Anti-evolution, pro science conservatives

Of all the factors that led to Mike Huckabee's demise in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes (insufficient funds, lack of foreign policy experience), there's one that has been largely overlooked: Huckabee's disbelief in the theory of evolution as it is generally understood – without the involvement of the Creator.

Perhaps you're thinking: What's evolution got to do with being president? Very little, as Huckabee was quick to remind reporters on the campaign trail. But from the moment the former Baptist minister revealed his beliefs on evolutionary biology, political commentators and scientists lambasted him. Some even suggested those beliefs should disqualify him from high office.

Evolution is covered in much more depth, and matters significantly more simply because it's a controversial issue, which the state has a responsibility to treat delicately.

Actually, in many schools, evolution might cover a week or so of high school biology. It is really not covered all that in depth. Nor do I think that the state has any concern about how accurately it's taught, so long as they can avoid run ins with the ACLU by NOT teaching creation.

And honestly, knowledge of the ToE has so little relevance to what the vast majority of people are going to do with the rest of their lives, that that is why it's seen as an indoctrination issue.

IMO, it could be totally avoided at the high school level and nobody would notice the difference. Even if it's well taught, it's not being well received. If the kids even pay attention to it in the first place and haven't slept through it in class, or listened to their iPods instead, or done homework for a different class, they still have to assimilate it correctly. Kids can pass the Biology regents even if they totally fail the evolution part. How does anyone expect kids that are barely literate or numerate, to understand scientific concepts of any kind?

Any one who needs to know anything about evolution can learn what is relevant to their career fields at the college level.

It is really too bad that you include scientists in the category of

“must admit that I right now I feel a sense of satisfaction at the thought of seeing those who would fly planes into buildings, slice of the heads of those they disagree with, put suicide vests on children, or stone women for being raped, get theirs.”

Really now, equating science with those who attacked us on 9/11?

Really? My school spent about a month and half on it... Eh, maybe my memory is just plain wrong about it.

That said, I agree with you that high school education is more or less a joke. Honestly, if history and geography received half as much public attention as science did, the country would be in a much better state right now... The teaching of cause and effect, and the importance of minor actions, would serve to make people much more responsible.

History, properly taught and properly received, changes lives. Science? It's useful, and it's important, but to prioritize it over history is a huge mistake, as far as I'm concerned...

I don’t recall learning it much at all, course, then again, I don’t remember much of what I learned in high school because I didn’t care. It was college and homeschooling my kids that counted for me.

Anyway, I ran into a classmate of mine some years after I graduated who happened to have the same biology teacher and he told me that she just glossed over it in one day or so. He suspected that she didn’t believe it but had to teach it so did the bare minimum she could get by with.

My kids bio teacher says he’d rather not teach it at all because it’s so controversial. He hates the controversy over it.

Thus I'm asking how you would describe your relationship with origins -- how much is belief and how much is knowledge?

Origins? The current scientific hypotheses are plausible, and are based on (limited) evidence. They are arrived at using the scientific method. None yet reaches the level of a theory.

The current religious ideas concerning origins (and there are several thousand internally contradictory ideas worldwide) are based on revelation and scripture and pure speculation -- in other words, nothing.

Thank you oh so very much for your outstanding essay-post! And thank you all for your insights in the sidebar that followed.

I find it particularly telling that, once again, the focus of the rebuttal to your and hosepipe's assertion, is not directed to the substance of the argument but rather the (presumed) agenda of the poster. That tactic is typical in the never-ending Intelligent Design v. Evolution debates.

But it is merely a "spitwad" - a straw man or redirect - something posters use when they have no real ammunition. Chalk one up for our side.

The short answer: Logic and reason, the same "tests" that scientists use. Don't forget: the natural sciences are first-born of philosophy; the subdiscipline of epistemology is particularly strongly emphasized. (What do we know? How do we know it? How do we know we know it?)

This is the inescapable bottom line: How do we know that we know it?

Science is to philosophy as a child is to his father. He might run away from home, condemn and deny his father but he cannot make his lineage not be true.

Almost every field of science that deals with the natural world is reliant on the belief that the world is old to explain certain facts.

I'll try to respond to more when I have more time, but I would like to say that my life's interest from my youth has been science, specifically the physical sciences, and it isn't true that almost every field of science that deals with the natural world is reliant on the belief that the world is old.

