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Pandering President Pushes Prayer

Here they come…”President Bush has cut short his vacation, and urged Americans to pray for the people hurt by Hurricane Katrina. “” In the meantime, America will pray — pray for the health and safety of all our citizens,”I’m not praying, Mr. President. Not to your god, not to any god.He also urges donations to the evangelical Salvation Army and Catholic Charities.It seems like any time there is a disaster of any kind, certain politicians use it as a “free ride” to break the law. They seem to think “Nobody would criticize me for telling Americans to pray if they were praying for a good reason, and if I encourage donations to organizations that evangelize religion and openly discriminate, well, I can do that too”Apparently he’s right. Few are pointing out that he is breaking the law (and obviously pandering). I do. Pushing religion or donation to religious orgs is not the President’s responsibility, and slipping it in when there is suffering is, well, insufferable.Stop it, Mr. President. This is a great time to push community service, national (military) service, and donations to all-encompassing charities like the Red Cross — but remember the Big Easy is also a Big Melting Pot.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2005 at 12:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

472 Responses to “Pandering President Pushes Prayer”

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  1. DNAunion says:
    September 17, 2005 at 12:39 am

    On (or about) 09/15/2005, this response (one of two in the same edition!) was published

    In reference to Rick Pierson?s Aug. 28 letter on evolution, this area is not the only area that believes in the intelligent design by a Supreme Being.

    Questions that can?t be answered by evolution are:

    - How did the heavens and the earth get here?

    - How is it that the sun is the exact distance from the earth that it must be?

    - How does the Earth tilt north and south to provide seasonal changes?

    - How is it that nature is in perfect harmony?

    - How is it that prophecies in the Bible have come true as stated?

    The concept of evolution is in reality contrary to the word of God. The mathematical possibility of a Christian going to Heaven is 100 percent. The possibility of a non-Christian going to Heaven is zero percent in accordance with the word of God.

    If death is the finality of mankind according to the evolutionists, then the Christian would not have lost anything. But if not ? and there really is a Heaven and Hell and eternal life with the Creator forever and eternal torment for the non-Christian ? then the Christian would gain everything and the non-Christian would lose everything.

    Choose the road you want to travel.

    Ray Connor
    Daleville

    And my letter I sent to the paper. Again, this has not been printed yet, and I doubt that the right-leaning paper ever will.

    Judging by his Sept. 15 letter, Ray Connors is confused as to what the scientific theory of evolution actually is: it is a theory regarding biological change. As such, evolution has as much to do with the origin of the Earth, the distance of the Earth from the Sun, and the tilt of the Earth on its axis, as it does with why a rock rolls down a hill instead of up it: in other words, nothing. As many Creationists wrongly do, Mr. Connors has erroneously twisted the scientific theory of evolution into some overarching, all-encompassing, philosophical worldview.

    Mr. Connors goes on to make a couple errors in reasoning. First, he confidently asserts that the probability ?of a Christian going to Heaven is 100 percent.? Not if the religious Jews are correct! In fact, then the probability of a Christian going to Heaven becomes 0. The probability also drops to 0 if the Muslims are correct, or if the Hindus are correct, or if the Jehovah?s Witnesses are correct, or if the atheists are correct. In fact, even if certain Christians are correct, not all people who consider themselves to be Christians will go to heaven: the fundamentalist Baptist church I attended for a while held that Catholics were not true Christians and so would be going to hell.

    Ray then employs what is known as Pascal?s wager. One major flaw with this logic is that it creates a false dichotomy: allegedly, there are only two possibilities, and they are mutually exclusive. First, are the two possibilities Ray listed mutually exclusive? No. Numerous people are both Christians and evolutionists. Second, are there actually only two possibilities? No. Where are the Jews, the Muslims, and the Hindus taken into account? Does Ray consider them to be Christians or evolutionists?

  2. DNAunion says:
    September 17, 2005 at 12:44 am

    This is the other letter from 09/15/2005.

