Rog, Nova, you guys are bang on the money. The idea that, regardless of how good a person you are, you have to jump through these absurd ecclesiastical hoops (being dunked in water, chanting magic words, believeing in silly fantasy stories, or ignoring the evidence of your own eyes) as a prerequisite to the Kingdom of Heaven is the realm of the opiated masses, and is indicative of the intelligence of the same. I believe in none of that rubbish, yet am still able to live my life more in line with Christian values than most Christians are capable of. If there is a God, and he/she/it has such a problem with that that the only solution is Eternal Damnation, then that Supreme Being can just lick my lefty. Put simply, I don't have to believe in Creationism and Great Floods to help a little old lady across the street or give a homeless dude a buck.
On Athiesm:
There are no athiests, only confused agnostics. An excellent Captain with whom it was my great fortune to share a month of day trips laid out the logical fallacy of it like this: "There is no way to be 100% sure that there is no God. You can be 99% sure, 99.9% and so on, but as long as there's that .1%, there's a possibility. As long as there's a possiblity, you're an agnostic." Granted, the same logic can be used to prove the existence of the Easter Bunny, but I'm a proud agnistic so I'm not going to split Hares, and besides, having such a scientific mind I'm disinclined to say that anything is impossible. Only exceedingly unlikely.
On Creationism:
I have noted that people who believe in Intelligent Design and want it taught in schools almost invariably have two things in common- one, a profound misunderstanding of what science is, and two, a disturbing level of religious (and intellectual) intolerance. If you have to believe that all Hindus are going to Hell and that all Muslims are evil, I can't stop you. But science is one thing, belief is another, and here's why Creationism belongs to the latter and has no place in a science curriculum-
SCIENCE IS NOT WRITTEN IN STONE. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS ARE.
Science observes things, makes up hypotheses about those observations, tests those hypotheses, and writes up a theory to try to describe whats going on. If new evidence comes along suggesting that the previous theory is wrong, then it is re-tested, re-hypothesized, and re-written until the theory fits the best available evidence at the time. This is all Evolutionary Theory does. When new evidence is (literally) unearthed, then the theory is modified, or new theories are postulated to better describe what has happened. Science is a living, breathing, changing thing. Anyone who says "Evolution is a
fact" is a dammed fool with no more understanding of science than a creationist, and any Creationist who says "Evolution is imperfect! Scrub it for the Bible, and teach our kids the same!" is simply, and profoundly, ignorant of basic science. Again, put simply, new science books are written almost every school year. New Bibles are not. That's how easy it is to differentiate the science from the belief.
Edit to add: If you must teach Creationism, fine. But to be fair, you have to also teach all
these "theories" along with it:
6.1 Ainu
6.2 Apache
6.3 Australian Aboriginal
6.4 Aztec
6.5 Babylonian
6.6 Bantu
6.7 Buddhist
6.8 Cherokee
6.9 Chinese
6.10 Choctaw
6.11 Christian
6.11.1 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
6.12 Creek
6.13 Digueno
6.14 Egyptian
6.15 Evolutionary Spirituality
6.16 Finnish
6.17 Greek (Classical)
6.18 Hermeticism
6.19 Hindu
6.20 Hopi
6.21 Hmong
6.22 Inca
6.23 Inuit
6.24 Iroquois
6.25 Islam
6.26 Japan
6.27 Jainism
6.28 Judaism
6.29 Korea
6.30 Lakota
6.31 Maasai
6.32 Mandaeism
6.33 Mandinka
6.34 Mansi
6.35 Mayan
6.36 Māori
6.37 Mongol
6.38 Navajo
6.39 Norse
6.40 Ojibwe
6.41 Orok
6.42 Polynesian
6.42.1 Hawaiian
6.43 Randomness
6.44 Seminole
6.45 Sikh
6.46 Surat Shabda Yoga
6.47 Taoism
6.48 Tlingit
6.49 Voodoo
6.50 Wicca
6.51 Yoruba
6.52 Zen
6.53 Zoroastrianism
6.54 Zulu
And I mean, come on. We've got enough kids failing science classes as it is withough overloading them like this. And confusing them as to what science really is.
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