Creationism in schools

I said it wouldn't eliminate the darker aspects of human nature. You incorrectly infer that I meant some lighter aspect of human nature has been eliminated.

No not miracles. Spontaneous remissions are a very rare but documented fact. You say its from the power of prayer and offer it as proof. Well if it is a miracle and god directly intervened he has a pretty lousy batting average. How many people die of cancer every year? How many of those people and their families and friends pray to god to get well? How many have unexplained spontaneous remission?

I prefer to consider alternative hypothesis extrapolated from the knowledge we have so far gained of human bio-chemistry. A rare mutation of T-Cells? a proponderance or dearth of a particular enzyme? Don't know, but before I call it a miracle I'd want to enquiry into more "natural" explanations. Indeed the quest to answer such questions is a fundamental part of both science and human nature (curiosity/creativity/problem solving).

Not a shred of evidence there.
the universe is just right? its in balance? its just the right size? OF COURSE IT IS! It is our reality. we come along after the fact and attempt to describe what we see. We build equations and theories and accumulate observations and gee, and then after the fact we notice the elegance of our reality. The fine tolerances that it consists of and say - there would be no life if this was 1% off or that was a femtosecond later.

That may be correct, but all it means is that it would have been a different universe. Look at the earth's orbit and axial tilt and say wow, a few million miles one way or the other or another 5 degrees of tilt and life wouldn't exist on earth. But in reality all you can say is OUR kind of life wouldn't exist.

No, the precision of measurement, the fitting together in harmony of those measurments is what this universe is all about. It certainly doesn't constitute evidence of a creator or a designer.

you beleive you have a case, i beleive its a bogus case. mere sophistry in support of faith, not of science itself.

I do not attempt to disprove god. I am looking for proof of god's existance, not his non-existence. So far all I get is sophistry and quasi science, to support your faith. I respect your right to your faith, I don't respect the "science" you attempt to rationalize it with.

Name one peer reviewed study that proves that the super natural exists.

Gimme a break. I love her because she fills me with joy and contentment just looking at her. I love her because she has never doubted me and supported me through some pretty tough times, I love her for the little things she does for me, I love her for her friendship, I love her for her help, I love her for caring, I love her for her criticisms (always positive once she cools down), I love her for her tenderness, I love her for her strength. I love her for the funny faces she makes when she's sleeping. I love her because we have compatible pheremones. AND I love her for being an exceptionally fine lover.

You are wrong. I have attended three different denominational churches for prolonged periods. I have read the bible, the koran, the torah, the Mahābhārata, the Tao Te Ching, the Pali Canon. I have engaged priests, rabbis, imams, gurus and monks in hundreds of hours of discussion both verbal and written. I began my search for faith in God, 40+ years ago. Some 10 years ago I came to some personal conclusions. Since I didn't have faith, I'd venture to say my search was far more extensive and my questioning far more rigourous than yours.

Would the discovery of extra-terrestrial life prove you wrong?

 

Jonsa, I'll hit you tomorrow.

Well, not literally ...

 

I will summarize the answer with a few points:

- Prove your belief. When you've proved it we can discuss it. Until then, your belief has to be taken so seriously as is taken the Lord of the Rings. Pure fiction.

- If you want to teach your creationism I want that in school be taught Islamic creationism, together with the Jewish, also the one taught in The FSM, also in LotR, and so on.

- In name of atheism no one has done anything.

- I was refering to the American Family Organization that asked to make again illegal again the homosexual relations. Ultraconservative envy the Islam.

 

Except in the case of Zionist State of Israel which continues it's religious/racist wars and tyranny against the Islamic citizens and residents of Palestine.

Of course violence in the name of religion continues to this day although not openly condoned by nations. Afghanistan was invaded by the United States with the excuse that Osama bin Ladin was behind the 9/11 attacks but in reality it was because Afghanistan was a fundamentalist Islamic nation run by the Taliban what had no involvement in 9/11. The "Christian" in the White House wanted revenge against an Islamic nation which had nothing to do with bringing KSM, the actual person responsible for the 9/11 attacks, to justice. Even the offer by the Taliban to turn over bin Ladin to a neutral country for prosection was rejected by the Bush adminstration.

