Luke 2:52
New International Version (NIV)
52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
It is the absurdity of verses like this that show that the bible is simply a work of fiction.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Being all knowing
It is the absurdity of verses like this that show that the bible is simply a work of fiction.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Handout of Gideon Bibles in public schools ignites controversy
The decades-old routine of handing out free Gideon Bibles in public schools has sparked renewed passions amid complaints the practice is discriminatory and no longer has a place in a secular education system.
The latest flare-up occurred in the sprawling Bluewater District School Board in southern Ontario after a parent’s objection led to the discovery the board had no policy on the issue.
Yet, there should not be a controversy. The issue is clear. Bible Distribution in Public Schools Is Illegal
It is unconstitutional for public school districts to allow these groups to distribute bibles in classrooms during the school day. Courts uniformly have held the distribution of bibles to students at public schools during instructional time is prohibited. This means that Gideons cannot be present inside your child's classroom or on public school grounds to distribute bibles. Public school officials—including principals and teachers—cannot hand out bibles or otherwise facilitate the distribution of bibles.
Courts have determined that allowing bible distribution at public schools—especially to elementary students who cannot make the distinction between private religious speech and state-sponsored speech—is unconstitutional not only because it appears to be government endorsement of Christianity, but also because of the social pressures students feel to accept the bibles. Moreover, these practices infringe parents' rights to direct the religious, or non-religious, upbringing of their own children.
In one of the leading federal court decisions on this topic, Berger v. Rensselaer Central Sch. Corp., 982 F.2d 1160 (7th Cir. 1993), the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, held that classroom distribution of Gideon bibles to fifth-graders violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In striking down the school district's policy permitting Gideons to distribute bibles at the schools, the court stated, “. . . the Gideon Bible is unabashedly Christian. In permitting distribution of ‘The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’ along with limited excerpts from the Old Testament, the schools affront not only non-religious people but all those whose faiths, or lack of faith, does not encompass the New Testament.” It is significant that the U.S. Supreme Court let stand this decision, just as it let stand Tudor v. Board of Education of Rutherford, 14 J.N. 31 (1953), cert. denied 348 U.S. 816 (1954) four decades earlier. The law is clear.>>>>
Source: http://ffrf.org/faq/state-church/bible-distribution-in-public-schools/
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The OWS movement
I have decided to embrace the idea that the OWS people have shown over the past several months. I agree that some people in society have more than they deserve.
Therefore, I have decided to conduct an occupy the playboy mansion. I believe it is time for the 99% to swim with playmates in the grotto.
Therefore, I have decided to conduct an occupy the playboy mansion. I believe it is time for the 99% to swim with playmates in the grotto.
Samoa and Tokelau to cross international date line
APIA, Samoa — The tiny South Pacific nation of Samoa and its neighbor Tokelau will jump forward in time on Thursday, crossing westward over the international date line to align themselves with their other 21st century trading partners throughout the region.
At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 29, time in Samoa and Tokelau will leap forward to Dec. 31 — New Year's Eve. For Samoa's 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 in Tokelau, Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, will simply cease to exist.
The time jump back to the future comes 119 years after some U.S. traders persuaded local Samoan authorities to align their islands' time with nearby U.S.-controlled American Samoa and the U.S. to assist their trading with California.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45810626/?ocid=ansmsnbc11
Who knew time travel could be accomplished so easily?
At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 29, time in Samoa and Tokelau will leap forward to Dec. 31 — New Year's Eve. For Samoa's 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 in Tokelau, Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, will simply cease to exist.
The time jump back to the future comes 119 years after some U.S. traders persuaded local Samoan authorities to align their islands' time with nearby U.S.-controlled American Samoa and the U.S. to assist their trading with California.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45810626/?ocid=ansmsnbc11
Who knew time travel could be accomplished so easily?
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Newt Reveals Plans to Wage Holy War on Atheists in America
http://www.politicususa.com/en/newt-reveals-plans-to-wage-holy-war-on-atheists-in-america
It is absurd that we would be drawn so often back to the “War on Christianity” meme that seems to form the heart and core of every Republican campaign in 2012. Even the battles surrounding issues like marriage equality and women’s reproductive rights are framed in terms of “religious freedoms under attack” as though somebody is being told they can’t practice their religion if other people have an equal amount of liberty. And rather than focusing on the absurdity of claiming persecution on the basis of equal rights, the media legitimizes the Republican narrative as something deserving discussion.
