I passed on listening to the Democratic debates, so you can sure as heck bet I skipped the recent Republican debate. Just as well, too; the candidates got pressed on that evolution question again, and wouldn’t you know it, it simply triggered an avalanche of idiocy, with Mike Huckabee leading the way. Just look at these quotes.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth,” said Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister. “A person either believes that God created the process or believes that it was an accident and that it just happened all on its own.”
An accident? That’s the only alternative? The whole point of evolution is that there are natural mechanisms that drive organic change. These mechanisms are not entirely accidents (although accidents play a major role in evolution!), but one thing we don’t see is any magical interventions from a deity.
But OK, let’s go along and pretend it is a binary choice. I’d rather go with the accident explanation, which is far more reasonable than inventing a cosmic sky-daddy.
Huckabee also said that if Americans “want a president who doesn’t believe in God, there’s probably plenty of choices. But if I’m selected as president of this country, they’ll have one who believes in those words that God did create.”
Grrr. Moron. No, there are not plenty of choices. There are no candidates who are willing to get up there and say there are no gods. Can he name a single one? I have to stomach the electoral reality that the Christian bigots will not even consider voting for an atheist, but I don’t have to silence myself when a presidential candidate stands up there and lies.
“Whether God did it in six days or whether he did it in six days that represented periods of time, he did it. And that’s what’s important.”
No, there is no evidence that a “he” did it. What’s important is that the evidence absolutely and conclusively excludes a literal six-day creation; the choices he gave are between ignorant lunacy and a vague rationalization that tries to accommodate religion to the evidence, and this clown can’t even exclude the nutjob explanation.
John McCain, who never saw a gaping rectum he didn’t want to curl up in, then crawled right up Huckabee’s butt and started ordering tasteful accessories from Ikea.
“I admire [Huckabee’s] description, because I hold that view,” said McCain, an Episcopalian. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today. And I do believe that we are unique, and [I] believe that God loves us.”
I have sad news for you, John. God doesn’t love you at all. You’re going to die and be eaten by the great void that awaits us all, and all that will be left of you are eye-rolling recollections of your inconsistency, hypocrisy, and intellectual inanity. Sorry. What you believe doesn’t count.
Oh, no, not Brownback—didn’t we already get enough of him?
“I believe we are created in the image of God for a particular purpose, and I believe that with all my heart,” said Brownback, a Roman Catholic. “I am fully convinced there’s a God of the universe that loves us very much and was involved in the process. How he did it, I don’t know.”
What Brownback believes doesn’t count, either.
These two guys are so convinced that there’s a god that loves them and everyone on the planet, that you’d think they’d be a little more anxious to quit causing him pain by blowing up and shooting and running over and neglecting his beloved Iraqis and cherished GIs and treasured Afghans and esteemed Palestinians and highly regarded Jews and admired Sudanese and all those other loved peoples of the planet. This “belief” of theirs would be a little more plausible if they lived like peace meant something.
So it’s a good thing I didn’t bother listening. I can only take so many empty platitudes and lies.
God may like us but he has an especially inordinant fondness for bacteria and intends to feed each and every one of us to them.
To be fair, there’s no evidence against Last Tuesday-ism. Which is kinda the point. And I doubt Huckabee would admit to believing in it, so this is just nitpicking, but still.
I watched both debates. Neither was very good, but holy hell the republicans’ was just horrible. Especially that evolution part.
As I mentioned in BAB though, I was shocked about the issue of global warming and energy independence. I wouldn’t be too too distraught if a republican was president, as long as he did what the president should do against global warming. Whether they’ll do it or not though is a completely different issue.
I did notice that John Edwards was fairly reasonable when asked about same-sex marriage in that CNN “faith and politics” thing. He said that he was personally against it, but he acknowledged other belief systems (and atheists), said they all deserved respect (Yeah yeah I know, religions don’t deserve respect. I’m saying “reasonable” compared to other candidates), and that he would allow (if not same-sex marriages, someone distracted me in that question) same-sex unions to get all the benefits of marriage.
Like they pointed out in that south park episode, your choice of presidential candidates is always going to be between a douche and a turd sandwich.
Oran: John Edwards’ statements have revealed him to be a tool just like all the rest.
Would you vote for someone who admits being a racist, but promises not to implement racist policies?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=huckabee
nuff said.
>>Would you vote for someone who admits being a racist, but promises not to implement racist policies?
Yes, if that’s the only choice I had. Like you said, “John Edwards’ statements have revealed him to be a tool just like all the rest.” Are there any candidates that would allow same-sex marriage? or that are atheists? etc?
