Posted on 10/28/2015 2:09:11 PM PDT by Kaslin
THE TV NEWS was on, and there was a story about the leading candidates in the Republican presidential field.
"So if Donald Trump gets the nomination," my liberal friend needled me, "are you going to vote for him?"
"He's not going to be the nominee," I said, "but I wouldn't vote for him in any case."
"What about Ben Carson?" he wanted to know.
I like what I've seen of Carson's personality and character, I replied, but I couldn't imagine backing someone so inexperienced for president. Then I added: "He'd make a great surgeon general, though!"
I meant it lightheartedly, but my companion was appalled. A surgeon general who doesn't accept Darwinian evolution? I couldn't really imagine Carson in that post, could I?
Now it was my turn to be amazed. Carson is an eminent physician and surgeon. He was a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins, and spent 29 years as the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In a 2001 celebration of "researchers and doctors who are changing our world," Time magazine hailed Carson as one of America's best scientists and physicians. The Library of Congress, no less, declared him a "living legend." Surely even the most impassioned liberal couldn't argue that Carson, whatever his political or religious beliefs, would lack the scientific and medical chops to make a fine surgeon general, the nation's leading spokesman on matters of public health.
Nonsense, said my liberal friend. Someone who questions the fundamental scientific understanding of the development of life on earth would have little credibility on any scientific topic, including public health. Carson may be a great surgeon, but if he rejects such bedrock scientific findings, who knows what other well-founded data he would refuse to acknowledge?
It is certainly true that Carson denies that life developed through random, unguided genetic mutations over millions of centuries. It is also true that he believes in literal six-day creationism (though he's agnostic on the question of the planet's age) and that he attributes the rise of Darwinian thinking to the influence of "the Adversary," — i.e., Satan. Those are not mainstream views, but Carson has plainly thought about the subject and hasn't been shy about explaining his conclusions, in both religious and scientific terms.
To be sure, he is seeking the presidency, not the office of surgeon general or any other science-related position. But would Carson's views on evolution and Creation be such a red flag to Democrats if his views generally were more in line with left-wing priorities?
The best-known and most beloved surgeon general of all — C. Everett Koop — is remembered for his early leadership in fighting AIDS and for warning bluntly that smoking was harmful. Liberals admired him for putting public health before politics or ideology. Yet Koop, too, was skeptical of Darwinism. "It has been my conviction for many years that evolution is impossible," he wrote in a 1986 letter. Like Carson, Koop also believed that Genesis should be taken at face value, not as "something like parables." Yet those views clearly were no barrier to Koop's nonpareil service as surgeon general.
Similarly, Carson's decades of remarkable medical achievement should quell any suggestion that his biblical views about the development of life "in the beginning" have impeded his scholarship and skill at saving and improving lives in the present. All faiths (including dogmatic atheism) incorporate teachings that cannot be supported by mainstream science. Water into wine? Manna from heaven? Golden plates from an angel in New York? A universe that spontaneously created itself?
Can you regard someone's religious creed as preposterous, yet entrust the person who is faithful to that creed with public office? Of course; Americans do it all the time. I can't see Carson as president, but what I really can't see is why his religion or his doubts about evolution (neither of which I share) should even enter the conversation.
Yeah he would, but Surgeon General is a military title and since Dr Carson did not serve in the military I am not sure if he is qualified or not. Besides as Secretary of Health and Human Service he would be over the Surgeon General whoever that is.
Is your name Gator113? My reply in post#25 was to him not you.
I’m not responding to your post.
I’m responding to te Private Mail you sent me.
As I said - If you want to insult either me or my FRiends, do it right here, not under cover.
Haz we got us a behind-the-bath-house- badass up in here?
Oh no, I’ll make my time and consider meself properly chastised and all.
Nothing serious.
Just bad form.
It doesn’t bother me.
Me, well I’m going to take off every Zig.
What would worry me about having a literal creationist in office is that the President submits the budget to Congress--and if the President decides that scientific research based on evolutionary principles should not be funded, he can do a large amount of damage that would take decades to undo. Any significant life science research becomes impossible when it isn't based on biological theory.
