Posted on 11/26/2012 3:30:07 PM PST by Kaslin
Let the Blood Games continue.
Only weeks after election 2012 and years before election 2016, in a routine interview, a glossy pop magazine popped Florida Senator Marco Rubio with an oddball question: How old do you think the earth is? Rubio responded a bit clumsily and noncommittally. Smelling blood and opportunity, the wolf pack bared fangs and chased.
Their game is either to force Rubio to affirm a personal belief the earth is 4.5 billion years old—disturbing some of his religious supporters--or to mock and stigmatize him and others who could harbor any delusional uncertainty—damaging him with a different part of the electorate.
The snarling pack imposes a totalitarian demand: No matter whether you’re intelligent, you engage the real world, you offer solutions to problems, and you attract and persuade citizens to support your vision and solutions; the pack demands to know if you have any hidden reserves of unsavory, illogical faith. Deny it or be tarred and marginalized.
The pack’s position, stretched to its logical end, amounts to demanding that politicians reject belief in God’s divinity and supremacy. That is, it countenances loyalty only to a god who exercises no will or power beyond passively upholding the principles set forth in Science 101.
Before reflecting why that is necessarily so, consider some of the other malignancies exposed by this flare up.
First is the premeditated bad faith of an upscale publication. The random question is untethered from public policy, from issues in the US Senate, or measures Rubio might pursue. It arose from a singular goal unrelated to reporting current events: GQ wanted to conjure a killer question, something that might damage a popular potential GOP presidential candidate. It’s easy to imagine the query came from a group brainstorm over lunch: “Think, people…how can we trip him?!”
Second on the list is the poisonous effect of unresting, perpetual attack machinery. Scarcely had the interview hit GQ’s website and newsstands when it ricocheted across the blogosphere and commentariat, with sneers from the left and defenses from the right. Barack Obama is two months shy of putting his hand on the Bible for a second term. Yet, already an anticipated candidate for 2016 is under manufactured attack for how he might read that book’s teachings.
GQ forced the exchange, the left media took up the cudgel, and then a celebrity hack of liberal economics at the Grey Lady weighed in. Now, it’s volleyed about on social media. Is it any wonder so many ambitious politicians opt for the duck and cover art of saying nothing about anything?
Ugliest of all is the totalitarian, anti-faith direction this attack takes our politics. A western Democratic organizer cited the GQ interview on her Facebook page to spread the smear. When I commented critically, a number of her friends suddenly appeared and pressed to know how old I think the earth is.
Their interest in getting a term-limited state lawmaker on record was surprising, but more troubling were their justifications for the question’s relevance: The earth’s age is determined by scientific measurements of carbon, radioactivity, and other phenomena. Those technologies also inform the operation of nuclear reactors, radiation therapy, and a host of other modern processes. If someone believes in a literal account of biblical creation, then he’s a threat to modernity and our comforts.
Oh, really? Do you see where this insanity goes?
Do you believe in the Virgin birth? Then how can we trust you with oversight of HHS programs and youth sexual education? If you won’t swear allegiance to the principles of biological reality and sexual autonomy then you are a freak and a menace.
Do you believe there was a purifying flood as the Bible describes? Is that established in the geologic record? How can you be trusted to oversee the Department of the Interior, the Geological Survey or BLM?
Did Moses part the Red Sea? You must be kept away from the National Weather Service.
Do you believe Jesus walked on the water to his disciples in the boat? Then how can you oversee a Navy that relies on conventional flotation physics to design its ships?
Do you believe He ascended after His resurrection? You are disqualified from commanding the Air Force: It relies on Newtonian physics for its understanding of aerodynamics.
Do you believe in resurrection at all? How can we trust you to make life and death decisions if you believe life is just a dress rehearsal and we all get a do over?
Only creativity limits the attacks on traditional faith and the grounds to exclude believers.
The gambit’s offensiveness and sinister portent is obvious. The canine-Pavlov types pursuing Rubio may understand the logical ends of their position or not. But the logic leads, whether they grasp or not.
So, let me hazard an answer to the GQ interviewer. It’s directed to the specific question, but adaptable to those that are sure to come.
