What is Sarah Palin’s Religion?
She is Assemblies of God.
Ted Boatsman, the former Alaskan District Superintendent for the Assemblies of God, was her junior high pastor at Wasilla Assemblies of God Church. Later she attended Juneau Christian Center whose pastor is pastor is Mike Rose. Now, she is attending a more acceptable “Bible Church.”
In high school she was the local leader of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
McCain does more than balance the ticket with a woman. He solves his complicated religious problem with Pentecostals and Charismatics, who according to a recent Barna survey make up almost half of all born again Christians. And the number of born againers is 42% of the general public. McCain’s on again off again relationships with Pentecostals, John Hagee and Rod Parsley, as well as the ill timed Charles Grassley attack on six Pentecostal television ministries – which had provoked a fissure in the shrinking GOP base of Baptists and Pentecostals – are now moot points.
But wait until liberal media finds out. Expect all hell to break loose. She will be portrayed as a pro creationist – Neanderthal. Just wait. And, as well intentioned as they will be, thinking that they are doing Obama a good deed, it will drive the massive Evangelical bloc into the McCain camp. All of Senator Obama’s kind overtures to people of faith will be for naught.
Especially effected will be tight border states Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky; some otherwise close southern states, Florida and North Carolina; and critical big electoral states Pennsyvlania and Ohio.
Note: Has Sarah Palin spoken in tongues? Consider: According to Barna, 36% of the American public are charismatic or Pentecostal Christians. We are talking about huge numbers, probably 80 million adults. Compare that to 24% of the American public who are Catholic or the 13% who are African American. Politicians have to know these numbers first. The business world follows and the media is usually the last to know. See the sourcing and analysis at….
https://dougwead.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/has-sarah-palin-spoken-in-tongues/
Doug Wead 
Yes, the media will have a field day with this. It should further illustrate the dvidie in the country. Get ready for what may be an ugly race.
When Sen. Grassley lets his investigation drop it will prove what we have known all along. It was an atttack on religious doctrine that the Sen. is opposed to and thought had fallen out of favor with republicans. What will be funny is to watch the media try and figure out how to attack Gov. Palin after having defended Hillary all this time. In the end they will prove by their actions that they only care about Liberal women not all women.
A savvy pick by McCain. A VP pick is the first personnel decision a candidate for President makes…seems like McCain opted for more change with Palin than Obama did with Biden. Who is the agent of change now?
McCain does more than balance the ticket with a woman. He solves his complicated religious problem with Pentecostals, who according to a recent Barna survey make up almost half of all born again Christians.
A reasonable educational point, Doug.
But wait until MSNBC find out. Expect all hell to break loose. She will be portrayed as a pro creationist – Neanderthal. Just wait. And, as well intentioned as they will be, thinking that they are doing Obama a good deed, it will drive the Evangelicals into the McCain camp. All of Senator Obama’s kind overtures to people of faith will be for naught.
McCain’s support of the unpopular Iraq war will continue to be used by the Obama camp.
Obama is a media darling that McCain is not.
Many in the media like to brand Biblical Christians negatively and dismissively as fundamentalists. Not all Biblical Christians are, as there are more moderate positions taken by some, especially those of us with degrees that deal with Biblical, theological, and philosophical subtleties.
I reason the Republican ticket is in tough, but having Palin on the ticket may help the cause.
“Pro-creationist Neanderthal?” Don’t insult Neanderthal Man so.
If she doesn’t want to be portrayed as an anti-science nut, all she has to do is not be an anti-science nut. Not difficult. Not difficult for Neanderthal, who understood only too well the dangers of having Homo sapiens next door and failing to understand evolution.
It seems to me to be a sad commentary that one’s religion, rather than one’s qualifications or competence, seems to be in this case what makes a person the “best” candidate for high office.
Also, Ed is right. Anyone who advocates “teaching the controversy” is in my opinion someone open to jettisoning science and fact. That should not be acceptable to *anyone*, yet will bring people in flocks to the polls.
I heard she is a secret Muslim.
“secret muslim”…hahahahahahahaa!!!
I love that one.
Really, though, I do like that she is Assemblies of God. I recently attended a Hillsong United conference, and being southern Baptist, it was refreshing to see that the Trinity is their main focus and source of strength. Plus it was a rockin’ show to boot.