As far as I’m concerned, while I WOULD rather vote for someone who believes in the cause, someone who promises not to implement racist policies is better than those who promise to do implement racist policies.
Since Brownback is a convert from one Christian sect to another, someone should ask him about his confidence in his belief system. Since he was wrong before, how does he know he’s not wrong now?
Will he be a Scientologist next?
How in the buggering hell did this crackpot nonsense become a legitimate electoral issue? Have to give credit to whoever ran that PR/propaganda campaign, even if they are evil.
Didn’t Huckabee says something immensely stupid about us not being primates?
I actually think that is a great question Zeno. Not only that but any Protestant hopeful could mash him with that one for purely political purposes. Given the sheer size of the Protestant electorate and the wishy washy number of catholics it could torpedo his chances.
American politics is fun. It all comes down to which candidate is less incompentent. Why aren’t there any other political parties in the US, anyway?
I agree that it’s sad, but evolution is rather trivial compared to the decay of empiricism in the sciences (string theory, the standard model, so-called climate science) or “postmodernist” creep into the social sciences (qualitative research). It’s rather ludicrous that liberals who jeer at people for not believing in evolution swallow all sorts of multiculturalist, postmodernist nonsense, based upon no real world evidence of any kind–and scream “racist!” if you dare question them. Funniest of all is that they consider themselves educated.
I’ll worry about evolution after all the postmodernists are gone from the academy and no academic journals are publishing papers about how little Mary “feels” about boys in her class, or feminist “scholars” aren’t publishing papers about hunting being a metaphor for rape.
Yes, damn you liberals with your postmodernist particle accelerators, and your postmodernist Yukawa theories of force, and your postmodernist Higgs mechanisms. Damn you liberals with your postmodernist statistics and measurements, and damn you liberals with your postmodernist claims of the existence of carbon dioxide!
And what’s up with this DDT thing? You liberals are all throwing these celebrations for that genocidal maniac Rachel Carson. We banned DDT, and then nothing happened. Next thing you know, these liberals will tell us that putting out a fire will stop the house from burning down. What a bunch of postmodernist crap.
I’m the only one who understands you, rightwingprof.
http://rightwingnation.com/
yeah, if only banality disqualified idiots from making totally unreasoned rants, too.
dustin nailed you perfectly.
“”Didn’t Huckabee says something immensely stupid “”
That goes without saying…
One can only hope that the anti-reality stance of these candidates backfires on them. At least I hope the majority of Americans aren’t creationuts.
Brownback sez:
The science has been checked repeatedly. Please do check your faith. At the door.
I love this:
We’re not just descended from primates you clown, we ARE primates. A quick glance at dictionary.com would have shown you this definition:
Reading more than one book in your life might have given you a clue. And Huckabee thought the whole evolution question was unfair.
As a voter I want to know if you plan to use all available evidence to make decisions affecting millions of people, or if you’re going to be like G. W. Bush and ignore anything that doesn’t fit your preconceived notions. Looks to me like it’s the later.
I don’t know about the metaphor of hunting, but I know that some people hunt for food and others hunt for sport (notice: when I say “sport” in this context I mean “to quench their urge to kill”). Oh, yeah then there’s hunting as a form of population control, for too many animals in one forest can be harmful it’s the flora.
It already has on the current president, but unfortunately he hasn’t noticed.
It already has on the current president, but unfortunately he hasn’t noticed.
hasn’t noticed, or simply doesn’t care?
after all, he IS the “decider”.
Horrible. I haven’t seen a real debate since the League of Women Voters debates were ousted in favor of these party-controlled sound bite campaign events.
Putting string theory (speculative, hard to test, but promising) in the same class as the Standard Model (verified out the wazoo thousands of times) can only be accomplished by completely ignoring the last thirty years of scientific discovery.
Call me naïve, but I am optimistic that this nation will begin to realize the embarrassing mess that Sunday school politicians have made of things. Perhaps even, people will become bored with showing the rest of the world who worships the ‘real God’. I would like to think that there will be resurgent sense of pride in America’s past scientific accomplishments, when we sent men to the moon, and science was seen as an endeavor pursued by intelligent, hard working and exploratory men and women of reason — and not stupidly dismissed as just another religion.
I don’t know if we really are backsliding into the dark ages or not, maybe things just go in cycles, I don’t know. But I do have hope that is a growing realizing that those who refuse the validity of evolution simply don’t have the mechanical aptitude to be in charge of complicated systems–like our country.