Another danger is that the President has a lot of influence on culture. If he is pushing the message that people should forego science education because there is no scientific evidence that supports a literalist interpretation of Genesis, people will take that message to heart and make choices accordingly. And if anyone does not think the President has an effect on culture, they have only to look around at the current cultural insanity of legalized "gay marriage", promotion of homosexuality, and obsession with "transgender." This insanity comes from the top.
I can see how a surgeon might be able to get through med school and learn the technical skills without fully understanding evolutionary theory and all of its implications. But putting such a person in charge of deciding which science gets funded is, IMO, highly risky. I, for one, rather enjoy the medical advances made possible by life science research.
Isn’t Obama claiming to be a Creationist these days?
He cited the Pope saying that the Earth is a gift from God and that we are to protect it.
Of course, LIFE itself is a gift from God and Barack Obama stands in violent opposition to young life.
Bernie acknowledges that he’s not one to give much credence to God. He’s Jewish by heredity, not belief. He won’t say openly that he doesn’t believe, but Obama himself is still pretending he believes in God (but not Heaven, not an afterlife, not Jesus Christ as his personal Savior, not sin or Hell)...
It has been more years than I care to remember since I was in a biology lab, but I don’t recall any need for evolution to enter into research re medical advances.
You’ll pardon me if I lack the faith necessary to believe that the immeasurable complexity of life on this planet could arise through random mutations, regardless of what “science” asserts.
I once read that as one climbs the ranks of serious astrophysicists and cosmologists, one finds fewer and fewer rank atheists and more mystics. You're right -- they are truly in awe of what they have seen and discovered.
He means a guy like Obama.
Liberal got stabbed to death with a magic knife but was so intent on babbling out his 'Rat talking point of the week and elaborately-structured argumentum ad hominem, that he didn't feel himself bleeding to death.
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Engaging his friend in political discussion just so he could "moustrap" him.
Considering what people who have had the first clue, have done about the economy, and that many others who did as well, have used their knowledge to loot it instead, don't you think we might be better off with an honest amateur?
I have zero faith that this man could run a country.
Fair enough. But remember that many, many people thought the same of Harry Truman, Dick Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt, whom the Karl Rove of his day, "Dollar Mark" Hanna, called "that damn cowboy" when he heard McKinley had died and Roosevelt would be taking the oath of office.
Now Teddy's on Rushmore, and who even remembers "Dollar Mark"?
And if that isn't enough, Abraham Lincoln was a railroad lawyer who never passed law school and carried not one electoral vote from south of the Ohio River. (Okay, that was partly his fault, but still.)
And he's up there on Rushmore, too.
I am not that religious but people who have deeply held beliefs in Creationism don’t bother me at all. I say these beliefs are mistaken and wrong but I don’t look upon them as irrational. I see such people as looking for God’s natural order of the universe which is a lot more thatn I can say about the godless.
Above all, the very religious and Creationism believers are completely “normal”, calm and rational when it comes to other parts of their life. Things in life such as working a hi-tech job, raising their children, being kind and considerate neighbors.
The arrogant mistake of godless atheistic liberals is to think that a believer in “irrational” Creationism is irrational and stupid in the rest of his life. Its funny to see the scientific atheist skeptic types get supremely pissed off at Creationism believers. They take it personally. I have seen this and this is what is really irrational.
Actually... It is widespread capitulation to Darwinian dogma - a term carefully chosen - that has paved the way for all of the things conservatives claim to abhor: abortion, homosexuality, borrowing without intent to repay. Existence-as-an-accident begets nihilism, where the only reality is whatever one creates. Hence there can be, in purely naturalistic existence, no basis for ultimate right and wrong. Thus I give you America, 2015.
Magic underpants?
I would think that starts with M and ends with t with five letters in between. Nothing to do with Seventh Day.
More like the 2012 loser's religion!
If Mr. Carson is a creationist, it means that he’s not a
brilliant, intellectual, really-really smart, cosmically brilliant, Progressive genius.
See? Ya know?
/s/
IMHO
The correct answer is that we don’t know.
The only answer an honest person can give to the question of creation...
“There are two kinds of people in this world. There are creationists. And there are those who ignore creation.”
There are creationists and then there are lying, murdering, Communist swine who have murdered with impunity, tortured untold numbers of humans in re-education camps and actively sought out Christians for elimination because they did not accept the Communist line.
IMHO
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