incorrect; though Christians have been in the majority since Colonial times, this is not and never was a Christian nation. That was the Framers' gift to this country.

"You have fortunately destroyed your own argument by unconsciously confirming the validity of the Scriptures. God created a perfect man but Adam screwed things up and impugned his own integrity and was no longer perfect."

So Adam's testicles were where, exactly? He had no blind spot? Before the fall, did he see in infrared as well as the visible spectrum? Did he have gills so that he could breathe under water? And what is the "perfect man"? Did he have five fingers or 876? Why is 5 more perfect than 876? Did he urinate and defacate? Did he need a woman to reproduce? Seems superfluous . . god doesn't have a mate, supposedly - why create one for man?

No, your scriptures simply respond to the mysteries of life by making stuff up, and then saying, "Of course, it seems like nonsense to you! God is unknowable!" Yep, he is somehow omnipotent "without potency." His existence is his essense, and he is "without composition." He is the definition of white and fully black!

Please.

As for Aquinas' proofs, they are pure fantasy. The first three rely on the idea of a regress while fallaciously assuming that god is exempt. Meanwhile, the argument from degree is hopelessly capricious, and the argument from design - well, we've already put that to bed with your ludicrous analogies, yes?

Your dedication to Bronze Age superstition - and medieval attempts to justify Bronze Age superstition - is, well, dumbfounding. The Enlightenment is several centuries old now. Time to catch up.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
BUCKMINSTERJ
PROOF OF GOD:
Posted May 13, 2010 2:54 PM

IRT:
As for your Boeing 747: wouldn't an omnipotent god be far more complex (and therefore more improbable) than a jet plane?

ANS:
To the contrary, not more improbable, but more unknowable because He is Infinite Being. God Is Perfect, Simple, without potency, and unchangeable. His probability is shown by Aristotle.

Changeable beings begin, God doesn't begin or change. God is simple in nature, viz. pure actuality. Creatures are composites of Potency and Act. God’s essence is His existence. Hence, it is written, “I Am Who Am.” He always exist in the present not in time.

http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/aristotle_prime_mover.htm

The purpose of human life is to become like God, perfect. Hence, the natural end of man is perfect happiness, without potentialities without wants.

Man is in a perpetual search for eternal happiness in an imperfect world. To be satisfied he must seek the perfection of God for which man is made. Thus, St. Augustine writes, “Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” To do so is to be God like.

IRT:
How, then, could your creator have just assembled himself? Maybe your god was actually designed by a super-god of some kind? Who was himself designed by a super-super-god?

ANS:
You have the dog chasing his tail a God creating a God. There can only be one God; anything else would be a contradiction.

God is without composition. Things that change are composed of potency and act. Consequently, they are corruptible. Moreover, the essence of all creatures precede the created. All have a beginning. God has no beginning or end because his essence is his existence. All essences (in potency) begins when given existence by the Creator.

IRT:
“As, human life did not just spring into existence by chance and from nothing,...a process driven by natural selection.”

ANS:
First, you assume something exists. The problem is how it came into existence.

Natural Selection is a Natural Law. Law presumes an intelligence, that intelligence is whom we call God. Man’s nature does not evolve. Namely, if it evolved man would assume another nature not human ceasing to be man.

Yes life did just come into existence from nothing because to exist it requires a Creator, one who must be eternal existence with no beginning and no end to cause life to begin, viz. the Prime Mover.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
BUCKMINSTERJ
PROOF OF GOD:
Posted May 13, 2010 2:54 PM

IRT:
As for your Boeing 747: wouldn't an omnipotent god be far more complex (and therefore more improbable) than a jet plane?

ANS:
To the contrary, God Is Perfect, Simple, without potency, and unchangeable. His probability is shown by Aristotle. Changeable beings begin, God doesn't begin or change. God is simple in nature, viz. pure actuality. Creatures are composites of Potency and Act. God’s essence is His existence. Hence, it is written, “I Am Who Am.” He always exist in the present not in time.

http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/aristotle_prime_mover.htm

The purpose of human life is to become like Him, namely perfect. That is the natural end of man, perfect happiness, without potentialities without wants.

Man is in a perpetual search for eternal happiness in an imperfect world. To be satisfied he must seek the perfection of God for which man is made. Thus, St. Augustine writes, “Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” To do so is to be God like.

IRT:
How, then, could your creator have just assembled himself? Maybe your god was actually designed by a super-god of some kind? Who was himself designed by a super-super-god?

ANS:
You have the dog chasing his tail a God creating a God. There can only be one God; anything else would be a contradiction.

God is without composition. Things that change are composed of potency and act. Consequently, they are corruptible. Moreover, the essence of all creatures precede the created. All have a beginning. God has no beginning or end because his essence is his existence. All essences (in potency) begins when given existence by the Creator.

IRT:
“As, human life did not just spring into existence by chance and from nothing,...a process driven by natural selection.”