(Like I said, naïve.)
We can thank Falwell and his ilk for this, Buffy. This is the legacy of the swelling influence of the Religious Right and self-proclaimed Moral Majority. The Founding Fathers would have despised them. I won’t speculat on what Jesus might have thought of them.
“Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws.” – John Adams
[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. (Article VI, Section 3, The Constitution of the United States.)
CNN got the dems to gush about their faith the other day:
http://edition.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/politics/2007/06/05/obrien.faith.politics.cnn&wm=9
Gag me with a spoon!
I’m not quite sure how to react to the American political process.
It’s corruption personified, oh let me count the ways…
Nahh, it’d take too long.
But, as much as I loathe the current political situation in my own country,(that’d be Denmark),
the American Republican primaries are, indeed, a real study in psychopath posturing.
(“Double Guantanamo!” “Bomb Iran!”).
The really odd thing
is that, here in Denmark we have an official state church,
but most of the population is secular, at least as far as voting is concerned.
We are a constitunional democracy.
We have a Queen and a Statsminister (State Minister)
and the latter has all the power.
Instead of a “State of the union” speech,
both the queen and the Statsminister
make their speeches on New Years Eve, and the powerless queen is the only one to reference god.
And we don’t have powerful lobbyists clamoring for ID
and we don’t have religious tests for running for office.
Some have tried to drum up such things where muslims are concerned
but so far such measures have backfired.
And there is no risk attached to running as an atheist.
To put it simply, religion isn’t a big thing in Danish politics.
Wether you are left or right, sure…
but wether you have WELCOMED JEEEBUZ INTA YER HEART§!…
uhhh.. not so much.
Yes, the proclaimed ignorance of the Republican candidates is frightening — but not as frightening as the fact that they need to say these stupid things to get elected.
In other words, we shouldn’t be lamenting the ignorance of these politicians without also lamenting the ignorance of the segment of the voting public that demands their politicians spew this nonsense.
Well, we now know that the republicans all belive in a god/creater, that they won’t pull the troops out of Iraq, and that they’d all pardon Scooter Libby.
…was anyone REALLY surprised by ANYTHING that was said yesterday?
Oh, great, PZ!
Start a thread about Politics AND Religion!
Might as well go whole hog, now.
So, how about those Astros? I think the’ll take the series…
I’ve always thought that sort of setup would stop Americans from thinking of the President as the King and Pope — and they really need to stop doing that.
How difficult is it for a Presidential aspirant, when asked these questions about faith, to simply say:
“My belief in God is a personal matter, and not a subject for public discourse, since it has no bearing on my ability to serve as President. Now ask me about who I will appoint as my Science adviser.”
They are pandering to their religious base. They are brownbacking and they won’t stop until someone calls them on it.
As much as I normally hate the shallow capriciousness of American politics, I’m taking heart in this case that America will never vote somebody named ‘Huckabee’ into office. ‘President Huckabee’ doesn’t work, somehow.
I have to stomach the electoral reality that the Christian bigots will not even consider voting for an atheist
I don’t know it might be possible. The problem is, we don’t have an atheist running in the main line parties. If one stepped forward and said worship who you want where you want when you want, as long as you don’t force it on other people; focus on real issues like the war, education, health care, economy and the environment Christians might not have a problem getting behind him.
The problem is everyone wants to play the faith game, and use that as THE issue of importance.
“Brownbacking” — so perfect. That one word would have saved me two paragraphs.
‘President Huckabee’ doesn’t work, somehow.
coincidentally, I actually have run into a few people who wouldn’t vote for Gore for the same reason.
yes, capricious indeed.
How difficult is it for a Presidential aspirant, when asked these questions about faith, to simply say:
“My belief in God is a personal matter, and not a subject for public discourse, since it has no bearing on my ability to serve as President…
It’s not. John Kerry did it in 2004.
Huckabee’s saying that “God created the process”, and Brownback’s saying that God “was involved in the process” could charitably be read as allowing for unguided evolution.
Because the administration is appointed by the president, no matter if it has a majority in Congress or anything. That’s why.
The US president represents the fusion of the UK king and the UK prime minister. The Austrian president is just the Ersatzkaiser. The USA get split government and wholesale paralysis of the country, we get coalition governments that at least get something done. The USA get a two-party system, we get at least an occasional threat to the two-party system (in the parliamentary elections of 1999 the traditional 3rd party was 315 votes ahead of the traditional 2nd party — and in the government that was formed based on those results the 1st party did not take part and had to go into opposition).