Newt Gingrich likes to harp on the subject of “religious freedom” as much as the next Republican. Of course, as we have shown here repeatedly, the phrase “religious freedom” is a stand-in for something else: the privileging of Christian belief over all other forms of belief – or disbelief. Religious freedom should mean equal freedoms for all with regards to belief and that is what the First Amendment establishes by prohibiting government establishment of religion, originally applied to the federal government in the First Amendment and later applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment in the wake of the Civil War.
But this isn’t what the GOP wants. The conservative Christian-driven GOP wants the establishment of Christianity as a state-sponsored religion in contravention of the First Amendment and all rhetoric directed at the topic is toward this end and this end alone. Newt Gingrich is no different. CBN claimed Monday evening to have received a document from the Gingrich campaign that shows how seriously their candidate takes this mythical war on Christianity. According to The Brody File, they “obtained an exclusive document that lays out in detail Newt Gingrich’s plan on day one of his administration to create, through Executive Order, a Presidential Commission on Religious Freedom in the United States.”
The document has been posted on Newt.org as of Tuesday in all its dubious glory. It would obviously have been crafted (and leaked) to show how serious he is on the subject of “religious freedom.” It would also demonstrate that Gingrich is well aware of how important it is that he makes a serious attempt to draw conservative Christian voters away from Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, who have more God-cred than does he, especially at a time when Newt is struggling with falling poll numbers. The Brody File further claims that “While Gingrich knows this commission will be welcomed by conservative evangelicals (read: key primary voters), this should not be read as an attempt to pander.”
But it is. A more blatant case of pandering cannot be imagined at this point, and we’ve already seen some truly egregious pandering on the part of GOP candidates.
We already have the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI), established by George W. Bush and maintained and enhanced (as well as renamed) by President Barack Obama, but putting Christianity in the federal government isn’t enough for Gingrich. The others may talk, he seems to be saying, but I have the cojones to actually scrap that pesky First Amendment once and for all and stop the spread of what he likes to call “pagan culture.”
The 20-page-long document states that the Religious Freedom Commission would have as its purpose to:
“Examine and document threats or impediments to religious freedom in the United States and to propose steps for reaffirming and protecting the foundational principle of freedom of thought, conscience, and religious belief upon which our republic is built and thrives.”
Translation: to wage war on secularists, atheists, pagans and everyone else who dares object to what Christians see as their right to completely ignore the First Amendment, or to repurpose it as a document establishing Christianity as America’s state religion.
According to the Brody File, Gingrich says that “Today, the foundations of religious freedom in this country are being eroded as never before.”
Gingrich pretends to adhere to the First Amendment but read what he says about religious pluralism in light of the Christian position that it alone possesses access to some ultimate, capital-T Truth:
A commitment to religious pluralism—or affording every individual’s religious beliefs the equal protection of the law—is not the same as saying all beliefs are equal.
This is a long-standing Christian position. Pope Benedict XVI certainly agrees and his position is that truth trumps tolerance, which seems also to be the point Gingrich is angling at.
Gingrich claims that anti-religious viewpoints are being forced on people when of course, the opposite is the problem. What he is really saying is that those who do not subscribe to Christian interpretations of morality and various social issues do not have the same rights as Christians because not all beliefs are equal. Far from it, Christian belief is more equal than others and atheists have no right to non-belief at all.
When the document talks about “promoting greater religious freedom” what it is talking about is promoting Christianity at the expense of other forms of belief and non-belief. It is saying, like Bachmann and Perry and pseudo-historian David Barton, that Christianity is indeed the basis of the American system of government and that the Founding Fathers were wrong. Rather than legislating from the bench, as he claims “activist” judges do, Gingrich proposes to legislate after the fact, redressing perceived imperfections in the First Amendment by stressing Christian pre-eminence (Christianity didn’t even get a nod, let alone a mention, in the U.S. Constitution).
Gingrich is desperate, as this document proves and he has just upped the ante, putting other Republican
candidates in a position to demonstrate their own devotion to the myth of Christian America.
It is absurd that we would be drawn so often back to the “War on Christianity” meme that seems to form the heart and core of every Republican campaign in 2012. Even the battles surrounding issues like marriage equality and women’s reproductive rights are framed in terms of “religious freedoms under attack” as though somebody is being told they can’t practice their religion if other people have an equal amount of liberty. And rather than focusing on the absurdity of claiming persecution on the basis of equal rights, the media legitimizes the Republican narrative as something deserving discussion.