As a matter of fact, I'd wager that very little of any of the sciences require an old universe. The only one that I know of is the science of naturalistic origins.

-Jesse

[[Not once have I had a scientist tell me that I am going to hell, that I am not moral, that I can not be trusted or that I hate everyone save myself.]]

Why are you looking to scientists to evaluate your spiritual condition anyway? Lots of ‘moral’ people will be going to hell if they don’t listen to God and Accept Christ as hteir Savior. God’s gift is free- we don’t earn it by being ‘moral’ ‘trustworthy’ etc. While it’s fien to be those htings- which I’m sure you are- they do not save a person.

Coyote said to you [[Because they did not arrive at their beliefs through logic and evidence, they will not abandon those beliefs because of logic and evidence. And they will go to great lengths to twist and distort science until it comes out they way they believe it has to.]]

Which is a load of crap- The only distortions of science are those hwo introduce assumptions about Macroevolution and insist they are ‘scientific’ when the empiracle evidences simply do not support those assumptions- He would have you beleive ID’ists don’t rely on logic, but he is nothign but a person who iognores the facts- ID is the only scientific discipline that actually does follow the empiracle evidneces and doesn’t have to rely on just so imaginary scenarios that include all manner of biologically impossible processes to help make it all ‘fit together’. When folks like Coyote are asked to back up their claims with biological evidences, they are mysteriously silent on the matter- Why? Because they have absolutely ZERO scientific evidences to present- all they offer are wild biologically impossible imaginary scenes that defy the very natural laws they love to tout.

Anyway- This discussion isn’t about your spiritual condition- nor is it meant to be unless you yourself bring the issue up. You should certainly not be put off by those who, despite hteir good intentions, are a bit overzealous in judging you- as Christians are judged much harsher many many times here on FR, and we all just brush it off- there are overzealous peopel on both sides of the isle- that’s just the nature of people and it isn’t exclusive to one group or hte other.

[[Returning this to the discussion of the world, it would still be in our best interests to treat the world as though it were old; if we’re dealing, functionally, with a thirty year old male or a world billions of years old, we’re best off treating it as a thirty year old male or a world billions of years old.
Can we agree with this point?]]

Why should we throw away facts and just accept the a priori beliefs of one side? That isn’t science- that’s dogma. There are scientific facts that do indeed point to a young earth, and so no- it wouldn’t be in our best interest to just throw it all out hte window and beleive the opposition. The fact is that hte methods used to measure ‘old earth’ are based entirely on assumptions, and all the systems used have serious problems trhaT make them unreliable and untrustworthy- You’re asking that those who don’t beleive the earth is old should just ignore any evidneces for yoiung earth, then that they should just accept the measurements systems that have been proven faulty, and just simply trust that the assumptions of Macroevolutionsits and old earth scientists are right desp[ite the fact that they can’t determien with any degree of accuracy how old the earth is, nor can they know what the conditions were when the earth was supposedly as old as they say- After years of looking into the situation, it has become clear to me that despite their grandiose posturing, they really have nothign of any scientific substance to offer other than wild biologically impossible scenarios to offer.

coyote tells you [[The current religious ideas concerning origins (and there are several thousand internally contradictory ideas worldwide) are based on revelation and scripture and pure speculation — in other words, nothing.]]

Which is nothing but a bald faced lie and shows that he is ignorant of what ID science actually does forensically. He shows his hand by choosing to ignore the facts and instead spout nothign but biased propoganda- I have many sites such as Demski’s, Behe’s, and several ID sites which directly and soundly refute Coyote’s petty insults and accusations if you care to check them out- two excellent sites which refutes scientific claims and exposes the pure hype and lack of scinetific substance in wild origins claims are trueorigins.org, and creationsafaris.com

http://creationsafaris.com/crev200709.htm

http://www.trueorigin.org/

Neither of which rely on “pure speculation” as coyote accuses them of- but then again- when a person like Coyote has nothign of scientific substance to offer in support of their argument for Macroevolutioin, they must rely on ad hominem attacks.

Never have have in the past falsified evidence, or never had anything to gain by falsifying anything?

There are clearly some examples of falsified evidence in the past, and that's what I was referring to. The poster child for that was Piltdown Man. I suspect man-made global warming is in that category.