Because the administration is appointed by the president, no matter if it has a majority in Congress or anything. That’s why.
The US president represents the fusion of the UK king and the UK prime minister. The Austrian president is just the Ersatzkaiser. The USA get split government and wholesale paralysis of the country, we get coalition governments that at least get something done. The USA get a two-party system, we get at least an occasional threat to the two-party system (in the parliamentary elections of 1999 the traditional 3rd party was 315 votes ahead of the traditional 2nd party — and in the government that was formed based on those results the 1st party did not take part and had to go into opposition).
I love that term… a twist on “brown nosing”.
It should be adopted forthwith!
a twist on brown-nosing, a dash of barebacking…
santorum anyone?
The introduction of a new top predator into the ecosystem, which feeds exclusively on creationists… if I believed in a god, I would pray for that.
“My belief in God is a personal matter, and not a subject for public discourse, since it has no bearing on my ability to serve as President.
Actually in the US we have more than two parties. The problem is, none of the other parties have a large enough stake in the process to be recognized.
There is also the case that a party doesn’t get the same kind of government contributions to finance the campaign unless they get 5% of the national vote. Which means the amount of money they have to get voted for is less, and they can’t afford as many spots in the media.
Basically the democrats and republicans evolved faster than the other parties. If I recall correctly (and I may not) the republican party was still considered a “third party” when Abraham Lincoln was elected.
I’ve always believed that the Noah flood story is the ultimate wedge issue to promote Republican disarray. Noah’s is easily the most widely-known and least-defended (at least literally) story of the Bible among the masswes. There’s no room for weaseling out with the “six days was maybe six eons” escape clause.
Mr. Huckabee, do you believe in the literal truth of the Biblical account of Noah’s Ark?
I would love a journalist to ask Republican candidates this question. The candidate is forced to move completely out to the fringe (I believe in Noah) or directly offend the fundamentalists (Noah is a fable/metaphor/morality tale).
Of course I fail at cut and paste… my last comment (post 43) was directed at David Marjanović as a response to his post. sorry for failing.
oops… wrong thread
Of course none of them are jumping out and claiming to be atheists. Even if they aren’t actually religious in the sense that they bother to adhere to the doctrines of whichever cult is their favorite, most of the people in the U.S. believe in supernatural entities that have an interest in their personal lives. Jumping out and admitting that you don’t believe in supernatural entities at all would make you weird.
Weird people aren’t usually the most popular ones, and representative democracy is a popularity contest. Even the candidates that think religion is bollocks aren’t going to admit to it.
I couldn’t stomach the thought of watching any of it, either side. I say PZ for Prez–has a certain pleasing ring to it, don’t ya think? I say we all write him in. He can even have one of those stuffalopods he’s always pimping as VP!
There, I said it. PZed for Preznit.
While discussing the debate on the View today, the guest host filling in for Star/Rosie–some lady named Sherri Shepherd–said she flatly doesn’t believe in Evolution. The dumb blonde, Elisabeth, said she’s a fan of ID and went into some sort of BS about how she couldn’t believe the Sistine Chapel just “appeared,” or something like that (I learned all this from my sister, who somehow managed to suffer through watching this).
Barbara apparently did question Shepherd’s non-belief in Evolution, asking if she had ever read Darwin, to which Shepherd (of course) replied “No, I read the Bible,” or something to that effect. From my sister, it sounded like Barbara wasn’t terribly confrontational about this idiocy, apparently because she was more in shock that such idiocy was coming out of someone not Elisabeth.
Of course I already know what the answer to this is, but is it really too difficult when someone says, “I don’t believe in Evolution, even though I proudly don’t have the faintest clue what the hell it even is,” to turn to that person and vigorously chew them out for the awful idiocy?
Plate Tectonics is “just a theory,” too, but do these morons also believe that volcanoes and earthquakes are caused by an angry God and not the movement of the Earth’s crust?
None of this should come as any surprise. It should be obvious (as evidenced by the present head moron in charge) that to be a politician, no intelligence is required.
We have only 2 real parties in the same way that any election in any country, even with a bunch of parties, pretty much comes down to 2 major supergroups of choices anyway. The parties start forming factions with each other and such depending on their chances of winning, elections in general tend to boil down to 2 options in the end.
Plate Tectonics is “just a theory,” too, but do these morons also believe that volcanoes and earthquakes are caused by an angry God and not the movement of the Earth’s crust?
funny you should mention that:
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/hydroplate.htm
are creationists imaginative?
sometimes.
are they idiots?
always.
