One-third of Americans reject evolution, poll shows

[buffalo]

But God is not a science. God is beyond the scope of all scientific studies,
and any attempt to argue otherwise, I believe, is insulting to God. How dare
anyone try and pin God down under glass or put him in a test tube or under
a microscope and say that we can use God in Science.

\

My kneejerk reaction to this was to agree. He will not be subject to laying down in the lab for our examination. But then I thought about Eucharistic Miracles, in particular bleeding hosts. They have been examined by science. But taking it a step further, what if in studying His blood a particular disease was cured?

Then I think, He came down from heaven and died for us. Something to chew on I guess…

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

You keep treating the two as the same, but I have yet to see the two shown to be the same.

Other then a court case, but I believe we can all agree that the courts do not decide truth.

HAVE YOU SEEN OF PANDAS & PEOPLE 1st & 2nd Editions AND DESIGN OF LIFE?
You have seen it, but are just ignoring it, moving the goalpost again and again and again.

What is the deciding factor behind what science is?
If the scientific general consensus is that ID is NOT
a science, then in your mind science apparently is
WHATEVER WE WANT IT TO BE. No sorries, NO.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Summa

Article 2. Whether sacred doctrine is a science?

Objection 1. It seems that sacred doctrine is not a science. For every science proceeds from self-evident principles. But sacred doctrine proceeds from articles of faith which are not self-evident, since their truth is not admitted by all: “For all men have not faith” (2 Thessalonians 3:2). Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science.
Objection 2. Further, no science deals with individual facts. But this sacred science treats of individual facts, such as the deeds of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and such like. Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science.
On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. xiv, 1) “to this science alone belongs that whereby saving faith is begotten, nourished, protected and strengthened.” But this can be said of no science except sacred doctrine. Therefore sacred doctrine is a science.
I answer that, Sacred doctrine is a science. We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.
Reply to Objection 1. The principles of any science are either in themselves self-evident, or reducible to the conclusions of a higher science; and such, as we have said, are the principles of sacred doctrine.
Reply to Objection 2. Individual facts are treated of in sacred doctrine, not because it is concerned with them principally, but they are introduced rather both as examples to be followed in our lives (as in moral sciences) and in order to establish the authority of those men through whom the divine revelation, on which this sacred scripture or doctrine is based, has come down to us.

No mention of the word “theology,” for one.
For two, it is not SCIENCE science, which
is applicable to the physical world.

It is science, to an extent, I suppose, but not in any way relevant to the issue at hand.

 

[edwest2]

So if people on their own decided that the Earth was flat, you’d be okay? That is why you are wrong.

Well when Creationists prove their false science to be true, we may take the time to listen.

Your first question avoids the topic. It assumes something without evidence.

The us and them dilemma appears in the second statement. As I wrote, it is clear that Creationism and ID are the devil, never to be discussed as they are forbidden. And people thought the Wright Brothers were fakes too.

I’ll keep reading more about the mistakes science is making while some, or even many, try to dismiss ID. I don’t need anybody’s permission to know that the completely biased assumption surrounding “junk DNA,” complete with a wishful thinking explanation, was based on bias and indoctrination.

Peace,
Ed

 

[HansTrappist]

The reasoning behind the “nice arrangement” is because the very heart of Intelligent Design
has been from the beginning a religious doctrine, formulated by Creationists, in an attempt
to overthrow evolution. The Scientific Community is well aware of this, so it isn’t even going
to give Creationists a chance to get one foot into the door.

Creationists have an agenda, and we’re on to them.

Nonsense. Michael Behe is not a “creationist” in the manner you are abusing the term.

Over numerous postings here you and numerous others of like mind have done nothing but attack and misrepresent Mr. Behe in an undignified yet strangely familiar manner.

Here is Michael Behe in his own words on Intelligent Design so you can no longer pretend to not know his position:

"If random mutation is inadequate, then (since common descent with modification strongly appears to be true) of course the answer must be non random mutation. That is, alterations to DNA over the course of the history of life on earth must have included many changes that we have no statistical right to expect, ones that were beneficial beyond the wildest reach of probability. Over and over again in the past several billion years, the DNA of living creatures changed in salutary ways that defied chance.