Newt Gingrich likes to harp on the subject of “religious freedom” as much as the next Republican. Of course, as we have shown here repeatedly, the phrase “religious freedom” is a stand-in for something else: the privileging of Christian belief over all other forms of belief – or disbelief. Religious freedom should mean equal freedoms for all with regards to belief and that is what the First Amendment establishes by prohibiting government establishment of religion, originally applied to the federal government in the First Amendment and later applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment in the wake of the Civil War.
But this isn’t what the GOP wants. The conservative Christian-driven GOP wants the establishment of Christianity as a state-sponsored religion in contravention of the First Amendment and all rhetoric directed at the topic is toward this end and this end alone. Newt Gingrich is no different. CBN claimed Monday evening to have received a document from the Gingrich campaign that shows how seriously their candidate takes this mythical war on Christianity. According to The Brody File, they “obtained an exclusive document that lays out in detail Newt Gingrich’s plan on day one of his administration to create, through Executive Order, a Presidential Commission on Religious Freedom in the United States.”
The document has been posted on Newt.org as of Tuesday in all its dubious glory. It would obviously have been crafted (and leaked) to show how serious he is on the subject of “religious freedom.” It would also demonstrate that Gingrich is well aware of how important it is that he makes a serious attempt to draw conservative Christian voters away from Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, who have more God-cred than does he, especially at a time when Newt is struggling with falling poll numbers. The Brody File further claims that “While Gingrich knows this commission will be welcomed by conservative evangelicals (read: key primary voters), this should not be read as an attempt to pander.”
But it is. A more blatant case of pandering cannot be imagined at this point, and we’ve already seen some truly egregious pandering on the part of GOP candidates.
We already have the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI), established by George W. Bush and maintained and enhanced (as well as renamed) by President Barack Obama, but putting Christianity in the federal government isn’t enough for Gingrich. The others may talk, he seems to be saying, but I have the cojones to actually scrap that pesky First Amendment once and for all and stop the spread of what he likes to call “pagan culture.”
The 20-page-long document states that the Religious Freedom Commission would have as its purpose to:
“Examine and document threats or impediments to religious freedom in the United States and to propose steps for reaffirming and protecting the foundational principle of freedom of thought, conscience, and religious belief upon which our republic is built and thrives.”
Translation: to wage war on secularists, atheists, pagans and everyone else who dares object to what Christians see as their right to completely ignore the First Amendment, or to repurpose it as a document establishing Christianity as America’s state religion.
According to the Brody File, Gingrich says that “Today, the foundations of religious freedom in this country are being eroded as never before.”
Gingrich pretends to adhere to the First Amendment but read what he says about religious pluralism in light of the Christian position that it alone possesses access to some ultimate, capital-T Truth:
A commitment to religious pluralism—or affording every individual’s religious beliefs the equal protection of the law—is not the same as saying all beliefs are equal.
This is a long-standing Christian position. Pope Benedict XVI certainly agrees and his position is that truth trumps tolerance, which seems also to be the point Gingrich is angling at.
Gingrich claims that anti-religious viewpoints are being forced on people when of course, the opposite is the problem. What he is really saying is that those who do not subscribe to Christian interpretations of morality and various social issues do not have the same rights as Christians because not all beliefs are equal. Far from it, Christian belief is more equal than others and atheists have no right to non-belief at all.
When the document talks about “promoting greater religious freedom” what it is talking about is promoting Christianity at the expense of other forms of belief and non-belief. It is saying, like Bachmann and Perry and pseudo-historian David Barton, that Christianity is indeed the basis of the American system of government and that the Founding Fathers were wrong. Rather than legislating from the bench, as he claims “activist” judges do, Gingrich proposes to legislate after the fact, redressing perceived imperfections in the First Amendment by stressing Christian pre-eminence (Christianity didn’t even get a nod, let alone a mention, in the U.S. Constitution).