 

There are no messages from Jesus. Not a single word in the New Testament came directly from Jesus. At best there are paraphased statements attributed to Jesus made decades later by men. We have no way of knowing whether those statements were accurate or if they are pure fabrications.

Murder is, of course, a violation of the Rights of the Individual and as such is wrong. No one has a Right to infringe upon the unalienable Rights of another sovereign individual and this has nothing to do with Jesus or religion.

Adultery and lying aren't inherently good or bad. It depends upon the situation and the individuals. In many situations committing adultery or lying to another person is the correct thing to do. In other cases it is not.

 

Are you realy saying there is only one side to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? That the Crusades, which were between Christians and Muslims, is being carried out by Jews in lieu of Christians with the full blessing of the Pope to ride Europe of an excess of criminal minded young men?

THat is an interesting take.

So, tell me, what is the difference between Al Qaeda and the COMINTERN? Are Priates off Somalia driven by a zeal for Islam? How about FARC in Columbia? The Shining Path is Peru? Those Marxist guerillas in Nepal and India? Is Kashmire, with a local insurgency, a Pakistani fed insurgency, and an Indian response to both primarily about Islam?

Is it good to spin all these things into a religious thing?

 

When did it stop its religious/racist war and tyranny against its Islamic citizens?

Did you get that line from "The Language of Jihad or Screw Those Evil Zionists" by Sheik Ahmoud Yassin. I recall it has a chapter on tyranny.

 

Creationism is not science, it is religious nonsense believed by a small, tiny number of christian sects and followers. If taught at all in school, it should be taught as part of some religious beliefs. It is not a major part of Christianity, since by far, most Christians accept Evolution, not creationism nonsense.

 

You cannot have it both ways my friend. We cannot first dismiss Saint Kolbe's acts as 'normal' and then simply explain that everyone else who is apparently hardwired for this behavior actually has a survival mechanism that is kicked in.

The difference is choice, and in Saint Kolbe's choice, is faith. You may disagree with it, but you have a hard time denying its power and its power to help others.

I don't believe that I ever claimed that bravery was a 'religious' thing.

I am however, pointing to faith and stating that it has distinct advantages when the chips are down. Indeed, science agrees with me. In fact, it doesn't matter what your faith is, in battle and in the after math of battle, its been shown time and again that faith helps.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/onwisconsin/army-faces-questions-over_n_805524_73585517.html

Of course, as I have said, many atheists are more than willing to throw out science with such anecdotal insights as, "most atheists I know are resilient!" As if casual observation now trumps study?

Think want you want about the study, but the US Military is is teh most fastideously non-religious organization on earth (inlcuding atheism), battle is all that matters.

Yep, but the Bible offers a way to beat them does it not?

Well, lets just get straight to it. You speak of knowledge, but when it comes to morality, you basically say the same things Christians do about what it means to be 'good'. The only thing you reject is God.

So, for thousands of years, literally, people strove against a world that was anything but inbued with these values, instilled them, and now .... you reject God, not based on evidence, but based on knowledge? Knowledge born thousands of years ago? All correct .... except God?

Evolution is not necessarily a slow process, a few hundred generations is more than enough in the right circumstance. That is just sceince.

How much of our social structure is instict at this point?

He does, he claims it is all genetic. And the problem isn't that his evolution speak is off kilter, its that he takes that and makes a genetic claim that is not proven to disprove God.

Its silly, and it is exactly the kind of subjectivity that corrupts science.

There is nothing about the choice to sin or not that is genetic. Nothing. When you steal, you steal. Your brain, controled by DNA for synaptic function, knows (except in exceeding rare cases) that it is wrong - people do it anyway.

Even sociopathes, with STRONG genetic pre-dispositions toward violence can CHOOSE not to be violent.

Simply put, Dawkins is wrong. He has created a lie because he believes God is lie. If that isn't irony itself, I don't know what is.

We have not been 'pray' for a good chunk of our evolutionary history. Indeed, we are closely related to monkeys and, those that organized the way we did, do not have flight insticts, they have attack insticts. A threat to the pack results in a coordinated defense. The norm is a small, but tight knit group, as it was for early human history. The neo-lithic revolution changed that.

You have a burden of proof then to do more than claim it. Its the same case that Dawkins makes, and it fails. I take 19 year old X-box playing fat kids and turn them into warriors for a living. Instinct is the result of discipline and training - not genetics. There is nothing natural about shooting another human beings.

