Posted on 01/04/2008 2:12:20 PM PST by Sub-Driver
US 'doomed' if creationist president elected: scientists Jan 4 05:29 PM US/Eastern A day after ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee finished first in the opening round to choose a Republican candidate for the White House, scientists warned Americans against electing a leader who doubts evolution.
"The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming," University of Michigan professor Gilbert Omenn told reporters at the launch of a book on evolution by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
"I would worry that a president who didn't believe in the evolution arguments wouldn't believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin," added Omenn, who was part of a panel of experts at the launch of "Science, Evolution and Creationism."
Former Arkansas governor Huckabee said in a debate in May that he did not believe in evolution.
A poll conducted last year showed that two-thirds of Americans believe in creationism, or the theory that God created humans at a single point in time, while 53 percent believe that humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life -- the theory of evolution.
Around a quarter of Americans said they believe in both.
The evolution versus creationism debate has crept into school classrooms and politics, where it is mainly conservative Republicans who espouse the non-scientific belief.
"If our country starts to behave irrationally whereas all the other countries coming up and chasing us (to take over as the world leaders in science and technology) behaving rationally, we are doomed," Omenn said.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Well, since Darwin didn't even publish until nearly a hundred years after the Declaration, then that would stand to reason.
"If"? Don't we already have one? ...and we're still the lone superpower.
And anyway, a President's view on this particular subject is irrelevant -- U.S. Presidents aren't kings who rule by decree.
FDR and Ike were the only presidents we’ve had that were not creationists.
>>But they do recognize that almost all progress in civilization comes from science and a President who doesn’t believe in evolution (or atomic theory or acids and bases or electromagnetic theory or any core science) would never be able to set the right priorities.
And what *right* priorities would that be anyway?
What *scientific* decisions does the president need to make?<<
Having a science background ts probably easier for me to see the connections but its actually not that big of a leap.
Consider the President’s outlook on economics - is he generally for free market solutions or is he generally for government intervention and control?
The President appoints all the key people in every agency and his outlook on government intervention and regulation hits us in a thousand different ways - from whether we subsidize ethanol to fees at national park to whether various government functions are dealt with by hiring new bureaucrats or whether we privatize and outsource.
Science is like economics in that its almost everywhere - when we have drought or when we want to build something and there is an impact on fish or we have to deal with Africa and AIDs or stem cell research and thousands of other.
I could no more support someone for President who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old than I could support someone who thinks government intervention is always the answer.
Oh, and yes, priorities and decisions are often best approached with the scientific method. When the chairman interviewed me for the PhD program in managment the question that most surprised me was “how many courses have you taken with calculus and science.” He explained that a logic and math background best correlated with success in economics and finance.
Someone has been strangely silent about the whole issue.
Matter of fact, no evo I’ve met has had a good response to that point.
All I ever hear is...... crickets......
The President's budget for 2006 totals $2.7 trillion. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:...
$24.0 billion (0.92%) - Science and technology
All of science and technology in the 2006 budget amounts less than 1%.
Once again you are completely wrong, and in fact you are off by a couple of orders of magnitude.
Have you no pride at all? How can you post such nonsense, time after time, and still return to this website.
And with whoppers like this, how can you expect anyone to believe a single thing you say?
>>I do believe the MAJORITY of founders and presidents were creationists, and frankly I think America did quite well under their leadership<<
I’m sure they were.
They probably didn’t advocate using computers in government and didn’t believe in atomic theory. But I would not support a candidate now who didn’t believe in computers or atomic theory.
>>The children of “superstitious” parents who are in the “superstition” schools or home “superstition” schools are generally doing much, much better on college entrance exams and in many other areas those in the government-funded Darwinian schools. So there is something to be said for the “superstitious” if you want a society that can read better and cipher better.<<
It is important to remember scale when we compare home schooled kids and private schools kids.
It would be a sacrifice but either my wife or I could stay home from work for 12 years. She could teach liberal arts and I could teach math and science.
Likewise the parents that send their kids to good private schools either have financial means or they care a lot and are involved in their education.
That doesn’t describe most parents. Many families either only have one parent or both have to work. And many are not educated enough to educate others. And frankly most parents don’t care enough to do the hard work and commitment that it takes to home school.
So while I agree that many successful kids come out of home schooling and more people could home school, it doesn’t work as a model for the masses.
Quality education is expensive. Many communities can simply no longer afford to provide it.
I want no truck with those who defend some form of “scientific creationism” or attempt, as Huckabee has, to poke fun at the idea that we have non-human primates as ancestors. Yet, I would ask those secularists who are shocked to hear a presidential candidate profess that God created human beings just what they would expect from anyone who believes that there is a God. Are there any theists who care to reject the idea that God is the Creator of all?
>>Quality education is expensive. Many communities can simply no longer afford to provide it.<<
It sure is - I’ve been involved with helping schools set up science labs and hire better science teachers. One of the problems is that anybody really qualified to teach science is also likely to be able to earn $60,000+ elsewhere.
And a good lab can cost hundreds of thousands.
Schools that can’t pony up the cash are pretty much doomed. There are reasons why high quality private schools cost $20,000 to $30,000 a year.
My solution would be for communities to grow their own quality teachers: pay college tuition for bright high school grads with the understanding they’ll teach locally for five years. Of course, this would take a decade or more to come to fruition and it’s fraught with dangers, like the mayor’s kid getting a free ride.
The late Dick Feynmann being a notable exception.
Cheers!
That's very odd considering some of the remarks in the Gospels.
Which are not exactly the kind of thing you'd find "a nice Jewish Boy who went into His Father's Business"TM saying.
Cheers!
When you or your family members go to the doctor, do you get antibiotics developed to treat drug-resistant bacteria, or do you insist that because evolution doesn't exist you should be just fine with the drugs from twenty years ago?
I'll vote for a creationist but would never vote for a creationist who thinks the world was created +-6000 years ago.
Not that you’re saying he has, but Huckabee hasn’t committed to “young earth” creationism, has he? In any event, see my post #130.
Gilbert Omenn is afraid that the Church of Darwin will lose its grip on Academia.
Quit trying to hide the real expenditures on false ‘science.’
Elementary schools, highschools, colleges, universities, all spend massive amounts of money on propaganda and indoctrination. Evolutionism and global warmingism are sucking us dry from every phase of government.
Frankly, I would never take an antibiotic; there are far safer and more effective treatments, but all that aside, nothing that you mention above has the slightest connection to evolution. You are propagandising by attempting to mix evolutionism with biochemistry.
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