gadgetlady

Nutjob here, reporting for duty. Yup, I believe dinosaurs lived with people and Adam and Eve literally were the first man and first woman. Have you ever seen petroglyphs of dinosaurs? The cavemen didn't reconstruct from fossils and figure out what the dinosaurs looked like; they must have seen them. Did you hear the news story several years ago that some scientists believe everyone descended from one woman (I think it was produced into a documentary called "The Real Eve" -- which was NOT a pro-Creation Science production)? Things that make you go hmmmm . . .

Thanks, Nora. I'll take a look at those later tonight when I have some time and my kids aren't around.

Thanks, Lana24. Everyone I know who's ever had one says it's the best thing they could do. Both my mom and my grandmother have had them, but of course they didn't have them vaginally, which is what I'm looking to do. I don't want to be cut open ever again LOL! When you say you were in one full day, you mean you had surgery in the am and were released the next am, right? No pain, no discomfort, no bleeding -- that's what I'm aiming for! Why did you have to be off a minimum of 3 weeks to recover? I own my own business so I really have to be able to work, but it can be as simple as a computer and a phone, which I expect I could do easily. Catheters don't bother me one iota. And then there's something I didn't think of until you mentioned a 3-8 week recovery time: when were you able to resume sexual relations? The toughest thing about childbirth for me was waiting the prescribed 6 weeks afterwards! That's something they never told me about.

AKA Pascal's Wager. It always seemed like a junior high level argument to me.

As one of them, I am posting on behalf of those who haven't spanked with anger, abuse of power, or control, and who care about more than "that one judgment day in the end." We exist. I'm sorry you've never seen one. Maybe you've never seen one because those of us who spank this way don't do it with screaming fits of rage, but rather quietly and with understanding, sorrow, and reconciliation afterwards.

luluc, I'm so sorry for what your father went through and how that impacted your relationship with him. Whenever I hear about such things they literally bring tears to my eyes. How someone can do that to a child, much less their own child, is simply beyond me.

Sorry. I wasn't sure which is why I indicated such. No one in our family is jovial about spanking. However you are 100% wrong; in our family, anger is absolutely not involved when we spank. If we're angry, WE take a "time out" first so we don't spank in anger. Your family didn't behave that way but that doesn't mean it's universal.

If I'm not mistaken (I haven't gone back to look at the whole thread), didn't you say that your dad whipped you with a belt across the legs? If that was you, that's not spanking. That IS abuse. My children understand calm, rational, disciplinary spanking because we talk about it. They know which actions result in the consequence of spanking. After spanking, we talk about the cause and discuss where they went wrong. They have no doubt but that we love them and we don't spank in anger -- ever.

Thanks, TommyO. I am, too (extremely happily married). Civility is good, but sarcasm, when it doesn't condemn, isn't such a bad thing either.

Neither can molecules-to-man evolution. Plain, I believe in a young earth. I'm not a nutjob, I'm not uneducated, and I'm not anti-intellectual. While I appreciate that there are those who disagree with me (and some vehemently), I would appreciate it if you don't write off the theory as crackpot or nutjob. There are a lot of people who believe it.

My parents spanked me, and I love them dearly. I'm not "pulling the plug" or sending them to a cheap nursing home when the time comes. I spank my kids, and they love me dearly as well. I don't think method of discipline is a determining factor. Abuse? Yes. Spanking? No.

Glad you caught the humor in it

That's not true. There are old-earth Intelligent Design proponents, just as there are old-earth Creation Scientists. I don't agree with them, but there are quite a few out there. Credible to YOU. It is certainly credible to a lot of other people. And the age of the earth is NOT a "known fact". That's just plain wrong. From the Discovery Institute in Seattle, http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php: Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago. Addressing the question whether Creation Science = ID: No. The theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent design" in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. Intelligent design starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what inferences can be drawn from that evidence. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected through science is supernatural. Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism. University of Wisconsin historian of science Ronald Numbers is critical of intelligent design, yet according to the Associated Press, he "agrees the creationist label is inaccurate when it comes to the ID [intelligent design] movement." Why, then, do some Darwinists keep trying to conflate intelligent design with creationism? According to Dr. Numbers, it is because they think such claims are "the easiest way to discredit intelligent design." In other words, the charge that intelligent design is "creationism" is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to delegitimize design theory without actually addressing the merits of its case. And as to whether ID is a scientific theory: Yes. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

