Isn’t he the scam artist just convicted of fifty-eight counts of tax fraud and is currently facing up to 288 years in prison?

Why yes, yes he is.

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061103/NEWS01/611030338/1006

This guy’s an A #1 Snake-oil Huckster. A scam artiste extrordinaire and a multi-millionaire from taking the believers’ money hand-over-fist. Hope you weren’t one of them. I really feel sorry for the employees and investors he ripped off. Don’t know why you’re shilling for that crook. Are you one of his cohorts? Tell me, what do you think about his criminal record? What do you think about his endorsement of the anti-Semetic hoax “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”? What do you think about his assertion that the Oklahoma City Bombing was a secret operation of the US Government? What about his wacko UFO beliefs? Do you really think that UFO’s exist and are controlled by Satan?

Don’t make an idol or a martyr out of that conspiracy-theorist, UFO wacko and convicted criminal. Stick to Jesus Christ if you feel that call, but don’t worship at the feet of a liar with a made up doctorate like Hovind.

He and the other creationist scam artists make a pretty penny off of ignorance, and they have, it seems, an endless supply of people willing to fight their battles on the internet.

Don’t make a false idol of Hovind or any medicine-show huckster.

If I were you, I’d take a long, hard look at my criteria for calling someone “credible.” If you don’t, you’ll get taken by a scammer like Hovind the millionaire convict who got rich by fleecing the Flock.

Here’s a name I have not heard in a long time, Steven Weinberg (get the spelling right next time). It was the Winter of 1987-1988 when Steven was giving a symposium at a Dallas-area college regarding super-string theory. I was well-know within my school district as a Senior having received numerous scientific awards and having sparked a number of open-forum discussions at my school. My physics teacher happened to be on the Texas Academic School Board which reviewed curriculum and text books for the state. I’m not sure how, but we were both asked to attend the symposium and my teacher decided to make it into a field trip for a very select few of us who showed the most interest and potential.

I remember arriving after dark and sitting in a college auditorium for the first time, and I listened intently to his discussion of Super-String theory. It was definitely geared to a college-level education, but I kept up just fine. I even brought my own thesis and hurriedly scribbled notes when I disagreed with Steven.

After his presentation, he shook hands with several people, chatted for a few minutes, then moved on to the next person. After what seemed like an eternity, my group was introduced to Steven and most of my peers said that it was fun, but I had some questions. Steven actually took the time to clarify some of his points and to listen to some of my ideas. We conversed for almost half an hour before my teacher decided that we really needed to get back to the school. Steven shook my hand and told me that I could call him “Steven”, and maybe look him up after I graduated from college.

I kept the handouts, notes, and synopsis from that fateful meeting. I even followed his career for a while, noting some of my ideas being incorporated into the newest theories. But I chose a career in Electrical Engineering rather than Theoretical Physics, so I never had a chance to talk to him again. Maybe I should “check-up” on his work and see what he is up to these days.

Txatheist, I have you to thank for jogging my memories. As always, thank you.

Your thoughts and questions are WELL WORTH my time to devote some serious thought. Could you afford me the weekend to give them the attention they deserve? I’m not trying to stall for time or anything. I do have some thoughts already. But several of your questions require me to do some serious introspection, and I just don’t want to make light of them.

I did however find two comments that you made with which I AGREE:
1) “we are supposed to intellectually progress concerning religion”
2) “Our ideology and system of law is far from perfect.”
Both of these go together in my world-view and tie nicely with science. You see, science requires us to INVESTIGATE, LEARN, HYPOTHESIZE, and TEST. Since clearly a vast majority of the human population throughout the history of mankind has held one form of religious belief system or another, then the nature of religion itself is worthy of scientific study. It would seem to a lay scientist such as myself that ONE, but by no means the only, thing that we as humans share most with each other but not with the rest of the animal kingdom is our enduring need to feel connected with a supernatural Creator – our religion makes us human or at least our religion enabled us to create a civilization. So, as a scientist, I study where religion came from and why, how it has changed over time and what influenced those changes, and ultimately what effect has religion had on the establishment and durability of the human society. Every social scientist I have ever met acknowledges the need to study a society in terms of its religious underpinnings, you just can’t separate the two.

So, I AGREE that we do not have a perfect set of ideologies or laws, but it is through our deeper understanding of where those things came from that we can hope to improve them. That is WHY I enjoy conversing with you so much, to better understand.

Thanks for the help and I will spend some time this weekend in deep introspection to answer your other questions.

Thanks. Paul : )

Your joke is sick because you’ve put yourself on the moral pedestal to determine what others should do that has no effect on you. Allow me to yank that pedestal out from under you and send you crashing on your head.
US law gives women that right to an abortion, medical science is the method. I’m still waiting for you to provide me with a non-human animal species that graduated medical school. Then I’ll get to the abortion idea of choosing on their part. No one lives by god’s laws, we live by US law. If you lived by your god’s laws and took them literal you’d be in prison for many offenses. I see our current society’s dilemma. It’s call being nosey. Your message is typical of the conservative xians I talk with.

