The Ron Brown Religion Thread

[knapplc]

man, i really would have loved to see Bourdain speak. The guy makes a living being a jerk, traveling the world, eating great food, and generally not giving a crap. Its great.

 

He was worth seeing. He shoots straight. He's been through the wringer and there is no BS in his delivery.

[Husker in MI]

Did they finally add "Separation of Church and State" to the Constitution? Last time I checked, the Constitution didn't say anything about it. I know the ACLU likes to claim that it's in the Constitution....but Its really just a phrase that was pulled out of a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote. Ironically, it was actually meant to protect the "Church" from the "State"...not the other way around. Funny how things get twisted around over the years.

[Hingle McCringleberry]

Wow... Why is it every time some one brings Ron up it turns into some debate. Be happy he is staying.

[Husker Richard]

Did they finally add "Separation of Church and State" to the Constitution? Last time I checked, the Constitution didn't say anything about it. I know the ACLU likes to claim that it's in the Constitution....but Its really just a phrase that was pulled out of a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote. Ironically, it was actually meant to protect the "Church" from the "State"...not the other way around. Funny how things get twisted around over the years.

 

You are correct. I was merely questioning Knapp's use of constitutional rights when referring to free speech and Ron Brown's actions. I then brought up separation of church and state to prove my point that religion cannot enter the governed public domain (ala public school). Under the United States Constitution, the treatment of religion by the government is broken into two clauses: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. Both are discussed in regard to whether certain state actions would amount to an impermissible government establishment of religion. Such as religion (and anything pertaining to it) in public schools.

[macroboy]

I just wanted to get in this thread before meltdown.

[rawhide]

"SIGH"

[knapplc]

Did they finally add "Separation of Church and State" to the Constitution? Last time I checked, the Constitution didn't say anything about it. I know the ACLU likes to claim that it's in the Constitution....but Its really just a phrase that was pulled out of a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote. Ironically, it was actually meant to protect the "Church" from the "State"...not the other way around. Funny how things get twisted around over the years.

 

You are correct. I was merely questioning Knapp's use of constitutional rights when referring to free speech and Ron Brown's actions. I then brought up separation of church and state to prove my point that religion cannot enter the governed public domain (ala public school). Under the United States Constitution, the treatment of religion by the government is broken into two clauses: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. Both are discussed in regard to whether certain state actions would amount to an impermissible government establishment of religion. Such as religion (and anything pertaining to it) in public schools.

 

So your whole angst against Ron Brown is not that he's "pushing his religion" on you, it's that he gives speeches in public schools in which he mentions God. Sorry, but this is not a government endorsement of religion, and there is nothing wrong with Coach Brown's mentioning his faith in such a speech. In order for Brown to be in the wrong you'd have to show that he was actively proselytizing to an unwilling audience. When you have that evidence, as in direct quotes where Brown was trying to convert or suborn his audience, we can talk. Until then, you're failing under the First Amendment, which does not prohibit any and all conversations of God or faith or religion in a government building, or in any particular government-sponsored arena. That dollar bill in your pocket says "In God We Trust." Your congresspersons open their sessions with prayer. These are just some examples submarining your point.

 

You may question all you like. But it's still constitutionally protected.

 

Out of curiosity, did you read the entire Wikipedia page from which you pulled the bold lines, or just the part that you felt supported your point?

[Phil the Red]

Did they finally add "Separation of Church and State" to the Constitution? Last time I checked, the Constitution didn't say anything about it. I know the ACLU likes to claim that it's in the Constitution....but Its really just a phrase that was pulled out of a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote. Ironically, it was actually meant to protect the "Church" from the "State"...not the other way around. Funny how things get twisted around over the years.

 

You are correct. I was merely questioning Knapp's use of constitutional rights when referring to free speech and Ron Brown's actions. I then brought up separation of church and state to prove my point that religion cannot enter the governed public domain (ala public school). Under the United States Constitution, the treatment of religion by the government is broken into two clauses: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. Both are discussed in regard to whether certain state actions would amount to an impermissible government establishment of religion. Such as religion (and anything pertaining to it) in public schools.