To that I say: if smacking is illegal, people will just go around the law and find a way to smack illegally. You can't stop people from smacking, so a law about it won't make any difference. Before smacking was legal, people went into back alleys to smack their kids. It didn't stop anyone from doing it, and making it illegal will only drive them underground. After all, if you outlaw smacking, only outlaws will smack.

plain, are you aware of the depth of scientific study on the issue? There are graduate-level science degrees offered in the subject. I'm sure they will be pooh-pooh'd by those who doubt the theory (and haven't more than given it a cursory glance), but the depth and quality of scientific research devoted to the topic isn't insignificant by any stretch of the imagination.

Two separate issues. I was not saying Creation Science should be taught in school because the Founding Fathers believed in it. My discussion about Christianity and the Founding Fathers was speaking to the general topic of the mixing of religion and politics. I only mentioned Creation Science / Intelligent Design because someone else had. That being said, Creation Science and/or Intelligent Design may not be what you believe, but there are many learned scientists who do have serious questions about evolution. I don't have a problem with your not believing it, but I think you do yourself a disservice by calling it a crackpot theory with no scientific basis.

You really need to see Expelled. At the end of the movie, Ben Stein was interviewing Richard Dawkins and Dawkins offered the theory that the earth might have been "seeded" by external beings (the implication was aliens).

Why thank you, luluc. That's nice to hear, especially when my weight loss is so stalled (due entirely to my own eating habits). And I would love to look at your face rather than a big lab

While people are certainly free by virtue of the US Constitution to worship whomever they choose, including the Cookie Monster, let's be clear that the Founding Fathers overwhelmingly worshipped the God of the Bible -- not the Cookie Monster, and not pagan gods. The Pilgrims did not originate from Native Americans, but rather saw it as one of their purposes to be missionaries to the Native Americans. I read a study once which indicated that over 90% of the political documents of the time were based on the Bible, and something like 30-40% had direct quotations from the Bible. Here are a few quotes from some famous men that many of us recognize: Horace Greeley: It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom. Patrick Henry: The Bible is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed. Thomas Jefferson: I have always said, and will always say, that studious perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens. In early schools, the Bible was often the only or one of the few texts used in the public school system. If you look at the history of the major college institutions that are acknowledged as some of the best in the world (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc.), you will find Christianity at their roots. Yale was founded by 10 Congregationalist ministers to train ministers. Princeton was founded to train Presbyterian ministers. Harvard was named for a minister who left his library and half his estate to the institution. The list goes on and on and on. There's a reason that courts and legislatures all across the country open with prayer -- as they have since their inception. This isn't rocket science. My point was and remains that we cannot and should not obfuscate our roots (and by "our" I mean the great men who founded this country). I understand and believe in freedom of religion, which is what the First Amendment guarantees. What it does NOT guarantee is freedom FROM religion. I think it's a tribute to the American people that we don't buy evolution hook-line-and-sinker despite all of the attempts to the contrary. It might be a great little diversion for you and those who don't believe in Intelligent Design to poke fun at those you feel inferior in knowledge to you, but there are a great number of learned non-scientists and scientists alike who have serious issues with the theory of evolution. And I say this full well understanding what scientific theory is.

I think you'd be hard pressed to ignore the stated intent of the early pilgrims. Many believed that their main purpose in being in the new land was to further the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is even written into many of the original state compacts. While I don't believe the government should push an official denomination or religion, I also don't believe we should ignore our roots. That being said, I don't think I would want a specific denomination of Christianity taught in school because I wouldn't trust the teachers or the public school system to get the Bible right. In the same sense, I don't think current science teachers would teach Creation Science or Intelligent Design very well; what I would like to see is the acknowledgment that there are varying and legitimate alternate theories out there. But the extremes to which we're going nowadays to disassociate ourselves from our history are, in my opinion, misguided.

I think the comments in the article I posted generally match my interpretation when I read the full letter you posted: that religious rights are "natural" rights, in essence not granted by the government but granted by God. I think that was the concern at the time.

I read a fascinating web page on Thomas Jefferson and the separation of church and state recently: Thomas Jefferson and the Separation of Church and State

Don't know about other states, but in CA you can opt out.

Thank you, Elena. That is very sweet and made me smile today

LOL! If you're not worried, don't worry!:thumbup: