Republican Debate Last Night: Was It Pandering or Stupidity?
Did anyone notice? I was lying there on the couch, more absorbed by the whacked out format than by any of the answers, when someone asked a question about evolution to a particular candidate. Chris Matthews took it upon himself to ask for a show of hands how many of the Republican candidates [...]
Did anyone notice? I was lying there on the couch, more absorbed by the whacked out format than by any of the answers, when someone asked a question about evolution to a particular candidate. Chris Matthews took it upon himself to ask for a show of hands how many of the Republican candidates did not believe in evolution. The New York Times this morning says three candidates, Tom Tancredo, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback raised their hands. Blogger News Network confirms, though is honest enough to hear some ridicule on those candidates who don’t believe in evolution. (I swear I saw four of the candidates raise their hands.) These are men who believe they are fully able and qualified to lead this country but who don’t believe in evolution. Is this stupidity or just pandering. And does it matter?
You know what? They also think they bought themselves some votes by taking that stand. Whether these three are truly ignorant or whether they are pretending to be in order to capture Christian conservatives does not matter. It is likely true that they have gotten themselves votes by claiming not to believe in evolution. We’ve got a whole raft of museums (here and here and here) dedicated to explaining the biblical story and how it supposedly trumps Darwin, quietly skirting the issue of whether Fred and Barney are fictional or factual.
The real story here is the denial, based on faith, of a theory that is so universally accepted by scientists as to be fact. The real story is that this denial of fact can be done publicly by candidates for President of the United States and not one news source has seen fit to comment on how absurd that scene was.
If anyone sees a news outlet mentioning how absurd it is that 30% of the Republican candidates don’t believe in evolution, please let me know in the comments.
I could never vote for a man who would debase himself by sucking up to christianists. Which means I will never vote Republican’t for President
EVERY single man standing on that stage last night should scare the hell out of any thinking human being. While Bin Laden and his ilk would NEVER - EVER have the ability to destroy our country, these men are vying for a position they attain it could put them in a position to destroy our country from within in a matter of years. Like Bush and especially Reagan (remember that Reagan was the man who subverted the Constitution and should have ended his years behind prison bars) these men should wake all of us in the middle of the night screaming. Very, very SCARY!
There was one winner last night, the democratic party. Jeez, was that painful to watch or what? The three who said they did not believe in evolution are nuts so they shouldn’t even be running.
i tried to watch some really…made it about one question.
but really, the thing that scared me the most was the gnawing feeling in my stomach that one of those devolutionary thinkers would be our pres in ‘08 whether they win the vote or not. my bet’s on the most extreme because it’s all about the base, aka the lunatic fringe.
Hi SpinDentist,
In regards to this part of your post: “If anyone sees a news outlet mentioning how absurd it is that 30% of the Republican candidates don’t believe in evolution, please let me know in the comments.”
I will be talking about this on my radio talk show tomorrow, Saturday 5/5/07, “The Bernard Schaer Show” between 9 and 10 Mountain.
Best Regards,
Bernard Schaer, Host
Recent polls show that the belief in evolution is about 50/50 in America. Yeah, I was totally shocked, too, but it’s true. Almost half of the people in this country don’t believe in evolution.
In no way am I trying to divert the attention of this discussion, but have you actually thought about the things evolution suggests. While it is taught as fact in some places, it, in my opinion, takes more faith to believe in evolution than in intelligent design. The science of evolution is not observable, it breaks many laws of physics, and when you break it down it just sounds plain stupid. Even though many pieces of “evidence” that support the evolution theory has been proven to be false, it is still in the used in the textbooks. I bet those guys believe in natural selection, which is observable. But not believing in the grand theory of evolution that changes yearly hardly seems insane. I know, it’s hard to believe that someone who disagrees with you might have a non-crazy or vile reason for doing so.
Matt, evolution does not break any laws of physics, that’s just some more bullshit said by people having problems to understand basic science, I guess you are talking about the “Second Law of Thermodynamics”, which is used quite often in the ID propaganda…that’s just wrong, difficult to explain if you cannot understand basic science. I recommend the carefull lecture of a good physics book. The funny thing here is that thermodynamics were the second (after copernic) big blow against hard read-the-bible-literally religion.
Let me see……Evolution states that lightning strikes a pond with amino acids resulting in proteins. By chance these proteins organize into “complex” RNA and then ultra complex DNA. This organizes into cells which then reverse the process which we now know occurs. DNA(organized sequencing)-to RNA-to protein.Then…single cell organisms form more complex organisms and by chance mutation and natural selection species develop. All you need here is billions of years, chance, and pure faith in the impossible. Although microevolution is an established fact, macroevolution is a joke and unprovable. It is the antichristiian’s only hope to explain the undeniable fact of intelligent design. Nothing in our observable world leans towards organization by chance. Quite the opposite. Intelligence and design operate from the moment you wake until the day you die. The evolutionist is the believer of blind faith.
Believing doesn’t make the belief true nor does the consensus of those professing belief make the belief true. There are things that are believable because there is a reason to accept that belief and belief that is considered unreasonable because there is absolutely no reason to believe. The original question should have been asked as do you accept evolution as factual. There is overwhelming evidence that it is and all anyone has to do is look at the flu strain and how it changes every year as evidence. Everyone who saw supposedly educated men state they did not accept evolution as fact running for president should be embarrassed that they live in the US.
Mjjp,
You are confusing microevolutionary principles with macroevolution. Flu viruses have never been proven to change into Varicella viruses. They mutate……….. but stay flu viruses. This is similar to bacteria developing antibiotic resistance. Go back and study the difference between the two types of evolution. The “educated” are blind and are pseudo intellectual in this regard.
The key is not the *size* of the change (micro vs macro) but the *direction* of the change. All observed mutations either reduce the information content of the genome, or are neutral. The General Theory of Evolution not only requires life to emerge spontaneously from lifeless chemicals, but it requires millions of information-gaining mutations. None have ever been observed.
If Intelligent Design was how we came to be, then I think the designer needs to go back to school. What entity with any brains at all would design a human being that has the prostate gland wrapped around the urethra so that as men get older they can’t pee? What designer would create an air passageway that is shared with a food passageway so that people can choke to death? How intelligent is that?
People that think religiion explains everything need to think about all the negative aspects and repercussions of their beliefs. Once they examine their beliefs with a ballanced viewpoint, maybe they’ll begin to see how absurd their beliefs are.
The designer created the airway with an epiglottis that discrimates between food and air.With millions of nerve endigs working constantlty, it keeps your spit from ending up in your wind pipe nearly 100% of the time.
The designer put the prostate near your urethra in order to allow you to ejaculate in order to reproduce. The designer did not make us put all sorts of trash in our bodies to cause hypertrophy of the gland to cause difficulty in peeing. He did give us intelligence to create a device to shave the gland down to allow you to pee again with ease. Any more stumpers?
“The key is not the *size* of the change (micro vs macro) but the *direction* of the change. All observed mutations either reduce the information content of the genome, or are neutral. The General Theory of Evolution not only requires life to emerge spontaneously from lifeless chemicals, but it requires millions of information-gaining mutations. None have ever been observed.”
That simply isn’t true, but that won’t stop you from making it. Form talk origins:
By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of
* increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
* increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
* novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
* novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995