ANS:
First, you assume something exists. That problem is how it came into existence.

Natural Selection is a Natural Law. Law presumes an intelligence, that intelligence is whom we call God. Man’s nature does not evolve. Namely, if it evolved man would assume another nature not human ceasing to be man.

Yes life did just come into existence from nothing because to exist it requires a Creator, one who must be eternal existence with no beginning and no end to cause life to begin.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
BUCKMINSTERJ
PROOF OF GOD:
Posted May 13, 2010 2:54 PM

IRT:
“Um, those are not proofs of God’s existence – they are superstitious speculations that have been debunked countless times, by countless people smarter than me.

ANS:
And, who are these countless people smarter than you. Don’t be taken in by fools. The Five Proofs of God and the Prime Mover by Aristotle are not from Scripture but from reason. Of course if you have a faulty reason they make no sense to you, nor will they ever.

Many have attempted to spoof these proofs throughout the centuries, but when they put their beliefs into practice their theories failed miserably. However, the Founders, who were not foolish, recognized God's existence and our inalienable rights. They were correct and they produced the greatest nation in History by recognized our inalienable rights were endowed by God and not man.

IRT:
I take it that your precisely assembled pages are an analogy for the human body? Fine – only problem is that the human genome is definitively imperfect..."

ANS:
You have fortunately destroyed your own argument by unconsciously confirming the validity of the Scriptures. God created a perfect man but Adam screwed things up and impugned his own integrity and was no longer perfect.

Hence, death entered the world, and man was destined to work by the sweat of his brow. Concupiscence chalenged reason and the weak fell prey to their irrational proclivities.

You might read Genesis. Adam’s nature was wounded. He no longer remained perfect and lost his preternatural gifts God had given him. Consequently, man is subject to error. Hence it is written, “With God all things are possible; with man alone nothing is possible.”

IN REPLY TO
BUCKMINSTERJ

THE ATHIEST IN THE BASEMENT

"If, on entering a home with three floors, one deludes himself into believing that there is nothing above the basement where the Id lives, then, to have fun, one must explore every nook and corner of that subliminal floor. But to one who knows that there are two other floors above, each one more beautiful than the other, the joy of life will be in having these higher mysteries revealed.

Literature throughout the centuries depicted love but never concentrated very much on sex until this century, and that is because our times refuse to believe that there is anything beyond. Modern man substitutes prodding for discovery, analysis for ascension, the scalpel for the microscope, and the couch for the prie-dieu."

If there is no God, there is no inalienable rights. Rights would be given by man. That’s what is done in godless countries like Russia, China, N. Korea, and by Terrorists.

However, there is a God, as the Founding Fathers (FF) wrote in the Declaration of Independence (DI), and there are inalienable rights.

Furthermore, these rights are endowed by God, and not by government. Consequently, the FF wrote, if the government consistently violates these rights, it is not only the right of its citizens to replace that government with a government that restores those rights, but it is their duty (DI).

The Court has trespassed on these rights without authority and impugned the integrity of human life. Moreover, in “Roe," they have usurped the providence of the Natural and Moral Law (N&ML) and redefined the nature of man.

The Court has no more authority to do so than to declare that all fish must fly. The N&ML is the domain of God not man. They have banned the basic precepts of the N&ML that is described in the “Ten Commandments and Scripture.”

If government declared only a one child family is legal, and murdered your second child, why would that not be intolerable? They do that in Godless nations.

If God and the N&ML are only constructs of the mind, why would Hitler’s and China's constructs not be just as valid as ours?

To the contrary, there is a God and His N&ML is an essential element of all governments.

Um, those are not proofs of God’s existence – they are superstitious speculations that have been debunked countless times, by countless people smarter than me.

Still let me take a stab:

I take it that your precisely assembled pages are an analogy for the human body? Fine – only problem is that the human genome is definitively imperfect: blind spot in the retina, useless appendix, odd placement of testicles, and all that. If the body were a book, in other words, page 112 would be upside down, the foreword would appear at the end, and chapters 12-17 would be missing entirely. Nicely done, omnipotent creator.

As for your Boeing 747: wouldn't an omnipotent god be far more complex (and therefore more improbable) than a jet plane? How, then, could your creator have just assembled himself? Maybe your god was actually designed by a super-god of some kine? Who was himself designed by a super-super-god?

Besides, human life did not just spring into existence by chance and from nothing, nor is it (unlike a 747) a finished product. We arrived at our current state via gradual evolution, a process driven by natural selection. Google them.

Next: Miracles (i.e. events of extreme improbability), contrary to your assertion, have myriad explanations, depending of course on the miracle in question. Divine intervention is not one of them.

