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Politics

Science and the GOP

Nov. 23, 2012 10:09am

Don Rasmussen is a writer and a political consultant providing campaign technology and strategic analysis to Constitutional Republican candidates. He earned […]

Don Rasmussen is a writer and a political consultant providing campaign technology and strategic analysis to Constitutional Republican candidates. He earned his BA in Political Economy and Latin America Studies from the University of Washington before moving on to a Masters in Political Management from George Washington University. He has staffed or advised on two presidential campaigns and over a dozen congressional races as well as organizing The Rally for the Republic, the conservative counter-convention to the 2008 Republican National Convention, which helped launch the TEA Party movement. Today he lives in Austin where he is working on his first book, Diaspora: Why We Leave, a study of the economic and political motivations of Americans living abroad.

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dar2214@gmail.com

In the wake of Marco Rubio’s recent interview in which he claimed that the age of the Earth was “a dispute among theologians,” the Republican Party’s science problem has resurfaced as an issue.

According to Rubio, “I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that (the age of the Earth).” By that logic, only a meteorologist can tell it is raining and only a chemist can tell us that the rain is made of water.

The other fallacy propagated by Rubio in that interview is the old canard that evolution is “just a theory.” Gravity is also just a theory. Shall we start pushing politicians out of airplanes to see if it’s a valid theory? The false “just a theory” argument is borne of ignorance of the scientific process. It is easy to confuse the common use of the word “theory” with the exact, specific and verifiably valid scientific process of the same name.

When this confusion forms the premise of your argument, you’ve already lost the argument by revealing your misunderstanding. Yet this premise has persisted in Republican circles for years, along with a host of other false, anti-science “facts” that form the support for some people’s view of politics, apparently including Senator Rubio.

Growing up in small town Texas, I learned that plate tectonics was a hoax, the Earth was only 10,000 years old, there are no transitional fossils, radiocarbon dating is fake and humans were created whole cloth in God’s image.

All of this was years after the US Navy sonar-mapped the oceans, Edwin Hubble observed galaxies flying apart, Penzias &Wilson found the residue radiation from the Big Bang, paleontologists began discovering pre-human hominid fossils along with hundreds of transitional animal forms, geological measures repeatedly validated radiocarbon dating and Watson & Crick cracked the structure of DNA.

It’s especially ironic when these falsehoods are propagated on the internet, a technology based on quantum mechanics, a field of science that confirms much of the scientific understanding of the universe and its origins. It is also the foundational science behind CAT scans and many other modern technologies.

In fact, if you propose that DNA technology is wrong and humans can’t be genetically tracked back to early ape-like species with which we share 90 percent of our DNA, than you must also advocate releasing every murderer and rapist convicted with DNA technology. If one is fake, then so is the other; it’s the same technology.

I don’t write this to disparage anyone’s religious beliefs, only to highlight the fact that when those beliefs bump up against foundational science and proven technology; it is easy to make those beliefs look ridiculous to a majority of Americans. And so it is with Marco Rubio.

Despite overwhelming belief in God (92 percent according to Gallup), only 40percent of Americans persist in accepting some pre-modern views on the origins of the universe and the human species. That’s far higher than any other developed country except Muslim-dominated Turkey. The evangelical base of the Republican Party makes up the majority of those holding those views.

Therein lies the political problem. Reporters will continue to ask these sorts of questions for this very reason. Marco Rubio’s awkward pander to the base separates him from the 60 percent and growing portion of the population that doesn’t think Jonah literally lived in a whale or that Noah managed to get to Florida to collect a pair of swamp newts.

Moreover, this basic misunderstanding of science (Marco Rubio is actually on the Science and Space sub-committee) leads to many other misunderstandings that prove politically toxic; “legitimate rape” comes immediately to mind. If you accept a magical, meta-scientific worldview, you can fall for all kinds of quack theories that follow from it and you set yourself up for scandal and mockery when those views are revealed to a skeptical electorate.

Todd Akin didn’t lose because of the TEA party; he beat two TEA party candidates in the primary who split almost 60 percent of the vote. Akin squeaked by holding his 36 percent evangelical base. But his views didn’t sell to a general electorate. Case after case we see the same thing, media labeled TEA partiers who lost due to their religiously-motivated anti-science views…Angle, Mourdock, Akin, O”Donnell, Buck, the list goes on and on.

For all of the Democrats faults (and they are legion), they have successfully occupied the public space for objective and rational view of the physical world (setting aside climate change “science” which is infused with so much interest group politics and secular religion as to be a wholly separate case).

That leaves the GOP in a tough position representing minority views that seem increasingly at odds with scientific fact and public understanding. It also makes our legitimate criticisms of climate change seem less credible.

Apart from the cultural sensitivities that this raises; it is a political problem for the GOP. It is a political weapon so powerful that it can re-elect written off for dead senator Claire McCaskill and send an Indiana liberal Democrat senator to Washington even as the state votes for Mitt Romney by 11 points over President Obama.

Republican candidates and spokespersons must start responding to these types of questions in a fact-based manner. For every Biblical literalist they anger, there are more voters who will breathe a sigh of relief. Marco Rubio tried to have it both ways and ended up looking clueless and spineless to both sides.

The Republican Party has tried to fence sit on this issue for years, but our constantly improving scientific understanding along with an electorate which is increasingly accepting of the “science-based” view of the world make it a losing bet. The GOP is in desperate need of a scientific reformation. It probably starts by putting people on the Senate Science and Space sub-committee who know that the Earth is c. 4.5 billion years old and, just as importantly, why we know that is the case.

Evangelicals are an important and welcomed part of the GOP coalition, but they can’t continue to cost us election after election. If literalist rhetoric is making us politically uncompetitive and undermining our credibility among swing voters and educated suburbanites, then it is better to market to the 60 percent who don’t hold those views.

It’s not a matter of philosophy or ideology; it’s a strategic and practical necessity if we want to govern. We should never attack people for there views, but the only reason a political party exists is to obtain or retain political power. We must, therefore, not permit those views to dominate and define the party when they are at odds with our strategic and tactical objectives.

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Comments (287)

truthnstuff
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:55pm
Only a left wing idiot would ask a question like this. Totally irrelevant.

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theotherberean
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:48pm
Total hogwash.

That’s the “best” I can say about the article.

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TomSawyer
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:48pm
“I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”– Issac Newton

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- charles116
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 7:05pm
  Surely you believe at one time dinosaurs existed?
  So you must believe man and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time.
  There is zero fossil evidence to support that.
  One will NEVER modern human bones mixed with dinosaur bones.
  One could site thousands of example to refute ‘evolutionists have no proof.
  
  Report this comment
- TomSawyer
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 7:17pm
  charles116, So? What is your point?
  
  Report this comment
- TomSawyer
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 7:23pm
  charles116, First, Not finding evidence of something does prove does not prove the it didn’t exist. Saying that no human remains exist at the time of dinosaurs fossils makes it very probable that they did not occur at the same time, but far more improbable is a quantized DNA-RNA code mutating over time with improvements. There are many SCIENTIFIC reasons not too believe in evolution. None of which you will ever bother to research. Evolution has been proven wrong based, not on religious grounds like you would like, but on scientific grounds.
  
  Report this comment
- JJJB4EVERFREE
  Posted on November 24, 2012 at 9:12am
  charles116, there is evidence: http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm
  
  Report this comment
TomSawyer
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:31pm
The author of this article is stupid. I don’t need a meteorologist to tell me rain is water because I can drink it and find out for myself. Gravity’s existence is not a a theory. We fall down. We know. The age of the earth is a theory. And finding new ape species fossils does not mean they are our ancestors. They could just be another extinct species of apes. I find this article unscientific and subjective.

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- Gourdy
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:44pm
  This is a common mistake. People believe “theory” means something that is merely conjecture or opinion. Gravity is real — as you say, we fall down — but the theories supporting gravity have been modified as we gain more evidence. Newton’s theory of gravity, in part, was radically changed by Einstein. Still, gravity is real just as evolution is. Evolution too will be modified with new discoveries and tools to gauge it.
  
  Report this comment
- TomSawyer
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 7:07pm
  You are 100% correct that is what I believe that the common uses of the word “theory” imply that something is unproven or speculative . We need to be sure to we make a distinction between guess and fact. Please learn the difference.
  
