I guess it's gotten a lot worse from 20+ years ago. My ITT two year degree from 23 years ago is accredited, and employers at the time were very happy with graduates from the particular ITT I attended. At the time, they had a 100% placement rate for everyone who graduated and did not go on to further education (and that was my whole reason for going, as my 4 year engineering degree from a top 10 school got me and 70% of the graduating class na-da : and the rest broke down as 20% going on to grad school and 10% being the chem engineers getting hired to go work in Saudi Arabia). But that quality came from the local ITT staff, not the corporate level. I heard even back then that the quality of your education depended on which location you went to. And it was definitely a heck of a lot easier than my 4 year degree, but also one heck of a lot more practical (which makes sense given it was a degree for a technician working on circuit boards, etc, not an engineer designing parts or systems).

Still no studies proving GMO in any way cause damage to human beings. So far everything I have seen is a sad, clearly luddite mentality that "technology bad". Calling the death penalty "murder" is symptomatic of poor logical skills on your part. That implies the state does not have the right to terminate the lives of it's citizens, which is poor reasoning, given the many things I suspect we will find you support the government passing laws to do. For example, deciding not to have a death penalty for murder means removing one factor that encourages people not to murder others, which in part contributes to more people being murdered. Government makes many decisions that impact how many people will live or die. Setting a speed limit is defacto determining one of the major factors in how many people die in car accidents. When the state sets the speed limit, they defacto decide how many people will die.

You aren't parsing the original statement right, it devolves into two sentences.

"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;"

Is actually "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" and "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of the press". I think you are trying to read it as "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech of the press". But that ignores the comma I think.

I suppose it depends on how you define what a "Christian" is. The ones I think of would eat you for lunch if all you have is 5-6 verses and those are your "killer" ideas there listed. I would hazard a guess that you have only argued with ignorant people and may thus be a bit confused over your own level of understanding. Camels and needles usually comes from confusing translations with the original, i.e. I would never argue an English language bible is anything other than the very best human effort to translate the original language "breathed" by God. And context is very critical, if you are cherry picking a few verses out of context you can say most anything you want and claim it's from the Bible. The Bible says what is impossible for man is possible for God. The rich man story is about priorities and what/who is in control of your life, and the point Jesus makes is that wealth can make it very hard if not impossible for a person to have the right priorities in their life. Thankfully for the wealthy that God can do what we cannot. This follows in the theme of getting rid of things that have control over you, so if your wealth holds you back from following Jesus, you get rid of it. In any case, we are to give everything to God, and then receive back what he entrusts to our stewardship. Which 10 commandments, the Philonic, Talmudic or Augustinian? In any case, the portion of God's covenant referred to as the "10 commandments" is given in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, not Exodus 34, so color me confused. I would hazard you think Exodus 34 is a different list of 10 commandments, and you think the 10 commandments is something critical? It rather isn't, it's a handy handle to refer to some core tenets of the ethical/moral system God gave to the Jewish people. If I remember right, the "naughty children" were young men of age doing something rather nasty, so again, go do a bit more digging, as context is very useful.

Get a 4+" screen smart phone. The only negative here is it would be hard to handle textbooks on the smaller screen. Every kind of ebook distributor has an app that works on an android phone, and they all do seem to work okay for general reading. You can switch to white text on black screen for reading at night or to save on power. You'll adapt, it's definitely just good enough tech approach, and you read a lot less on the screen at one go, but it's a flick to get to the next page and you don't have to carry multiple devices. If you use your smart phone a lot, you are already set up to handle getting it recharged as you go (car charger, charger at work, by computer, in kitchen, etc, spare battery if you can remove yours, etc). Smart phones with 3G/4G access can go get new books. I've harvested tons of free books on the major 3 platforms, and Amazon also has free ebooks all the time. It's a new hook for authors with multi-book series, first book is free, second book is $1-2 and so on to newest book which is $4-5. I've done this multiple times, and I get all three books as fast as I can read them generally for $5-8, and for 3 full books I really enjoyed that's a good price. So I have tons of books, all of Frank Baum's Oz books are available free from Google Books for example, ready to be reread when the urge hits. Aldiko has a separate sync app that allows you to copy your Aldiko library to your dropbox and then to another smartphone/tablet/etc.

