Canada would welcome an open-minded American like yourself :)

 

This has nothing to do with your post, but you reminded me of it.

You said, "he apparently left and came to make his fortune in America when he couldn't find enough gullible idiots in his homeland."

A book that I am reading says that 46% of adults in the United States did not know how long it takes for the earth to make one orbit around the sun (of course there was no information about the polling technique).

If that is true then we are not a nation of "gullible idiots", just horribly uneducated idiots. Not that there is a lot of difference.

 

Never seen anything like that here. Sure we have the occassional crackpots, but most of our religious fanatics are very different from yours. Tom was telling my mum about the church that he and his parents went to in the US, and this was apparently a typical catholic church. My mum was appalled by what he was saying - that the pastor would get up and rant about the people who donated money last week and praise the people who donated lots of money and scould those who didn't donate very much, publicaly during the sermon. There were a lot of other contrasts between the churchs here and there, and it really looked like the ones over here were generally much more pleasant places to be; they also generally help the community a lot lot more.

I find it odd that he is blaming abortions, divorce and racism on the theory of evolution. Divorce has been around long before the theory of evolution has, and has been accepted by certain parts of the faith (not catholicism, of course). Racism was strongly backed by the christians, with the good old "god wouldn't have put them on separate continents" jig. Abortions have been going on for a long time too, and are only encouraged by the church's extreme views on contraception - a rape victim who is on the pill doesn't need to worry too much, but one who is a devout catholic...

I don't see how things like gay marriage or 'happy holidays' can possibly relate to the theory of evolution, but these are recent advances so its conceivable they can come up with a "look how awful modern times are, all because of Darwin" type arguement. Funny they aren't blaming it all on Galileo like they should be - he really kicked off the scientific revolution which led to Darwin. I guess that's been done, and failed. And the Pope pardonned Galileo fairly recently so I guess they can't contradict him :)

 

From what I know about religion here, in the uk, we don't have anything like that here. All the fundmentalist crap I hear about seems to be happening in the US (Or the middle east, but that's another story (Or, come to think of it, Africa))

So people really beleive in it? Yes. I've read too many quotes from www.fstdt.com to have any faith left in humanity.

 

Ha ha,

so from the bunch of your loyal readers comments, I find that I am the only 'fundamentalist' crackpot around. Course I'm from Chicago, a long ways away from the bible touting Jesus bangers in the South.

If you'll entertain my opinion, the simple fact is that alot of the 'scientific minded', and 'modern' people as you might describe yourself already have a set limitation to the understanding of a higher power. It's so engrained that you can't even entertain the possibility of God's existence.

The whole problem doesn't come down to what they are saying, because if God exists, then what they are saying is absolutely correct. It comes down to the definite question of does God exist, which I have never seen you address. I'm a person that doesn't believe that God's existence can be proven, because faith is a necessity. You may ask why faith is a necessity, and I would respond that it is necessary to protect free will.

you may criticize this guy for spreading his rhettoric and jargon, and criticize his motivations for doing so as purely selfish but I don't think that's the case. He actually believes this stuff and it's not really for you to say it's wrong for him to do so. He believes he's telling these people the truth, as you do would when you tell others of the inexistence of God. YOu think you're right, and he thinks he's right. What's the deciding factor between the two of you? I don't think I need to list the numerous scientists and the studies they've performed that have been done just as falsely to convince others of some scientific value they really want people to know. It really goes both ways.

=)