Finally, your argument from scripture is hardly worth dignifying with a response. I might as well say Dan Brown was right about the origins of Christianity because it says so in his books.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
BUCKMINSTERJ
POSTED MAY 13, 2010 10:38 AM
“HUMAN CONSTRUCTS”

IRT:
Since god is a human construct (and an infinitely malleable one), your theocentric law is also "subjective, relative, and based on the impulsive authority of man" - far more so than the secularism you decry.

ANS:
The word is not “malleable,” my friend, it called “Omnipotent.”

So God doesn’t exist. I can prove God exists; can you prove He doesn’t?

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm

Let's say you walk into a room and find papers scattered all around the room. The next day you find the papers were collated and in perfect order page by page. Would you believe these papers collated themselves, or that someone ordered them and why?

Let’s say you see a 747. Do you believe it made itself? . Do you believe that the raw material came together by chance and formed this plane? Maybe some monkeys from the jungle thought up the idea, dug up all the raw materials and put this airplane together. Only an imbecile would believe that.

Even more would it take an imbecile to believe that the Universe millions of times more ordered than a room of collated papers or a 747, designed itself.

Namely, to believe the Big Bang, a compression of concentrated matter caused itself and formed the Universe, wrote all the laws of Physics and Chemistry without an intellect has to be the delusions of an imbecile. Such an illusion would be incredulous and it would answer the question why the hallucination that God is a fairy tale exists.

God does exist. He is manifested in His works, in one’s conscience, and is demonstrable from reason from the existence of Order, Cause and Effect.

The only explanation of Miracles is the intervention of God into the natural order. His Miracles are witnessed in the Scriptures. In today's world Miracles are ostensibly documented throughout the world, and patently verified in such places as Lourdes and Fatima.

Moreover, explain how the life of Jesus was foretold over 300 years before He was born and He fulfilled the Old Testament prophesy to its smallest detail. In addition, what would be the motive of the Apostles and all they converted to risk martyrdom for a fantasy?

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
AORJI
“RELIGION”

IRT:
“The last thing we need is a religious bent on the supreme court. We already have too, too much with Alito.”

ANS:
What religious doctrines has Alito forced on the Court?

IRT:
"I doubt very much if the Christian religious community will ever live up to Mathew 6:6."

ANS:
Prayer is both private and public. That’s why there are Churches. Jesus often prayed privately, in the temple publicly, and openly to thousands. In two miracles, He publically feed thousands with a few fish and loaves.

IRT:
Bush’s inflexible positioning mantra. "My way or the Highway" stimulated emotional and violent reactions.

ANS:
To the contrary, it is the denial of truth that causes violent emotional reactions, for one, abortion, the murder of the unborn.

Some things are inflexible, namely, the intransigency of the Natural & Moral Law (N&ML). Hence, murder and lying are crimes against humanity. Thus, some 52 million aborted unborn have been murdered. Gay-sex and Gay marriage are moral contradictions.

However, a profligate Court made morality subjective, relative, and meaningless. The Court incredulously claimed Traditional morality served no legitimate purpose to the State and was not a basis for Civil Law when the N&ML is the cornerstone of all Civil Law.

Human life is sacred and endowed with certain inalienable rights. These rights are inviolable and inscribed in the Bill of Rights. Consequently, Bush would not compromise these rights but the Court did and concluded your life is no different than cattle or pigs in “Roe” and “Lawrence v. Texas.” Was the Court right?

Nor would Bush compromise the life of the embryo, an innocent human person protected by the 4th, 5th, 9th, and the 14th Amendments that guarantee the equality and sanctity of all persons.

Because of its irreligious and amoral beliefs, the libertine Court, unrestrained by convention and morality impugned man's dignity and degraded humanity. Is that okay?

Because Christianity holds that all human life is sacred, religion does matter. The irreligious on the Court made immorality a human right, elevated gay-sex to the equal of conjugal love, and impugned the building blocks of Society, Marriage, and Family.

Though man may choose to be immoral, there is no right to immorality. Hence, the NML exacts its vengeance on all nations who choose to be immoral.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

Well then, if you know what common sense is, then what is your problem?

TTW: "They made law subjective, relative, and based on the impulsive authority of man. They proffered an anthropocentric that should be theocentric."

Since god is a human construct (and an infinitely malleable one), your theocentric law is also "subjective, relative, and based on the impulsive authority of man" - far more so than the secularism you decry.

So how do we minimize subjectivity and impulsiveness in U.S. law? Ditching the sky fairy is always a good place to start . . .

All this TTWS phenomenon has to offer is slime and invectives, under the guise of a lot of words. The sad conclusion: The fact that somebody knows Greek letters is no shield against utter stifling stupidity.

To wit, some examples of his enlightening vocabulary:

pretentious pedantic
Democrats, who are consummate liars and hypocrites
witless
amoral
bigots
travesty
ignoramus disaster
abomination
etc. etc.

without a single statement worth reading: Quite a feat!

If I were a catholic, I would pray to god to save us from these fellow humans.

His Catholic "Natural Law": Preposterous.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“COMMONSENSE”

IRT:
What do you think common sense is?

