Posted on 06/13/2007 8:30:23 AM PDT by presidio9
The three Republican presidential candidates who indicated last month that they do not believe in evolution may have been taking a safe stance on the issue when it comes to appealing to GOP voters.
A Gallup poll released Monday said that while the country is about evenly split over whether the theory of evolution is true, Republicans disbelieve it by more than 2-to-1.
Republicans saying they don't believe in evolution outnumbered those who do by 68 percent to 30 percent in the survey. Democrats believe in evolution by 57 percent to 40 percent, as do independents by a 61 percent to 37 percent margin.
The poll also said that those who go to church often are far likelier to reject evolution than those who do not. Republicans are likelier than Democrats or independents to attend church services, according to Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll.
At the GOP's first presidential debate last month, the 10 candidates were asked which of them did not believe in evolution. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo raised their hands.
The Gallup survey, conducted May 21 to 24, involved telephone interviews with 1,007 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
One weakness of Evolutionary Theory is that there is no public, peer-reviewed, agreed-upon criteria for falsification. Without such falsification criteria, ET can’t be taken overly seriously by professional scientists.
A person can answer that question in the negative and not deny evolution outright; and accepting evolution in the broadest sense, not contradict the divine creation of the universe.
It seems God created a universe that evolves, is capable of development. Big bang and Genesis are not inconsistent with each other. Both describe "evolution" of some sort. Darwin got his insights for biological evolution principally from this source; i.e., the universe evolves, so it is reasonable to suppose that biological life must do likewise. So far, so good. But it seems to me Darwin got the assumption of a purely random development of exclusively material bodies out of thin air.
To me, all the word "random" really denotes is "something we don't understand." Just like the idea of so-called "junk DNA." We only call it "junk" because we don't yet understand what it does....
It is this context that Huckabees' and Brownbacks' and Tancredo's raised hands need to be understood. IMHO, FWIW.
I seek to persuade Christians to lay off their attempts to destroy science, for two reasons. 1) it's bad for Christianity, because it forces people to chose between their understanding of science and their faith. 2) it's bad for science, because of the faith driven attacks against it destroy it's credibility for no good reason. Attack the handful of "scientists" who've sold out to the green's cash, but paleontology, anthropology and biology generally aren't guilty of that.
I keep my mouth shut about my lack of faith, until the subject of evolution comes up. Lay off evolution, and I'll keep my beliefs to myself. As I said in an earlier post, I think Christianity is the best faith of any, and since most people seem to be hardwired to require faith, it's the best choice. Just lay off evolution.
Define "near-instantaneously". It's probable that "modern" humans existed for 20-30 thousand years before any serious advances occurred. Even then, the advances were likely cultural, not genetically driven (and most of that was during the domination by religions other than Judeo-Christian theology, such as Ra worshipers in Egypt, and polytheistic faiths of the Greeks, Romans and whatever the Chinese believed then).
Culture is at the heart of the success and God is responsible.
Culture is at the heart of humanities success, but you are ignoring huge chunks of history to assert that your definition of God is responsible. The Chinese were far in advance of Europeans for thousands of years, and our history books largely ignores this fact. And "Western Civilization" itself was built, as I said above, on the polytheistic philosophies of Athens and Rome. When Christianity did take over Rome, it heralded it's decline for a millenia into the dark ages, until very recent centuries when a few were able to implement a philosophy of a separation between church and state, and an individual liberty of the people to judge their own relationship to God. It was this removal of God as central to culture that sparked the most recent huge advances in civilization.
Also since these human traits are so fantastically successful it is statistically unreasonable that no other species have evolved any similar characteristics. Why not?
Someone has to be first. The ability to pose an unanswerable question is not a positive indication of the existence of a God. Much less a positive indication that your particular God is correct over some other persons concept of God or gods.
Christianity is a minority faith on the planet you know.
God has driven man to adopt strategies, moralities and contrainstictual behavioural modalities (ooh cool term, it may deserve its own acronym, LOL) not found in other life forms.
Please explain how those Chinese did those things without God. Unless your point is that generic faith is the cause of these things.
The very idea of living life to gain reward after death is completely antithetical to base evolutionary theories. This alone suggests the need for science to consider...
There is zero scientific evidence to suggest life after death. It is a highly emotional subject and perhaps very hard for humans to imagine otherwise, but the bottom line is there is no physical detector for "spirits", or reincarnation, or even the existence of a soul. Please enlighten me if there is such detection hardware, or litmus strip test, or anything besides philosophy and good feelings to back up the idea of life after death.
Cryptic. I really don't want to guess at your meaning.
If you think it’s cryptic, then you understand neither science, God, or your own words.....
Your posts have multiple meanings that would waste my time to guess at. You must not have any real counters to my arguments, besides generic disgust at having to contemplate the idea that your faith in God could be entirely false. It was an emotional shock to me when I acknowledged to myself that God doesn't exist. It sucks to know that when you die, you die.
Just remember, anytime that the discussion of evolution comes up in a school, on FR, anywhere, the subject of the very existence of God will almost immediately come up. If you value your faith, and the faith of the young people around you, encourage the acceptance that evolution and Genesis are not contradictory.
Perhaps you are secure in the idea that scientific evidence can be false when it confronts the Bible, but some will not have your faith and will reject God rather than reject the evidence of their eyes. Fighting evolution is just not worth it for a Christian. Let my experience warn you of that fact.
What makes you think I haven't already been down that road. Only when you understand that God has more faith in us, than we will ever have in him, will you realize the error of your ways...and the signs and evidences are all around you. All you need do is look and listen...
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt(s). Once you realize that God doesn't exist, considering whether that imaginary God has faith in me doesn't make sense.
What more is there to say then....
Sheesh get to know AP. They purposely did not include the wording of the question because that would ruin the story about how all Republicans are rednecked Bible-thumpers. I believe that species evolve, but that that evolution is direced by God. I guarantee you that the AP poll would take that to mean that I reject evolution.
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