Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Legion Calls on Congress to Pass Bill Ending 'Judicial Blackmail'
(American Legion Press Release, September 25, 2006)

With a floor vote scheduled Tuesday in the House of Representatives for the Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006, the leader of the nation's largest veterans organization strongly urged lawmakers to pass the measure.

"This legislation, if enacted, would amend the United States Revised Statutes to eliminate the threat of judicial blackmail on constitutionally protected expression of religion by state and local officials," American Legion National Commander Paul A. Morin wrote in a letter to Members of Congress today. "This chilling effect results from the financial threat to cities and municipalities by potential litigants seeking civil damages and attorney fees under Title 42 United States Code (USC) 1988."

H.R. 2679, and its companion bill in the U.S. Senate, S.3696, would eliminate the authority of judges to award attorney fees in litigation against religious symbols at veterans' memorials, the Boy Scouts, public seals, and open displays of America's religious heritage.

"The real threat of such judge-ordered fees is that they have terrorized local elected officials into surrendering to the plaintiff's demands to remove religious symbols, such as crosses from veterans' memorials, city logos, police badges, and any public environment where the rich religious heritage of the nation flourishes," Morin said.

"It is time to put an end to this outrageous exploitation of a law designed to encourage individual plaintiffs injured by racial discrimination to seek judicial relief," he added. "Attorney-fees awards, although discretionary with a trial judge, are usually approved for the prevailing party; however, some have twisted this civil rights legislation to achieve results The American Legion believes Congress never intended.

"The American Legion fully supports this legislation because it fairly addresses the constitutionally protected expression of religion and rectifies the excessive awards of attorney fees paid from public funds," Morin said. "On behalf of the 2.7 million veterans of The American Legion, I strongly urge all Members of Congress to pass PERA legislation."

Darwin on the Right
Why Christians and conservatives should accept evolution

2. Creationism is bad theology. The watchmaker God of intelligent-design creationism is delimited to being a garage tinkerer piecing together life out of available parts. This God is just a genetic engineer slightly more advanced than we are. An omniscient and omnipotent God must be above such humanlike constraints. As Protestant theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote, "The Christian idea, far from merely representing a primitive anthropomorphic projection of human art upon the cosmos, systematically repudiates all direct analogy from human art." Calling God a watchmaker is belittling.

Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, it should be embraced. The senseless conflict between science and religion must end now, or else, as the Book of Proverbs (11:29) warned: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

As between York and Lancaster, there is little to choose from my point of view. All of my ancestors were Celts, and none were Sassanach.

Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands

Many archaeologists still hold this view of a grand iron-age Celtic culture in the centre of the continent, which shrank to a western rump after Roman times. It is also the basis of a strong sense of ethnic identity that millions of members of the so-called Celtic diaspora hold. But there is absolutely no evidence, linguistic, archaeological or genetic, that identifies the Hallstatt or La Tène regions or cultures as Celtic homelands. The notion derives from a mistake made by the historian Herodotus 2,500 years ago when, in a passing remark about the "Keltoi," he placed them at the source of the Danube, which he thought was near the Pyrenees. Everything else about his description located the Keltoi in the region of Iberia.

The late 19th-century French historian Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville decided that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. His idea has remained in the books ever since, despite a mountain of other evidence that Celts derived from southwestern Europe. For the idea of the south German "Empire of the Celts" to survive as the orthodoxy for so long has required determined misreading of texts by Caesar, Strabo, Livy and others. And the well-recorded Celtic invasions of Italy across the French Alps from the west in the 1st millennium BC have been systematically reinterpreted as coming from Germany, across the Austrian Alps.

De Jubainville's Celtic myth has been deconstructed in two recent sceptical publications: The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention by Simon James (1999), and The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions by John Collis (2003). Nevertheless, the story lingers on in standard texts and notably in The Celts, a Channel 4 documentary broadcast in February. "Celt" is now a term that sceptics consider so corrupted in the archaeological and popular literature that it is worthless.

This is too drastic a view. It is only the central European homeland theory that is false. The connection between modern Celtic languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman times is clear and valid. Caesar wrote that the Gauls living south of the Seine called themselves Celts. That region, in particular Normandy, has the highest density of ancient Celtic place-names and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. They are common in the rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region of Gascony), Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. Conversely, Celtic place-names are hard to find east of the Rhine in central Europe.

Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast.

Further evidence for the Mediterranean origins of Celtic invaders is preserved in medieval Gaelic literature. According to the orthodox academic view of "iron-age Celtic invasions" from central Europe, Celtic cultural history should start in the British Isles no earlier than 300 BC. Yet Irish legend tells us that all six of the cycles of invasion came from the Mediterranean via Spain, during the late Neolithic to bronze age, and were completed 3,700 years ago.

So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.

This may well be linked in this thread somewhere but just in case ...

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Darwin on the Right
Why Christians and conservatives should accept evolution

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2. Creationism is bad theology. The watchmaker God of intelligent-design creationism is delimited to being a garage tinkerer piecing together life out of available parts. This God is just a genetic engineer slightly more advanced than we are. An omniscient and omnipotent God must be above such humanlike constraints. As Protestant theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote, "The Christian idea, far from merely representing a primitive anthropomorphic projection of human art upon the cosmos, systematically repudiates all direct analogy from human art." Calling God a watchmaker is belittling.