ANS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense

"Common sense based on a strict construction of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" as their common natural understanding. Some people (such as the authors of Merriam-Webster Online) use the phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that — in their opinion — most people would consider prudent and of sound judgment, without reliance on esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people 'in common'.

“Thus 'common sense' (in this view) equates to the knowledge and experience which most people allegedly have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have. However this is not the common dictionary definition. The most common meaning to the phrase is good sense and sound judgment in practical matters."

"Common sense remains a perennial topic in epistemology and many philosophers make wide use of the concept or at least refer to it. Some related concepts include intuitions, pre-theoretic belief, ordinary language, the frame problem, foundational beliefs, good sense, endoxa, and axioms.

"Endoxa (Greek: ἔνδοξα) derives from the word doxa (δόξα). Aristotle uses the term endoxa (commonly held beliefs accepted by the wise/by elder rhetors and/or by the public in general) to acknowledge the beliefs of the culture embedded in universal common traditions.

"Endoxa is a more stable belief than doxa, because it has been 'tested' in argumentative struggles in the Polis by prior interlocutors. The use of endoxa in the Stagirite's Organon can be found in Aristotle's 'Topics' and 'Rhetoric'".

Aristotle considers "Endoxa" as knowledge we come to from experience over the centuries that has been tested and proven to be fruitful because they are true. It is what we call Tradition, viz. traditional values.

"Common-sense ideas tend to relate to events within human experience (such as good will), and thus appear commensurate with human scale." (Ibid)

Aristotle cautions that this knowledge should not be taken lightly because it has been tested for centuries and proven to be true. Hence, the traditional concepts of Marriage and family, a mother and father are icons of human values formed over all time in consonance with the Natural & Moral Law. They should not be dismissed in a time of passionate and shallow emotional exuberance.

(between the original sin and the original monkey).

its the ripe time to refine and suprem the suprem justice ,suprem thought, out of the above 2 hole and delusion,

juchristianity says,
for so god love the world he nailed his only son to the cross for the sin of mankind????

evolution depict,trace and originate mankind all the way to monkeyism????

a civilized suprem justce should know better.

Ms. Jacoby, I wonder if you've seen this latest from Gallup? If not, here it is.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx

I'd love to see you post your thoughts on this.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

And what of "common sense?" Does common sense come in to play in any of this?

What do you think common sense is?

Strictly speaking, the only topic pertaining to evolution that the Supreme Court has to address is the continuance of legal prohibitions against the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in public school systems - as alternatives to evolutionary theory.

These are obviously topics better suited for historical/comparative religious studies. Since this would require an objective, academic view of world religions and religion as a social institution, most school systems refuse to take the more sensible approach to student education - preferring to preach, rather than teach. This is where SCOTUS comes in. And then we have this:

'Furthermore it has been demonstrated that evolution is not necessarily a slow process but can act in a matter of generations.'
_____________

Evolution in the short term is cognitively/behaviorally based. As information/technology increase, cultures change and 'evolve'.

Scientific discoveries will typically lead the vanguard of cultural evolution, but emotion-based religious beliefs will slow the process - so this could be perceived as nature's balancing act, for better or worse.

Natural biological changes are extremely slow-paced, and have little or nothing to do with cultural changes - they simply do not occur together in the same time frame at all. This is in accordance with the most recent thinking on biology and cultural change.

For a different view, see Julian Jaynes and the 'Origin of Consciousness: The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'. He hypothesized a grand theorem - that modern self-aware consciousness was a mere few thousand years old.

The relatively recent emergence of modern consciousness was/is responsible for the rise of human culture, according to this view - a view not widely accepted by most contemporary researchers.

Cultural change occurs for many reasons, and most likely all involve processes whereby information reaches a 'critical mass' that simply forces a figurative 're-wiring' of how humans perceive the world.

The scientific mindset is also sometimes resistent to change - Einstein's discoveries on relativity, quantum field theory/mechanics, the Planck constants, and Hawking's thinking on the nature of black holes, are all examples of how modern physics was forced to change it's point of view on the laws of nature...quantum gravity is the next major frontier.

Obviously religion changes slowly, if at all, and tends to stand in opposition to this periodic process of cognitive/cultural retrofitting and the inevitable changes to beliefs, values, behaviors, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SUSAN JACOBY
“SUPREME COURT QUALIFICATIONS”

IRT:
“Religious correctness demands that we pretend it doesn't matter. But religious conviction does matter.”

ANS:
The only pretense that "religion doesn’t matter on the Court" is made by the pretentious pedantic anti-Catholic Democrats, who are consummate liars and hypocrites. They stand for the anti-Christian Murder of the Unborn (Abortion), Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Gay Sex and Gay Marriage and are the progenitors of the Sexual Revolution and the Culture of Death but ludicrously claim they are for the common man.

To Dems it does matter if one is a devout Catholic. The Democrats don’t nominate devout Catholics, however, they mouth the duplicitous rhetoric that religion doesn’t matter, knowing well that it does. Thus, Dems nominate witless amoral judicial activists who write laws and don’t interpret them to generate the Social engineering they can't pass in Congress.

The Democrats are the pawns of anti-Christian alliances as NOW, ACLU, and NARAL, and multiple Gay groups. Liberals as Speaker Pelosi, Sen. Leahy who chairs the Sen. Judiciary Com., the superficial anti-Catholic death-bed converted Sen. Kennedy and Obama the Social Communist are duplicitous anti-Catholic bigots that are more a detriment to the Catholic faith than were the scornful pedophile priest.

No Justice should be on the Court who is pro-Abortion. Sorry, but Abortion is also a moral Constitutional issue. Our Founding Fathers based our inalienable Bill of Rights on the Natural Moral Law that governs all mankind, regardless of race, color, sex, or religion.

Abortion is a violation of the Bill of Rights, irrespective of the Court's illegal and immoral trespass on our Constitutionally protected inviolable rights.

The Dems are a Constitutional abomination. Ginsberg is an abysmal anti-God Constitutional travesty, is agenda driven, writes law, does not interpret the law and is a contradiction of the Founding Fathers. Agenda matters more than does the Constitution to Dems and Obama, the Socialist Communist.

Warren (a judicial ignoramus disaster) and his Court overturned more “stare decisis” decisions than all the preceding Courts combined.

Devout Catholic Justices are grounded in the Natural Moral Law, a necessity to insure the efficacy of our Bill of Rights. Elena Kagan praised Justice Marshall who trashed the Constitution with unmitigated gall.

Part one.

What should be the religious composition of America's Supreme Court? Does religion matter in the mix of experience and expertise that a president seeks in a Supreme Court nominee?

Let me answer this question by describing what has actually loosely occurred over America's history. First, over America's history it has been recognized that the political structure of society, or if you will, political economy, should not be tightly tied to any particular religion. The Constitution in fact is a document which expressly forbids reduction of politics to any particular religion. That said something not very unpredictable has occurred: A political juggling by which something of the political essence of each major religion has influenced politics so that although no one religion claims the field, all are grudgingly satisfied in the sense that the political economy comes to be something of the religious reflection to have each man equal before God. In other words, politics is separate from religion, yes, but politics most certainly does not dash the religious hope of political utopia. On the contrary.

If we move to the extreme of Socialism in America as opposed to any particular religion we see something of the desire to have religion overcome-- or at least not have society reduced to any particular religion--and the hope in a political utopia not at all far removed from the typical religious dream of each man equal before God and saved in his arms. In short, Socialism is man's best solution so far to religious difference. Therefore the religious composition of the Supreme Court should always be such to drive a solution to particular religion even if the result is only Socialism, and the experience and expertise of a Supreme Court Justice should be such to somehow reconcile personal leanings toward religion with all the other evident religions in American society. And to be even clearer, when America was founded--and all through her history--religion was supposed to be separate from politics, but something of religion was distilled from conflict between particular religions anyway, and the result has been--if it must have a name--Socialism.

Part two.

And things become even clearer when we understand that the politics of America, the Constitution, has never been anything really modern and scientific but rather a religious, legal and economic process--a process of reconciling various religious beliefs, etc. and doing so by law and economics to the point that we now call such "secularism" and "Socialism". In fact the ignorance of the Supreme Court--not to mention the Constitution as a document--of science promises to be one of the great looming problems in the new millennium . A problem easily enough explained. But first we should sum up and say that there seems to be a process in Western Civilization whereby religious belief is overcome in paradoxically politics which does not so much erase religion as satisfy the essence of religious hope: A better, more secure, more lasting happiness and life. And this is what the Supreme Court generally upholds despite conservative and liberal leanings.

Now of course this has been a wide angle view given here. A view which steps into the distance so as to both distill the process which has been occurring in American political life despite evident particularities, and to get in position to see how much American politics and economics is removed from the scientific viewpoint and the problems science opens up. We would hope there is some leniency on the reader's part which would make him agree that American political life is neither reducible to this or that religion, nor is religious hope dispensed with, rather it is realized in attempts to have all men equal and with opportunity.--And this is where American political life runs up against a particular problem opened up by science. Science it will be observed makes all Supreme Court reconciliation of religion and support of whatever politics, not to mention Socialism, facile, in fact dangerously out of touch with reality.

Part three.

