Posted on 05/10/2007 11:59:08 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON -- In a nation where 91 percent of citizens profess to believe in God, it's a safe bet we won't see an atheist in the White House anytime soon.
But what about a president who doesn't believe in Darwin? And are Darwin and God mutually exclusive?
These are the questions that (still) trouble men's souls. And still cause trouble for presidential candidates forced unfairly to essentially choose between God and science.
In the "gotcha" question of the first GOP debate, journalist Jim VandeHei, relaying a citizen's question, asked John McCain: "Do you believe in evolution?"
A natural response might have been, "Well, that depends on how you define evolution.'' It would seem that Clintonian nuance is off the boards for now. Instead, McCain gambled and said -- no doubt with fear and trembling in his political heart -- "Yes.''
Next VandeHei asked: Is there anyone on the stage who doesn't believe in evolution? Three raised their hands -- Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado.
As debate audiences were pondering the meaning of Darwin in the Oval Office, McCain asked permission to elaborate. McCain then added: "I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.''
Note to George Tenet: This is what you call a slam dunk. McCain was able to acknowledge both science and religion -- evolutionary theory and creationism -- and make them mutually exclusive. Some may call that "fence-straddling'' or "having it both ways,'' but political observers call it "Bingo!'
The others weren't so fortunate. Like little boys called to the front of the class for public humiliation, Huckabee, Tancredo and Brownback immediately became targets of ridicule by...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
There should be nothing "curious" about this. The primary objections to the scientific theory of evolution are coming from religion, not science. The objections are based on religious belief, not scientific evidence.
What do you expect scientists to do when folks come calling with this type of "science" -- kiss 'em?
Yes
Hi Coyoteman!
Darwinist evolutionary theory is based on a mechanistic, deterministic, Newtonian worldview -- everything reduces to bodies in motion and strict causality -- that has been significantly undermined and challenged by discoveries in quantum mechanics. It is a "'science" that is sorely in need of "updating" -- and I say this not as someone speaking "religiously," but as someone who is looking at the scientific aspects of the problem.
Well, FWIW. Good to see you, Coyoteman!
That is why I described it earlier as a "reduction": Reductions generally involve important omissions. Darwinist theory, for example, has no theory of the origin of life, does not come to grips with the origin of intelligence or consciousness, assumes randomness (without defining what randomness is or giving evidence for it), has no good account of "irreducible complexity," and does not explain/account for the information-intensive basic structures of life at the level of DNA, nor demonstrate any principle that could account for how the amazingly complex higher biological forms organize and integrate their astronomical number of internal parts -- at the organic, cellular, molecular, atomic, and subatomic levels -- into an organized, dynamic, singular whole that is submitted to a sort of "global governance."
I have often been distressed by the failure of the theory of gravity to account for black hole evaporation, time dilation, the relatively high boiling point of water, and why I can put two socks in the dryer and get one sock back out.
The scientific realm is full of theories that explain one particular realm of the physical world, yet we do not call these worthless since they are not universal.
Moreover, many of your objections are wrong. Evolutionary theory has addressed many of these (I do wish you and other creationists would drop the obsolete label "Darwinist", in the last century and a half we significantly expanded on Darwin's original theory), and some of them are irrelevant.
Plus the Benedictine monk Gregor Mendel -- the "father of genetics" -- was pretty confident that his studies on selective breeding refuted Darwin's theory of natural selection. There are scientists who agree that he did just that.
It is impossible for me to understand how anyone living today could think that Mendelian genetics refute modern evolutoinary theory. This can only be so if the person in question is either completely blinded by bias or utterly ignorant of both Mendelian genetics and evolutionary theory, or both biased and ignorant. Betty! I am aghast! Next you will be telling me that Mendellian genetics prove that meiotic drive cannot exist! There is more in population genetics than was dreamed of in Mendel's science.
Can you provide a scientific article that concludes that quantum mechanics renders Newtonian and Einsteinian physics useless? Right now it looks like wishful thinking on your part.
As you know, this is because 'science' is based on the philosophy of naturalism. Science requires a 'natural' explanation and has one. No surprise since that is a requirement of the philosophy.
Science will always have a natural answer to every question because it is *required*. Even if nature was supernaturally-created, science is *required* to propose purely natural explanations by its philosophical foundation.
To imply that objections to naturalism must come from naturalists is circular reasoning at its best.
We also need to keep in mind that when coyoteman speaks of 'evidence', he means 'interpretations of evidence', not evidence in the strict sense of observable, repeatable tests. That evidence is the same for everyone but only coyoteman's interpretations (naturalistic) are acceptable.
Objections are unreasonable because those are 'religious belief' while 'naturalist philosophy' is 'scientific', but then we are back to the initial assumption of science again (that of naturalism). It's a nice neat little circle that no naturalist can escape.
Like a "WHo's on first?" skit... Lou Costello never did "get it".. Abbott just double talked his way around the bases..
Mutually exclusive? Amazing what our language can produce, including nonsense.
I don't believe anyone knows how old the earth really is (but God, of course). Having said that, the belief that it is 10,000 years old is as valid as the belief that it is a billion years old (or whatever the most current guess is).
Its either tough love or the Republican party is going to be the joke of the 21st century.
Alienate the 'religious right' and the Republican party might not be a 'joke', but they will definitely be out of power.
That is incorrect, as you noted. It is supposedly based on random mutation; thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics. But, that is incorrect, too. Depends who you talk to: if it's Marxists, it is progress toward improvement. That is incorrect, too. It's amusing to watch all the arguments on all sides--all incorrect.
Please So you'd rather vote for Hillary than someone who believes in Creationism or ID. The doesn't seem rational.
If the universe were miraculously created 6000 years ago we would not be able to come up with the models that we have because the evidence would not allow us to draw the conclusions that we have. There is no one who has plausibly explained the evidence from a young universe perspective. It cannot be done.
If we were coming up with:
then you might have a point, but as it is the evidence we have all points towards common ancestry and an ancient universe, most definitely not a recent origin.
I could go on, but time does not allow me.
That was an excellent example of a false dilemma. Thank you.
Give me a break.
No, the real issue for me the ability of our President to think rationally. Belief in any of the forms of creationism is irrational.
This question was important? It was idiotic. Who cares?
You’re certainly working at becoming the joke of this forum.
And there’s nothing Libertarian at all about your mindset.
CL has a pocket sized carbon dating machine that he carries around with him.
You can only find the Theory of Evolution credible or not credible based on evidence.
If belief in Darwinism came before belief in God this world would be a terrible place.
It would be normal for the strong to prey on the weak, It would be normal for step fathers to murder their new love interest’s children, It would be normal to eliminate the weak, handicapped, deformed and different...
Rape would be normal, incest would be normal,
There would be no medicine, no art, no music, no literature.
Without God individual humans are as expendable as individual gnus..
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