Again, a better question, why do you think this? To deny God or because you think it is the real answer? Certainly there is benefit in instict, but Maslow's heerarchy of needs seems pretty capable of defining our instincts.

Knowledge is creating new and better products.

Wisdom is seeing how they will effect things and getting in front of them. Steve Jobs is not famous for making computers (plenty of people do that), he is famous for continuously seeing opportunities and exploiting them in ingenius ways. He's wise in his area, obviously smart, he's not a nobel lauret either.

Yep, that is a staff process that is supposed to help us think about these things. Its given us terms like group think, etc., and that tells us that even a lot of very smart people can still do very dumb things.

Like create mortgage backed derivatives where no one was minding the proverbial counter where the individual mortgages were sold. All those strategic buisesses just missed that, huh?

Call it whatever you want to, the Bible is pretty clear what it is.

Because we evolved obviously. I am not a Creationists, nor would I defend that in a literal sense. Animals hoard, so do people. Unlike animals, we can recognize that the behavior is destructive and CHOOSE not to do it.

Then why do they crash? Why do we have financial crisis and look back and wonder what happened? We create systems and they go awry precisely because we do not control them, and the more we create, the less we are able to control things.

Take for example our food supply. It is a wonder of efficiency, to be able to produce this much food and these prices. Yet the system is vulnerable to weather, floods, etc. We can do wonderous things, but the more we integrate the more our individual himanity (much less ability to control), becomes something like a cell in an organism. Humans are simply not in control of all things, and untimate control is the ultimate illusion.

 

Humans are not manipulating markets, algorithims are. And people, who see teh disconnect between the fundamentals and the wild swings in the market, are making money off it - even knowing it will cause long term problems.

If humans are in control? Why not create systems that stop the fluctuations or ban the algorithims? Or ban them from looking at certain things? Because greed is in control.

Yep, it is, why accept everything in Christianity ... but God?

We say this now, but is this how you live your life? Is this how most atheists, when you look around the board are conducting themselves? Seriously, I will show you two people, and you tell me which one is living a love centered life. These two have famously clashed BTW.





If you spend your time bashing other people and their faith .... what is central to your life?

Not if you are slave to your instincts or genes.

I agree with you. There are plenty of vey honorable atheists, but, I will say that it is far more difficult for an atheist to do this than a religious person - in the aggregate. Church, a community centered around values and beliefs, encouraging each other to be better and calling each other when we fall short?

Atheism simply does not have that. Most atheists disdain the organization for that end, and I have been happily, derisively told that anything but what an individual atheist states in not atheism. Not all men or women will fall pray to temptation and rationalization, but when what you believe is defined solely by 'you' ... that is a warning.

But, as I said, in terms of morality, you seem to believe pretty much the same things I do - just no God. The point here is not right or wrong, its tolerance. When you dig into this area, certainty is not always possible.

 

Of course you can have it both ways. I didn't dismiss Kolbe's acts as normal, I suggested alternative motivations. I realize he was a pious man and your church is not doubt right, although I am unaware of the miracles he supposedly performed.

I stated that Kolbe is not unique. There are literally thousands of stories throughout history of self sacrifice to save others. did some do it because of their faith? Undoubtedly. did some do it because it seemed the right thing to do? Apparently according to various heros accounts.

I have no doubt that faith is great when the chips are down. It gives one the "reasurance" that somebody besides themselves is "in charge" and that the script has already been written. What ever works.

OTOH, I have never claimed that faith doesn't have many benefits accruing to those that have it. My criticism is with the objects of that faith.

Well if the bible offers a way, it can't be that effective, can it. Seems we still are dealling with it. Now you may think its because the world isn't christian, but I think its because human behaviour is founded on instinct and emotion and mitigated by intellect.

I agree. I just beleive that morals are not the sole domain of religion. Morals and ethics can be developed and adhered to because people make choices about their principles, Without god having anything to do with it.

People are still striving against a world that is not "imbued" with these values. However, to suggest that the ancient egyptians didn't have morals and ethics or that the headhunters of borneo didn't have morals and ethics or that the greeks didn't have morals and ethics is just wrong. Morals and ethics were a development of humankind LONG before Yaweh hit the scene.

