I’m Just a Simple President.
Bush tells the truth, and you know what, I think I might actually agree with him.
In an interview for Nightline yesterday, Cynthia McFadden got Bush to admit he believed in evolution:
MCFADDEN: But do you believe in it?
BUSH: That God created the world, I do, yeah.
MCFADDEN: But what about …
BUSH: Well, I think you can have both. I think evolution can — you’re getting me way out of my lane here. I’m just a simple president. But it’s, I think that God created the Earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty, and I don’t think it’s incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution.
I have never understood the false choice between the Creation Story and Evolution, or between God and Science. You can believe in both, with respect to God being the Why and Science being the How. Did God create the world in six days? Sure, like the question asked in the Scopes Monkey Trial, how long were the days? For Bush, this is a departure from insisting some years ago that creationism be taught in public schools. Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore about appealing to the insane of his party.
DD – You’re off base here. The “god” the majority of people “believe” in is the god of the holy book. This god is absolutely antithetical to science (at least as much as we can know of the natural world). The creation story in Genesis is fiction. If you want to start with the crazy apologies like “how long were the days” you can make those arguments to infinity. You just look more and more ridiculous.
It’s like Clinton saying, “it depends on what the meaning of is is”. That is quite lame indeed, I think you’ll agree.
If you want to have faith in a fairy tale, knock yourself out. I think the problem is that you are a rational man and sorting out how to satisfy the two contradictory ‘beliefs’ proves very difficult. Cognitive dissodence doesn’t come as easy to most as it did for Jefferson.
You are off base in believing you cannot have faith and believe in science at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive.
Just because reasonable people can’t shake it and don’t want them to be. You did it it your post. Just think of “mysterious” ways to reconcile the innane holy book bullshit with they things we have discovered about the universe since the Bronze Age.
Religious people have a vested interest in making sure that they aren’t mutually exclusive.
I like simple, somewhat pointless arguments to deep questions.
In this topic my question would be “Did God create science, then? Can’t we both be right?”
And when they say no, you say “Oh, he must not be that bright then.” Then you just watch them boil up in their own anger and logic.
Another example is abortion. “Oh, you are against abortion, do you eat eggs? Oh, you do. So you favor chicken abortion, but not human abortion. Isn’t all life sacred?”
Not to say i believe in these theories, i just like getting under people’s skin.
ruh-roh picturing car careening (sp?) off cliff with abortion arguement
I’d argue that there is far too much “flaw” in the natural world to have been designed by an omniscient all powerful god. Nearly 99% of all species known to have existed are extinct. Home sapiens were perhaps down to 5,000 before they made their move north toward the Med Sea from Central Africa. Our bodies themselves are poorly “designed”. They don’t support weight optimally bipedally and have many superfluous bits like tonsils and appendix.
Culturally many people seem to need a god. Period. I seem not to be so inflicted.
So, when Bush was running for president, he didn’t believe in evolution, but now when he’s leaving, he believes in evolution.
Could it be that he was lying to his base?
Chicken abortion LOL!
Personally, I don’t care how one justifies their beliefs as long a science is correctly taught.
I’m with DD and UI. I’ll be damned if I’ll allow Christian teachers to tell my (future) kids about God or any form of divinity. That’s my job and the job of their Hebrew school teachers. In secular school, they’d better be learning 100% God-free science. But I do, in fact, believe (from a purely religious standpoint) that God created the natural laws of the universe and guided the path of evolution. I am wholly uninterested in Biblical literalism.
I’ll just fall back on my earlier point. How do you reconcile the world that an omniscient, omnipotent god “put into motion”? Why use a messy method like evolution to create life whereby 98.7% of species go extinct?
At least you admit that this foolishness belongs no where near science class.
“At least you admit that this foolishness belongs no where near science class.”
I’ll go a step further, DG… these beliefs shouldn’t be allowed outside houses of worship.