But to get to the particular problem science presents to American politics, the Supreme Court, our very Constitution. The problem can be summed up in one word: Evolution. The theory of evolution according to Darwin and subsequent findings. The evidence points to man having evolved over a six million year period from a primitive ancestor. In fact recent evidence has man with one to four percent Neanderthal genes. Furthermore it has been demonstrated that evolution is not necessarily a slow process but can act in a matter of generations. What this means, by whatever name one wants to give the process of evolution or by whatever positive description one wants to give of the same (what spin put on such such as saying natural selection is not ruthless when from the human ethical perspective it can only be called that), is that man has perpetually been altering as a species--in fact been working toward ever more complex speciation. Now American political life is utterly unprepared to deal with this problem. Evolution describes a vertical process of transformation whereby even the fittest specimens of a species are eventually overcome in a still more complex species…

While American politics is still at the level of trying to reconcile quite petty collective differences of the religious, etc. sort in a society which actually moves horizontally rather than vertically, does not call for transformation of man but rather asks that all men be taken at face value, more than face value--we must not judge according to composition of face or anything really. Which means society does not confront the problem science presents at all. Which means we have at best pseudo confrontations with science such as the declaration that evolution has already been addressed by politics and that evolution politically was called Social Darwinism or something of the like and rejected as pseudo science…In other words, when we look past all the trickery politics has posed with respect to evolution we find that evolution has presented a too difficult problem to politics so politics has had to reject all attempts to grapple with evolution politically and instead acts as if evolution is not occurring at all or something, let alone presents a problem…But let me be absolutely clear. Politics in American life has swayed from a Social Darwinistic view to the most liberal Socialism at different times, but never has the problem of man transforming vertically--in the evolutionary sense--been met.

Part four.

Rather all attempts to reconcile politics with evolution have been reviled as evil--or more likely these days, evolution has been falsely interpreted in the light of mere political hopes--as if evolution can be kept from politics and must not rather be seen honestly and repeatedly attempted to be made ethical. Apparently man cannot deal with the fact he has been transforming let alone transform himself further. Man instead tries to pretend evolution has no influence on politics or that he is evolutionarily stable and with no further change or something. Man just continues with the apparent dream of overcoming religion in a society which is not so much the overcoming of religion but religious utopia realized on earth: Socialism. No politics exists yet which can morally deal with evolution, with the problems evolution presents, so all political acts which claim to act according to evolution are reviled as evil or do not really act according to evolution but pretend to do so… And justifiably so…but it is also no answer to proceed as if Socialism answers life's problems. The fact is man is politically deficient until the day he can approximate the process of transformation evolution depicts but approximate it with morality rather than act with the apparent ruthlessness evolution has so often presented as its action. Man politically must not just overcome religious differences but act on science and solve the problems science presents.

We do the former in American political life but not the latter. We pretend we do the latter, which is to say we just call all attempts to make politics compatible with evolution evil or act as if evolution is being dealt with, as if problem therefore solved, but nothing is solved. We still have the fact we transformed from something which apparently was closer to a chimpanzee than to what we are now and we cannot deal with it let alone transform ourselves further. We just continue declaring all men equal if not before God then before one another in a happy Socialistic state. We perpetrate a radically horizontal process in our politics in other words, while the process of making vertical transformation ethical eludes us. But we cannot pretend the problem does not exist. In fact I have already articulated it very clearly: Evolution shows man has transformed over millions of years. Man in his politics prefers to avoid seeing this let alone trying to solve it--because he cannot make it ethical--so chooses politics, specifically Socialism, which is the radical opposite of evolution. Socialism in fact is the realization of religious hopes politically at the same time that religion is being dispensed with for the scientific view not to mention evolution…

Part five.

So really the problem the Supreme Court Justices have is that all the tools at their disposal, all their desires to effect some sort of intelligent reconciliation between differences, are ineffective so far before the problem evolution presents and what they should be discussing is how they can make evolution an ethical process rather than trying to avoid this difficulty and reducing themselves to solving religious differences and so on…American politics, whether one is on the right or left, is being played at the prescientific level as if evolution is not even a theory let alone problem to man…but man evolved from a primitive creature to what he is now and the task is to somehow get man to continue evolving but make the process ethical and not have Social Darwinism or Naziism and so on…Which is to say religion is foreground so far as the Supreme Court is concerned, a minor problem we have already largely solved by having Socialism as the answer to religious difference…However the problem evolution presents looms…

We should be asking how the Constitution, morality, politics, economics--everything really--can grapple with the challenge evolution presents to man. That is the question. The true act of judging which awaits man is the judgement as to what man is to become biologically, a more advanced form of judging than any which exists today…Until a Supreme Court understands this in America all we have is preliminary justice at best. But all justice is preliminary. We actually always have justice beyond justice. We must act as if there is justice beyond justice so as to always be sure of being just. But perhaps that is better called the problem of legislation, creation of political economy…Political philosophy evidently still has a place in the world.

Are not Catholic and Jewish morals and values analogous to those of good Protestants, pagans, atheists, agnostics, secularists, Hindus and Buddhists? So what is the problem? Next topic!!!