I always thought of AG as the pentecostal “holy rollers” that are scattered around my area, Tennessee. Not so, as I learned firsthand, these kids at the show were having a blast, and most of them looked like any other teen you would see anywhere. No extremely long skirts and lack of makeup for girls, or shirt and tie guys, these kids had t-shirts and shorts, and had a blast worshiping God together, and hopefully, Sarah Palin is as down-to-earth as the people I met. Few of today’s Christians are uptight, judgmental separatists, but the few that are certainly make a lot of noise in the media.
I also think that starting out in the PTA, then city council, then mayor, then governor, and now VP candidate, hardly means unqualified, except for “religious affiliation”. Obviously, her peers feel that she is a great leader, or she would have never rose through the ranks in her community to where she is today.
I have to say that picking her as his running mate was a brilliant move. Evangelicals will vote for an evangelical, and this move is simply brilliant.
A couple days ago I could not imagine a McCain white house.. but this move seems to even the playing field.. and your points about how the media will effect the evangelical community are brilliant.
Another good post Doug!
They will never keep religion out of government! They all say it… Like sheep.
God bless America! Over and over like a broken record.
Simply put… There is no God… And those who are running on that platform are running all of us into the ground. They wan to see the planet explode into a fiery ball of flames.
Unlike the very scriptures they hold so dear, and spew to the rest of us they don’t love there fellow man or women. God believers judge and place blame on others while they themselves don’t even follow the rules they “believe” God told them to do.
It’s a sick mind that believe in God and shoves it down the rest of our throats.
Great post, thanks for helping us catch up on her! I’m incredibly excited about this ticket, and think that this put McCain over the top!
I agree, Jon
Palin is a disgrace to women, and science. She is potentially worse than Bush. Ignorance is dangerous.
Can we afford four more years of Bush?
I think NOT
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/the-environment-is-politics/
Does Obama’s “kind overtures to people of faith” include the one about clinging to God and guns? If that’s “kind” I’d hate to see unkind.
She supports the teaching of “creationism” in public school science classes. That does not make her a Neanderthal.
It just makes her wrong.
Hi Doug. I think it might be too quick to identify Palin as an Assemblies of God member. The Alaska AG District paper only stated that she attends an AG church when she in Juneau. According to the following article, her home church is The Church on the Rock, an independent congregation: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g4-w_DCWffagBaQb8Il9a0R2hkPAD92SL7E00
The article continue, “Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Palin attends different churches and does not consider herself Pentecostal.”
Darrin Rodgers
Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
http://www.iFPHC.org
Palin brings three things to the table: she’s a woman, she’s young and she’s pro-life. Period.
Does anyone think that qualifies her to be president?
For that matter, would McCain have chosen her had she been a man?
Don’t be ridiculous.
Church on the Rock started out as a cult based here in Texas, in Rockwall as I recall.
Still?
Everyone in the race goes to a christian church…
Cheers,
Tom
morningcupofcoffee.com
Palin helps McCain immensly with Religious voters, but she does more than that as well:
http://practicalpolitik.wordpress.com/
Sarah Palin’s religion does not matter at all! I do care that she thinks creationism should be taught along side science in school which is a real issue. Yes, let’s keep moving backwards by mixing science and religion. God help us all!
It’s a shame McCain picked a woman not based on experience and merit but that she has a fresh good looking face and did well on his checklist.
I will admit she has created a media buzz but it will not last and her weakness will be exposed. I have posted about her three times myself so guilty of addingand even posted her Alaskan beuty pagent photo and others…
Sarah Palin’s religion does not matter at all! I do care that she thinks creationism should be taught along side science in school which is a real issue. Yes, let’s keep moving backwards by mixing science and religion. God help us all!
It’s a shame McCain picked a woman not based on experience and merit but that she has a fresh good looking face and did well on his checklist.
I will admit she has created a media buzz but it will not last and her weakness will be exposed. I have posted about her three times myself so guilty of adding to the hype. Posted her Alaskan beauty pageant photo and other pics of her also…
http://ideasandrevolution.net/
P.S. Sorry Doug but hit submit by accident so please delete by first comment.