  Report this comment
Margyt
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:27pm
I think it is absolutely fair for Marco Rubio to dodge the question. All arguments on this subject are a fool’s mission. I will not change my belief from Creator to evolution no matter how many true believers try to ridicule my belief. I can’t even begin to combat the idiocy of evolutionary theory against blind belief in myth and dogma. Impasse, issue closed.

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- utopia27
  Posted on November 25, 2012 at 3:37am
  Then he should resign from the Science and Technology committee.
  
  Report this comment
Margyt
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:13pm
My dear friends, kick all evangelicals out of the republican party. We are proving to be a nuisance. Let’s see how that works for you.

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- hi
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:21pm
  Don’t worry. We will probably be rapture soon and then you guys can have your utopia like they have in Greece.
  
  Report this comment
rwinger261
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:05pm
ENCINOM- “Sorry Right Winger the Dark Ages ended, resaon and logic rule.”

What logic is it to believe that life arose from nothing without aid? Just where to you observe that in nature, and when did the white-robed high priests of science (at whose altar you worship) repeat it? Logic demands that the HIGHLY COMPLEX arise from an INTELLIGENT source, not from CHAOS. Look at the Honda Asimov robot (http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/). Was that little guy the result of chance and did he arise from nothing? He can imitate to a very minor degree what man can do without even giving it thought, but no one denies the thousands of engineering hours and the millions of dollars it took to get him to do it. Yet, my body, which repairs itself and reproduces itself, somehow arose BY ITS OWN LONESOME SELF as a simple-celled organism, then BY ITS OWN LONESOME SELF gradually developed into an enginrerring wonder? THAT is NOT LOGIC at all, but verges on insanity.

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- MAProg
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:24pm
  Your robot analogy falls apart because robots don’t reproduce. Furthermore, the first proto-organisms weren’t nearly as complex as modern organisms are.
  
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- theotherberean
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 7:10pm
  All living cells, regardless of how simple the organism, contain DNA.
  
  Explain DNA.
  
  DNA contains the genetic code necessary for life, and has the ability to copy itself for the next generation.
  
  DNA is very smart stuff, and according to science, evolved itself from rocks, with time and chance as the catalyst, while defying logic, life suddenly and for no apparent reason, sprang into existence all on its own!
  
  All scientists know that rocks can evolve themselves and become spiders too. These are now considered facts.
  
  … and 747′s, and even UFO’s! although, the notion that UFO’s evolved from Klingons is still considered just a theory.
  
  And those scientists say to God… ha ha ha You didn’t build that.
  
  Report this comment
- rwinger261
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 9:24pm
  MAPROG “Your robot analogy falls apart because robots don’t reproduce. Furthermore, the first proto-organisms weren’t nearly as complex as modern organisms are.”
  
  1. Until robots reproduce themselves, you prove my point. Not only is the human body magnificently complex, it has a mechanism to pass on that information in a copy of itself. How did the sexual organs evolve, and how did the species survive in the mean time?
  
  2. No one was there to see the first proto-organisms, and even they were incredibly complex if they had the ability to reproduce and survive in a hostile environment.
  
  Report this comment
Ghandi was a Republican
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:59pm
Another fact of science, and it is quite simple is that the apes have a jawbone unlike man. A jawbone that impeded the possibility of the jaw of man and ape ever evolving as one. In the case of the Ape the jaw is wrapped in such a way that it would be impossible to evolve as man has. This configuration is the difference in what would allow for a larger brain cavity. Incidentally liberals have a similar Jaw:brain cavity ratio..

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- theotherberean
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 7:12pm
  Bwaaa haaa haaa
  
  Thanks for the chuckle.
  
  Report this comment
Liberal Basher
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:53pm
You anti-science morons should refuse to use ANYTHING invented by the application of the scientific method. That means you’d basically be back to wearing a loin cloth and hunting wild animals.

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- hi
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:00pm
  Again, we believe in the scientific method and scientific facts. Evolution cannot be tested with the scientific method and evolution does not have one fact that supports the change of one species into the next.
  
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- rwinger261
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:07pm
  Another example of how Darwinist deal with those confronting their faith – call the opposition a “moron” and a knuckle-dragger.
  
  Report this comment
- charles116
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:41pm
  @HI
  You make absolutely zero sense and do not know what you are talking about.
  