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SUSAN JACOBY
JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS:

IRT:
“…eminent Americans from every profession were asked what should be the most important quality of the next Supreme Court justice. Various people said that Obama should appoint an atheist, a politician...etc., etc."

ANS:
Why does a Justice need necessarily to be grounded in right reason? Simply put, from right reason the existence of God and His attributes are demonstrable. Subsequently, any nation that forfeits belief in God, in the long run, commits social suicide.

The Court’s liberals as Stevens, and Ginsberg are nominal atheists in all practicality, and they made law subjective, relative, and based on the impulsive authority of man. They proffered an anthropocentric that should be theocentric.

Consequently, immorality became a Constitution inviolable right; they denounced the N&ML, vilified and demeaned traditional Marriage and undermined the Family and individual self-worth. surreptitiously, they attempted to destroy America and Her greatness.

A nominee should be grounded in the belief that there is a God from which all authority comes, that there is a Natural and Moral Law (N&ML), and that man is endowed by God with certain inviolable inalienable rights that are based on the N&ML. Otherwise, man is the giver of rights and not God.

The nominee should be fixed firmly in the profession of law, have impeccable integrity, superb intelligence, and soundly grounded in the history of our nation, its historical bearings in the context of the Constitution's purpose, development, and meaning.

Next, he should be reasonably healthy, well read, and logical, viz. capable of right reason, and not be contradictory or illogical.

Elena Kegan thinks Justice Thurgood Marshall, her former boss, was a remarkable Justice. Marshall, who once fell asleep while doing an interview, stood before Black students, on C-SPAN, and said, (paraphrased) “To hell with the Constitution, it was the Constitution that made you slaves and property. The Constitution doesn’t give a damn about you.”

Fortunately, the Constitution and the Founding Fathers did give a damn about them, however, it was politicians, like the Dems and Justices like the liberals on the Court that have and is in the process of disemboweling it.

Obviously Protestants, atheists, agnostics, and pagans are not getting the education that Catholics and Jews are getting.

Ultimately, I do not think what a nominee's religion is should be an issue for or against them...whether that religion be protestantism, catholicism, Hinuism, atheism, etc.

That being said, I agree with Ms. Jacoby that one's religion does affect people's lives and the decisions they make. I do not consider that a bad thing...or a surprising thing. Of course, religion determines many things in people's lives. Religion (or a person's worldview) is part of human nature. It cannot be eradicated.

I just would like to point out that EVERYONE's life is affected by their religion. This is not something unique to Christianity. Religion is really just someone's worldview - everyone has a worldview. EVERYONE's actions are affected by their world view...which means that athiests make their decisions based on their worldview just as much as I do as a Christian. The prevailing view in this article and the accompanying posts seem to indicate that only Christians make decisions based on their worldview. That is just plain naive at best...and untruthful at worst.

Regardless, I hope that we can nominate someone who takes seriously that their decisions should be based on the constitution.

An atheist isn't eligible, since he/she couldn't swear. What would they swear by?
--------------------------------
It is completely possible to swear or affirm (its really just a promise) without involving religion. The reason god was added originally was because it used to be what people feared the most. Its just as valid to say "I swear under penalty of death to do or not do...." People in swear oaths all over the world, and its pretty much only Christain nations that use and god bit.

Bush senior picked Clarence Thomas, a right wing black man, not because he thought that a black person should be on the Supreme Court, but because he thought that it might muffle his critics, who could be accused of racism for opposing him, which they were.

And Bush junior picked conservative Christian Catholics, not because he thought that Catholics should be on the Supreme Court, but because he thought that it might muffle their critics, who could be accused of being anti-Catholic for opposing them, which they were.

"The Prince" by Machiavelli; look it up.

What Christians!

Someone remarked that an atheist is not eligible to serve because they cannot swear an oath.

From Article VI:
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Oath OR Affirmation. Clear now? NO religious test. Clear now?

Re: "So the question then becomes: What exactly is the religious baggage of Catholic Justices?"

ANSWER: Same baggage as any other religious person...i.e., having 1 part of your life exist that is given over, wholly and without reservation, to irrationality and the mentality of the tribe.

Re: "The only thing I know of that would be less valuable than experience on the federal bench would be experience as the dean of an Ivy-League law scool.

Many people thought that the White House meant real-life experience when they said they wanted a non-judge."

RESPONSE: You are an idiot. WHEN does academia become non-real-world? I can think of no more barbaric, bloodthirsty, petty, childish, and perfect training for government/judicial sparring, than the internecine warfare that is so-called "Higher Ed". Highly intelligent monkeys hurling feces at each other? You're talking SCOTUS or any faculty governance committee.

Obama chose wisely.

Obama should have searched for and found a Moslem homosexual to nominate as a justice.

That certainly would have brought diversity to the supreme court!

An atheist isn't eligible, since he/she couldn't swear. What would they swear by?