Yeah, that’s too bad. He should have run on a Barbarian King platform — it worked for Arnold.
Err, what am I saying? Gore won.
Dad, did you forget your meds again this morning?
c’mon, now, take your pills like a good boy.
Err, what am I saying? Gore won.
*sigh*
I look back and recall having voted for Clinton only because I thought Gore might have a chance to succeed him.
regardless of how it turned out, I’m glad to see Al has bounced back and at least is trying to have a positive influence on important issues still.
He makes a persuasive argument that he actually can do as much good freelance as he could in the oval office.
as someone pointed out earlier, the problem of idiots in office is one thing, the problem of those VOTING for the idiots is far larger.
ron paul 2008
mike gravel 2008
end the fed
problem reaction solution
the love you withhold is the pain you carry
sigh… I am completely amazed that anyone bothers paying attention to these so-called “debates” or the present “candidates” at all. Let the zealots choose their nominees at the conventions, wait for the candidates to rush to the center (hopefully not knocking each other over in the process) and then I’ll start paying attention. Otherwise this is all just hot air.
I disagree. Jimmy Carter was the guy who talked about God a lot in his campaign in 1976, and won. Falwell voted for a guy who consulted astrologers in the 1980 campaign.
seaducer wrote:
At least I hope the majority of Americans aren’t creationuts.
A forlorn hope. And a large majority of Americans favor teaching creationism either alongside or instead of evolution.
Mike Haubrich, FCD wrote:
Jimmy Carter was the guy who talked about God a lot in his campaign in 1976, and won.
At least Carter kept god out of his administration and his religion separate from his public life. Reagan changed things when, as president, he proclaimed 1983 the year of the Bible.
Speaking of evolution …
PZ, I hope you’ll update your article on sponges in light of the exciting finding that they “have most of the genetic components of synapses. Even more surprising is that the sponge proteins have ‘signatures’ indicating they probably interact with each other in a similar way to the proteins in synapses of humans and mice”
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1612
It’s strange how religion in US politics has become such a big thing. Historically, I believe the religion of the presidential candidates was no big thing, since they were generally members of mainstream Protestant churches — as was a majority of the public. JFK’s Catholicism was a big thing, but in the end it made no real difference. Carter was a Baptist, and an enlightened one at that, but as another commenter pointed out, he kept religion out of politics, and rightly so.
Billy Graham was always hovering at the White House door, but usually as a benevolent force, not a ranting pulpit-thumper like Falwell or Robertson.
Reagan pandered to the Christian right and let the Falwells, Robertsons, Reeds and Dobsons wiggle their way into national politics. W has only made it worse. Now each and every presidential candidate faces a challenge that I doubt many are up to face. They are going to have to stand up to the religious zealots and say, “No more. Religion and politics need to stay away from each other.”
I don’t see any current candidate with enough backbone to resist being pulled into a religious/creationist/evolution debate. They are trying to appeal to as many potential voters as possible at this point, so they all sound wishy washy.
Oh dear, not rightwingprof again (#13).
Further to Blake Stacey (#23): The Standard Model is in fact the very best example in history of empiricism in science. It has been empirically verified down to as many decimal points as anyone has tried to test, in every single detail, in thousands of meticulous experiments over a period of decades. Not one single solitary aspect of the Standard Model has ever been empirically disproved.
The perceived deficiency in the Standard Model is precisely that it is *limited* to empiricism – it does not provide a fundamental explanation as to *why* the numbers it predicts so unerringly well should have the values they do.
Thus, rightwingprof, by giving an example that in fact demonstrates exactly the opposite of the point you were trying to support, you’ve proved conclusively (even, one might be forgiven for saying, empirically) that you do not know what the hell you are talking about.
Jud: couldn’t have said it better myself! Thanks for saving me the tedium.
Wasn’t he a post-modernist, feminist, liberal?
phat
Nah, “Magic Man done it” is a better hypothesis if there are no selection forces, and all we have are accidents. Of course, reproduction and heritable phenotype variation guarantee the existence of selection forces. Make that heritable variation just slighly imperfect, and you guarantee evolution.
However, maybe we can all agree that heritability does not exist – that children have random traits. Or maybe we can agree that reproduction doesn’t happen. In either case, Magic Sky Daddy would be a compelling hypothesis.
As with any other hypothesis, it would take a mountain of evidence in order to elevate it to “just a Theory.”
