Secular Left Posts

October 27, 2005

In the discussion that followed the film and continued on our member’s e-mail list, it was suggested that Flemming and many non-believers go too far in “attacking” people with religious beliefs. It was said that we need to acknowledge that religion plays an important role in most believers lives and by “attacking” their beliefs we have crossed the line of decency.

As expected the charge was made that we non-believers who “attack” religious beliefs are hostile to religion and the religious and how this hostility undermines our credibility as a group to better the human condition. The assumption is made that we must not question people’s deeply held beliefs lest we hurt their feelings.

October 25, 2005

On October 21st, the American Enterprise Institute sponsored a forum on the issue of teaching Intelligent Design in the public schools. C-Span has Real Media videos of all three sessions available to view online at least through the first or second week of November. I haven’t watched them all yet as they total about 5 hours of video but I have heard it was a good event for supporters of Evolution.

October 21, 2005

The cross examination of Behe highlights what is so wrong about Intelligent Design and the zeal of its supporters to get it wedged into school curriculums. They simply dismiss anything that doesn’t support their conclusions or they cry about being victims of politics.

Further on in testimony the discussion talked about one of the main charges ID’ers make against Evolution – that Evolution can’t be observed. ID’ers point out you can observe the “design”.

Michael Behe was asked if intelligent design is observable. Behe said it is. But when asked if he had witnessed newly designed structures appearing in the past five years. Behe said the designed structures that he’s written about are much older.

October 19, 2005

First up was Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemistry professor and author of “Darwin’s Black Box,” who is considered an expert on Intelligent Design (ID). He has written that “intelligent design theory focuses exclusively on proposed mechanisms of how complex biological structures arose,” but when asked to name the driving force behind the concept, Behe could not.

Contrast that with Evolution. Darwin named “natural selection” as its driving force.

October 18, 2005

I really didn’t want to post this entry today but feel that I must.

The focus of this blog is to “expose the myths about secularism” that dominate the culture. Most of the time this takes the form of responding to some article I read where the writer is totally wrong about secular people. Usually the writer is a theist.

Today I have to call out one of my own for perpetrating a myth about being secular.

October 16, 2005

If you have listened to people like Parsley, or James Dobson, or Jerry Falwell, or Bishop Sheen and on and on it would seem that this country’s morals have been in decline for decades yet religious conservatives control the White House, the Congress, many state legislatures and state offices, as well as have friendly city and county councils, and school boards – all pushing their agenda. What is left to “reform” or “reclaim”?