The idea that a Justice's religious leanings is somehow decoupled from his approach to the law is pure balderdash. Of course it's relevant. I reject on its face any argument that a seriously observant Catholic, Jew, or Protestant becomes religiously neutered when she becomes a Supreme Court Justice. I'm not talking about justices who are nominal members of some religion. I'm talking about the ones who take it very seriously. I agree with those who offer Alito as the poster boy for such a person.

I see nothing but pure hypocrisy in the argument that a Catholic-dominated Court is a matter of no concern. Would the same argument apply if some other denomination was so disproportionally represented--especially Protestant? I think not. The only other disproportionate category has been gender--and the fact of the disproportionate representation of males to females has been duly noted and strongly criticized. So why does over-representation of one category suddenly become so irrelevant when Catholics are the over-represented group?

And imagine this: What if six of the Supreme Court Justices came from the ranks of fundamentalist, right-wing, evangelical Christians? That is, six Supreme Court Justices who believe that the earth was created about 4,000 years ago by a fairy godmother-like God who waved his magic wand and created the whole universe in six days. Tell me with a straight face that you would feel confident that the decisions of such Justices would be decoupled from their religion.

So the question then becomes: What exactly is the religious baggage of Catholic Justices? Does it include some of what most of us consider rank superstition? Do they believe, for example, the Catholic Church's doctrine--forcefully reiterated by the current Pope--that only Catholics will get to heaven? I'm not at all comfortable with Justices who view the overwhelming number of people on whom they will sit in judgment as unworthy of eternal salvation. That seems a division of mankind as every bit as evil as, say, a division along racial lines.

And we haven't even gotten to the issues of abortion, divorce, and homosexuality.

religion does matter.

in a hard core secular society and culture like the usa and the west in general where separation of church and state is *the way the truth and life*

i,m surprise why even discuse the religion affiliation of the public official ?why the muslim obama or the jewish kegan or the christian white jon or the christian black zulu matter as long as they fit into the bible of secularism that *doesnot know no race or color or religion*??????

is the filter of secularism is cocked and lopsided or that is the choice of the people by the people and for the people ?

all the above is true for the simple fact that secularism is a proudct of the people by the people and for the people ,

for the second simple fact that no matter how much and how long you fill the head of the people about the piousity and uprightness of secularism ,still people will never forget their religion and affiliation.the evidence is so plain and clear.

for the third simple fact that secularism is not only unabsolute but is elastic to the twisting and bending of human being ,in other words if people can sell and jeapordise the fundmentals of their holy sacred religion why not spare the unholy secularism the food eater and market place walker?

religion does matter and is comeing to the gov sooner or later.

It is not religious correctness that requires no inquiry about religion, it is Article VI of the Constitution. And, it is the Constitution that the Senators have sworn to protect, support, and defend.

The only thing I know of that would be less valuable than experience on the federal bench would be experience as the dean of an Ivy-League law scool.

Many people thought that the White House meant real-life experience when they said they wanted a non-judge.

Unfortunately, we have seen that religion CAN matter, at least in the case of the Gang of Four 1/2 reactionaries (Kennedy is the 1/2), who seem to believe that they are on the Court to do the bidding of their particular (and particularist) God.

However, it was clear that these four and one-half were conservative before they were appointed, likely that they were religionists and that there religionism would carry over into their SCOTUS careers. As for Sotomayor, who is also Catholic, she is more of a centrist.

This is also the case with Kagan, who may or may not identify as Jewish. Ginzburg had a Jewish upbringing and from what I've gathered Judaism still plays a role in her life (not her decision-making). Breyer's Judaism is nominal, at most; it is unclear whether or not he identifies as a Jew. He is not observant, married an Anglican, and his daughter is an Episcopal priest.

None of this should matter in the least, of course. It should not matter whether the candidate is Jewish, Catholic, Pagan, Protestant, Muslim, or, preferably, Atheist. The fact that it does, that we must think about it, speaks volumes of our continuing habitation in the Stone Age.

Tribes.

The last thing we need is a religious bent on the supreme court. We already have too, too much with Alito.

I doubt very much if the Christian religious community will ever live up to Mathew 6:6.

Bush was the classic modern religious example with his "My way or the Highway" mantra.
All that staunch, inflexible positioning does is stimulate emotional responses that inevitably end up in violent reactions.

Susan: You are right that this is a difficult question. If a person the President's is considering as a nominee has a history of actions and decision that are clearly motivated by a particular religious view, then the President should certainly make religion a part of the mix and should drop such person from considation.

Absent such history, it is difficult to justify consideration of a potential candidate's qualifications.

So will the religion of the judges be a factor in future decisions? Should it be? Maybe, maybe not. According to the historian Will Durant, "Nothing, save bread, is so precious to mankind as its religious beliefs..." I think this statement is NOT true for everyone, but it is true for many. Our religious experiences, like all our experiences, have some impact on what we think and do.

Obviously Catholic and Jewish parochial schools are doing a better job!!!!