I’m with Hume on that last one– even without a theory of natural selection, ‘I dunno’ is better than ‘magic man dun it’– if only because the second is just a disguised version of the first.
The really interesting candidate, religionwise, is John Edwards. Edwards says he is a Southern Baptist. He claimed his faith had been reignited recently, so presumably he’s a fired-up Southern Baptist. It’s a precept of Southern Baptist Protestantism that the Bible is literally true. Either Edwards believes in a six-day creation, or he’s an apostate.
So how come no one has asked him his views on evolution?
As to where the U.S. is going with this… who was it who said that the optimists are learning Japanese and the pessimists are learning Mandarin?
@ Monado #69
Ramen to that.
I’m just very depressed that this whole issue is actually a subject of debate amongst prospective presidential candidates.
Anyone know of a good source for Mandarin tutorials? My Japanese is servicable but a little rusty. I don’t think that will matter.
I asked So how come no one has asked him his views on evolution?
Actually, it turns out someone did, on Monday night, in the Dems’ big faith-a-thon. And when Soledad O Beien pressed Edwards on the discrepancy between evolution and his professed Souther Baptist faith, this is what he said.
So, Paul, a little intellectual consistency please. Explain why what McCain and Huckabee said is so much more reprehensiible than the above.
Remember, these are politicans. Edwards is trying to make his science sound like a religion. Huckabee is trying to make his religion sound like a science. I’d give that one to Edwards too.
McCain I’m not so sure about, but if I had to bet I’d say he was with Edwards on this one. Huckabee and Brownback’s rhetoric on this is much more creation-friendly than McCain’s and Edwards’ that I’ve seen.
So, Paul, a little intellectual consistency please. Explain why what McCain and Huckabee said is so much more reprehensiible than the above.
I know you hate dems, Gerard, but name me the last democrat either in the senate, the house, or a presidential candidate, who said it was OK to teach ID/creationism as science?
yes, let’s see that intellectual honesty at work.
who, again, has been the courtiers of the ultra right wing evangelicals over the last 25 years?
the neocons, or the dems?
yeah. teach the controversy!
face it. YOUR party is the one that needs the big slap in the face at this point.
why don’t you spend more of your time out there helping them to wean themselves from the creobots?
here, let me help you:
if you aren’t already, you should be contributing to Ron Paul’s campaign if you consider yourself a conservative in the original sense of the term.
pushing his platform to the fore would at least get people thinking there is SOME sanity left on the rethuglican side.
Let’s compare the two:
McCain: There’s no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today. And I do believe that we are unique, and [I] believe that God loves us.
Edwards: Because the hand of God was in every step of what’s happened with man. The hand of God today is in every step of what happens with me and every human being that exists on this planet.
Peas in a pod, I’d say. But only one of the two was berated for it. Curious.
Gerard Harbison,
I know you weren’t asking me, but my answer is that it isn’t. Edwards’ answer sucks pretty much as much as the other two
oh, wait, was that a rhetorical question? /sarcasm
never ask rhetorical questions… you may not like the answer ;)
FWIW, Icthyic, and this isn’t about me, I’m hoping Giuliani gets the nod on the GOP side, and Richardson on the Dem. And if we were fortunate enough to have that choice, I’d have to think long and hard before voting one way or the other.
I’ve been arguing for science – not just evolution, by the way – on conservative fora, and within the Republican party, for a couple of decades. I don’t need silly rants to encourage me, least of all from people who think ‘Rethuglican’ is an argument. Lincoln was one of those Rethuglicans, remember. This week, while the Republicans had a formally secular debate, the Dems were trying to outdo each other in sanctimoniousness in a forum promoted by a specifically Christian, religious organization.
I dislike the Religious Right with a passion. Familiarity, in my case, bred contempt. How do you feel about the Religious Left?
neocon=rethuglican in my book, and I can make an awful good argument for it.
now, whether you like “silly rants” or not (you might point the finger at your own in this area), you can’t argue with what I said about who sponsors religious propaganda in politics, can you?
answer my question:
who are the dems who have said it’s alright to teach ID/creationism in our schools? who are the dems who have sponsored legislation to encourage such?
you’re missing the big picture here:
it’s been very clear for the last 30 years that the dems, religious or not, seem able to check their beliefs at the door.
can your party claim the same?
i thought not.
so, if you want an “even handed” discussion, you better wait for the entire playing field to not be so skewed to begin with.
…and on a more personal note…
guiliani???
YEEEUCKKK.
