Vouched so I can point out that yours is an obsolete line of argument; consciousness can be suspended, yet the organism retain intelligent function, by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation. Certain lesions and traumas can produce the same or a similar effect, but permanently - Cotard's delusion, for example, in which that part of the mind which calls itself "I" becomes unshakably convinced that it is dead, and assumes the body must be also because it cannot conceive of any distinction between the two. The materialist explanation of conscious experience, then, is quite straightforwardly that it is an epiphenomenon of some kinds of brains but not others, and thus in no way suggests or implies there's any sort of mystical business going on.
I can't recommend attempting to argue against materialism per se; systems of faith are so strongly and intimately cherished that this is as much an attack as is the attempt to argue you (or me) out of Christianity. The idea is rather to believe what we believe, have the other guy believe what he believes, and manage to get along nonetheless. Our errant brothers and sisters in the "progressive" heresy have largely lost sight of this. We need not live down to their example, and we must not lose sight of the fact that they are our brothers and sisters, who have merely lost their way. Anger and opposition are easy - are we here to do easy things?
All else being equal, it'd be nice if we were all on the same page so that we could get past extremely fundamental arguments such as "should we teach our children science in school, or theology". Because one of those is useful in making our citizens and country competitive on the world scene, and the other is useful in decreasing our reputation on the world scene.
Otherwise, yeah, I don't give a hoot what you want to believe, that's your right. Just don't impose on the rest of us.
The Scopes monkey trial was quite a long time ago indeed. If a peaceful modus vivendi were the goal, one might reasonably imagine that enforcement efforts, whether legal, judicial, or cultural, would end when teaching the theory and evidence of human evolution ceased to be illegal.
The attempt to dictate that that, and nothing else, be permissible - utterly without regard, in this nation of better than a quarter billion people, for anything so completely irrelevant to the question as whatever local opinion on the matter may happen to be - seems, if nothing else, curiously at odds with the ubiquitous contention that those who persist in the attempt wish merely that "live and let live" be the whole of the law.
That said, before I conclude here, I feel it incumbent upon me to note my appreciation for your having chosen to engage with my prior comment, rather than merely downvote it and move on. I can hardly but acknowledge that the substance of that comment is not merely heterodox in the extreme, but very likely to get right up a lot of people's noses. Such commentary invites downvotes, and those who engage in it have no excuse to find this upsetting - but I do always find it preferable when someone instead takes the time to engage, and I thank you very kindly for so doing.
The thing with what you seem to be saying (that the science camp is trying to drive religion out of schools despite their supposed adherence to "live and let live") is that public schools are a state institution, and separation of church and state is also incredibly important. You're perfectly free to set up religious schools (which exist), and also to home school your children (also common for the religious). What's explicitly not OK is trying to foist your specific religion in an institution paid for by public money. That's the entire distinction. Past that, "live and let live" is indeed the order of the day.
But then, I suppose you may view science as another religion, and I guess that's probably going to be a sticking point. I view it as mostly orthogonal except for the creationist stuff that has mountains of evidence against it, and requires rather convoluted reasoning about God putting the evidence there as a test of faith (my understanding of the reasoning, anyway)
I don't really think that either of us is going to convince the other on any subject of import; we just don't share enough priors - for example, I doubt you are very susceptible to conviction on the point of modern progressivism as an inherently corrupt Christian heresy, and while I did once share the same faith you expound here, it would take a book to explain how and why I ceased to do so. That book actually has been written - and in a pleasantly engaging and discursive style, yet - but it would be astonishingly presumptuous of me to require such a hefty prerequisite for mere conversation, and I will not do so.
I will, though, note that it's curious how you talk about public schools as though they were paid for with federal money - this being the usual meaning with which the phrase "public money", in this connection, is used. By the Department of Education's own accounting [1], the proportion of primary and secondary public school funding which originates in the federal purse is approximately eight percent.
Yet the federal regulatory apparatus insists on an approximately one hundred percent share of control over how all of these public schools, even the vast majority for which it does not pay, must operate. This is a remarkable disparity! In any other context, its mere existence, to say nothing of the desirability of its being suffered to continue, would require considerable justification. Perhaps I am a fool to wonder what makes this context so unique.
I didn't mention Federal money, I'm keenly aware that it's primarily funded at the local level, mostly via property taxes. I'm not sure how the funding source is relevant, though, it's still public funding one way or the other. Separation of church and state is a core American value, not only at the Federal level.
It is the privilege - in the denotative sense, the private law - of power to identify one's own faith so perfectly with the right ordering of things that you need not recognize that the distinction you cherish, between church and state, does not at present exist, and has not existed in living memory.
I should not like to see my own church take charge of the nation. I don't like that yours has done so, either, at least not now that I've become an apostate of it. Before that happened, I would've been fine with the idea, but, like you, failed to recognize the fact of it - not that that's any excuse.
Even when ignoring the weird claim about materialism unable to explain consciousness, what makes you think that Christianity is the answer and not some other non-materialist view?
What point in a response which merely says "you're wrong"? I believe I covered the substance of the matter adequately in my own prior comment, sibling to yours; I must confess I fail to see what worthwhile contribution to the discussion you intend to make here. Perhaps you'd like to elucidate?
