Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) joined the ranks of leading Republicans condemning evolution last week. On Bill Maher’s show, Kingston was asked directly if he believed in evolution and announced “I believe I came from God not from a monkey so the answer is no.”
Kingston rejected the notion as absurd that a “creature crawled out of the sea and became a human being one day.” Well, this may be a problem with how he was taught evolution. That particular creature did not become a human, but I accept that he was generalizing. He does not, however, view the Bible (Genesis 1:27) as generalizing when it says “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
By the way, a recent study showed that there are still plenty of high school biology teachers who take the same view. Thirteen percent admitted in a study that they advocate creationism over evolution and a majority of high-school biology teachers avoid taking a position between the two.
Kingston is also in good company in his party. Three of the 10 candidates (Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who later dropped out, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado) have even publicly proclaimed that they did not believe in evolution in the Republican Presidential Primary in 2004.
Source:TPM
Buddha,
He sounds like he should be called a hero. Especially by his grandson. It would be nice if my grandsons can say that someday about their grandfathers!
raff,
Thanks.
My grandfather was and shall always be my hero.
Elaine,
That was fantastic.
The “seven chimps and an Anglican vicar” line made me laugh out loud.
Buddha,
I enjoyed your comments about your grandfather.
Mespo,
I think FFLEO will return when the time is right for him. I understand how those Grandchildren can tug on your hearts. I will be baby sitting for mine on Thursday, if it stops snowing here by then!
I miss FF Leo, the lord of the music videos too.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E49A7zflKs&w=640&h=390]
rafflaw & BIL:
Sad to see him go, if only for a short time. I respect that decision to be with friends and family. As my Italian uncle used to say when confronted with a ballplayers statement that he wanted more time to spend with family, “Don’t worry, he’ll get over that soon enough.” 🙂
mespo,
I kind of got the impression FFLEO was tired of looking at the ugliness of the world and wanted some time to, I believe his words were, enjoy the beauty that was around him. Given the state of the world and his status as a newly minted grandpa? One can hardly find fault with that. I echo raff’s comment though. He is missed. He once said he thought he would have liked my grandfather based on the stories I’ve told of him. I think Papaw would have liked him too. They are cats cut from very similar cloth. If he’s still lurking about in between playing with the baby, then he surely knows what you know: that from the heart, this is high praise indeed. May our paths cross again, but if they do not, I am honored that they crossed at all.
FFLEO said he was going on hiatus for awhile. He didn’t say why. I hope he is back soon! He is missed.
BIL:
“We depend on you and Nal to catch the tunes since our much missed FFLEO has retired from the field.
******************
Whoa! What happened to FFLeo? I must have missed this one.
Gyges,
Thanks for the songs! I especially liked the Kinks! Very appropriate!
Gyges,
lol, that is the most festive apology ever! Thanks!
Buddha,
As an appology:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmTQSKr5U3c&w=480&h=390]
I can’t believe it took you that long either, Gyges. 😉
We depend on you and Nal to catch the tunes since our much missed FFLEO has retired from the field.
I can’t believe it took me this long
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEep67akIn4&w=480&h=390]
Charlton Heston: “A planet where apes evolved from men? There’s got to be an answer.”
Dr. Zaius: “Don’t look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find.”
As a species, we don’t seem to be elevating the angle of our learning curve much.
Lottakatz,
It certainly IS sad that so many people in our country are anti-intellectual and anti-science–and unfair that public schools and teachers are given all the blame when American kids don’t test as well in science as children in many other countries.
Anonymously Yours: “Aren’t they supposed to teach a balance so that the children can learn to make a choice? I suppose I dreaming…”
**
They are by law in some states but it’s bad science and bad law IMO.
——————
Michael Eriksson: “The hitch, however, is that we here do not have a legitimate conflict: Not all opinions are created equal and not all opinions can or should be given equal space.”
**
Unfortunately they disagree with you in Oklahoma. This is just sad.
“Educators in Oklahoma would be forced to openly question in their classes the legitimacy of the scientific theory of evolution should a new bill become state law.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/oklahoma-bill-would-mandate-educators-question-evolution-in-classes/
Evolution is not a unidirectional process in terms of, say, mental competence. That evolution may reduce mental competence is amply demonstrated by those who do not comprehend evolution because they evolved (aka devolved) from much more intelligent members of their species.
The best proof that evolution is real is the presence of those who believe otherwise.
Alas, that which does not exist cannot evolve toward greater intelligence nor toward less. Hence, creation must exist in some form for anything to exist which can evolve in any direction.
I have a hunch that creation is fast evolution and evolution is slow creation; both are forms of change.
Evolution is directly observable, and not usefully subject to rational question. Alas, some form of creativity must also exist, or the notion of evolution would not exist.
But, then, what do I know?
At the risk of committing drive-by linkage…
http://www.alife12.org/proceedings/
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems
My own contribution there:
“Using Meta-Genetic Algorithms to tune parameters of Genetic Algorithms to fi nd lowest energy Molecular Conformers”
Evolving the parameters of evolution (population size, mutation rate, etc) to make evolution more efficient. How? By evolution, making a number of “universes”, and those where evolution happens more quickly get to breed, to make a new population of universes. Rinse, lather, repeat.
It’s perhaps a good thing that Theologians aren’t aware of what we’re doing. Synthesising cells to perform certain tasks, and we already have a decent RNA compiler that will enable synthesised life-forms to perform useful computational functions.
Had we known more about biology, the internals of what happens in cells and why, computers would have been invented much earlier. There are logic gates (NAND, NOR, NOT, AND etc), flip-flops and so on, all implemented in RNA in each one of our cells.
We’ve already created life-forms that do band-pass filtering: perform a task only if environmental concentrations of chemicals are within a certain range. Too much or too little, and they’re inactive. The basic building blocks turn out to be far more simple than we’d ever imagined.
Life evolving is inevitable, given a whole range of environments.
Zenith,
You can thank auto-correct.
I mangling the typing while eating and read the suggested spelling as “punctuated” too. lol
Brains are a funny thing.