I seriously suggest you look at Ron Paul.
ah, here ya go:
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
IMO, why this guy isn’t getting more leverage in the republican party kinda reflects the fact that the republican party has mostly abandoned the things that gave them the label “conservative” to begin with.
Guiliani knows as much about foreign policy as my dead grandmother.
you better HOPE he doesn’t become the next pres.
Indeed, Ron Paul polls very well on Free Republic, though they marginally prefer Duncan Hunter. The two of them have the wingnut vote locked up.
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/poll?poll=185;results=2
OK, two things:
1) If Al Gore decided to run for President, as a candidate for the Greens, the US would have its 3rd party. Who knows, he even might win, as he also has credibility beyond the environmental issues.
2) If you want to wedge politicians on religion, don’t ask them about God, which is acceptable to Jews and Muslims as well, ask them about Jesus. Watch them waffle as they try to avoid making any clear statement on that subject :-)
so, Ron Paul is a wingnut, eh?
got anything to back that up?
I’m listening.
and still noticing you haven’t answered my previous question too.
are we done with that?
Or do you admit that bringing up religion on the dems side is not the same as on the repub side at this point?
’cause that WAS the reason I posted that to begin with.
If Al Gore ran for the Greens he’d get creamed. The Greens aren’t a political party. They are a group of sanctimonious , self-important, fools who just barely get on ballots just so they can whine and complain about not being heard.
It takes more than good policy ideas to have a political party. You need to do the work to actually build a party structure. My experience with pretty much every green I’ve ever met in this country is that they don’t want to do the organizing work. They don’t want to go door to door. They don’t want to raise serious money. They don’t want to make the phone calls.
They think that all they should have to do is have some good ideas and people will hear them and automatically vote for them. That’s never how it has worked and it never will.
Maybe in other parts of the country it’s different. I can’t imagine it is, though.
I have to agree with Gerard, and I work for the Democratic Party here in Lincoln, NE. Edwards’s answer isn’t particularly better than the others. I think, though, that he’s made it clear that has has a healthy respect for the separation of church and state in this country. He’s sounded better about it than Obama.
Wesley Clark, if I remember correctly, has been the best at explaining his respect for the Enlightenment and liberal democracy. It’s too bad he’s not running.
At this point I think we’re stuck. The narrative has been written for a long time and it’s going to be hard to change that narrative. The Democrats haven’t been especially great at trying to change that narrative, but it’s the Republicans (starting, in particular, the 70s) who have written that narrative.
Read some Kevin Phillips.
phat
Ron Paul is a wing-nut.
He’s what I call a “conservatarian” (I didn’t coin that, I don’t know who did).
He squawks and squawks about the war and a couple other things but really, he’s bad news. He has a history of connections with the “Patriot” movement. He despises the UN and considers it part of a conspiracy with all that “New World Order” claptrap.
And this is from one of his direct mail pieces in 1993
Please, it’s best if everyone stay away from Ron Paul.
phat
Check out Orcinus on Ron Paul: here and here. The guy is freaky scary.
He has a history of connections with the “Patriot” movement. He despises the UN and considers it part of a conspiracy with all that “New World Order” claptrap.
ah, fair enough. he said a lot of things recently that made a bit of sense.
he seems to have spent quite a bit of time reading up on foreign policy, for example, and the things he said about investigating the motivations behind terrorist attacks (instead of saying inane shit like “they hate our freedom”) were dead on
oh well. everyone has a good side.
still looking for someone with experience that makes sense on either side, as usual.
I like Obama, sometimes, but hell, he really has no experience. What kind of backing will he have in congress?
Hilary has tangential experience, but her congressional term so far hasn’t shown much, and all the Reps hate her guts.
guiliani is a fruitcake, even NY’s know that.
Edwards is spineless.
now I hear two people say Paul is a wingnut.
Mcaine has gone insane, and doesn’t seem able to make up his mind on anything any more.
the three that showed us they are proud to be idiots, by raising their hands, and then explaining just how MUCH they are idiots aren’t even worth wasting time on.
pretty weak field all the way round.
what else is new?
*sigh*
Orcinus pretty much said why I thought Ron Paul might have some sense:
Molly, with her usual insight, laid out the essential struggle we’re having with Paul. As a libertarian leftist, I understand viscerally the charm of Paul’s message. Who wouldn’t be charmed? He’s anti-war, anti-torture, anti-drug war, and anti-corporation — a real progressive dream date.
Until you reflect on the fact that he’s also anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-sane immigration policy, and apparently, anti-separation of church and state as well:
I only saw the first part of him, and he added:
anti big government (hence the conservative comment) and pro researching the history and motivations behind Islamic fundamentalism.
never saw the back end of him before now.
oh well.