  Report this comment
- TomSawyer
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:57pm
  “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”– Issac Newton
  
  “God existed before there were human beings on Earth, that He holds the entire world, believers and non-believers, in His omnipotent hand for eternity” — Max Planck (founder of quantum mechanics).
  
  Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician): “We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.”
  
  Report this comment
Ghandi was a Republican
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:52pm
Science has never dis-proven the existence of God. That’s the science. Not that it hasn’t been tried. Every attempt to discredit God increases the evidence that God is real. So the question is WHY do those who want to claim ‘science’ ignore this fact?

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- MAProg
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:26pm
  Science also can’t disprove the existence of Zeus or Thor, it doesn’t mean should seriously consider their existence.
  
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- charles116
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:40pm
  On the plus side
  Rubio has revealed himself to be another Paul Ryan and will NEVER
  recEive a Presidential nomination.
  NEVER.
  
  Report this comment
kellywsmith
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:49pm
I tried to explain something that I see in this debate and put a link to my site that has a long post about it. Apparently that is not accepted and they deleted my post, so here is a link to a video I had created about it.

http://youtu.be/tgpeVQGhzdE

The fact is we do NOT know everything and those on both sides are in error and along a diverted path. We are searching for truth here and truth has to be obtained by following the right path.

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Founderscam12
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:21pm
Evolution is absolute joke and for those idiots out there who think that the argument of the falsehood of evolution can’t be articulated, you going to be given a rude awaking in the years to come. Just answer one simple question, if evolution is true, where are the transitional fossils to prove it. There should be millions of one animal changing into another. The age of the earth is more disputed, but the way that so called scientists used to age the earth are terribly inaccurate just by the simple fact they keep on adding millions if not billions to the total because they keep explaining away the error in evolution with “it just needed more time.” I welcome this debate in the political arena because it will easily be won.

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- Gourdy
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:37pm
  Think of evolution as a tree and not a straight line that spawns simplistic questions such as, “If we came from apes why are there still chimps, gorillas, etc.?” There is a proven fossil record of the genus ****, to which we humans belong, that shows us evolving from primitive man about 2.5 million years ago. From that beginning, brain size increased, we began walking upright, and our tools became increasingly more complex. This took at least 2.5 million years based on the info we have right now.
  
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- MAProg
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:56pm
  Technically, every fossil is a transitional fossil because every species is a transition between its ancestral form and the form of its descendents. If you are refering to transition between, say, a crocodile and a duck, then you won’t find one because that’s not how evolution works. It is a gradual change in phenotype (and other traits) in a population over many gererations. You will see transtional forms on the species level, such as the genus ****, but not at the genus level or family, order, etc, because a species doesn’t change on that level.
  
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- charles116
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 7:00pm
  Animals do not change into each other.
  Since you know nothing about science in general, discussing evolution would be waste of time.
  Did you know there is now evidence that 3 DIFFERENT Types of early man walked the planet at the same time.
  
  Report this comment
- Founderscam12
  Posted on November 24, 2012 at 12:41am
  Nothing I haven’t heard and rejected before. Not every fossil is transitional because you can’t say its transitional if you can’t prove it is the process of changing from one form to another. For example, there is no half bird, half reptile fossil. Every time scientists say they found the first truly transitional fossil, they end up being found out to be frauds. Let me get basic, Science must observable and be able to be produced to be good science or it is just a theory and should be expressed as such. Not to mention, carbon dating is garbage. Carbon dating has dated two parts of the same fossil different by 20K years.
  
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- utopia27
  Posted on November 25, 2012 at 3:44am
  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Vog1h.jpg
  
  Archaeopteryx is an almost perfect transitional fossil between reptile and bird. The fossil clearly displays plumage (feathers), and many aspects of avian anatomy (such as extended breastbone), and at the same time has an extremely reptilian skull and snout.
  
  any more questions?
  
  Report this comment
Charlie Justice
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:15pm
FYI, the word THAN is not interchangeable with the word THEN.

FYI, when attempting to appear intelligent you should state facts and not opinions. When stating facts, please back them up with references. Your credibility as well educated has already been shot.

FYI, God does not require your faith or belief as a prerequisite for His existence.

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- MAProg
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:57pm
  Nor does evolutionary biology require your belief to be factually accurate.
  