    With regard to Rick Pierson?s Aug. 28 letter about the theory of evolution, I think it is about time for evolutionists to admit that this theory on evolution can no more be proven than the Bible can prove God as Creator.

    That is correct; the Bible cannot and was not intended to prove that there is a holy, all-powerful, all-knowing God, the same God I firmly believe is Creator, not only of man and beast, but of the entire universe.

    You ask with a somewhat puzzled look how it is that one can believe that God is Creator of all things, living and not, if the foundation of your belief, the Bible, cannot be proven.

    The answer is faith. We all worship something. In my case, I worship the Creator and not the created. Evolutionists place faith in a theory and it is a theory that cannot be proven. They have great faith and deep devotion to winning everyone to the idea that this theory is correct and that makes it their religion ? the very same thing Christians are scorned for having.

    No, I can?t take God?s word and prove He is God or that He created the universe because the message of God?s word is foolishness to those who are perishing. God?s word was never intended to prove Him as Creator, it was recorded simply to say He is.

    If the theory of evolution and creationism cannot be currently proven, don?t you think they deserve equal time in our classrooms?

    Ray Robinson
    Dothan

    And here is my response. This one also has not been printed yet, and I doubt that it will (because of the right-leaning nature of the paper).

    In his Sept. 15 letter, Ray Robinson?s improper usage of the term ?faith? amounts to equivocation. Creationists? belief in God is accurately called faith. Their blind faith in their particular formulation of God is not based on empirical evidence and is highly subjective. Neither Creationists nor anyone else can confirm the existence of the imagined supernatural Creator, and that Creationists believe in their particular God and no others ? while people of the various other religions of the world believe just as firmly in their own God, and reject the Creationists? ? shows the highly subjective nature of religious beliefs.

    On the other hand, the confidence ? what Creationists disingenuously mislabel as ?faith? ? evolutionists have in evolution is objective and based on empirical evidences. In fact, evolution has been confirmed by ? and is accepted by ? people from all across the globe, cutting through global, national, and regional ? as well as many ethnic, cultural, and religious ? boundaries. Biblical Creationism, on the other hand, is largely restricted to the United States, and even then, to just particular belts within it.

    Let me recap: blindly and unquestioningly accepting one particular form of unsupportable religious dogma leads to a belief in Creationism; critical thinking, rational thought, and a thorough examination of evidence, on the other hand, leads to confidence in the validity of evolution. Two vastly different types of ?faith? are involved, yet Ray acts as though there is just one type and that it applies equally well to both Creationism and evolution.

    As far as whether or not Creationism should be taught in public schools, one answer is crystal clear: not in science classes! Creationism is religion, not science. In fact, the only relationship Biblical Creationism has with science is that the former grossly distorts the latter.

  3. DNAunion says:
    September 17, 2005 at 12:46 am

    And finally, the person who started this whole thing – Gerald Hicks – replied to my letter.

    In the 09/16/2005 Dothan Eagle:

    I cannot say Rick Pierson?s Aug. 28 letter is dumb because he has an extremely large vocabulary, such as multicellularity and Volvocaceans. There were a few things that caught my unintelligent eye, however. He refers to ?the oldest exposed rocks? being 3.7 billion years old. How old are the oldest unexposed rocks and did they all arrive at different times?

    I am inclined to reject reason when a bunch of marijuana-smoking scientists get together to perform a speciation event to grow a new strand of marijuana ? i.e., hemp ? nettles. How this was duplicated in the laboratory and lead the production of a new species in the wild is quite a feat. Either it was in the laboratory or it was in the wild.

    I am amazed at the number of people in this area who believe that everyone here is dumb and outdated.

    My question to all those who believe like that is, ?Why are you still here? Can you read a road map?? If not, I can and will be glad to show you how to exit this area so you can arrive at a place where people are a little bit more intelligent.

    I thought I had observed abject ignorance in my 70 years, but Vic Powell?s Sept. 2 letter has topped everything to this date. He said evolution has nothing to do with how our species began, merely how it came to be in its present form.

    I know man didn?t come from apes; they came from fish, as Rick Pierson pointed out.

