Well, the cost curve HAS bent down because of Obamacare.
I truly hope he runs-just for the political nonsense he’ll spout. I believe he’s an excellent surgeon, shown by his record, but now that he’s on the waning years of being a surgeon, he’s making the mistake of believing some right wing suck ups that he can be a politician. His crazy talk will do him in, sooner rather than later.
The GOP primary season is always the funniest season of all!
Carson doesn’t just reject the idea of evolution without divine intervention - he is on record as refusing to believe in evolution period (as in his statements about how complex structures like the brain and eye just couldn’t have evolved, because, well, they’re so complex and he finds it unbelievable.
That would seem to place him in the minority of Americans based on this recent Gallup poll, in which 42% of Americans were creationist, while about 50% accepted evolution (with or without divine intervention).
Regardless, I would like to have presidential candidates capable of rising above mainstream (or near-mainstream) stupidity.
It’s a shame that the physicians who are touted as having at least an outside chance at the Republican nomination don’t seem to have a solid grasp of science, much less the wherewithal to succeed as President.*
*here’s looking at you, Rand Paul (who belongs to a fringe society of physicians that is deep into HIV/AIDS denial, opposes vaccination and has entertained the notion that Obama was elected by a “cult” because of his ability to hypnotize people).
Just because someone can get into med school doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t be dumb asses- as evidence I present Rand and Ron Paul.
Your conclusion does not necessarily follow from your premise. One can believe in “descent with modifications” but still think God had a hand in the “modification” part. I have not seen any statement from him that proves him to be a YEC. If you have one, I’ll happily change my mind.
Check out this link.:
That’s a pretty solid indication that he doesn’t trust the dating methods that tell us the age of the earth (because, I guess, God could have created the earth with all the radioactive decay that would indicate an old earth already in place).
On the brain and eye:
Taken together, it seems pretty clear he rejects (and, according to these comments, doesn’t understand) the concepts of both evolution and an old earth. Which sounds like a YEC.
Your understanding of basic economics isn’t sufficient to make that claim. The ACA is lowering the amount of increase.
If you’re gaining a pound a month, and a diet shifts that to a pound every three months, is that diet helping?
Similarly, the ACA is lowering the amount of increase. This is one of those basic economic things that you should understand before commenting.
In what way is a large group of actual experts an argument by popularity? I get that you read that someplace and thought you were being all fancy with the Latin and all, but it doesn’t apply. If anything it’s an appeal to authority, but it isn’t, because the people involved are actual authorities in the subject at hand.
I’m just not satisfied with quotes taken out of context and then with links that don’t actually go to the original source. Since he seems to think that creatures have “the ability to adapt to the environment”, that would imply an acceptance of descent through modification.
He seems more like an Intelligent Design proponent, not a YEC.
It would be good to see the original source of that interview. I googled and googled and googled, but came up empty handed.
OK. Here is a youtube link with at least some of that interview. At about 2:20 he says he believes in natural selection. So, I put him in the “God nudges evolution along” camp.
Again, not something I accept, but pretty much mainstream American thought (if not mainstream neurosurgeon thought).
If you listen to the rest of that video, he also doesn’t believe that the eye or brain could form. So I’d say his thoughts are muddled. He also doesn’t believe that carbon dating proves anything. Which suggests to me he’s liking the 6k year old Earth.
He’s a Young Earth something – he dismisses modern radioactive isotope dating. Further, ID is (of course) just one type of Creationism. He doesn’t mention anything about ID in the sources I can find, though.
Wouldn’t that mean electing those with good track records as presidents? Where do you find those candidates?
I agree that “his thoughts are muddled” on evolution is an apt description. But I’m not sure how you get to him thinking the earth is 6K years old when he explicitly says you can’t say how old the earth is.
However, the power he ascribes to God (that he is not bound by physical laws) is mainstream Christian thinking. In fact, a God bound by physical laws isn’t really a God at all. In this sense, he’s at least consistent in his thinking about what the implications are of believing in an all powerful God.
The only reason to mention that it’s impossible to know how old the Earth is, is if you disagree with how old science shows the Earth to be.
Also, Seventh Day Adventists usually go for a literal six day creation.
Most Christians presumably think that physical law is how God chose express His creation. Scientists who are Christian want evolution nudged by God to end up in us. But they’re usually okay with the scope and detail of evolution.
No, he thinks that God resorted to Last Thursdayism and put fossils in the ground to fuck with us. His beliefs, so far as his religion are internally consistent, but his beliefs insofar as his acceptance of science are variable, based on if it contradicts with his blind and unthinking adherence to his religious beliefs.
That’s the point. He was exposed to tons of biology in school. I’m married to a veterinarian, I know doctors. The amount of smug delusional arrogance it would take to scoff at biology, shows that there is literally nothing, no amount of evidence that can penetrate his wall of ignorance.
If he decides that Country X needs bombing, do you think the CIA can come up with more evidence against the need than there is for evolution? His level of delusion is dangerous.
Most people in America think God made us. Most of those people haven’t had the advantage of detailed and in-depth training in biology.
Doctors don’t have “in-depth and detailed training in biology”. They will have had a college level Biology class (pre-med) and probably a class in cell biology and genetics in med school. But they don’t study evolution in med school.
Sure, this guy has more overall education than most people, including more science education. But doctors are not biologists. They aren’t even scientists, unless they are research doctors. I agree that he has no excuse, other than his religion, for not understanding evolution or accepting it as good science. But again, that puts him in the mainstream of US thinking, not outside it. That’s all I’m trying to say.
I agree. I wasn’t suggesting that doctors are as good as biologists. Just that they get way more biology training than the average person. And certainly enough that disbelief in evolution has to be a willful denial of what they’ve learned.
Saw this as part of a book blurb on realbencarson.com:
The vast majority of Americans feel that our nation is moving in the wrong direction, but we feel powerless to do anything about it.
“Vast majority”? Sounds like a drooling victim of confirmation bias. “I believe it, so everyone else must also.”
How do you know that this “lowering the amount of increase” is due to the ACA?
The answer is you do not. This is because there are a multitude of variables that go into manifest consumer prices.
65% of Americans feel that the nation is moving in the wrong direction.. Does that qualify as the “vast majority”? Do you think “I don’t believe it so everyone else must also” makes one a “drooling victim of confirmation bias”?
Do 65% agree on what the right direction would be?