Misunderstanding the Theory of Evolution etc.

Huckabee on evolution

Huckabee repeats a very common mistake when he says that "a person either believes that God created this process, or that it's an accident it just happened all on it's own." He goes on to talk about creation and how it contradicts evolution.

The thing that is always missunderstood is that evolution PRESUMES an origin. In order to evolve, there has to be something to select on. It doesn't remotely contradict anything at all about creation. They are 2 entirely different areas. The origin of life is completely separate from evolution.

Not just evolution is misunderstood by people like Huckabee. Huckabee then goes on to state that he doesn't know whether God created the Earth in 6 literal days, or if he did it in 6 periods of time. That's scary that someone could be governor, let alone president, with that much ignorance of Geology and Earth History. Go to a freaking museum or read a book or talk to a Geologist. That the age of the Earth is remotely in doubt is comical. It is physically impossible for God to have created the Earth and animals on it, in the order it says he did, in six days given what we know about radiometric dating and the fossil record. We also get ages from tree-ring dating, counting annual layers in sedimentary rocks etc.

I am baffled that ANYONE could actually think like he is outside of a trailer in Alabama. It is inconceivable that someone how presumably has a good education could think the things he is saying. I can't believe anyone would consider voting for this man. He is either ignorant or stupid. Both of those should disqualify him for the postition.

 

Therropods,

My father is a fundamentalist/Methodist hybrid (Calvary Chapel) and listens to their pastor preach about geology and science. He has told me about the current state of the science, you know the 'new science is being done that proves the Bible is right!' type of crap (e.g. I heard about how the salinity of oceans and its present rate of increase means that the Earth cannot be 4.6 GA).

I have also heard him, (this baffles me because he is a computer programmer) talk about how radiometric dating is wrong, but they seem to like stable isotope dating (carbon) because it has helped confirm some of the Bible's accounts.

Go figure. Fundamentalists have taken 1 thing to be true, the Bible is infallible, and 100% literal. Nevermind that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict... the 'fact' that the Bible does not contradict itself when written by multiple people, proves God's influence, not an editor's.

I have given up. ID'ers and fundamentalists, IMO, reject science because their faith is weak and they do not believe in the moral salvation without the literal.

 

The bottom line is Huckabee is a preacher, not a scientist. Science is the best tool we have to understand the reality that our five senses can perceive. Religion is a social, personal, and experiential phenomenon created by humans. Although is has made claims to reality, and still does, it really only holds sway over its own inventions (heaven, hell, purgatory, etc.) and people's minds if they let it.

 

I've never understood why some people seem to refute these process which have been proven many times over. Even to say that they "don't know".

Besides the faith aspect, maybe one reason is that it's mentally easier for someone to understand the religious theory of Earth formation as compared to the hard science of how it formed.

If 6 days = 4.55 billion years, then I suppose 1 day = 0.76 million years. I guess calendars are a little different in Heaven.

Also, maybe Adam and Eve were really organic compounds in the primordial ooze...

 

If they believe in carbon dating, that would make them have to take a non-literal view. Carbon dating takes us reliably back to about 40,000 years or so and is validated by tree ring studies (dendochronology). There are people that take it back farther than that, but I don't think Carbon dating can be trusted beyond 40,000 years since there isn't much carbon left to date. That will probably piss them off if you point it out.

 

Uh oh, if I forgot about the "Heaven" part in "God created the Heaven and the Earth" That means 6 days = roughly 13.6 Billion years. Wow. Talk about hard to comprehend a time scale like that.

I see Huckabee's point when he says that a question like this is not relative to a presidential debate. However, I have to disagree because even though the topic my be irrelevant, it brings to light an underlying thought process.

 

I place blame equally on people who say that God disproves evolution and people who say that evolution disproves God. They deserve one another.

 

2 Peter 3:8

"But beloved, be not ignorant of this, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

If the IDers and creationists want to believe their book, they need to read this verse. God's day could have lasted millions of years if He wanted it to.

 

I'd vote for George Lazenby before Mike Huckabee. OK it's late.

 

Anyone who refuses to believe in evolution really ought to be confined to a camp somewhere indfinitely.

Maybe that way all this religion stuff will die out once and for all.

 

I too believe that evolution and God go hand-in-hand. They need each other. Now having said that, I don't think God looks like a Geico pitchman.

 

Personally, I don't believe in gravity, so I say all you guys condemned to a life forever stuck to the ground are suckers!

 

For most of your post, I was wondering why you were singling out Huckleberry.

 

Theropods,

The fundamentalists can put arbitrary limits on stable isotope dating. Last I heard it is 10k years.

 

I agree that evolution isn't sufficient to disprove God.

Let's be clear here: the "God" in question is the God as described in the collection of Christian texts, i.e., the Bible. This "God" in all likelihood has no similarity to the actual supreme being, if such a being exists.

To some, evolution contradicts the Bible, thus, the literalists do not subscribe to the theory of evolution. The Bible is good for some things. Science doesn't happen to be one of those things.

 

The Bible is, however, a great financial planning guide.

 

...I too believe that evolution and God go hand-in-hand.

The physical universe and God go hand in hand, I think.

What causes problems is when this physical universe contradicts the holy texts of certain religious sects. Much cognitive dissonance sets in: whom, or what, to believe?

 

What if God created everything as is. Since that point things have been evolving. God can do anything....otherwise it would not be God.

 

pod

 

Physical Sciences staying flat makes me

 

I blame Darwin. He went and named his book On the Origin of Species..., changed it to just The Origin of Species for the 6th edition and confused Creationists have been running around ever since.

They hear the word origin and that's it. You're doubting God and you must be smitten.