No, adaptation can take a few hundred generations. Please provide one example of any higher lifeform that evolved into another species in so short a time.

Does sex sell?

Wait a moment. The notion that choice is genetic is absolutely absurd, and I don't think anyone has said that.

Morality that stems from unlearned knowledge or instinct is the issue here. The likeliest explanation for transgenerational untaught knowlege transfer is genetics, but there may be other mechanisms - jury is out on that. BUT, teh jury has come in on the fact that some aspects of morality are hardwired.

I also agree that intellect has the ability to "govern" certain behaviours. You seem to acknowledge that it is the choices we make that impact on living the best possible life one is capable of.



[/quote]We have not been 'pray' for a good chunk of our evolutionary history. Indeed, we are closely related to monkeys and, those that organized the way we did, do not have flight insticts, they have attack insticts. A threat to the pack results in a coordinated defense. The norm is a small, but tight knit group, as it was for early human history. The neo-lithic revolution changed that.[/quote]

Monkeys most definitely have flight instincts. So do apes. They also have attack instincts - especially when outnumbering the threat.. Indeed, chimps are the only other known species that will seek out and murder others of its kind.

We are more closely related to apes than monkeys (human/chimp -98-99 % common DNA, human/monkeys 92-93%).

We have been prey for pretty near all of our existence. Our big brains allowed us to hunt the hunters as well as all the prey animals. Even Today we still find big cats eating humans so you can bet their ancestors where also doing it. I don't think a dire wolf or a smilodon would have any compunction about eating a human or two.

No, the nurture vs nature debates have evolved beyond whether its one or the other. Its now about how much is one and how much is the other and what behaviours can be attributed to them. There are volumes and volumes of science from an array of disciplines about this very subject.

No, instinct is not the result of discipline and training. You may want to call it that, but you are teaching them. Discipline to use what you teach them and use it "unthinkingly" thru training. Again, instinct is transgenerational untaught knowledge. I agree it ain't natural to kill other humans let alone be ordered to do so.

(Aside - helluva job. I hope you feel good that you save tons of lives - both your boys and enemy non-combattants. good on you.)

I do not claim that we are creatures solely of instinct. I merely claim that instinct or unlearned knowledge plays an important part in human behaviour.
I deny god's existence for a multitude of reasonsm not this single issue.

I won't get into a semantic debate about what is wisdom. Suffice it to say that creativity/vision is not the same as wisdom and his success has way more to do with the former than the latter. not that he lacks wisdom as he does display great wisdom in areas like corporate culture for instance.

The guy that created those products knew there was nobody minding the store. All of the financial institutions that were pushing them knew that nobody was minding the store. the front line mortgage underwriters were having a field day because the knew nobody was minding the store. All they cared about was making PILES of money (like in trillions), and when its flowing like that, anybody rocking the boat gets thrown overboard.


[

They crash because at this level of complexity, humans don't always get it right. They cannot anticipate every scenerio. That's why I never buy a software product until it hits version 3 at least.

Totally agree. we are not in control of all things. However in some things we do have ultimate control and it isn't an illusion.

 

Obviously there are two sides to any conflict but it was Zionist European Jews that "invaded" Palestine which was overwhelmingly an Arab homeland. The Arabs didn't move to Palestine from foreign countries, they already lived there. It was the Zionists that declared war on the non-Jewish Arab population in 1948. It was the Zionist Israeli state that provoked and then invaded Egypt, Jordan and Syria to acquire territory in 1967. And it has been the Zionist controlled Israeli government that has continued to violate the Rights of the non-Jewish population of Palestine.

Yes, the non-Jewish population of Palestine has violently resisted the violations of their Rights by the Zionists of Israeli often resorting to terrorism in response. We must all condemn any act of terrorism but let us not forget that Israel was also founded on terrorism and even elected the leaders of Jewish terrorism to head the government of Israel.

So yes there are two side but never forget who started the war and who perpetuates it to this day.

 

Well, lets put some things in perspective. The land of Israel was owned by ... no one. The Jews were immigrating to their homeland as a result of the Halocaust, and the first Arab governments the attempted to sieze control of the territory attempted to use force to kick the Jews back out. In fact, they asked the Arabs to move out of the way so they could deal with the Israelis. They then attempted to use force to expel the Jews ... and lost. They tried a few more times, and lost.

