Reply #106: You miss the whole point of the first amendment. [View All]

[ChairmanAgnostic]

Take a look at the colonial history leading up to the 1750s-60s. Several states outlawed puritanism, others banned other sects, still others would arrest Quakers. Many of the larger towns had not just blue laws, but prayer laws, and if they found you outside of church on sunday (ALL DAY) you would be fined an beaten. Fear and religion ruled the day, and led to Cotton Mather's attack on women, which was repeated on a smaller scale elsewhere.

ben Franklin, John Adams, Tom Jefferson and Tom Paine all saw the corrosive, destructive force of organized religion and worse, state or city sponsored religion. In that context, today's 1st amendment has a whole differnent look to it. Even after the revolution several states attempted to install a state religion, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia, each of which failed. North and South Carolina attempted to force the country to underwrite their chosen faiths. Luckily that failed.

You are making a deliberate, unsupported and frankly ignorant step of equating science and religion, then mixing the two topics while erroneously analysing the constitution. WHat you do is far worse than mixing apples and oranges, it is an effort at willful deceit. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I will repeat SCIENCE IS NOT A RELIGION. your effort to equate the two is no better than what Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts and Joh Dobson do, when the facts and the laws are against them, they throw up shit and pray that it sticks.

The problem is religions is destructive, dangerous, and deceitful in every and any form. You are trying to pull down science to the gutter level of religion. Another problem is that you are woefully ignorant of the constitution.

I'd suggest you get online and read the damned thing. The whole thing. When you do, you will find this little gem hidden in the text:

Article 1, Section 8, Par. 7 " The congress shall have Power to:

. . . . To Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts. . . . "

missed that, did you? Shame on you.

Science is based on rational thinking, the creative application of brain power to a set of facts and circumstances. Religion is the brain-deadening effort to replace rational thought with something called blind faith.

does science make mistakes? Sure. Trial and error is one scientific method and relies on hundreds of mistakes in order to find out the proper answer. The whole basis of science lies in taking a theory, testing it and poking holes in it until it is proven.

Does religion make mistakes. none they like to admit. And their mistakes have killed more millions and millions of innocents than anything else.