  Report this comment
SoCaDad
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:05pm
I liked Rubio’s GQ response until i read this article. Don makes very good points and I have to agree. The liberal press will harangue every Republican with faith vs. science questions ad nauseum until his/her credibility is sufficiently crushed. Republicans need to learn how to better deal with these landmines.that await them as soon as they step onto the political battlefield. If your personal faith, and specifically your commitment to evangelizing aspects of it that conflict with what most consider settled science, will cause you to lose an election…then DON’T RUN! Start a church or a bible study or something else…but we need conservative candidates that can WIN.

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Gourdy
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 4:40pm
I have a question to the social conservatives here. If the GOP does indeed decide to jettison or de-emphasize a lot of core values important to evangelicals or tea-party type voters, do you believe you could create a viable 3rd party?

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- thecrow2123
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:10pm
  A third party that would exceed would be one that is truely conservitive with strong christian values that solidly believes in and backs the constitution.
  
  However, after 4 more years of Obama, we may not have to resort to a third party. Complete fiscal collasp and depression may be what it takes to wake up the sheeples.
  
  Report this comment
- SoCaDad
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:11pm
  Gourdy – There is no mention anywhere in this article, nor any discussion I’m aware of, where the Republican party would consider jettisoning the Tea Party ideals of smaller government, less spending, taxes and debt. The Tea Party advocates no social issues. Stop trying to portray the Tea Party as fringe.
  
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- Gourdy
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:22pm
  Socadad, I’ve read plenty of soul-searching type articles about the GOP leadership assessing why they lost so much ground in this past election and whether or not the far right helped them lose. And although the Tea Party had a brief focus purely on fiscal responsibility (which I initially was quite happy to see), it quickly allowed in fringe people like Palin, Bachmann, and West. I understand there are purists out there, but the TP is also seen as extreme by most because of that.
  
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- utopia27
  Posted on November 25, 2012 at 5:14am
  @gordy – excellent question that didn’t receive any substantial response. I believe there is no good response from the Republican Party as a whole. There are small trial balloons going up (mostly involving immigration policy, though some involving throwing Grover Norquist under a bus somewhere), but none of them are getting broad traction. And none of them currently address ‘The Crazy’. So until Republicans can find a way to create space between their candidates and ‘The Crazy’, they’er going to wander in the desert for some time certain to GREATLY exceed 40 days and 40 nights.
  
  Report this comment
Bodankeu
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 4:35pm
Let’s dial it back to when Obama said the exact same thing when asked about when life begins. Science is much more clear and exact about that answer yet Obama was given a pass and the liberal airhead yukked it up. Enough with the gotcha questions by the liberal PR machine. Rubio at least knows the simple answer that science gives to the question of when life begins – at conception.

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- ruoncrack
  Posted on November 24, 2012 at 10:23pm
  According to Jewish law life begins with the intake of the first breath. So if i don’t want to accept your science over my religious belief,even though we claim the same god a lot of things get confusing very fast. Lucky for me I think believing in and arguing about some old story told around the campfire before our forebears figured out how to build the internet is a colossal waste of time.
  
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Dano.50
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 4:28pm
As background, I get to church no more than once a month. I’m a sci-fi, science buff since I was a kid, and try to keep up but.

There’s a show called “Creation Magazine” that I caught about three months ago, and they were trying to use science to prove the Bible. I’ve seen some things that made me wonder.

First, many fossils have flesh and soft tissue outlines and according to science, in order to fossilize, a body must be instantly and completely buried. C.M. was theorizing about a flash flood and also used real examples of floods in the past few decades to show that sedimentary type layers can be formed by such.

Also, according to physics and math, over 95% of the universe is missing. So they’re looking for Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

I just picked up a book called “Starlight, Time, and the New Physics.” It’s supposed to be about how we can be in a young universe, with the laws of physics that work and don’t need a 95% fudge factor.

It’s about how the speed of light may be slowing down. (Also check out “Faster than the Speed of Light” by Joao Maguejo.

Last, any time Christian scientists try to publicize such material, they’re laughed out off because the scientific community is the same as the main stream media. Our way or the highway.

It used to be accepted that the human body would explode if traveling faster than sixty mph.