Re: “The 10 C authors are not completely verifiable so ‘author unknown’”, how about I concede to that point of view IF you concede that science proves that unless you can reproduce an experiment to provide an expected result and submit your findings for peer review and have several independent researchers duplicate your results with the same outcome, that your idea is classified as a THEORY and NOT fact. Thus, because biological evolution cannot be “COMPLETELY VERIFIABLE” with direct and repeatable experiments, it is then scientifically classified as THEORY. (I used to work as a Staff Scientist under guidance of the US military and collaborated with multiple scientific communities for our projects, so don’t even try to argue the scientific process with me)

Re: Law is not provable
You said “I can’t prove we are equal, when we are not.” This was in response to my asking you for scientific proof of what the Declaration of Independence clearly stated “we hold these truths to be SELF EVIDENT, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and of these are the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” You denied the truth of many things on the grounds that they cannot be “completely verifiable”, yet you cling to something like this which is clearly “SELF-EVIDENT” and NOT scientific at all. And based on you answer, “…we are not (equal)”, one could infer that you don’t even take the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States of America very seriously since you believe (no not ‘believe’, ‘find as fact’) that they are incorrect and inconsistent with scientific proof.

Re: the nature of god
“god=Allah, Jehovah, Brahma and YHWH and that is completely different than God=Nature”, please, I would like to learn more about this later. My studies of theology and social orders have pointed to a natural “evolution” of religious thinking. Now there are dozens of books sighting hundreds of sources drawing the same conclusions; that early humanoids were atheistic, then poly-theistic “naturists”, then poly-theistic “plurists” (Egyptian), then monotheistic (Jewish), then Trinitarian (Christian), then Muslim monotheists, then Druid polytheists, then Deist naturists (I may have left out a few, I’m not the expert here). I would love to learn more about your points of view here. Thanks.

Re: Natural Rights
“I didn’t say that our rights are genetic”, sure seemed like it when you said, “My rights are natural stemming from nature.” And since “evolution, it’s not a belief system but a scientific fact” and evolution uses the scientific principle of genetics, one would naturally conclude something like “my rights are genetic and come from my genetics”. Wouldn’t you agree, with your own words?

Re: man’s laws
It is nice to hear you admit that “our rights (are) outlined in the Constitution and our judicial rights” (sorry for the paraphrase). And the fact that “I’ve yet to really disagree with a Deist…” does show me that you may have at least a rudimentary appreciation for those who outlined, enumerated, and protect your human rights, rather than leaving it to some scientific proof that you deserve them at all. Ok, I should throw myself into the mix there, I AM very grateful that I don’t have to PROVE SCIENTIFICALLY AND COMPLETELY VERIFIABLY that I personally deserve the human rights afforded to me and my family. Some things in life I just have to prove by faith and be grateful.

Re: indoctrination
If what you said was really SCIENTIFICALLY TRUE that “God is built into our wiring once a parent indoctrinates a child”, then there would be NO cases of grown children being able to CHOOSE a different way of thinking and to follow a different religious point of view. Even ONE case DISPROVES your theory. Very sloppy scientific reasoning. Heck, by your “scientific reasoning” you have “proven” that a parent can influence a child’s behavior in such a way as it appears that the now-grown child is hardwired or even born that way; ie: HOMOSEXUALITY. Do you really want to go on record as having proven that unintentional indoctrination is capable of “building into our wiring” homosexual behavior?

JOKE (albeit horrifying):
I can show you lots of “non-human animals that have graduated from medical school”, just ask the young girl who’s parent’s were arrested and convicted for kidnapping her and taking her to an abortion clinic.

Re: abortion rights
I never said that abortion is a moral issue with me, I didn’t even give my opinion. You were the one who first mentioned your mother not exercising here nature-given right to have you aborted; I mentioned no such thing until then. And even then, I simply wanted to know HOW did “nature” give her this RIGHT and have you PROVE IT scientifically. I am still waiting.

Were you being silly when you asked “When a tiger kills a pregnant zebra is that abortion or just nature?” I don’t know that many pregnant zebras that CHOOSE to terminate their unborn offspring. I have never heard of a case when that zebra threw its legs apart and thrust her pregnant belly at the hungry tiger with the understanding that only the fetus would be eaten alive and not her. Prove to me with SCIENCE and not superstition that pregnant animals other than liberal human women try to terminate their offspring before birth thru ANY method; like abdominal trauma, vaginal stretching, vaginal insertions of rocks or sticks, or any other scientifically documented and proven method. IF NATURE gave us the right to have abortions, then there sure better be PROOF in nature of that right being exercised at least somewhat regularly.

IF nature did not provide for abortion rights, but rather men who believe that their god gave them those rights, then is it not fair to say that “whatever god says about our rights is true”? Or to put another way, allow us to muse that “man created god, man said that god wrote laws for man, man accepted those laws from god and must then live by those laws” thus “in the eyes of man who created god and accepted those laws, if god says that man has a right, then it is so, or if god says that man has no right, then that is also so.” You see, for the Unitarians and Deists and Christians and Jews and Muslims and even Buddhists, they live by laws given them by god and have created many nations based on those laws. Thus if god says “you shall not kill”, then a theist believes god and so it is written in the law. If god says that “you may kill unborn or partially born offspring that you do not want”, then that is our right and that becomes law. Do you see our current societies dilemma which so many other fallen empires have faced in the past?

Re: social issue of a stable family
That gave me a great segway for your next quote, “How about the right to have two stable parents who can function as responsible adults first?” On this, you and I could not AGREE more. If you are one of those stable families, than I thank you and comment you. If you have any concrete suggestions, let up discuss them. I am all ears. And again, I AGREE with you that strong healthy FAMILIES lead to a better society.

Sadly, I will have to leave the rest for later.

On a very slightly personal note, what has been your take on these conversations? Do you feel that they have been at all productive? I know that I have learned a great deal in the process. Do you feel as if I have contributed to a little “deep thinking” or have you been falling asleep on me? LOL. Do you dread my next message or do you look forward to my alternate point of view as much as I do yours?

In any event, thank you.

Sincerely, Paul