You are absolutely correct, "you cannot convince people who do not want to challenge their presuppositions and assertions". Of course, the dirty little secret is that most people don't want to admit what their real presuppositions and assertions are. And there are a whole bunch of people want to believe most adamantly that they have truly challenged their presuppositions and assertions and really haven't. Speaking of straw mans, you appear to have taken your particular version of "homophobic creationist" upbringing and used it as such. Your particular variation of cultural christianity (I guess by the few clues offered) is not true christianity. Nor is the ones I grew up in. Perhaps that is what spoiled me but kept me seeking the truth, having been in a variety of denominations and churches growing up. Becoming a follower of Jesus Christ does not involve everything you were taught in church as a child. Much has been added, misunderstood, misapplied. Satan works from within and without the church to try and destroy it. Sadly many that struggle clear of that do not seek the real truth but instead embrace whatever seems left. There are some very intelligent thoughtful folks who care very much about the truth that find no problem between science and a faith in Jesus Christ. It you want to find answers, they are out there. But to be clear, you will see tons of stuff on the internet attacking those answers, because as you noted, people don't want to challenge, and are far more likely to attack and then dismiss whatever truly threatens what they want to believe.

Now, now, we all know that those who can't do, teach.

Let me hold a mirror up...

IMO you have the scale wrong for "check"ing these as being present. For example, you are probably equating the presence of any corruption as equaling the "rampant... corruption" from your checklist. Go compare corruption in the US to say the USSR. Labor Power is Suppressed? Seriously? With a democratic president and congress? Labor being one of the big political campaign fund contributors? Religion and Government entertwined? I agree, aethism has way too strong a hold on our government. Sexism? Have you watched Mad Men? Compared that to today? Compare our military structure to say that of North Korea. How many elections are fraudulent? This is a total fail of a checklist if it didn't come with actual metrics to measure these areas by. These things are present every where, but to greatly varying degrees and impact levels. Is mass media controlled by the government? No, its controlled by the rich and by corporations. So it's controlled, but I suspect "Cotnrolled Mass Media" for determining if a nation is fascist refers to controlled by the government.

One of the authors? No. That is his opinion. The final document is the consensus of the entire group, not just one author. If the Supreme Court looks at the combined opinion and attempts to establish the consensus opinion/body of writings upon which to base their increased understanding of the final document, fine and good. Just one or two authors? No. Their personal writings are just that, their personal opinions. If Jefferson intended a separation of church and state and used that particular phrase several times, why did it not make it into the final document? Either the final document's wording truly expressed that (which it does not appear to do so to me), or it was what he had hoped/intended to accomplish but he had to bow to political expediency and gaining consensus and had to settle for something else. As I have yet to see here any rational logical argument demonstrating how "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" results in "separation of church and state" without the introduction of statements not present in the actual amendment or constitution, I feel the weight at this point is on the latter rather than the former.

Who else besides Jefferson and Madison? What percentage of the founders supported which standpoints over the issue? And in any case, the actual wording of the amendment reflects the combined will of those that put it into place, not just the personal opinions of a few of them. So for all I know you are simply quoting the more extreme opinions of a few of the more liberal members of the founding fathers (or conversely they were expressing the most common opinion *shrug*). The cause of the intent is clear from the history books over how governments had used religion as a tool of oppression and political expression. I'd be curious at the overall reaction of the founding fathers to our modern brewhaha over nativities and 10 commandments in court rooms. From www.dictionary.com, we find establish [ih-stab-lish] = verb (used with object) 1. to found, institute, build, or bring into being on a firm or stable basis: to establish a university; to establish a medical practice. 2. to install or settle in a position, place, business, etc.: to establish one's child in business. 3. to show to be valid or true; prove: to establish the facts of the matter. 4. to cause to be accepted or recognized: to establish a custom; She established herself as a leading surgeon. 5. to bring about permanently: to establish order. Perhaps someone can dig us up the fuller list of definitions from an unabridged Websters or what not? My family once had a beautiful old dictionary that must have weighed 20 pounds and was 10" thick. Unfortunately that's harder to quick grab for a copy and paste online. ^_^

You know, after you define the terms, do a substitution and restate it, and you will find it does not support your conclusion. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" becomes "Congress shall make no law with respect to/concerning/regarding a religious establishment". Absolutely nothing there about "or be affected by any religion".

Good heavens, perhaps if they had actually written that instead of what they did...

Actually, from my chemistry high school course, you start the scientific process by listing your assumptions. Assumptions are those things you assume to be true but can't prove are true. One of them proving to be wrong could cause your hypothesis/theory to be on very shaky ground. Now what would we call a course about assumptions/beliefs about the nature of the universe that can't be proved by data or the scientific process... Philosophy or Religious Studies sound like two possible candidates... Congress shall also make no laws prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, not just establishment. So yes, religions do have a bit more free reign.

There is no constitutional requirement for separation of church and state. Amendment I of the Bill of Rights - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;". So Congress, using laws, cannot create (establish) a religion, nor can they make it illegal to practice a religion (free exercise). The "separation of church and state" was an artificial progressive reconstruction by a liberal Supreme Court.