A majority of conservatives = a minority of Democrats…Not.
38% is not the kind of minority you want to be cheering about, given the context. That’s an abysmal number no matter how much better it is than your competitors.
I expect they won’t be, but I’ll suggest that some defining of terms is in order. Strictly speaking, creationism and evolution don’t cover the same territory - the former includes ideas on how life originated on this planet, while the latter does not. As well, the latter includes ideas on how life developed on this planet, while the former does not (or at least not the common creationist theories that suggest animals and humans were created in more-or-less their current forms).
Even then, I personally think it’s fair to frame the debate as “creationism vs. evolution” when discussing what should be taught in science classes. Creationism can’t be discussed with anything approaching scientific rigor, while evolution can. Evolution has evidence, while creationism does not.
Forgive me for starting on this elementary level, but if your contention is that certain things are obvious, we should probably establish what those things are. Mere simplification, i.e. labeling the debate “creationism vs. evolution” even when those concepts cover slightly different territory, doesn’t strike me as the grand error you’re claiming.
60 % of republicans in general, + republican leadership loudly proclaiming anti-evolution sentiments.
38% of democrats in general +some democrat politicians sharing those wrong beliefs.
The US has the highest proportion of evolution-deniers in the world (except for Turkey). I think it is certainly possible that this is due to promotion of anti-evolution from some faction of society.
The OP’s father had to get his wrong information from somewhere. He did not just wake up one morning and invent creationism himself out of whole cloth.
As far as I can tell, it’s not a left/right divide.
I wanted to badly to laugh at the silly Americans, but turns out 60%of Canadians believe God had a direct or indirect role in the creation of mankind.
But what’s telling, is that even though a significant number of Democrats/liberals believe in some form of creationism, their politicians haven’t bothered to feed off that.
It’s the Republican candidates that proudly stand on stage, united in their refusal of scientific evidence. That put out news paper ads proclaiming that they believe in creationism more than their [primary] opponent. That go on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and demand to know why monkeys still exist (hint, the answer is masturbation).
At least as far as evolution is concerned, it is part of the conservative matra that creationism and intelligent design be given equal weight in schools–which in effect is teaching children to be stupid. It is deliberately going out of your way to tell them things that are wrong.
Isn’t there a section where a dude describes a circle, resulting in pi = 3.
“And he [Hiram on behalf of King Solomon] made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.” 1 Kings 7:23
Is it fact or opinion that pi is not 3?
I must admit, since reading Starving Artist’s bizarre logic I find myself rethinking how I describe the debate between creationism and evolution. Even in my last post I found I struggled to make sure that I wasn’t in fact blurring the line between evolution and abiogenesis.
Then I realized that once again Starving Artist is completely and utterly full of shit, and it was pretty fucking clever of him:
He played an interesting little game, [1] pushing the true meaning of creationism, back to being “where life originated.” Then [2] pushing the meaning of evolution towards modern changes of a population. He was then successfully able to throw out the connection, by showing how [1] and [2] are not in conflict.
[claps]
The problem is that the meaning of creationism isn’t in and of itself limited to the point of abiogenesis, as he would have us believe. In fact, the Christian bible (as described in Genesis) is in direct conflict with evolution; God created everything all in 7 days. Then later he wiped it all out with a flood and started again a few thousand years ago.
The second problem is that evolution is a continuous process, the whole point of it is that we can trace it going back millions of years. With that in mind, we can essentially trace it back to the moment just after life began.
So for creationism to not conflict with evolution, it has to end at the point just before evolution begins.
It was a pretty cleaver ruse, I wonder what blog he stole it from.
Well, isn’t that the general position of Intelligent Design proponents? When they talk about “irreducible complexity”, they invoke ciomplex biological structure like the eye or the blood clotting process, claiming these are evidence of creation/design. Well, heck, if all the hard stuff is the work of a creator, the rest of biological development is trivial by comparison - almost an afterthought. Opposible thumbs? A cinch.
Thus, creationism/design and evolution are not in conflict at all. You’ve got some superintelligent God/designer going around creating eyeballs, and what kind of creature happens to grow around them afterward is just incidental.
No, because that’s not what i asked for evidence of.
My request for evidence was, specifically:
As Bryan Ekers notes, there are some very good reasons to frame the whole debate as “creationism versus evolution,” not least of which is that the fundamentalist right wants to replace or supplement evolution with creationism in the nation’s classrooms.
What i’m specifically concerned with here is evidence that liberals, in making arguments for the validity of evolution, make claims about evolution that imply (or outright claim) that evolution is responsible for the initial emergence of life from inanimate matter on planet earth. As i said, i’m looking for evidence that they confuse abiogenesis and evolution.