“Nah, “Magic Man done it” is a better hypothesis if there are no selection forces, and all we have are accidents.”
But how did the Magic Man come to be? By… accident? ;)
John McCain, who never saw a gaping rectum he didn’t want to curl up in, then crawled right up Huckabee’s butt and started ordering tasteful accessories from Ikea.
And with that, my drink went spewing over my keyboard. Nicely done, PZ.
RE: your title
“if only banality disqualifed one from running for president”
Then there wouldn’t be ANY candidates left in the race.
— And the problem with that is…Hmm.
FB
Karey wrote:
Yes, in most countries there are two major parties which are most porbably going to be in the government in the end. But that doesn’t mean there are only two options in the end, far from it. In Germany right now there are 5 important parties: CDU, SPD, FDP, the Greens and the Linkspartei.
The SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) is somewhat of a worker’s party and is considered to be more or less progressive. Currently it would get about 34% of the votes.
The CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union) is pretty conservative, at least in European terms. Would currently get about 40% (Luckily their policies don’t involve Christianity at all, but I still loath them.)
The FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei) is liberal (10%).
The Greens (14%). I don’t I need to tell you something about them.
And the Linkspartei (The Left Party). As with the Greens the name says it all. The Linkspartei is arguebly the worst party of the five, but would still get 12%.
Nevertheless that’s the choices you’ve got here. The policies of a coalition between the SPD and the Greens differ quite a lot from the policies of a coalition between SPD and the Linkspartei. Thus it doesn’t boil down to only the choice between the biggest two parties, for the coalition partner will influence the policies in one way or another.
At the moment Germany is reigned by a coalition of CDU and SPD.
We have only 2 real parties in the same way that any election in any country, even with a bunch of parties, pretty much comes down to 2 major supergroups of choices anyway.
Oh yeah, that’s why here in Scotland we have a minority Nationalist government in a 4-way split parliament with the Scottish Green Party effectively holding the balance of power…
I often think the US has the least democratic “democracy” in the world…
“I am fully convinced there’s a God of the universe that loves us very much”
And that is why god created a hell where you can burn forever.
DCP, don’t forget the neonazis in the NPD party. It doesn’t have representation in the federal German government but sits in several state houses, esp in the states that made up the former east germany. I think there is a real danger in the existence of a multitude of parties namely that in the end you can’t have a functional government because you seldom have a consensus. Just look at the Italians, something like 30-odd different governments since the war ? Or the Israelis where sometimes a small radical (and often religious) minority in the Knesset can dictate policy because they can add the numbers neceesary to pass or reject legislation.. Not that I find the political choices ind this country appealling – but then again, as a foreigner I don’t have to.
Umilik, yes, you are right that too many political parties will eventuelly block any meaningful consensus. But the current German constitution, the basic law, is quite good in preventing that from happening. The people who drafted this constitution learned from the mistakes of the Weimar republic. So unless the NPD gets more than 5% of the overall votes it won’t get into the federal government. And as soon as they try something anti-democratical like the Nazis back in 20s and 30s they’ll be outlawed, ’cause that’s unconstitutional (which is reasonable in the light of the Weimar republic…).
Nevertheless several parties are able to actually represent the people’s will in a more democratic way. For example neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would match my political opinions completely, but with 5 or 6 parties I’m well suited. Too many is bad, but too few are bad as well.
Technically, though, any event which was not intended can, under one definition of the word, be called an “accident,” evolution is accidental, in a manner of speaking.
“…not stupidly dismissed as just another religion.”
Yeah, but these guys pick and choose the bits of science they’ll accept. And evolutionary biology isn’t one of them….They don’t call science a religion, they call evolutionary science a religion….
What needs to be understood is that there will be an infinite amount of time after we leave the this world. The things that happen in the few years of our lives on the earth will be insignificant in a million years from now. But, what you believe and how you behave while you are here will determine forever how your environment will be. A billion years after earth is destroyed you will be living in the consequences of how the Creator thinks of you. Therefore, let the wise not mock Him. Or do those who do so really think the thrill of such folly is worth the risk? “It is no fool who gives up what he can never keep to gain what he can never lose.” Forever.
Wow, Pascal’s Wager. Talk about banality there …
I do not envy you US folks on your choices of leaders. I don’t know how to bootstrap new alternatives, even, except by pointing to other places where grassroots organizations work, somehow.
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