Posted on 12/09/2008 2:39:05 PM PST by My Favorite Headache
President George W. Bush said his belief that God created the world is not incompatible with scientific proof of evolution.
In an interview with ABC's "Nightline" on Monday, the president also said he probably is not a literalist when reading the Bible although an individual can learn a great deal from it, including the New Testament teaching that God sent his only son.
About creation and evolution, Bush said: "I think you can have both. I think evolution can — you're getting me way out of my lane here. I'm just a simple president. But it's, I think that God created the earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution."
"You know. Probably not. ... No, I'm not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament for example is ... has got ... You know, the important lesson is 'God sent a son,'" Bush said.
"It is hard for me to justify or prove the mystery of the Almighty in my life," he said. "All I can just tell you is that I got back into religion and I quit drinking shortly thereafter and I asked for help. ... I was a one-step program guy."
"I do believe there is an almighty that is broad and big enough and loving enough that can encompass a lot of people,"
Asked whether he thought he would have become president had it not been for his faith, Bush said: "I don't know; it's hard to tell. I do know that I would have been — I would have been a pretty selfish person."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.aol.com ...
Are you saying Bush dropped his push for a marriage amendment because he felt it would interfere with states’ rights or he dropped it because he felt it wasn’t realistic to achieve or he dropped it because he didn’t feel strongly about it to begin with? I think he is “wishy washy” and that is one example.
I’m saying you have either judged his views of Christian doctrine by policy decisions unrelated to doctrine, or you have been so unclear in your writing that you left a strong impression that is what you meant.
His views of Christian doctrine seem to be that he doesn’t take the Bible literally. Is that correct?
Good try at a binary but you still come up short.
You can pursue the meaning of the Bible without pretending to fully understand it. The false choice between zero meaning and total meaning is a silly one.
Hermeneutics is predicated on this variability. The Bible itself points repeatedly to this discipline of knowledge.
The Bible would be useless if it could be read once and discarded. It is a lifelong pursuit. I bet you know this rather well but seek to evade the obvious.
Not taking everything literally is not the same thing as taking it as untrue, or even ambiguous.
You appear to have said he was wishy washy about faith in your first post, then later you said that you never made any such charge. As I said before, you have either judged his views of Christian doctrine by policy decisions unrelated to doctrine, or you have been so unclear in your writing that you left a strong impression that is what you meant. Or (we have a third option now) you meant he was wishy washy in faith in the first place and based that assessment on doctrinal statements but later declared for some reason that you hadn’t been talking about his faith.
Basically, you’re all over the map and seem unable to make any coherent point more intelligent than “Bush bad.” So please, either write clearly or call the conversation dead. You’re getting silly.
I was asking what could be concluded about what you were saying, not about what could be concluded about President Bush if your opinions about the best tactics to use against terrorists (which appear to be straight out of an advance copy of “Zapp Brannigan’s Big Book of War”) were consistent with reality.
Ticking off potential allies and making a perilous war hard to win isn’t brave, it’s foolish and dangerous.
bttt
hard=harder
I see you have been properly disposed of...
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