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Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, it should be embraced. The senseless conflict between science and religion must end now, or else, as the Book of Proverbs (11:29) warned: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

House OKs bill on religious expression
(By JIM ABRAMS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, September 26, 2006)

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans, carrying out their election-year values agenda, on Tuesday pushed through legislation cutting off financial awards for lawsuits successfully filed against expressions of religion such as Christmas displays on government grounds.

The bill, passed 244-173, denies the awarding of attorney's fees or monetary damages to a party that wins a court case based on the establishment clause in the Constitution that is used to argue a separation of church and state.

There is no companion Senate bill and little chance the Senate would consider it in the waning days of this session, but the House vote was a reminder to the GOP's conservative base that their issues are not being ignored.

"We cannot continue to allow frivolous and, frankly, unwarranted lawsuits to stifle the beliefs and self-determination of our great communities," said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga.

Democratic opponents saw the bill as a serious infringement of constitutional rights.

"This bill would make it more difficult for ordinary Americans to defend their religious freedom against intrusion by government," said Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas. "There's nothing benign about this bill."

"Singling out one class of cases for the denial of attorney's fees when every other one gets them does seem to me an odd way to run a constitution," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Backers of the legislation cited cases contesting the use of religious symbols, such as crosses in veterans' cemeteries, the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings or using public land to host the Boy Scouts, who require participants to declare belief in God.

They said local and state governments, unable to match the financial resources of civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and unwilling to pay costly attorney's fees in losing cases, often accede to demands to remove religious symbols.

"This is an issue of allowing the cases to go to court and not to have the threat or intimidation by the ACLU and their minions to hang over all of these heads," said Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., sponsor of the bill.

"With this bill we will close a loophole that has allowed liberal groups like the ACLU to prey on taxpayers for far too long," said Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office, said passage of the bill "would isolate and discourage enforcement of a specific piece of our Bill of Rights." The legislation, she said, "would, in fact, weaken the very freedom they claim to be protecting."

This just in.





The notoriously poor pelvic conformation of Holstein dairy cattle contributes significantly to reproductive inefficiency by predisposing the cow to urine pooling and chronic vaginitis.





Carry on.

In fact, there's a really good chance that the breed was produced in the duchy of Holstein, lying to the south of Denmark . . . but don't quote me.

Breeders can only work with the material and mechanism which arise in nature--they cannot produce an "unnatural" animal and expect it to live and reproduce.

Breeders can only work with the material and mechanism which arise in nature--they cannot produce an "unnatural" animal and expect it to live and reproduce.

.........why do we presume that randomly occurring mutations ( the overwhelming majority of them harmful or of no benefit) which also must work only work with the material and mechanism which arise in nature and occurring at random intervals and guided by no intelligence, can accomplish that which (and much more than) intelligent human direction and effort cannot?

House passes measure to chill establishment-clause lawsuits
(By Robert Marus, American Baptist Press, September 26, 2006)

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- After impassioned debate on the separation of church and state Sept. 26, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make it harder to sue the government for violations of church-state separation.

House members voted 244-173 in favor of H.R. 2679, called by supporters the "Public Expression of Religion Act." In cases involving the First Amendment's establishment clause, the proposal would prevent federal courts from requiring government entities to reimburse the legal costs of the individual or group that sued the government agency -- even though the agency was found in violation of the constitution.

The establishment clause bars the government from endorsing or inhibiting religious groups or doctrines. Currently, federal judges routinely require the government entity to pay the legal expenses of a plaintiff who successfully asserts an establishment-clause violation.

Supporters contended that the bill would keep special-interest groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union from "abusing the system" when filing challenges to government actions that may endorse religion.

"Too often today, overzealous courts have infringed an individual's right to worship," Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), a supporter of the measure, said on the House floor. "These attacks on our religious heritage are frivolous."

But opponents said it would have a chilling effect on the ability of religious minorities to defend their freedoms.

"Mr. Speaker, let's be clear -- there's nothing benign about this bill. This bill makes it more difficult to enforce the First Amendment to the Constitution and the very words thereof designed to protect the religious freedom of every American," said Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas).

Without such reimbursements, many church-state separationist groups and other civil-rights groups could not afford to file such lawsuits in the first place.

The bill's chief sponsor, Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.), said some such groups file lawsuits and use the threat of hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to pressure municipalities and states into settling before the case reaches court.

"Without that ability for the ACLU and others to go into these closed-door sessions and say to the mayor…we're going to sue, we're going to win, and you're going to have to pay our attorneys' fees, these cases will go to court," Hostettler said, referring to the American Civil Liberties Union.

But Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) asked the bill's supporters if they would feel the same way about limiting attorneys' fees in such cases if government agencies were being sued for advancing other religions.

"Let's assume in some town Sunni Muslims became a majority. And let's assume that everyone in that town…was forced to recite 'There is but one God, and Allah is his name,'" he said, quoting Islam's most common affirmation of faith.

"They think that only the majority religion is ever going to be in the position to dominate the local government or any government. Maybe so, but the whole reason we have the First Amendment is because you can't be sure."

Although a companion bill has been introduced in the Senate, that body is virtually certain not to address it before Congress ends its current term.

Surely it will pass won't it?

Is there a chance of it not doing?

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.........why do we presume that randomly occurring mutations ( the overwhelming majority of them harmful or of no benefit) which also must work only work with the material and mechanism which arise in nature and occurring at random intervals and guided by no intelligence, can accomplish that which (and much more than) intelligent human direction and effort cannot?

Because the time available is equal to the number of attempts allowed.
Infinite.

Joe