Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Talk:Natural science

2007-03-11T22:45:37Z

Rick:

== Irony ==

Isn't it it sort of ironic to reference a creationist on the 'science' page?

Steven Colbert

2007-03-11T22:44:07Z

Rick:

== Steven Colbert ==

An American satirist who pokes fun at the self righteous and often absurd tendencies of the American right. His humorous news reporting is in the best traditions of American contempt for ideologoues of all stripes.

National Health Service

2007-03-11T22:37:02Z

Rick:

== National Health Service ('NHS') ==

The UK welfare state has created a National Health Service which provides healthcare free at the point of use. This ensures that everyone is able to be treated, no matter their individual wealth or means. The NHS is funded out of general taxation, and is often described by Conservative critics as being state socialism.

However, the existence of the NHS has done nothing to prevent London becoming the world's greatest financial centre, nor the progress of capitalist economic gains elsewhere in the UK.

Atheism

2007-03-11T22:34:03Z

Rick:

Atheism is disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a [[God|god]] or gods, or any supernatural entity.

Atheism is closely tied with Secular Humanism. Popularly-known Atheists and Secular Humanists include [[Stephen Hawking]], [[Albert Einstein]], [[Stephen Jay Gould]], [[Carl Sagan]], [[Richard Dawkins]], [[William Borden]] and [[Sam Harris]]. Other famous atheists include [[Pol Pot]], [[Emilio Altieri]] and [[Stalin]].

== Atheist morality ==

Many atheists base their moral code upon emotion, experience and empirically derived ethics, such as those promoted by secular humanism. Atheists hold that neither the Bible, nor the Koran, nor the Torah, nor any religious text can be our only source of morality. This claim is made as all religious texts contain, and often ascribe to God, extremely immoral acts such as the Israelites driving out heathen nations from Canaan (i.e. ethnic cleansing), the stoning of homosexuals and adulterers to death, and the institution of slavery.

Atheists often subscribe to the secular humanist idea that it is far more ethical to do what is right because you believe that it is right, rather than because you fear divine punishment or desire divine reward. One example is illustrated in the following quote from [[Albert Einstein]]:

:“A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death”.

A modern example is the absurdity with which we view Islamist suicide bombers acting on a desire for 72 virgins in the afterlife. Atheism condemns this desire, along with other religious desires for exclusive reward (and the punishment of others) such as are found in all religious texts.

== Origins ==

It is difficult to trace the origins of atheism as a result of the incomplete historic record. It may well be that atheism is the natural state of mankind, or belief in supernatural entities may have a biological origin against which reason has only recently reacted. It is known that ancient Greece produced a theory of materialism as early as the 5th century BC. The materialist world view was essentially mathematical and had no room for gods.

== The Problem of Evil==

A central argument against religious belief in all powerful entities ('gods') is the problem of evil. First identified by the philosopher and materialist Epicurus (341-270 BC), this problem points out the difficulty created by the mere existence of evil:

:Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
:Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent.
:Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
:Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

== Atheism and Agnosticism ==

Atheism and agnosticism are logically distinct concepts. Whilst atheist reject the existence of a god or gods, agnostics do not do so. [[Richard Dawkins]] has contrasted the two positions as follows:

:“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?”.

==References==

<references/>

[[Category:Religion]]

Thomas Jefferson

2007-03-11T22:27:13Z

Rick:

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third [[President of the United States of America]] and often credited as the author of the [[Declaration of Independence]], though key portions of that document were simply taken from the [[Virginia Declaration of Rights]].

Jefferson was a prominent architect, inventor and scientist. His presidency had significant failures, and is best known for doubling the area of the United States with the controversial [[Louisiana Purchase]] from France.

Though Jefferson did not describe his beliefs in that manner, many textbooks and online resources claim that he was a [[deist]].<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deist_thinkers</ref>

With regard to Christianity, Jefferson admired the ethical and moral teachings of Jesus, but did not believe in the divinity of Christ. He produced a compilation "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels," familiarly known as "The Jefferson Bible," in which he included the passages which he felt described Jesus' life and teachings, while removing references to the miracles and to Jesus' divinity.

In an 1803 letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, he stated:
:I then promised you that one day or other I would give you my views of [the Christian religion]. They are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other.<ref>Jefferson, Thomas, April 21, 1803: Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush[http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jeffbsyl.html]</ref>

"I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming
feature.....Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and
imprisoned.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson</ref><sup>'''References 3 does not authenticate the quote before the ellipses'''</sup> What has been the effect of this coercion?To make half the
world fools and half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the
world." -- Thomas Jefferson Notes on the State of Virginia 1787 <ref>http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whatwedo/k12/psd/colony/tjnotes.htm</ref>

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors." –Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Reason is the tool to use to change opinions—not censorship." 1801 inaugral speech
----

'''References:''' <references/>

[[Category:Biographies]]
[[Category:Presidents of the United States]]

Barack Hussein Obama

2007-03-11T22:25:09Z

Rick:

Barack Obama is a Democratic Senator from Illinois, elected to the United States Senate in 2004 after serving as a state Senator. He is a candidate and Democtratic front-runner for the 2008 United States Presidential election.
Obama has a Doctorate Of Laws from Harvard University and a BA from Columbia University. Until he entered politics in the 1990's, he was a senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

Barack Obama is also the next President of the USA. He will be the first non-white President in several hundred years of American history, and will therefore go some small way towards fulfilling the Founding Fathers' dreams of equality and justice.

Talk:George W. Bush

2007-03-11T22:23:21Z

Rick: /* Photo */

== Edits ==

1) Removed the line about Bush executing Saddam. Saddam was executed by the Iraqis under Iraqi law.
2) Removed the un-encyclopediac comment about John Kerry.

== Photo ==

Somebody deleted the body of this page and substituted a photo-- can anybody verify that this photo actually is President Bush? (Could we maybe print the photo as a thumbnail, and link to the large photo?)

I believe the photo is one of Prince Harry, who has recently taken up active duty in Iraq for the UK, in compliance with the American notion that leaders such as George Washington and the sons of prominent and wealthy people should be involved in and at risk from armed conflict for their country in equal measure to the legions of the poor they send to do their work for them.

==Lacking Substance==
This article is useless. It is a stub, which is fine, except that this is GWB, not some arcane entry. This is made more eggregious since this page has undergone many edits, and nobody has decided to actually make it a full article, just back and forth fluff. I admit that I don't particularly want to put the work in, because I don't care about this entry, I just think that conservapedia needs a credible entry for GWB to be taken seriously. Compare with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush Wikipedia's entry].

As a starting point, how about information that would be useful, that you don't hear about in the liberal media; Major (and minor) legislative pushes, both successful and not. Who were his good conservative judicial appointments? --[[User:Whatter|Whatter]] 01:51, 24 February 2007 (EST)

== Nation building ==

It's interesting that Bush's stated opposition to nation building isn't modified to show that he has been involved in exactly that in both Afghanistan & Iraq for over half his time in office.

I'd argue he hasn't done much nation-building in either of those places. :(
It is weird, though--having a site for Conservative politics and having such dinky articles about President Bush and Iraq is like having a wiki about oceanography and not mentioning water. --[[User:Sandbagger|Sandbagger]] 14:38, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

== Economy ==

Since when is Exxon Mobile the bellwether of the US economy?