    If science and religion are not at odds with one another and science and religion are in harmony as Vic said, then God created the world and then evolution began. That sounds better than we came from a fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals to primate to humans, as Rick stated.

    The main reason people refuse to believe in Intelligent Design is the fact that they would have to change their ungodly lifestyles. They want to live like they want to live with no supreme being to answer to. They might not answer today, but when this life on earth is over, we will all answer to Almighty God.

    My prayer is that all men will come to know the Savior Jesus Christ before it is too late.

    Gerald L. Hicks
    Dothan

  4. DNAunion says:
    September 17, 2005 at 12:48 am

    Hmm, somehow my post got truncated?!?!?!

    Anyway, here’s my response to Gerald Hicks second letter. Mine has not been printed yet, and probably won’t.

    In his Sept. 16 letter, Gerald Hicks jumps immediately to an incorrect conclusion. He assumes that simply because the word ?hemp? appears in the term ?hemp nettles? they must be narcotic plants: they are not. So much for his attempt to discredit science by means of ridicule (?a bunch of marijuana-smoking scientists?).

    Mr. Hicks is hopelessly lost as to the speciation event that occurred both in the wild and in the lab. Let me explain. A new species of hemp nettle arose in nature first. Scientists then formulated a testable hypothesis about how that occurred (a process called allopolyploidy), and performed breeding experiments in the lab with the two presumed parent species. After only a few generations, a new lab-produced species arose: it had the same appearance as the one produced in the wild, as well as the same number of chromosomes ? which differed from that of both parent species ? and the lab-produced species was reproductively isolated from both parent species, while at the same time being fully capable of interbreeding successfully with the species that had arisen in the wild. The scientists? and nature?s new species were one and the same.

    As to Mr. Hick?s assertion concerning the main reason people refuse to believe in Intelligent Design, it is unfounded speculation. I, in fact, was a fairly well-known Intelligent Design proponent on the Internet for several years, as many hundreds of my posts at several Creation/Evolution forums ? most under the monicker DNAunion – attest. The main reasons I eventually rejected Intelligent Design, in favor of mainstream evolution, do not have to do with the lifting of lifestyle restrictions. Rather, they were based on serious flaws in Intelligent Design my opponents pointed out over the years, and on the overwhelming scientific evidences for evolution to which I was exposed.

  5. mryder66 says:
    September 17, 2005 at 1:21 am

    DNAunion.

    Loved the letters – thanks for sharing.

  6. Seixon says:
    September 17, 2005 at 4:00 pm

    I’m an atheist, but how exactly is the president asking people to pray illegal?

    The 1st Amendment says nothing about restricting free speech of the president, or any other elected official. In fact, it guarantees the freedom of speech for them, and anyone else.

    You can criticize the president for calling for praire, and wanting people to donate to religious organizations for the Katrina effort, but I fail to see how it is illegal.

    Unless you are reading the 1st Amendment in a very abstract way…

  7. reluctantatheist says:
    September 18, 2005 at 3:13 pm

    DNAUnion: I’d wondered where you’d gotten to. Kudos on the letters. Outstanding!

  8. reluctantatheist says:
    September 18, 2005 at 3:23 pm

    Seixon: no, no abstract reading here. Between the Establishment clause, 1st amendment, and the majority of SC rulings, what it is (intentionally or no), is state-led/goverment-led prayer, & is uncool. Now, while it may seem like nit-picking, a little digging shows a great deal of behind-the-scenes Xtian efforts to change this country. It is the small details that do matter. I, for instance, used to believe that we were based as a nation on biblical premises, until I sat down & read the 3 pivotal docs that are the keystone of this country. Talk about a rude awakening! Who taught me these things? Not my parents, or my teachers: little things like the pledge, or the money imprimatur. It is misleading.
    & before I am labelled as a ‘conspiracy nut’, google on reconstructionism, or dominion theonomy, ‘Christian reconstructionism’, etc. Don’t trust me: look it up.
    Cheers.

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