What caused DNA to change in nonrandom, helpful ways? One can envision several possibilities. The first is bare chance— earth was just spectacularly lucky. Although we have no right to expect all the many beneficial mutations that led to intelligent life here, they happened anyway, for no particular reason. Life on earth bought Powerball lottery ticket after lottery ticket, and all the tickets simply happened to be grand prize winners. The next possibility is that some unknown law or laws exist that made the cellular outcomes much more likely than we now have reason to suppose. If we eventually determine those laws, however, we’ll see that the particular machinery of life we have discovered was in a sense written into the laws. A third possibility is that, although mutation is indeed random, at many critical historical junctures the environment somehow favored certain explicit mutations that channeled separate molecular parts together into coherent systems. In this view the credit for the elegant machinery of the cell should go not so much to Darwin’s mechanism as to the outside world, the environment at large.

Each reader must make his own judgments about the adequacy of these possible explanations. I myself, however, find them all unpersuasive. Although much more could be said, briefly my reasons are these. The first possibility— sheer chance— is deeply unsatisfying when invoked on such a massive scale. Science— and human rationality in general— strives to explain features of the world with reasons. Although serendipity certainly plays its part in nature, advancing sheer chance as an explanation for profoundly functional features of life strikes me as akin to abandoning reason altogether. The second and third possibilities both seem inadequate on other grounds. They both seem in a sense to be merely sweeping the problem of the complexity of life under the rug. The second possibility replaces the astounding complexity of life with some unknown law that itself must be ultracomplex. The third possibility simply projects the functional complexity of life onto the environment. But, even in theory, neither the second nor third possibilities actually reduce complexity to simplicity, as Darwin’s failed explanation once promised to do.

Instead, I conclude that another possibility is more likely: The elegant, coherent, functional systems upon which life depends are the result of deliberate intelligent design. Now, I am keenly aware that in the past few years many people in the country have come to regard the phrase “intelligent design” as fighting words, because to them, the word “design” is synonymous with “creationism,” and thus opens the door to treating the Bible as some sort of scientific textbook (which would be silly). That is an unfortunate misimpression.

The idea of intelligent design, although congenial to some religious views of the universe, is independent of them. For example, the possibility of intelligent design is quite compatible with common descent, which some religious people disdain. What’s more, although some religious thinkers envision active, continuing intervention in nature, intelligent design is quite compatible with the view that the universe operates by unbroken natural law, with the design of life perhaps packed (In fact, possibilities two and three listed above— where nonrandomness was assigned either to complex laws or to the environment— can be viewed as particular examples of this. I think it makes for greater clarity of discussion, however, just to acknowledge explicitly in those cases that the laws or special conditions were purposely designed to produce life)…cont."

 

[HansTrappist]

(cont.)…What is the rational justification for chalking up to design features of life that may be just barely over the edge of evolution, such as molecular systems that contain two different cellular protein-protein binding sites? After all, up until now I have shown simply that it was biologically unreasonable to think that Darwinian processes produced them. How do we proceed from the improbability of Darwinism to the likelihood of design?

Let’s consider an analogy. Imagine that, like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, you wash up on a tropical island, the sole survivor of a plane crash. Choking and spitting out water, you pull yourself up off the sand and set off to explore the island, to look for food and shelter. After hours walking along the beach catching crabs, you turn and head for the interior mountains, hoping to find a cave to use as a base. Eventually you stumble across a sizeable crevice in the side of a mountain where you can at least take cover from storms. Over the next few weeks you range farther and farther on the large island, finding some coconut trees here and other edible plants there.

One day while exploring a distant stony beach you notice a half dozen football-sized rocks close together, forming a small crescent. Odd. But there are a lot of rocks around and they have to be in some pattern, so why not a crescent? About fifty yards away on the edge of the same beach you find another group of rocks, roughly the same size as the first, but this group has a couple dozen rocks and forms a complete circle, about four feet in diameter; no other rocks are close by. Very odd. Maybe a freak accident. Maybe a larger rock got hit by lightning, shattering it into pieces that landed in a circle, or possibly a swirling wave pushed rocks into a circle.

