Toshie 5

'OT literalists really make a mockery out of christianity, don't you?'
If you are not an OT literalist your faith is not in the Christ of the new testament.They are one and the same. Your belief that evolution has proof is a joke.

even the title ACCESS Ministries should raise concerns on the part of people who accept that religious belief should be free and not associated with school education, nor imposed upon school students. it sounds like a us evangelical television organisation - so often associated with the imposition of religion rather than freedom of religion and from religion.

>>any true rationalist knows the evolution myth is based on faith not evidence.<<

Epic fail. Evolution is a scientific theory which means it is based on evidence not faith. If scientific theories aren't supported by evidence they get dropped because they are incorrect. The history of science is full of examples of perfectly plausible theories which were dropped because they weren't supported by evidence. That's why neo-Darwinism is the prevailing evolutionary theory rather than other evolutionary theories which fell by the wayside: it is the one which lines up best with the evidence.

Religion works the other way around: it starts with a theory which it assumes to be completely correct and then strenuously ignores all evidence counter to that theory.

>>Must be hard to have keep the faith when the story keeps changing.<<

Although I disagree with your use of the term faith, the fact that the story keeps changing is exactly is what makes scientific theories more credible than religious theories. Science takes account of new evidence: theories are constantly being revised or replaced as new information becomes available. Religion, convinced that it already has the right answer, never changes its tune: a perfect theory needs no revision.

>>The textbooks I had in school are now be very embarassing for evolutionist.<<

Almost certainly: the biology textbooks at the sort of school you must have gone to probably didn't contain many big words, but made up for it with lots of nice pictures of Adam and Eve riding dinosaurs around Eden. Possibly with a footnote about a Satanist named Charles Darwin who used black magic to fool intelligent, God-fearing men into believing that their great-great-grandparents were monkeys. What's even more embarrassing is that these sort of textbooks are still being printed.

Cheers,

Tony

It would certainly appear appropriate for ethics classes to be a compulsory inclusion for all students in our nation-wide education system, in both public and private schools, to be taught by professional teachers who could also be teaching history or geography or a language (English or otherwise), or some other formal subject.

Such classes should start in Primary School and continue to at least middle High School level, with progressive increase in coverage and complexity. Ethics should include coverage of the nature of the world's religions, as well as the fundamentals of philosophy, anthropology, archeology, biology and sociology - as a broad social studies primer. This may also lead in to an understanding of law, politics, multiculturalism and international relations.

Ethics is after all universal, or should be, and is demonstrably somewhat lacking in portions of our populace, and it is a means to instill self-confidence through development of an understanding of rights and obligations, both of self and others, particularly if there is coverage of protections under law and of avenues for redress of wrongs, discrimination, abuse and unfair treatment.

On a side issue: For the young earth creationists - if so little has changed on the Earth in the 2,000 years since the birth of Jesus, how is it possible for a prior mere 4,000 years to account for all the geological, anthropological and biological changes which have obviously occurred - Grand Canyon, Himalayas, Gondwana's dispersion, fossils in rock (even on top of Everest), coal, oil, and the disappearance of mega-whales, mega-sharks, mega-fauna, dinosaurs? Credible evidence?

Yea Tony

'Evolution is a scientific theory which means it is based on evidence not faith '

Like the BIG BANG. What a joke!

Saltpetre, Friday, 9 March 2012 5:10:15 AM

I think the over-arching subject should be philosophy, of which ethics is a subset.

In NSW general religious instruction is included in HSIE - human society and its environment http://k6.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/go/hsie