I was a member of an AG church for years. If I had been on the fence about who to vote for (I wasn’t, I support Obama), Sarah Palin would tip my vote in the opposite direction. Yes, that may sound backward and reactionary. But so was my experience with the AG church in general.
1) Another exception is her belief that global warming is not caused by humans.
2) McCain had met Palin only six months earlier at a meeting of the National Governors Association.
3) He’d spoken with her about the position only once, on the Sunday before he formally offered it to her.
I don’t know if it will work or not, I guess it will, but in my opinion it’s a damn desperate move from McCain. I mean, I’m sure it’s best for mr McCain but what about the United States of America? It’s like letting a child drive a car.
Isn’t anyone worried about Obama’s lack of experience? Really, the haters are setting the bar higher because Sarah Palin is a woman. But what else is new…
Simply amazing. And quite expected I might add. Let’s ee, she is a woman (former beauty queen, soccr mom, chrsitsian?, assemblies of God so she has the evangelical church in the purse. If that is tru, then it is a sad commentary on the state of the church. Sure, a few few pet positions which many people including my brothers and sisters in Christ haven’t realy raken an objective look at. But she will save the election. What asre we really looking for in thisd nation. We are well aware of what the real issue with Obama that the rank and file of the all but dead evangelical church has. It is eveident every Sunday morning in our churches. Let’s see what her stance is on the condition of the poor, justic, racial reconciliation, immigration, anf foreign relations. We still have the same tired ideology that the put this nation in peril. I don’t think a soccer mon from Alaska, regardless of the “religious” badge she wears is. True, the evangeical church will swoom to her in the same way they did to George Bush, and what they sow they will reap. I do not agree with all that Obama puts out, but he hjas the sense enough to know, in order to bring about change, it take the collective whole and yes, having a running mate that has a great undserstading of Washington helps. He at least surrounds himself with people who can understand the issues and not parrot a party line agenda. Now McCain is claimimg the change mantra, of course. He realized that “experience” wasn’t working. Now Palin. What will he come up with next. People, let’s not allow the GOP to prostitute the church again. When will we learn. The church needs to grasp the message of the kingdom and stop buyingthsi GOP bit about their undersatnding f of our moral concerns. They promise and don’t deliver, promosie and don’t deliver. And now they insult us to our face and we think it is a gift from God. We reallyneed to pray for discernment this time around.
With respect I must take real issue with some of your statements.
“But wait until MSNBC find out. She will be portrayed as a pro creationist – Neanderthal.”
While I’m sure you are correct in that some the opinion show hosts will it would be a surprise is she were portrayed a such in the news programming. If she is a creationist, it’s certainly newsworthy and should be reported as such.
” …thinking that they are doing Obama a good deed, it will drive the Evangelicals into the McCain camp.”
I would ask if you are as skeptical of say fox news when they, in my opinion, attempt the opposite favoring John McCain?
“All of Senator Obama’s kind overtures to people of faith will be for naught.”
For naught why exactly? Your comment suggests these Evangelicals are incapable of accepting a kindness for what it is without prejudice or some erroneous conflation.
And finally, I wonder if your most basic principles aren’t disquieted by what is in essence a marriage of convenience? I’ll check back and thank you.
Sincerely,
Kelly Scott
Dallas, TX
Creationism is nothing more than an attempt to confused real science with mather of
faitt.Because you will not prove the possibility of aGod
This is the type of rhetoric that kept the best man from being the republican candidate: Mitt Romney. It doesn’t matter the religion of the person. What matters is their conservative stand on absolute principles that never change. one plus one equalls two; it always will. Relative thinking is what is killing our country. If our choices aren’t based on absolute principles — anarchy will soon prevail.
MSNBC is known to be the anti-Fox. In other words, leans to the left. Fox has commentators who are admittedly right-leaning. They also have commentators who are admittedly left-leaning. But the news is unbiased. MSNBC claims to be unbiased but is obviously left-leaning. That is what the difference is. There was a Breaking News banner Friday when John McCain announced the choice of Sarah Palin. The banner said “How many houses does Palin add to the ticket?” That was a cheap shot. Reporting that she is creationist is ok. The truth should be reported.