A week or two later while exploring the jungle, you spot a banana tree. Overjoyed at the prospect of a new food source you continue in the same direction, hoping to find a few others. During a ten-minute walk you find some more banana trees, a few scattered— then six of them, in two rows of three, each spaced about a dozen feet apart. Strange. Why should they grow like that? Were there just three original trees that happened to be growing in a row, and then perhaps a steady wind blew seeds perpendicular to the row? Or maybe there were two original trees, and the wind blew seeds to make two rows of three? But what sort of a lucky wind would it take to space the seeds so evenly?

A little farther into the jungle you find a grove of thirty-five mango trees in five neat rows of seven. About a quarter mile from the grove you discover a square of stone walls, with four straight sides ten feet long, each with three layers of stone neatly atop each other. Running now, you surmount a hill and for the first time spy the other side of the island. On the far beach, broken and weathered, are the remains of a small sailing vessel, a hundred years old by the looks of it. Its mast is snapped, planks are missing from the hull, and only shreds of the sail remain…(cont.)"

 

[HansTrappist]

"(cont.)…After rummaging through the ship, you walk back to your cave, and again pass the banana and mango groves, the square of rocks, and the circle and crescent. Now you see them differently. Did the wind blow seeds into neat rows of fruit trees, or did a shipwrecked sailor plant them? How about those piles of stones? Not just the big square, but the circle and the crescent, too? Once it’s crystal clear that some things on the island— the ship and its contents— are the result of intelligent design, you have to reevaluate other features of the island. Now possible explanations include not only nature and luck, but mind and purpose, too. Yet how do you decide if something is more likely accounted for by intelligence rather than the natural forces that also are at play on the island?

Here’s one way. Design is the purposeful arrangement of parts. Rational agents can coordinate pieces into a larger system (like the ship) to accomplish a purpose. Although sometimes the purpose of the system is obscure to an observer who stumbles upon it, so the design goes unrecognized, usually the purpose can be discerned by examining the system. What’s more, the arrangement of the pieces is frequently one that is quite unlikely to occur by chance. So if something on the island now looks as if it might have served some palpable objective, and if it seems quite unlikely to be the result of chance, you decide that the best explanation may be that it was purposely arranged that way.

With those considerations in mind, you now judge that the mango grove is very likely to have been purposely planted. The purpose would be to provide a supply of food, and the probability of the mango trees’ growing in five neatly spaced rows of seven seems quite low. However, although suspicious-looking, the two rows of banana trees might just be a coincidence. Flukes do happen, even when an intelligent agent is around, so it’s hard to tell for sure. The crevice in the mountain you are using as a base is not an uncommon natural occurrence— no reason to suspect design there. The square, three-layered stone pile is presumptively an incomplete or dismantled makeshift shelter; the four-foot circle of rocks is most probably some old campsite, rather than the aftermath of a lightning strike. But instead of a second campsite where some of the rocks were washed away, the small crescent of rocks might really be a fortuitous arrangement. After all, there are a lot of other rocks around, and some simple pattern or other might pop up just by chance.

You would make inferences based on your experience of the likelihood of some event happening by chance. You might be wrong in some cases, when your estimation is off. What’s more, new evidence (such as discovering that the crescent is actually part of a large circle of rocks— a second campsite— the rest of which were covered by sand) could affect a conclusion, just as the new evidence of the discovery of the ship affected your judgments. Your level of confidence in design for different cases could range widely, from sneaking suspicion to utter certainty. As the estimated probability of serendipity decreases and the clarity of the purpose of the arrangement increases, your confidence in design would also increase. The stone crescent may be a fluke; the makeshift shelter almost certainly isn’t. The wrecked ship itself, never.

