Scientists: Creationist President Would Doom U.S.

[DinoDoc]

How did he run the school system in Ark? They teach "evilution" there afaik.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Perfection
Why not? The evidence is there for it!

Children should be taught science, and the scintific consensus is that all life as we know it evolved from a single ancestor. Should we simply lie and tell them it's not the scientific consensus? Should we just omit what science says from the cirriculum?

Here's what disturbs me about Huckabee and the idea of Creationists in charge: They disregard the conensus of experts in scientific fields. This is dangerous in a time where we need leaders to make good decisions on infrastructure, the environment, medicine/medical research, information technology, and much more, in this increasingly scientifically driven world!

How can we trust someone to make good decisions on science when they've made and hold onto onto such a clearly bad one?

I don't think there is much evidence indicating a single ancestor. There's very little evidence indicating this. (There's little contradicting it as well as far as I know.) All life could have evolved from a single protobacterium, or from a host of them that all were created at once, or from an asteroid seeding the world from another location ... it's too far back to really tell what happened at the VERY beginning. Evolution is one thing, the initial generation of life is a very different thing.

I wonder if you have what it takes to be president, with such a clearly bad decision...

[LordShiva]

Perfection for President

Or maybe VP on a Dis-Perf ticket

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
How did he run the school system in Ark? They teach "evilution" there afaik.

Was that an accidental pun? Teaching evolution on the Ark seems almost ironic.

[Will9]

Originally posted by Perfection
Why not? The evidence is there for it!

Children should be taught science, and the scintific consensus is that all life as we know it evolved from a single ancestor. Should we simply lie and tell them it's not the scientific consensus? Should we just omit what science says from the cirriculum?

I already said I don't think anything regarding the creation of the world and its species should be taught in school.

[q=Whaleboy]How did he run the school system in Ark? They teach "evilution" there afaik.[/q]

I beleive the major thing he did with the Arkansas school system was make home-schooling a lot easier.

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Will
Evolution can easily fit in into creationist beliefs. Such as God could be causing evolution, or (for those who believe God plays a less active in the world today) God created evolution as a method for species to adapt to new environments. I don't think that will hold back medical cures.

I agree with this statement. As both a religious person and a rational academic, I see no problem with the idea that God utilized the Big Bang, evolution, etc.

In fact, it is a doctrine of my faith that God created the Earth from pre-existing matter and that it took a very long period of time; the 7 "days" are not Earth-days at all. Earth was still being created. The days are undefined time periods, likely millions of years each.

However, I do not feel that anyone's religion should be taught as fact in any public school curriculum. That is simply not proper or fair. Moreover I do not think that "intelligent design" (defined as creation ex nihilo) has any place in schools either. It is not scientifically supported.

The schools should simply teach what science has to say on the matter. I don't see a problem with schools saying that some people believe that the earth was created by a higher being, but that this is not empirically verifiable, or saying that some people dispute the theory of evolution. That's very different from denying the science outright, which is simply foolhardy.

[Perfection]

Originally posted by snoopy369 I don't think there is much evidence indicating a single ancestor.

The universality of L-amino acids, the universality of Codon-anticodon encoding, the universality of DNA base pairs, and a multitude of other molecular simlarities among life forms paints a pretty convincing case for a single common ancestor.

Originally posted by snoopy369
There's very little evidence indicating this. (There's little contradicting it as well as far as I know.) All life could have evolved from a single protobacterium, or from a host of them that all were created at once, or from an asteroid seeding the world from another location ... it's too far back to really tell what happened at the VERY beginning. Evolution is one thing, the initial generation of life is a very different thing.

The common ancestor to life as we know it today was quite a bit after the initial formation of life and certainly there was other life forms around it,

Originally posted by snoopy369
I wonder if you have what it takes to be president, with such a clearly bad decision...

Even if I was incorrect (which I wasn't), I am just mistaken on what is the prevailing scientific viewpoint and could be corrected by a sound argument or demonstration that it's the prevailing views of the scientists. This is not the case for Creationists.

[Perfection]

Originally posted by Will
I already said I don't think anything regarding the creation of the world and its species should be taught in school.

Why not?

[Will9]

Originally posted by Perfection
Why not?

Because if certian beliefs aren't taught and others are, someone is going to offended (and any belief about the creation of the world can be tied to some sort of religon and is therefore unconstitutional). So the option is either all or none and all would be waste of time.

[Perfection]

Evolution is not tied to any religion.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Alexander I


I agree with this statement. As both a religious person and a rational academic, I see no problem with the idea that God utilized the Big Bang, evolution, etc.

In fact, it is a doctrine of my faith that God created the Earth from pre-existing matter and that it took a very long period of time; the 7 "days" are not Earth-days at all. Earth was still being created. The days are undefined time periods, likely millions of years each.

However, I do not feel that anyone's religion should be taught as fact in any public school curriculum. That is simply not proper or fair. Moreover I do not think that "intelligent design" (defined as creation ex nihilo) has any place in schools either. It is not scientifically supported.

The schools should simply teach what science has to say on the matter. I don't see a problem with schools saying that some people believe that the earth was created by a higher being, but that this is not empirically verifiable, or saying that some people dispute the theory of evolution. That's very different from denying the science outright, which is simply foolhardy.

I absolutely agree.
Being omniscient god would have much more knowledge about the universe than ttodays quantum mechancs and would be able know with absolute certaintiy things that are nowadays deemed to be imjpossible to measure with absolute certainty at the same time, such as location and impulse of all particles in the universe.

Therefore the universe would be predictable to him and he would be able to influence it to the results he wishes by inducing only smaal changes (which probably no scientist could detect, even if god introduced such changes evven now)

No need for believers in god to as well believe in a creation process that depends on god hand crafting earth around 6000 years ago, as well as every living being on it
(considering that god is seen as perfect, it would also do HIM a disservice to assume such a static creation process, where new species can only be introduced with god himself hand crafting the new species, instead of assuming an elegant dynamic process like evolution, that can produce new species by itself, without god having to do any more work)


Good reason to keep a thesis (i.e. Creationism/ID) that is only written down in some religious scriptures and has no scientific data that support it out of science classes.

[Will9]

Originally posted by Perfection
Evolution is not tied to any religion.

You'd be suprised. And for lack of a better word, I'm considering Atheism a religion.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Will


You'd be suprised. And for lack of a better word, I'm considering Atheism a religion.

Nope,
as you don´t have to be an atheist to be convinced that the theory of evolution is correct. Even as a christian you can "believe" in Evolution, as long as you don´t believe in the literal truth of everything that is written within the bible (especially the old testament).

[Cyclotron]

It shouldn't matter even if evolution is "tied to a religion" (though it is not). Science should be taught in science class. Evolution is scientifically supported; ID is not. The fact that some interpret this to be inconvenient for Christianity (or religion generally) is irrelevant.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Will


You'd be suprised. And for lack of a better word, I'm considering Atheism a religion.

It really depends on the type of atheism.

Atheistic Agnosticm or Agnostic Atheism can't really be described as a religion. That is, someone who recognizes that Gods are unknowable* and chooses to not believe in them.

* Try to imagine a way that God could prove his existence, in a way which could not be explained as either advanced technology (indistinguishable from magic) or delusion.

That Gods are unknowable is really a basic truth.

When something is unprovable** you don't need faith in order to not believe it, lack of belief should be the default.

** A better word than unprovable might be uninvestigatable - if that were a word.