There is more than enough blame to be apportioned in the IP conflict. When we take one side of this issue and attempt to deride it as 'terroristic' we run roughshod over a complex issues and we miss out on what is needed to actually solve the crisis - compromise.

 

Yes, humans are in control. They do modify their systems to stop fluctuations, ban certain auto/trade triggers, and cap volumes in those situations. Humans are constantly monitoring and modifing these systems.

I do not accept everything in Christianity by a long shot. I do share with it many moral and ethical positions. I do accept that there is wisdom within it. I reject all of the dogma however.

do you know anything about Chis Hitchens personal life? He may be a vitriolic atheist, but does that automatically preclude love, respect, etc.? No, but it does automatically breed distain and hatred from those he attacks. (and rightly so I might add, since he is over the top hateful in many of his comments).

Truth as you see it. Love of life. Intellectual expression. love of some others. Because a person violently disagrees with religion, does not render that person sub human.

While those with no faith can't understand those with it, the corollory is also true. The religious seem to believe that a life without faith cannot possibly be full of love, sharing, respect etc. ans is somehow less a life..

You have totally misunderstood or chosen to misunderstand my comment about us being slaves to our genes. I even qualified it by saying not in the way you seem to think.

We are slaves to our genes, because we have a genetic imperative. To propagate those genes. We are slaves to our genes because so many aspects of our bodies are dictated by genetic expression. Let's not engage in sophistic argument.

I do not "fall prey" to temptation, I make a conscious choice. I do not rationalize my lack of faith, I seek to articulate my personal conclusions and perspective.

I reject all religious dogma and ritual. I reject sectarian exclusionism. I reject the premise that religion is not the sole domain of morality. Funny, but most religions have some rather definite ideas of right and wrong, and are not all that tolerant.

However, I shall repeat, I respect a person's faith in as much that he/she has something I dont, absolutely has the right to, and appears to work for them. I do not accept the object of that person's faith.

 

Something cannot be both common and uncommon.

The real point of a Saint is to show an example of what right looks like. Now contrast a Saint with an atheist role model. You claim that love is central ... but ... who are the atheist role models?

Jefferson and Einstein? Who are not even atheists?

Dawkins and Hitchens? Whose academics fall short of many standards?

Gora of India? Whose message has been twisted into de-conversion stories?

What really seems to mark a atheist role model is scorn for God. That tells us what is central.

Is that how my faith works? When people shot at me in battle, is that what I was thinking? I want to show you something:

"Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster."

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching

Again, why are rejecting the faith and its benefits?

Why not? Because you say so?

Why is it instinct and emotion? Because you say so?

God had everything to do with it. Morals didn't just bubble up, and morals without God arrive well after the morality that is now taken for granted.

Tell me, how in this aspect is modern atheism any different than the Golden Cafe from the time of Moses? Having been delivered into calm and peace, humans reject God for ... what?

As I stated, they have a very different kind of ethic. One far closer to the instictual ethic you profess.

Moths in Great Britain. Bacteria. A spiked deer ruining an entire herd. Royalty and intermarriage.

Has our attitude toward sex changed as a result of being bombarded with it? Is promiscuity now consequence free? Can sex still get a hold of you and cause you to lose site of what is important?

Yeah, that is EXACTLY what Dwkins is saying. Morality is genetic.

Or, its far simpler that we are taught. There are plenty of social sciences that point to this transfer taking place. Again, why does it need to be genetic?

That still comes back to values. If I decide that my comfort is primary, then stealing is OK. Who cares if you are less comfortable as a result - and we see that in the animal world all the time do we not?

Why do you think parenting is listed time after time after time as critical to a child's development?

Just like today, attacks from big cats on humans were rare. Because for much of our history, we were hunter gatherers. Do big cats prey upon tribes of gorillas?

Simply put, once again, 'instinct' can be taught - and indeed it is taught, on the football field and in our battle drills, the phalanx being a prime example of a drill that beciomes instinctual - practiced to the point that thought is not required.

And yet, Dawkins claims genetic basis, and atheist - driven by knoweldge - cheer him and castigate his detractors as bigots?

Yep, it is, I train it every day.

Those trained boys will take life or save life based on the wisdom of those who lead them. I have seen it go both ways, and, when lead unwisely, I have seen the price those boys pay both personally and ... what they inflict.