As for a marooned fellow exploring an island, so, too, for biologists probing the hidden corners of life. In the past half century science has made enormous strides in understanding the molecular basis of life. In terms of the island illustration above, in the past few decades science has surmounted that final hill and spied stunning examples of design where it hadn’t been expected, in the cell. For those who don’t rule it out from the start, design is as evident in such sophisticated systems as the cilium as it is for the castaway in the wrecked ship. Once design has been established for such luminous cases, it then becomes a possible explanation for other, less overpowering examples. There will always be hard cases in the middle, but using the same principles as the stranded gent, we can go back and reappraise many features of life on earth. If a cellular feature has some discernible function, and if it seems to be beyond what is biologically reasonable to expect of chance, then with varying degrees of confidence we are justified in chalking it up to design…

…Design dominates the molecular level of life…Most protein-protein interactions in the cell are not due to random mutation. Since cells are integrated units, it’s reasonable to view cells in their entirety as designed. But keep in mind that accidents do happen, so there are Darwinian effects, of some degree, everywhere. For example, just as automobiles may accumulate dents or scratches over time, or have mufflers fall off, but nonetheless are coherent, designed systems, so, too, with cells. Some features of cells of course result from genetic dents or scratches or loss, but the cell as a whole, it seems, was designed." - Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

All balls in the box are red. A blue one is found. All balls in the box are not red.

All irreducibly complex things are not reducible. One is found. All irreducibly complex things are not irreducible.

No, that’s not falsifiable, that’s just wrong.

Intelligent Design must be dependent on the state of being of the natural world.
If we were to change an aspect of the natural world, Intelligent Design would
have to fail in that hypothetical world, but Intelligent Design is pretty handy
in working with such scenarios, ID still somehow works, cannot be prov-
en wrong. I now recommend this link for you:
theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/is-intelligent-design-falsifiable/

 

[buffalo]

No mention of the word “theology,” for one.
For two, it is not SCIENCE science, which
is applicable to the physical world.

It is science, to an extent, I suppose, but not in any way relevant to the issue at hand.

What do you think he was talking about when he used “sacred doctrine”. Theology.

 

[buffalo]

No mention of the word “theology,” for one.
For two, it is not SCIENCE science, which
is applicable to the physical world.

It is science, to an extent, I suppose, but not in any way relevant to the issue at hand.

You had a reaction when I mentioned theology as being called “queen of the sciences”.

 

[Peter_Plato]

No, that’s not falsifiable, that’s just wrong.

Intelligent Design must be dependent on the state of being of the natural world.
If we were to change an aspect of the natural world, Intelligent Design would
have to fail in that hypothetical world, but Intelligent Design is pretty handy
in working with such scenarios, ID still somehow works, cannot be prov-
en wrong. I now recommend this link for you:
theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/is-intelligent-design-falsifiable/

Is ID false?

How would you know that it is?

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

What do you think he was talking about when he used “sacred doctrine”. Theology.

You may have to demonstrate how what you said is true. That sounds more like an assumption on your part.

 

[buffalo]

No, that’s not falsifiable, that’s just wrong.

Intelligent Design must be dependent on the state of being of the natural world.
If we were to change an aspect of the natural world, Intelligent Design would
have to fail in that hypothetical world, but Intelligent Design is pretty handy
in working with such scenarios, ID still somehow works, cannot be prov-
en wrong. I now recommend this link for you: theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/is-intelligent-design-falsifiable/

Behe - “Well, all a scientist has to do to prove me wrong is to take a bacterium without a flagellum, or knock out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go into his lab and grow that bug for a long time and see if it produces anything resembling a flagellum. If that happened, intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water. I certainly don’t expect it to happen, but it’s easily falsified by a series of such experiments.”

"Now let’s turn that around and ask, How do we falsify the contention that natural selection produced the bacterial flagellum? If that same scientist went into the lab and knocked out the bacterial flagellum genes, grew the bacterium for a long time, and nothing much happened, well, he’d say maybe we didn’t start with the right bacterium, maybe we didn’t wait long enough, maybe we need a bigger population, and it would be very much more difficult to falsify the Darwinian hypothesis.'

 

[buffalo]

You may have to demonstrate how what you said is true. That sounds more like an assumption on your part.