Gingrich is desperate, as this document proves and he has just upped the ante, putting other Republican
candidates in a position to demonstrate their own devotion to the myth of Christian America.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
How to Make Your Own Shroud of Turin
http://gizmodo.com/5375303/how-to-make-your-own-shroud-of-turin
Further proving that the Shroud of Turin—a linen cloth that believers say covered Jesus after the crucifixion—is a big fake, scientists have made a reproduction using inexpensive materials and easy techniques from the Middle Ages. This is how:
Further proving that the Shroud of Turin—a linen cloth that believers say covered Jesus after the crucifixion—is a big fake, scientists have made a reproduction using inexpensive materials and easy techniques from the Middle Ages. This is how:
Italian chemist Luigi Garlaschelli and his team used the same type of linen. First they aged the cloth with heat, using a normal oven, and washing it with water. The shroud was placed over a student covered in red ochre, using a mask that simulated Jesus' alleged physiognomy. They kept aging and washing the shroud, adding the necessary blood stains in the process.
This easy to do, inexpensive one-week process resulted in exactly the same look as the Shroud of Turin, which has been repeatedly proven to be a fake made around the 14th Century using different dating techniques.
Would this convince the believers? Garlaschelli says he doubt it:
Many still believe that the shroud has unexplainable characteristics that cannot be reproduced by human means. But the result obtained clearly indicates that this could be done with the use of inexpensive materials and with a quite simple procedure.If they don't want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world's best laboratories they certainly won't believe me.
Indeed Luigi, indeed. These people won't take scientific proof that the relic is fake because they just like to do the Mulder and want to believe. Now, go back to kill Koopa Troopas and Goombas after killing God yet one more time. I'm going to pull a Nietzsche and find myself a linen cloth to try. [BBC and Daily Mail]
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
What is the role of the Supreme Court?
Supreme Court Decision Making
Deciding Which Cases to Hear
Each year, the Supreme Court is asked to hear approximately five thousand cases. However, because of time and resource constraints and because not all cases are of equal merit, the Court selects only a handful to formally review.
When formal appeals are filed before the Supreme Court, legal briefs outlining the reasons behind the appeals are circulated among the Justices who sit on the Court. Justices then compile and circulate a "Discuss List" of cases that might warrant Supreme Court review. Finally, the Justices meet and vote on which cases to hear. The Court uses an informal "Rule of Four" in deciding whether or not to hear a case--only four of the nine Justices need to vote to hear a case. Through this process, the Court chooses 150 to 200 cases to hear each year.
As they narrow the number of cases on the "Discuss List," the Justices use several standards to determine whether or not a case is "justiciable." First and foremost, the Court must decide if it has jurisdiction in a case. If it does not, it will not hear the case. The Court has heard less than 200 original jurisdiction cases in its entire history. The Court will also generally refuse to rule on "political questions," cases that it believes are better addressed through the regular political process by other branches of government. Cases in which no real controversy or dispute exists will also be rejected by the Court--it will not address hypothetical questions. Similarly, the person or persons who bring cases before the Court must have "standing." They must be able to show that they have sustained "injury in fact," i.e. that they have been harmed in some real way. An individual who knows someone who is wrongfully imprisoned does not have standing to sue for his or her release (the imprisoned individual would have standing).Supreme Court Decision Making
Once the Supreme Court has decided to hear a case, it orders lower courts that have handled the case to surrender all records and supporting documents related to it. As an appeals court, the Supreme Court does not convene new jury trials but rather reviews the decisions of lower court judges and juries.
As the Justices on the Court begin to weigh the merits of the cases that come before them, attorneys on both sides of the case present oral arguments in the Supreme Court chamber. These sessions are open to the public and are the most visible phase of the Court's decision-making process. Oral arguments, however, are rarely the deciding factor in the Court's decisions. Much more important are the legal briefs filed by each side as well as numerous "friend of the court" briefs filed by interested parties who want the Court to consider particular aspects or ramifications of the case.
Of even greater importance, however, are previous decisions of the Court. To maintain its consistency and credibility, the Court regularly refers to previous Supreme Court decisions as it considers new cases. Adhering to a standard of stare decisis, or letting previous decisions stand, the Court is very reluctant to reverse or even stray from the precedents it has established in past cases. The Court will, however, on very rare occasions, reverse previous Supreme Court decisions when it sees no alternative but to reject a "bad" or outdated decision.1
As they sort through these numerous legal briefs and the original trial and appeals court records, the Justices engage in private debate, argument and discussion. Once a fairly clear majority emerges in support of one side or the other in a case, a Justice (or Justices) writes and circulates "draft" opinions, or explanations of the Court's decision. Ultimately, a majority of the Court (five or more Justices) decides the outcome of the case and a final opinion is written and announced to the public.