100 years ago a knowledgeable man said the Patent Office should close cause there’s nothing left to inv

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JEANNIEMAC
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 4:25pm
The Big Bang proves the universe came into being about thirteen billion years ago, complete with everything necessary for everything that is in existence.
It was a Catholic astronomer/monk who came up with the discovery.

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- OccamsSword
  Posted on November 24, 2012 at 1:17am
  Wow!…Amazing facts….I guess the debate is over, huh ? Guess I’ll have to find a new hobby.
  
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thecrow2123
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 4:21pm
This guy, in his attempt to make Rubio look stupid shows his lack of scientific knowlege. On the point of gravity, it is hardly absolute science. It is interesting to note that for all the power it is given that the moment that one leave’s the atmosphere they become “weightless”. It’s not a gradual process. Further, there were a group of scientist that after much testing proved that gravity does not exist outside of a natural atmosphere. Lastly, in the case of quantum theory, in all case’s when one tries to use the current gravity models in calculations, it breaks down and the calculation cannot be solved.

Next is Darwin’s theory. First, the missing link. It’s still missing. Also, there was some DNA testing done that the scientific community threw out saying they used DNA collected from unreliable areas of the bones, that not only showed there was no DNA link to cro magnum and neanderthal to modern man but they weren’t even related to each other. They did however, link strongly to apes. Meaning, they were probably apes. Of course that didn’t fly so we find a way to throw it out.

Theorys are just that, theorys. Can be proven, in most case’s by mathmatics and such but not always in the real.

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- SoCaDad
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:21pm
  …so you are saying Crow that we should cling to these ideas, espouse them, and continue to lose elections? Aren’t there better ways to try to convert the populace to your religion than through one losing campaign after another??
  
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- MAProg
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:05pm
  Crow, gravity does exist outside the atmopshere. Where did you learn that notion from? Gravity permeates the entire universe. When people are weightless in orbit, it’s because they are in orbit, which is essentially falling. Of course, the further you go from a gravity well, the weaker the attraction because, but that doesn’t mean that gravity doesn’t exist outside the atmosphere. That’s absurd.
  
  As for evolutionary biology: the concept of a missing link is silly. There exists a reliable line of fossils, spanning various species, and across multiple genii that link us with our last concestor.
  
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- thecrow2123
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:39pm
  @maprog
  
  I invite you to read the entirety of the posting at the below link just to get you started on the absurdity of what I wrote.
  
  http://cs.astronomy.com/asy/news/f/20/t/26396.aspx
  
  Report this comment
- thecrow2123
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:52pm
  @maprog
  
  There is two sections, make sure you read it all.
  
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- utopia27
  Posted on November 25, 2012 at 4:02am
  @Crow – Did you actually read what was at the link you posted, or what the source was? That multi-part chunk of word-salad can be attributed only to, “Posted by Anonymous on Tue, Jun 12 2007 8:07 PM”
  
  Please do understand that current special-relativity models of gravitation are extremely accurate, and predictive of astronomical results to within small numbers of parts per billion. For example, both Neptune and Pluto were discovered because of noted changes in the orbits of other planets – astronomers did the math, then pointed their telescopes at the patch of sky the math told them to look at – and sure enough, there were planets of almost exactly the mass anticipated.
  
  The reason dark matter theory is such a challenge to the scientific community right now is that for galaxies, the math and the telescopes aren’t adding up. The telescopes tell us one thing about how much mass there is in a galaxy, and the math about how they interact (among BILLIONS of stars) shows us a much larger amount of mass. Scientists are working both sides – the telescopes and the math – to see if they can discover why these things agree so amazingly well, and accurately and predictively describe universe we see, that works so well at small- to mid-sized things, disagrees so grossly at the level of galaxies. Because that’s how science works – looking at the next unexplained thing.
  
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JEANNIEMAC
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 4:20pm
God is the great I AM. He has always existed.
You can keep going back, back to a cause for everything, until you finally reach Him Who is the First Cause of all that exists.
Humans have been proven to be descended from one pair of male and female. Whether God chose to create the pair directly, or have a particular pair develop until they were ready to be given conscientiousness and a knowledge of Him, is unknown.

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- SoCaDad
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 5:23pm
  …and that helps us win the next election…how?
  