 

So your whole angst against Ron Brown is not that he's "pushing his religion" on you, it's that he gives speeches in public schools in which he mentions God. Sorry, but this is not a government endorsement of religion, and there is nothing wrong with Coach Brown's mentioning his faith in such a speech. In order for Brown to be in the wrong you'd have to show that he was actively proselytizing to an unwilling audience. When you have that evidence, as in direct quotes where Brown was trying to convert or suborn his audience, we can talk. Until then, you're failing under the First Amendment, which does not prohibit any and all conversations of God or faith or religion in a government building, or in any particular government-sponsored arena. That dollar bill in your pocket says "In God We Trust." Your congresspersons open their sessions with prayer. These are just some examples submarining your point.

 

You may question all you like. But it's still constitutionally protected.

 

Out of curiosity, did you read the entire Wikipedia page from which you pulled the bold lines, or just the part that you felt supported your point?

 

 

Knapplc, Nicely done sir!

[mmmtodd]

oh, party pooper.

[mmmtodd]

say a recruits parents are active ACLU supporters. or Arab.

 

what ron brown supports is really of no concern to me. how he goes about it, however, is. whether or not it is unconstitutional is of little effect. its not unconstitutional to be an atheist. or an arab.

 

in the end, he gets paid to be a football coach.

 

do engineering students pick their college based on their professors religious beliefs?

[reksuH Fan]

im new to this site and joined because of the freedom to give your opinions and i have to say my brain just got fried reading what you guys wrote and i understood about 1/7 of it and i would call it a tie because religion discussion is a loss on both sides and can go on forever. when i was in high school if there was a speaker coming to school and i could be out of classes for a few hours. he could have talked to me about anything he wanted as long as i could get out of class i didn't care. the only reason it came up is because of parents and they always need to complain about something at there school.

[The Dude]

Ron is awesome. I don't care what fairy tales he decides to believe.

[HUSKER 37]

 

 

You are misinterpreting the Constitutional doctrine of separation of Church and State. The Constitution forbids a government body sanctioning and solely promoting a certain religion as a requirement to avoid retribution. That doesn't mean that the discussion of religion in and of itself, even a specific religion, is inherently prohibited. My wife is a high school teacher in a pretty diverse school, and there are really no truly "taboo" subjects in the classroom, including religious beliefs. Ron Brown's speeches in schools have always been clearly defined to the students and their parents, and have ALWAYS BEEN OPTIONAL. Attending his speeches is no different than attending the afternoon math club, or Young Democrats, or any other optional event that takes place at school. I happen to strongly oppose the religion of math, and I'm sure there are things discussed in various clubs and meetings inside schools that I would not agree with, but I'm sure not going to raise a stink about it, and I'm sure not going to sue the school or any of the presenters of that material. My kids and I simply choose not to attend those events and listen to those viewpoints...

 

 

Blasphemer!!!

 

Math is the only truly universal language!

In fact..it will probably soon be considered the only Inter-Galatic Language!

 

If it weren't for the salvation of Math, I probably would've flunked out of gradeschool.

 

It's the only reason my Boss thinks I'm the second smartest person we work with..Even though I seem to have no short term memory most of the time....(I think).

 

It's a contributing factor in why neither of us usually needs to explain logic to each other....(Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas).

 

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The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God. ~Euclid

God is real, unless declared integer. ~Author Unknown

 

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ~Albert Einstein, Sidelights on Relativity

 

 

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties; He integrates empirically. ~Albert Einstein

 

 

If there is a God, he's a great mathematician. ~Paul Dirac

 

 

To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology. ~Hilda Phoebe Hudson

 

The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that.... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E) temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed.... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving...shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. ~From Applied Optics, vol. 11, A14, 1972

 

 

I used to love mathematics for its own sake, and I still do, because it allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.... ~Stendhal (Henri Beyle), The Life of Henri Brulard

 

 

The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think. This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry. ~Eric Bell, The Search for Truth

 

 

 

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. ~Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

 

 

 

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years. ~Mark Twain

 

 

 

“Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.”