Types of Opinions
When the Supreme Court announces its decisions, the particular outcome in a particular case is often of only secondary importance. Far more important are the implications of the Court's decision in that case for a host of other similar cases and controversies. The extent of the applicability of the Court's decision in a particular case to other cases is usually spelled out in detail in the Court's opinion.
The most important document that accompanies a Supreme Court decision is the "Majority Opinion" of the Court which outlines the legal precedent and logic behind its decision. In some instances, one or more of the Justices in the minority may feel so strongly opposed to the majority's decision that they will write a "Dissenting Opinion." Justices who agree with the majority's decision but for other reasons might also write an additional opinion, a "Concurring Opinion." The Justice or Justices who write opinions for the Court generally affix their names to them, thereby giving the public and the legal community some insight into the thinking of individual justices. In rare instances when the Court rules unanimously on a case that it believes requires little explanation, it will issue a short "Per Curiam" opinion, or an opinion "for the Court," with no name attached to it.
Do Courts Make Laws?
When the Supreme Court announces its decisions and issues its opinions, it is often accused of "legislating from the bench" or making laws although it is not the legislative branch. Does the Court "make law" when it decides the outcomes of the cases that come before it? The answer depends on the definition of "law" one uses. When the Congress, a state legislature or some other established law-making body passes a law, it creates "statutory law." These are the laws with which people are most familiar, such as laws regulating the speed limit, laws that define criminal behavior and the laws that establish government programs. Statutory laws, however, are not the only kinds of laws that are "made" and applied in the American political and legal systems.
The most fundamental laws of this nation are the guidelines established by the Constitution. The "constitutional law" of the land includes the Constitution's descriptions of the relationships between the three branches of the national government, the relationships between the national and state governments, the powers the Constitution grants to the national government and, most importantly, the limitations it places on governmental action.
The Legislative, Executive and Judiciary branches are all established and guided by constitutional law. However, the Constitution is sufficiently vague that each branch has frequently found itself in situations where the "right" course of action under constitutional law was unclear. The Framers of the Constitution, recognizing that they could not anticipate every possible circumstance in the new nation's future, purposely left room for each branch to adapt and interpret their roles under the Constitution to meet the needs and challenges they would face. Most notably, the Congress was given the task of deciding what was "necessary and proper" to "promote the general welfare" and form "a more perfect union." The necessary product of these decisions has been thousands and thousands of statutory laws.
As the Executive Branch has implemented the statutory laws passed by the Congress, it has also had to interpret not only its role under the Constitution but also the intentions of the Congress. In many instances the Congress has passed legislation that was purposely vague, leaving the details to Executive Branch departments and agencies to decide. When bureaucracies determine the details of the enforcement and implementation of a law passed by the Congress, the Executive Branch also "makes law." These kinds of laws are called "administrative law."
As this nation's political system has evolved and matured, there have been numerous controversies about the laws passed by the Congress and the way those laws have been implemented by the President and the Executive Branch. There have also been disputes about the separation of powers between the three branches, the relationship between the national government and the states, the rights of the people and a host of other questions that arise under the Constitution. When such cases arise, they clearly fall under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. As Alexander Hamilton observed, it was necessary for the stability and future of the nation to "establish one court paramount to the rest, possessing a general superintendence, and authorized to settle and declare in the last resort a uniform rule of civil justice" (see The Federalist No. 22). When the Court makes decisions in response to such cases, it is, for all intents and purposes, defining and interpreting constitutional law. Does it "make" constitutional law in the process? There are differences of opinion on this matter, but the Court has clearly gone beyond the strict "letter of the law" embodied in the Constitution in several instances. Whether its decisions amount to new law or merely interpretations and clarifications of existing ones is, for better or worse, a matter of opinion.
From Hamilton's statements in The Federalist Papers, however, it appears that the Framers at least intended that the Supreme Court would stand between the other two branches of the national government and the people, preventing abuses of power and improper interpretations of the Constitution. Indeed, Hamilton declared it the duty of the Court to "declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing."2
Interpretation as law
A prominent attorney who had argued hundreds of cases before the Supreme Court once remarked that the Supreme Court is not final because it's right, it is right because it is final. The Court's position as the court of last appeal and as the highest court in the land means that its decisions are binding and largely unchangeable. Once the Court has ruled, its decisions have all the effect and permanency of law.
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