(November 13, 2013 at 10:48 am)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: If I, being a Christian, wished you a happy Christmas, would you be OK with that? Are there any circumstances you would find it offensive?
I wouldn't find it offensive, no different than a person offering a "bless you" when I sneeze. It's more like a custom than a religious observance. I would even return the sentiment.
The irony is that when I was a Jehovah's Witness, I would probably have seemed offended had you wished me a Merry Christmas, since their belief system considers Christmas to be a pagan holiday and any expression related to it would be inappropriate for a True Christian™ to make. So I probably would have replied with an uncomfortable "thanks."
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