As for the money, you have more chance of me teabagging you than giving you $20, because that’s not how it works on this message board. No-one else here demands money in order to provide evidence for their arguments. For the vast majority of people here, backing up an argument with evidence is what’s known as “standard operating procedure.” You don’t get a cookie for doing something that you should be doing anyway. If you had been required to dole out $20 to everyone who hands you your ass in a debate, you would indeed be a starving artist.
Strictly speaking, evolution is at odds with special creation - the idea that individual life forms were created in the form that we see them now; that is the form of creationism that evolution (via natural selection) specifically rebuts. It is not necessarily at odds with Old Earth Creationism, or the belief that God originally created one or more initial life forms which were then permitted to evolve via natural processes.
Well, if we’re gonna be strict about it, and all, I demand a tall raven-haired schoolmarm with her hair in a severe bun, wearing a starched blouse and pencil skirt…
Whoa, just a second here! Is that $20 covering all incidents, or $20 for each separate occasion of ass-handing?
You grew up with a brother or sister quite close to you in age, didn’t you? I suspect this because every argument you make on these boards is “but [somebody else] did it too”!
No, it doesn’t.
The difference, however, is that they don’t chase the crack-conspiracy believers by saying things like, “Well, i think there’s pretty good support for the idea that the government designed crack as part of a genocidal plan,” or “Well, i don’t believe in the genocidal conspiracy theory of crack myself, but i think we should respect the fact that other people do believe in it, and not ridicule their beliefs.”
No, a sippy cup!
CMC fnord!
Look, I don’t have the time to play pin the tail on the donkey today, especially when the jackass keeps shifting position to avoid his well-deserved sticking.
The facts of the matter are:
1.) I commented that when many people say they don’t believe in evolution, they aren’t talking about it in the more well known and scientifically proven sense; they are talking about it as being responsible for creation itself.
I further stated that oftentimes when someone refers to evolution as a “theory”, they are talking about it as being responsible for creation itself.
2.) I stated that the primary reason they think this way is that for years lefties have been presenting the issue as one of creationism vs. evolution. This phrasing clearly carries the implication that evolution is responsible for creation, given that it’s presented as the alternative to creation and that creation itself is concerned almost solely with, you know…creation.
3.) In a desperate attempt to avoid responsibility for having created this impression, certain of the board’s lefties have for some unknown reason decided to insist that I provide cites of lefties presenting the issue as being one of evolution vs. creationism…something that a child of five knows is commonplace.
4.) So, given that the practice is so widespread and that copying and pasting links to them would be needlessly time consuming, I asked these disingenuous lefties if they’d be willing to cough up a little dough to compensate me for my time and trouble in wasting my time on something so obvious and banal, as I could literally post pages and pages of such instances.
5.) Natually, my opponents, knowing that they don’t have a leg to stand on and fearful that I might actually be serious, have opted instead for goalpost moving in the form of proof that any liberals have presented evolution as “abiogenesis”, which is essentially what they’ve been doing but technically different enough to be difficult to find using that word; or they’ve dismissed it as verbal sleight-of-hand; or they’ve simply denied it outright; or they’ve responded with offers of sexual favors.
6.) They’re holding an empty sack on this issue and they know it, so they flip and flop and insult and do everything but admit the obvious: which is that their side is responsible for the confusion in the public mind over the difference between evolution and abiogenesis, and that when liberals make fun of people who don’t know the difference they’re really making fun of people who’ve taken seriously what they themselves have said.
7.) End of story.
- My God, you’re full of tard.
So “scientist”=“leftie” now, huh? Good to know. Based on that equivalence, I think we can therefore agree that “dumbass” = “rightie”.
9.) Starving Artist still does not have a good example.
“Facts” pulled out of his ass then it is.
From the earliest days of the controversy, it centered around the evolution of humans. If Darwin had postulated that all the other animals were a result of evolution, but humans were separately and divinely created, he would have had little or no problem. All the rest of the controversy proceeds from here.
No, it results from an unfortunate misunderstanding of the use of the word “theory” as it relates to science. The “germ theory of disease” being the best example. There is no advance from “theory”, no matter how thoroughly proven, the word remains “theory”.
Well, yes, in that all teachers and most especially college professors are agents of the Comintern. Darwin himself never made any such suggestion, because such a suggestion would be totally tardo.
Then you should have no problem, given your demonstrated capacity for cut and paste. Did you check your right wing hairball site?
Ten, then? Five? Given that it is ubiquitous to the point of universality, shouldn’t take you long at all. And if it is as you say, how come nobody else noticed this?
I believe that suggesting that you go fuck yourself is not actually an offer of sexual favors. Furthermore, its against the rules and I insist you report such miscreants this very instant!
The sack you are holding is, regrettably, not empty
Good. $20, please.