Killing your fellow human being fo no reason? To have been lead astray?

And I think this is abandoning personal responsibility.

So greed, not humanity was in control.

There were indeed humans who were sounding the alarm. There is no complexity in knowing that giving a man with no income a half million dollar loan was going to default on the loan. It takes no great imagination to see how repeatedly doing this is going to undermine the system.

Yet, at each step of the line, people took their cut, a bribe really, and sent it up.

Greed was in control. And now, all those people who took their cut? Hard to make a living from teh system they shanked isn't it?

People have a hard enough time controlling themselves. There are some things we can control, and much that we cannot. When we accept this, we gain far more than we lose.

 

Le't correct this.

Palestine belonged to those that lived there. This included some Jews, mostily Arabs and a small percentage of others. While others can certainly migrate to a territory they become a part of the population and have no right to violate the rights of others to which the territory is already their homeland.

The "Zionists" from Europe resorted to terrorism and coercion to force the existing non-Jewish population from what became Israel. It was a religious/ethnic war against the non-Jewish citizens of Palestine. It continues to be that today.

 

This.

The phrase "scientifically documented miracles" is a contradiction. By definition, miracles are outside of science. A miracle is an event attributed to a supernatural cause, and science cannot address the supernatural.

A "miracle" is simply an invocation of the god of the gaps fallacy.

No, this is the opposite of how science works. Science does not include possibilities until it has evidence to support them.

 

Palestine belonged to the turk for hundreds of years... Then they lost it in WW1 to the british who had already announced in 1917 that they would set apart a track of land for the establishment of a jewish state. In 1947-48 the world, minus the arabs, agreed to the creation of israel. The arabs, which had already received, from that same 1917 british land, Jordan and Syria, decided that the tiny sliver of land reserved for the jews was a terrible insult and they should be pushed to the sea... They tried, and failed... Multiple times... Resulting in the growth of the jewish state and the lost of nation status for the pallies... Which by the way have already a country of their own, being Jordan or Egypt or Lebanon, or Syria... They have quite a choice of countries... But they won't get what the israelites occupies today.

 

But we can still meet them halfway and allow a miracle to be any sufficiently unlikley event. But this is no good either. First I would ask how unlikley does something need to be in order to classify as a miracle and how that number was arrived at. William Dembski actually understood why this is a legitimate question and tried to answer it. Keyword "tried" because he failed miserably. 1) His calculations included giant mathematical errors and 2) Even then he could not rule out false positives.

 

Shiva:
The Arab population of the Levant was controlled by the British until after WWII. It was they who initially approved the migrations of Jews, who, by the time th British left, were now legal immigrants. The Arab armies that attempted to replace British political authority did so with the express desire to remove the Jews from Israel.

Then, as now, the problem was that one side wanted the other completely removed, and both sides are finding out that the reality of that desire is impossible to impose on the other. Israel has taken more and than it can control in Palestine, and Palestine has no reason to expect Jews to simply surrender to Arab political control. Or do you think that Jews are not allowed a homeland of their own? That they should spend eternity spread out among the populations of the world as second class citizens?

As for violence, are you really going to offer up that one side of this conflict is the only side that has experienced terroristic violence?

Having served on both sides of the issue, I will tell you that most Arabs accept Israel. What they do not accept is the constant preaching of Muslim infamy from Jerusalem. In response, BiBi's silliness has mostly run its course, and all the bluster of muscle flexing has done nothing for either Israel of its neighbors, which are now at their lowest point in years.

Look for change when BiBi gets the boot.

 

Oh, I think cancer miraculously reversing itself in a method that sceince can document but has not good answer for would qualify.

 

Remission is a well known phenomenon, but so to is its re-occurence after remission. Getting cancer is as much a miracle as losing it. Also, I assume you're unprepared to tell me just how unlikley something needs to be to be this sort of miracle.

 

Do you know of any Catholic countries that have "banned" homosexuality (meaning by law)?

 

Without referencing a source, I certainly don't believe that. My point is that you continually bring up the terrible deeds of atheism, but completely ignore what motivated them. Religion can be used as a motivational tool, which we saw during the Crusades and even now with terrorism. The lack of belief in a God is not a motivational tool, it doesn't make sense for it to be.

 

None that I'm aware of, but Uganda came pretty close. link