 

“Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.”

 

"Mathematics consists in proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way." -- George Polya

 

“Mathematics is like love; a simple idea, but it can get complicated.”

 

"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."

 

“Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.” -- Plato

 

"The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple." -- S. Gudder

 

"There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else -- but persistent." -- Raoul Bott

 

"Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics." -- E.T. Bell

 

"Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes." -- Mickey Mouse

 

"The greatest unsolved theorem in mathematics is why some people are better at it than others." -- Adrian Mathesis

 

"Mathematics is not a deductive science – that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork." -- Paul Halmos

 

“The different branches of Arithmetic are Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.” – Lewis Caroll

 

"Mathematics is written for mathematicians." – Copernicus

 

"Small minds discuss persons. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas. Really great minds discuss mathematics."

 

"But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer." -- Tom Lehrer

 

"Most likely, logic is capable of justifying mathematics to no greater extent than biology is capable of justifying life." -- Y. Manin

 

Black holes result from God dividing the universe by zero. ~Author Unknown

 

 

Mathematics - the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human affairs. ~Isaac Barrow

 

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally. ~Calvin Trillin

 

I don't agree with mathematics; the sum total of zeros is a frightening figure. ~Stanislaw J. Lec, More Unkempt Thought

 

 

If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them. ~Phil Pastoret

 

 

[A mathematician is a] scientist who can figure out anything except such simple things as squaring the circle and trisecting an angle. ~Evan Esar, Esar's Comic Dictionary

 

Math is radical! ~Bumper Sticker

 

It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class. ~Author Unknown

 

 

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three. ~Author Unknown

 

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. ~Carl Sandburg, "Arithmetic"

 

 

Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes. ~Eric T. Bell, The Development of Mathematics

 

 

So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. ~Francis Bacon, "Of Studies"

 

 

The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple. ~S. Gudder

 

 

The human mind has never invented a labor-saving machine equal to algebra. ~Author Unknown

 

 

The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede. ~Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

 

 

Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics. ~Dean Schlicter

 

 

It is not the job of mathematicians... to do correct arithmetical operations. It is the job of bank accountants. ~Samuil Shchatunovski

 

 

Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere. ~W.S. Anglin

 

 

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. ~Paul Erdos

 

 

Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings. ~Alfred North Whitehead

 

 

The tantalizing and compelling pursuit of mathematical problems offers mental absorption, peace of mind amid endless challenges, repose in activity, battle without conflict, "refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings," and the sort of beauty changeless mountains present to sense tried by the present-day kaleidoscope of events. ~Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture

 

 

 

Mathematics is as much an aspect of culture as it is a collection of algorithms. ~Carl Boyer, 1949, calculus textbook

 

 

Sometimes it is useful to know how large your zero is. ~Author Unknown

 

 

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. ~Eric Hoffer, Reflections On The Human Condition

 

 

 

Mathematics is the only good metaphysics. ~William Thomson Baron Kelvin of Largs

 

 

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic. ~Bertrand Russell

 

 

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. ~Gottfried Leibniz

 

 

How many times can you subtract 7 from 83, and what is left afterwards? You can subtract it as many times as you want, and it leaves 76 every time. ~Author Unknown

 

 

To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas. ~Ivars Peterson

 

 

With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics. ~Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

 

 

But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius. ~Harold Marston Morse

 

 

Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy we call mathematics. ~Gregory Bateson

 

 

You may be an engineer if your idea of good interpersonal communication means getting the decimal point in the right place. ~Author Unknown

 

 

The trouble with integers is that we have examined only the very small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can't even begin to think about in any very definite way. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions. ~Ronald L. Graham

 

Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife - what's the answer to that? ~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

 

 

Mathematics is the supreme judge; from its decisions there is no appeal. ~Tobias Dantzig

 

 