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- thecrow2123
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:09pm
  @SoCaDad
  
  I went back and re-read what I posted and I didn’t see in it anywere where I wrote anything that applied to your response. That said however, I personally will not change my beliefs, especially in my religion, no matter what the cost. The left’s philosophy comes at a cost as extreme as their vision and in the end will run it’s enevitable course and we will be here to pick up the piece’s.
  
  It’s unfortunate that in order the this country to come to it’s sense’s and return to it’s roots we have to experiance this dark time in our history.
  
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cmicko
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 4:16pm
Let’s play a game called “Guess the Senator”:

Q: Senator, if one of your daughters asked you—and maybe they already have—“Daddy, did God really create the world in 6 days?,” what would you say?

A: What I’ve said to them is that I believe that God created the universe and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we understand it … it may not be 24-hour days, and that’s what I believe.
I know there’s always a debate between those who read the Bible literally and those who don’t, and I think it’s a legitimate debate within the Christian community of which I’m a part. My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live—that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true. Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible: That, I don’t presume to know.

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- cmicko
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:45pm
  Answer: Barack Hussein Obama
  
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- OccamsSword
  Posted on November 24, 2012 at 1:23am
  Sounds made up to me.
  
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- cmicko
  Posted on November 24, 2012 at 8:22am
  Here’s the link. You must be a liberal because you’re too lazy to look it up yourself.
  
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/21/barack-obama-earth-creation_n_2170810.html
  
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- utopia27
  Posted on November 25, 2012 at 4:09am
  So, President Obama (then-Senator) said that he believed in an allegorical interpretation of Genesis. And that there’s a debate in his religious community about how literally to interpret any particular portion (or translation, or edition) of the Bible, and that he didn’t feel qualified to make a definitive statement on a matter of religious scholarship.
  
  So he stated his belief (in a well-informed way, including context and nuance) about the specific question being asked. Then spun the broader religious debate back to the religious community.
  
  And now you know how Marco Rubio could have answered the question without looking ignorant and spineless (to paraphrase the original article). Since Barrack Obama provided a deft and elegant solution to the problem several years prior to Rubio being faced with it, I now have even less regard for Rubio’s capabilities, since he didn’t have to make up an acceptable response on the spot, but could simply have cribbed the correct answer from a more capable politician.
  
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YAHSHUARULES
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 3:57pm
This does not have to be a “gottcha” The 6 day Biblical Creation Narrative and the Billions of Years Science Narrative are BOTH correct. They are in one accord: it depends on your perspective of the event. whether the Almighty’s or mans. Even the Cambrian Explosion lines up with both! Here is a nice little video which will explain it: either Science confirms the Biblical Narrative or Science is finally catching up with the wisdom of the Biblical Narrative:

The Genesis Code: Science v Faith Synopsis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu3R47gH4CM

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Brainmuffin
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 3:52pm
Rasmussen displays more ignorance of Science than Rubio did.

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- charles116
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:42pm
  You know Rass is a stanch Republican. Don’t you?
  
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Sherryb50
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 3:39pm
I really don’t care if Marco Rubio knows how old the earth is. I just want to know what he thinks about the ecomony, taxes and a host of other more important issues. This is just a way for the libs to try to destroy a possible candidate. Personally, I hope he doesnt run as a Republican. I am about done with the Republican party.

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Terry Duschinski
Posted on November 23, 2012 at 3:34pm
So, where is the evidence of a cell mutation crossing a species barrier?

Evolution is merely a theory, and a very poor one. Comparison to gravity is ludicrous!!!!

Man cannot explain what man cannot understand. So you won’t be explaining creation.

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- MAProg
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:09pm
  To answer your first point, simply look at the genetic code. To your second point, you are equivocating the term theory in the common vernacular with the formal definition used in the scientific method. Here’s a hint. It doesn’t mean a guess. Rather, it’s a explanation of a class of phenomenon or a natural pattern that is based on empirical evidence and experimentation. They cite naturalistic laws, and detail how those phenomon ocur.
  
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- charles116
  Posted on November 23, 2012 at 6:51pm
  “Man cannot explain what man cannot understand,”
  
  So YOU choose to put more credence in the superstitions and explanations of Bronze Age men
  rather than thousands of years of the study of science and ever improving instruments of study and research of modern men.
  
  That make SO much more sense.
  
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