This past week the results of the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey was published and on first blush it seemed like believers have lost more ground since the last survey in 2001. But as Austin Cline points out in his blog, caution is needed in reading too much into the latest results.
Author: Doug
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On Wednesday, February 25th, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling on a Utah monument case that involved the city of Pleasant Grove and religious group which tried to donate a monument to their Seven Aphorisms to be placed near an existing one with the Christian 10 Commandments. Unlike most cases like this, it was considered on Free Speech grounds rather than on religious establishment grounds. The court ruled that a government can pick and choose what gifts to receive and in doing so seemed to open them up to establishment challenges in the future.
During the campaign President Barack Obama promised to change how the federal government gave money to religious groups. While he did change the title of the office created under President Bush, he has yet to remove the rules and regulations that allowed religious groups to discriminate when getting federal grant money.
Today marks the 200th Birthday of the man who forwarded the concept of Evolution of species, which is a basic foundation of the science of Biology. Evolution is also a flash point in arguments between people with different views on religion. Even though Evolution has nothing to do with religion or religious beliefs, it has been used as a scapegoat for some people’s beliefs that might conflict with the results and facts of Evolution. How did we get there?
In the latest news article on the Darwin Day dust up (see my previous post) there was a quote that caught my eye. It seems that the former mayor of Reynoldsburg Ohio Robert McPherson said he didn’t remember signing a similar proclamation for a Darwin Day in his city in 2006. Well it seems there is proof that he did in fact issue such a proclamation.