Although he may not always recognize his bondage, modern man lives under a tyranny of numbers. ~Nicholas Eberstadt, The Tyranny of Numbers: Mismeasurement and Misrule

 

 

The mathematics are usually considered as being the very antipodes of Poesy. Yet Mathesis and Poesy are of the closest kindred, for they are both works of the imagination. ~Thomas Hill

 

 

[T]he different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. ~Lewis Carroll

 

 

[G]eometry is not true, it is advantageous. ~Henri Poincaré

 

 

Infinity is a floorless room without walls or ceiling. ~Author Unknown

 

 

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. ~Bertrand Russell

 

If a healthy minded person takes an interest in science, he gets busy with his mathematics and haunts the laboratory. ~W.S. Franklin

 

 

Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. ~Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

 

 

There was a young man from Trinity,

Who solved the square root of infinity.

While counting the digits,

He was seized by the fidgets,

Dropped science, and took up divinity.

~Author Unknown

 

 

One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulas have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers... ~Heinrich Hertz

 

 

In the binary system we count on our fists instead of on our fingers. ~Author Unknown

 

In most sciences one generation tears down what another has built and what one has established another undoes. In mathematics alone each generations adds a new story to the old structure. ~Hermann Hankel

 

 

Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. ~Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

 

 

I know that two and two make four - & should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 & 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure. ~George Gordon, Lord Byron

 

 

Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting. There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved by direct counting. ~Ernst Mach

 

 

Nature does not count nor do integers occur in nature. Man made them all, integers and all the rest, Kronecker to the contrary notwithstanding. ~Percy William Bridgman, The Way Things Are

 

 

A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars. That's subtraction. ~Mae West

 

 

I've dealt with numbers all my life, of course, and after a while you begin to feel that each number has a personality of its own. A twelve is very different from a thirteen, for example. Twelve is upright, conscientious, intelligent, whereas thirteen is a loner, a shady character who won't think twice about breaking the law to get what he wants. Eleven is tough, an outdoorsman who likes tramping through woods and scaling mountains; ten is rather simpleminded, a bland figure who always does what he's told; nine is deep and mystical, a Buddha of contemplation.... ~Paul Auster, The Music of Chance

 

 

Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful? ~Pliny the Elder, Natural History

 

 

Uneven numbers are the gods' delight. ~Virgil, The Eclogues

 

 

One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories. ~Philip J. Davis

 

 

Pure mathematics is the world's best game. It is more absorbing than chess, more of a gamble than poker, and lasts longer than Monopoly. It's free. It can be played anywhere - Archimedes did it in a bathtub. ~Richard J. Trudeau, Dots and Lines

 

 

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return. ~Bertrand Russell, 1912

 

 

The man ignorant of mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of civilization. ~John Kemeny

[HUSKER 37]

say a recruits parents are active ACLU supporters. or Arab.

 

what ron brown supports is really of no concern to me. how he goes about it, however, is. whether or not it is unconstitutional is of little effect. its not unconstitutional to be an atheist. or an arab.

 

in the end, he gets paid to be a football coach.

 

do engineering students pick their college based on their professors religious beliefs?

 

From what I remember about UNL's Engineering school, you were lucky to find a Professor or TA that spoke Engrish as a second language.

[Cina]

I think Ron Brown is probably a pretty cool guy. I saw him taking his daughter to the movies a while back on a weekday afternoon and he was wearing husker pajama pants. I will admit that I giggled.

 

I've seen him speak a couple of times and the only thing that turned me off was that once, while speaking to a bunch of undergrads at a function in the middle of the campus, he spend most of the time yelling about how homosexuality is a sin. Now, I love Jesus and I also believe it's a sin, but it was like he was doing it to be a sensationalist, to stir things up. I'm not sure if it was really in the best interest of anyone around. It reminded me of those guys who come to campus and yell at us about how we are all going to hell. If Ron Brown reminds me more of "cross guy" (not Jesus silly, the guy who stands by the Grande theatre) than Jesus than I have a problem with it.

 

Really though, that is probably me overanalyzing and being too sensitive.