Second Article: Whether sacred doctrine is a science?
Aquinas holds that sacred doctrine (or theology) is a science, an academic discipline dependent on the use of reason. He differentiates two types of sciences. On the one hand, there are sciences whose foundational principles are known by the natural light of reason; by this is meant that there are sciences that have their basis in self-evident principles. On the other hand, there are sciences that are derivative of other, higher sciences (e.g., music derives from mathematics). Aquinas believes that theology is the latter type of science, because, “It proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science (quia procedit ex principiis notis lumine superioris scientiae), namely, the science of God and the blessed.” He seems to mean that “sacred doctrine” or “the science of God and the blessed,” has for its point of departure divinely-revealed, foundational truths, or, in other words, scripture.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Is ID false?

How would you know that it is?

There is no scientific support for ID being correct, so
ID urns to its own false sciences because they can-
not verify themselves to be correct by true science.

Let’s review, shall we:

Originally Posted by Judas Thaddeus forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif
*Let me explain it this way:

If Evolution were true, we should observe a nested hierarchy of genetic similarities between
creatures that are progressively more and more similar to each other. This phenomenon is
explained by the Theory of Evolution by suggesting that species branch out from common
descent, and this is indeed what the evidence tells us.

Intelligent Design would say that the Designer used the same materials to design all life so
of course we would expect to find a nested hierarchy of similarities between creatures. Fair.

Now let’s change the state of being in the natural world. If we were to find the fossilized remains of a horse in strata
dating back to the Cambrian Explosion, the Theory of Evolution would be in Big Trouble, for NO amount of tweaking
in the light of new data could possibly explain this strange anomaly. So here, evolution is entirely dependent on the
state of the natural state of the world in reality.

Intelligent Design, however, still stands in light of the “Cambrian Horse.” Why? That’s how the Designer designed it.
What about altering the nested hierarchy observation, say that NO creature was similar in any way, shape, of form.
That’s how the Designer designed it. What if All Creatures were genetically similar EXCEPT for us Homo–sapiens?
That’s how the Designer designed it. What if camels were made of clay? That’s how the Designer designed it.

No matter what, Intelligent Design is not grounded in reality, does not depend on reality, only on the assumption of
the existence of an unknown Designer who designed it. Change reality, Intelligent Design still works, because That
is how the Designer designed it. Intelligent Design is not a science, that’s how the Designer designed it!*

 

[buffalo]

There is no scientific support for ID being correct, so
ID urns to its own false sciences because they can-
not verify themselves to be correct by true science.

Let’s review, shall we:

I suggest reading the entire article.

