I'd back you up on that one.

I'm from the UK, so when I started running across young-earthers for the first time over here I was initially amused, until I realized they were deadly serious.

Part of the problem is that it's becoming institutionalized over here. As far as the religious institution anyway. The big ones like Focus on the Family have more money than places to shove it, so they're everywhere. People who surround themselves with the evangelical institution are bombarded with things like young-earth messages from lots of directions at once, so when someone like me comes along and says, "But there's lots of evidence to the contrary for young-earth and none for it," they look at me like 'who am I to refute their minster, and radio host, and magazine writer and novelists'.

It's a scary, scary situation.

Don't shrug it off like it's a little closet phenomenon - it's not.

You're missing the point.

It's not about the age of the earth.

It's about faith in your advisors.

If there's an overwhelming consensus from all your presidential advisors and yet you choose to ignore that advice, YES that's a problem when it comes to leading the country.

I think the president would be better off saying he doesn't know much about science and is looking forward to working with accredited professionals that do understand it than to make statements that indicate not only willful ignorance but a closed mind.

Darn,click happy.

Really, really click happy.

I agree with you all three times!

Beat me to it.

By representations in history, a theist denies the existence of all false gods such as Zues.

The logical individual takes it one step further and denies the theists modern god.

The issue lies in the fact that Christian America represents the majority vote.

There are no political platforms that embraces atheism. The ability the seperate church and state in America has been lost. For a candidate to declare an athiest or agnostic belief, would be complete career suicide (despite that statistically, atheists and agnostics outnumber Judaism + Muslim voters, they are just unorganized). They would never work in politics again. Now, would you lie about your beleifs to make millions? Nah, politicians never lie.

I wanted very much to stay out of these debates, but I'm finally out of patience with the dogmatic insanity on both sides. Science doesn't have all the answers, and realistically hasn't even got a good start on sorting out which questions are actually worth asking. Get over it. Real scientists have no issues with this idea, the apologists and "true believers" on the other hand...

Religion, in this case fundamentalist Christian belief, has only one answer, but it works for any possible question. Other than the approach, I see very little to separate them from many of the science crowd.

The reality is, science acts very much like a religions some days, being very dogmatic, so should be very careful about stone-throwing. Having said that, fundamentalists should at least consider that they might have misinterpreted certain bits (regardless of who/what wrote the book, presumably it was a human reading and interpreting, how can a mistake at that point be offensive?).

As for "The Huckster" for president, his religious beliefs should not be a test for office, but before you vote for him, make sure you agree that policy in line with "an apocalypse is coming soon" world-view is what you actually want. Whether it's what he believes or not, it's his position towards the electorate.

Cheers

Doesn't he hire his own advisors? What fool would not listen to people who they specifically hired to give them information? Especially if they are all in agreement?

(other than Bush, of course)

I don't believe anyone has said that it does. I do, however, believe that it has a pretty good start in asking questions that matter.

What idea are you talking about?

The approach is a difference and it separates science and faith in vast ways. Religion makes claims with absolutely no supporting evidence. Science finds the evidence first and then makes the claims. That's enough of a difference to me.

Name one instance in which science, as a whole, has been dogmatic and then maybe I'll take that argument as valid.

Nope - not usually. They might hand-pick their closest staff members, but beyond that, the institution is pretty much in place.

You're right in some respects. A lot of advice would be coming from people they put there, but there would be an incredible amount of times when other specialists are brought in to advise.

Got it.

So, the question now becomes one of how stubborn is he and on how many topics? A modern politician can't afford to be stubborn on too many issues and hope for their career to survive.


(goes off to study Huckabee's record in Arkansas some more)

I don't think being skeptical of general scientific consensus makes you stupid I think it just means you put your trust else were.

Trouble is, if you hold stock in young-earth, things like oil reserves take on a whole new meaning. There's no point worrying about sucking all the oil out of the earth because it doesn't take that long to make anyway. I mean - heck - it can only be a few thousand years to replenish the earth - MAX right?

The other worrying thought is that there's a large percentage of evangelicals that believe we're in end times too, which means things like global warming don't really matter because we'll all be taken up in the rapture before the world goes to hell in a hand basket. One step further is that good little Christian Presidents may even help rapture along a little...

Evangelical Christian Presidents? I think I'd rather live under a Muslim theocracy.