Our best science says the earth is 4.5 billion years old. I don’t have a good reason to question that. I don’t know what a “day” is in the account of Creation. But I do believe in a God of miracles and mysteries. So I’m not going to scratch your inquisitional itch by denouncing anyone’s literal belief in the biblical account.
Does that trouble you? Why? I accept the laws of science and physics, and I admire the people who work to understand and reveal them. If, as a public official, I propose to substitute prayer for research, Bible verses for nuclear codes, or religious rites for rigorous testing, then, you can get concerned.
But until that point, the faith I hold somewhere in my mind and heart is between me and my God. If you want to force me to sign a loyalty oath denying it, you can go to Hell, figuratively speaking.
The left is made of nothing but illogical faith
The correct answer to such an obvious set-up question is, “The age of the Earth has no bearing on taking care of serious problems that face our nation and the world. Next question.”
Even scientists don’t KNOW the answer. I’ve read sources that put the age of the universe at 15 billion years. Why would our own solar system be a mere 4.5 billion? What was going on for 10.5 billion years before the earth was created?
After 40 years of this lame game, any Christian or pro-life politician that can’t handle routine questions about his faith or his pro-life position, is clearly not qualified for the field of politics.
dust swirlies
Marco Rubio was snagged on a “gotcha” question. At this point, anyone who is a target of such a question will have to be prepared to turn it around and ask the inquisitive one, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Of course, the inquisitive one may not HAVE a wife, but he might have a dog or a dear old sainted mother. Some fashion or another, it is obligatory to take it back to the busybody.
Good Answer, Good Answer! (said in a “Family Feud” tone of voice).
Mine would be something along the lines of “I’m not too concerned about when the Earth started - but I SURE am concerned about when this Nation of Liberty and Prosperity will end, and will do everything I can to prevent its demise.”
I'd go with "I can't say for sure. It was already there when I got here."
The book doesn't say that "bara" means "created," as in making something from nothing. In fact, the Hebrew root implies shaping a preexisting workpiece, producing chips or dust.
From a speech by Comrade Chi Haotian
Vice-Chairman of China’s Military Commission, December, 2005
The problem you see, is that those on the left, like all other totalitarians, despise competition. Even among themselves.
I'd go with "I can't say for sure. It was already there when I got here."
I really don’t know how it matters what someones belief is about the age of the earth.
I am sure that carbon dating has its limits. God may be playing a cruel hoax where if they get close to that date the method goes haywire. There have been several instances where something in nature defies physics.
I don’t know how old the world is and I don’t care. I have to get to my next paycheck so the age of the earth does not concern me. Anyone who is bothered about someones belief in a young earth obviously has more money and time than I do.
I bet that most Americans don’t really care without the media trying to make it an issue
Read the Catechism: Day 46
Part1:The Profession of Faith (26 - 1065)
Section2:The Profession of the Christian Faith (185 - 1065)
Chapter1:I Believe in God the Father (198 - 421)
Article1:”I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth” (199 - 421)
Paragraph4:The Creator (279 - 324)
V. GOD CARRIES OUT HIS PLAN: DIVINE PROVIDENCE
302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created “in a state of journeying” (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call “divine providence” the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection:
By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, “reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well”. For “all are open and laid bare to his eyes”, even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.
303 The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history. The sacred books powerfully affirm God’s absolute sovereignty over the course of events: “Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.” And so it is with Christ, “who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens”. As the book of Proverbs states: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established.”
304 And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a “primitive mode of speech”, but a profound way of recalling God’s primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world, and so of educating his people to trust in him. The prayer of the Psalms is the great school of this trust.
305 Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children’s smallest needs: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?”... Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”
I just remembered that Rubio was a Mormon as a child. That question would be tough for any Mormon or ex-mormon. The Mormon faith is based in materialism much like Atheism. Matter has always existed and God just formed it into the earth.
Wasn’t it General Sheridan who taught us that the only good queer is a not living queer?
That is how Ronald Reagen would answer
6000 years aprox. Binary Planet is an a unstable system and cannot last for very long at all. The farther from the earth, the weaker the gravity and it spins away, the nearer the stronger and it crashes into the earth in a short time.
Being lambasted by space debri insures that it will loose ballance if it was perfect to start.
million years? Impossible. At the current rate of spin away, will will not have a moon a Hundred thousan years from now.
“The age of the earth is anything G-d wants it to be!”
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