**Is Intelligent Design Testable?

FALSIFIABILITY: Is intelligent design falsifiable? Is Darwinism falsifiable? Yes to the first question, no to the second. Intelligent design is eminently falsifiable.** Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity in biology are within the theory of intelligent design the key markers of intelligent agency. If it could be shown that biological systems like the bacterial flagellum that are wonderfully complex, elegant, and integrated could have been formed by a gradual Darwinian process (which by definition is non-telic), then intelligent design would be falsified on the general grounds that one doesn’t invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do. In that case Occam’s razor finishes off intelligent design quite nicely.
On the other hand, falsifying Darwinism seems effectively impossible. To do so one must show that no conceivable Darwinian pathway could have led to a given biological structure. What’s more, Darwinists are apt to retreat into the murk of historical contingency to shore up their theory. For instance, Allen Orr in his critique of Behe’s work shortly after Darwin’s Black Box appeared remarked, “We have no guarantee that we can reconstruct the history of a biochemical pathway.” What he conceded with one hand, however, he was quick to retract with the other. He added, “But even if we can’t, its irreducible complexity cannot count against its gradual evolution.”
The fact is that for complex systems like the bacterial flagellum no biologist has or is anywhere close to reconstructing its history in Darwinian terms. Is Darwinian theory therefore falsified? Hardly. I have yet to witness one committed Darwinist concede that any feature of nature might even in principle provide countervailing evidence to Darwinism. In place of such a concession one is instead always treated to an admission of ignorance. Thus it’s not that Darwinism has been falsified or disconfirmed, but that we simply don’t know enough about the biological system in question and its historical context to determine how the Darwinian mechanism might have produced it.
For instance, to neutralize the challenge that the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum raises against Darwinism, Ken Miller employs the following argument from ignorance. Like the rest of the biological community, Miller doesn’t know how the bacterial flagellum originated. The biological community’s ignorance about the flagellum, however, doesn’t end with its origin but extends to its very functioning. For instance, according to David DeRosier, “The mechanism of the flagellar motor remains a mystery.” Miller takes this admission of ignorance by DeRosier and uses it to advantage. In Finding Darwin’s God he writes: “Before [Darwinian] evolution is excoriated for failing to explain the evolution of the flagellum, I’d request that the scientific community at least be allowed to figure out how its various parts work.” But in the article by DeRosier that Miller cites,** Miller conveniently omits the following quote: “More so than other motors, the flagellum resembles a machine designed by a human.” **
So apparently we know enough about the bacterial flagellum to know that it is designed or at least design-like. Indeed, we know what most of its individual parts do. Moreover, we know that the flagellum is irreducibly complex. Far from being a weakness of irreducible complexity as Miller suggests, it is a strength of the concept that one can determine whether a system is irreducibly complex without knowing the precise role that each part in the system plays (one need only knock out individual parts and see if function is preserved; knowing what exactly the individual parts do is not necessary). Miller’s appeal to ignorance obscures just how much we know about the flagellum, how compelling the case is for its design, and how unfalsifiable Darwinism is when Darwinists proclaim that the Darwinian selection mechanism can account for it despite the absence of any identifiable biochemical pathway.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Second Article: Whether sacred doctrine is a science?
Aquinas holds that sacred doctrine (or theology) is a science, an academic discipline dependent on the use of reason. He differentiates two types of sciences. On the one hand, there are sciences whose foundational principles are known by the natural light of reason; by this is meant that there are sciences that have their basis in self-evident principles. On the other hand, there are sciences that are derivative of other, higher sciences (e.g., music derives from mathematics). Aquinas believes that theology is the latter type of science, because, “It proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science (quia procedit ex principiis notis lumine superioris scientiae), namely, the science of God and the blessed.” He seems to mean that “sacred doctrine” or “the science of God and the blessed,” has for its point of departure divinely-revealed, foundational truths, or, in other words, scripture.

Aquinas appears to distinguish two categories of science, science-science, which it what
this thread is about, what Intelligent Design is pretending to be, and what evolution really
is, science-science.
I have no qualms with there being other types of sciences, but that does
not make them relevant to the debate over whether Intelligent Design is a
science-science or not.

 

[edwest2]

Is ID false?

How would you know that it is?

Based on reading the linked material, the obvious conclusion is ID must never be true. It can’t be true. It appears that dreaded religious ideas might take hold, and then… more people who prefer the wisdom the Church teaches to the dogmatic predictors of the future. Religion must be removed from people’s minds and replaced by what men believe. They see through one eye but not the other. So far, the most vocal of the posters are demanding religion threatens all and needs to be stopped, not just with the topic but everywhere.

As far as I’m concerned, design is a far better explanation than what’s currently being taught. I look around and see design in plants and animals. Dogs come in many shapes and sizes but they are all dogs. Man may have started with other skull shapes, but certain types of men have disappeared.

Peace,
Ed

 

[buffalo]

Based on reading the linked material, the obvious conclusion is ID must never be true. It can’t be true. It appears that dreaded religious ideas might take hold, and then… more people who prefer the wisdom the Church teaches to the dogmatic predictors of the future. Religion must be removed from people’s minds and replaced by what men believe. They see through one eye but not the other. So far, the most vocal of the posters are demanding religion threatens all and needs to be stopped, not just with the topic but everywhere.

As far as I’m concerned, design is a far better explanation than what’s currently being taught. I look around and see design in plants and animals. Dogs come in many shapes and sizes but they are all dogs. Man may have started with other skull shapes, but certain types of men have disappeared.

Peace,
Ed

Given the latest surveys religion is systematically being removed from the public eye. The demon has been somewhat successful. But he won’t win.

 

[edwest2]

Given the latest surveys religion is systematically being removed from the public eye. The demon has been somewhat successful. But he won’t win.

That is right. With all due respect, freethinkers cannot be free if certain ideas are rejected by the words of anonymous posters. The Church will protect and guide.

Peace,
Ed