None of this stuff stands up to scrutiny, and it's other scientists who bring it back to reality.

And yet I do not have a clue why Coyoteman is "yelling at me." I mean, he continually enthuses about the joys of "evidence." And heaps scorn on theists for cognizing things that he doesn't think exist simply because they are undetectable by the scientific method (methodological naturalism or, in the extreme cases, metaphysical naturalism).

So to put it crudely: Okay, God is "undetectable" by physical means. But by the very same standard, so is the Common Ancestor so beloved to Darwin's evolution theory.

Robert Herrmann usefully points out that "Direct evidence for the existence of postulated entities means that the entities directly impinge upon human or machine sensors." Neither God nor the Common Ancestor qualifies in terms of this criterion.

So on what basis can we say, speaking as scientists, that the theory of divine Creation is in any way "inferior" to the theory of the Common Ancestor in accounting for the facts of reality (in particular, for the rise of life and its articulation in the biological diversity we see all around us)?

Both theories rest on indirect evidence. The question is: Which one best accounts for the evolution of the universe? (Not just the biota.)

I'd love to explore this problem further, in due course, if anyone's interested in pursuing it....

Thank you oh so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your kind thoughts and encouragements!

[ I'd love to explore this problem further, in due course, if anyone's interested in pursuing it.... ]

I would... The presense of DNA'osaurs(of all kinds) on this planet ask many pregnant questions.. Like why the extreme minutia of thousands maybe millions of little uniquenesses of this planets position and cosmology that allows "life" to proliferate and swarm.. With humans being the absolute top of the food chain..

And not only that but that according to scientific "legend and myth".. A primate evolved to invent GOD.. and then invented a scientific community hell bent on disproving that, that, God exists..

Heck Yes I would appreciate a discussion like that..

... One example of a non-explosion powered 'expansion' is Lunar Recession:
Friction by the tides is slowing the earth's rotation, so the lenght of a day is increasing by 0.002 seconds per century. This means that the earth is losing angular momentum. The law of conservation of angular momentum says that the angular momentum the earth loses must be gained by the moon. Thus, the moon is slowly receding from the earth at about ~~12 inches~~ 3.82 centimeters per year.

There fixed it. All better now.

You are indeed more correct than my source!

It claims “4 cm (12 inches) per year”....

But according to Google: 4 centimeters = 1.57480315 inches.
(But 12 centimeters = 4.72440945 inches.)

So it looks like somebody got their numbers swapped.

Thanks for the heads up, dread78645.

The Big Bang theory came from Atheistic Evolutionist's need to explain where Everything came from without there being a God.
It also demands that everything have been totally randomly formed and that our solar system not occupy a preferred position in the cosmos.(scientific evidence has clearly shown a preferred position.)

Most of the evidence for the Big Bang is entirely theoretical whereas the evidence against it is scientific.
For the Big Bang to work, requires the use of circular reasoning and the Fallacy of Verified Prediction.

So I guess the simple way to sum up the contradiction is, the Big Bang says there is no God and that the universe exploded from nothing and has no purpose; whereas, God says he made Everything and that it all has a purpose.

In my mind, these two perspectives are not reconcilable.

First off, I know very little about Catholic doctrine.
That said, the idea seems a little scary to me that Atheistic 'science' should take precedence over the Infallible word of God.
(It is also my opinion that God's word should have precedence over the Church, not the other way around.)

Asking an Atheistic scientist to outline the 'stages' of Genesis is like asking a Wolf to tend the Sheep.

If you would like to gain some insight into the length of the 'days' of creation, I would suggest you read this.

You asked:
"if God caused the Big Bang, wouldn't he still have made the universe, in a very literal sense?"

If the Big Bang happened, then God did not cause it, because the Big Bang demands that he not be involved in any way.

And: "A flawed understanding of creation isn't going to damn me to hell, correct?"
It is my personal belief that you are indeed correct.
(AIG has an informative page here. on that subject.)

And: "while I can understand why evolution/creationism arguments get heated, I've never understood why some old earth/young earth arguments have gotten heated."

When someone claims the Bible says something, weather it be related to evolution or not, that is known from research to be completely wrong.
People consider it imperative to attempt to correct them.

An example would be if someone were to claim that Christ did not rise from the dead.

Educating your self is a good thing; But be careful, the sea of information is full of sharks.

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