And, speaking as an evangelical, Obama’s overtures of kindness have meant nothing to me. I believe he is sincere in his faith but we don’t have the same religion. I take the Bible literally. He admittedly does not. That leaves us a chasm apart. But leaving that out of the mix, his ideologies are dangerously sliding down the slippery slope of Socialism. Everyone should read up on Socialism. It will sound eerily familiar.
As for Sarah Palin, I was delighted to find that she is an AG member. She does not wear it on her sleeve. She should not have to. Her attitudes and actions should give that away. Her integrity appears to be impeccable (from what I have read). She has executive experience, and she is a regular person: a Washington outsider.
I will be watching and listening. I am not a lemming. I think for myself.
Hi Doug,
As WordPress highlighted your blog on Labor Day, I found you that way. Nice kudo!
Thank you for all the work that Mercy Corps does.
As a Northwesterner and a non-Christian, I think that the choice of Sarah Palin is even more frustrating than any person I had expected John McCain to choose.
He is just pandering to religious groups who should not be part of the political process. There is a separation of church and state, after all, for good reasons that the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) knew all too well.
Also, our region of the country is usually more remote, and more independent , than the rest and many will therefore say “out of touch”, but that is certainly not true for most of the urban areas. However, Alaska may really be an exception to that. I’m not sure. But life there IS hampered by the harsh clime and I would think community, priorities and news and much else is “different” because of it. Being Governor there is not business-as-usual.
Sarah Palin is not qualified, and the reason I say that is she’s been in moderate-level public service too short a time in too small a state. If she had been a man or a non-Christian, she would never have been considered. Yet, she might become the next President, if something ails Mc Cain.
This cannot be taken lightly. Frankly, I believe that, if elected, John Mc Cain will serve out his term without physical problems. He is probably healthier than a young black man who smokes (smoked? Did he stop???).
But, accidents and other situations in a Mc Cain Presidency could arise, and just the “possibility” of having Sarah Palin as President sometime in the next 4 years should make every American take more-than-a-moment to process that, before buying into ideologies etc.
I am more qualified than she is. And, I doubt that I would be considered. Millions of other women are. Millions of other men are. This was a terrible choice for our country.
I think people need to work hard and fast to bring viable third and fourth parties into the arena. And, for all our sakes, we had better insist on serious and complete Campaign Reform, from whoever is in Power, this time around.
Be prepared to start on those wider campaigns, because all of our existence depends on re-fashioning this broken system.
Best to all — Em
http://diabetesdietdialogue.wordpress.com
“Everyone knows someone who needs this information!” (TM)
Props on making the front page!
I agree it doesn’t matter, and MSNBC should go nuts… but who cares? If a network yells in the forest and no one watches them…. are they really there?
Sarah Palin is a pro-NRA gun fanatic who likes to kill things with guns, and call it a “sport.” (Well, with any luck, she has a better aim than Dick Cheney.)
She is vehemently anti-gay.
She denies global warming.
(Well, maybe that makes sense in Alaska.)
My question: How can she call herself Christian?
I thought Christian meant that you follow the teachings of Christ. No?!
Killing things for “sport” when the commandment is Thou Shalt Not Kill
Hating two people because they love each other when the commandment is
to love one another!
Putting corporate profits above protecting the planet when the commandment
is that we be stewards of the earth
Being pro-war, when the commandment is to
hammer your swords into plowshares
Look, if you’re a biased, intolerant war-dog who likes to shoot things,
FINE, but don’t go around telling people that Jesus is your hero.
Sarah Palin: 1.) IS a Creationist, 2.) politically supports abstinence (although her 17 yr old daughter is 5 months pregnant), 3.) has clearly sought Federal pork (i.e. the REAL story about the “bridge to nowhere”), 4.) is abiblically vindictive (see troopergate), and 5.) is associated with the Alaska Independence Party (a group advocating succession from the American Union). Then there are her extremely radical views regarding abortion (no exception for rape, incest, or genetic malfeasance). Bully for her to MAKE THE CHOICE to bring a severe Down”s Syndrome child into this world! However, a normal middle class family would be to financially strapped to support such a decision. Neanderthal doesn’t begin to describe Sarah Palin …
If “people of faith” see this as desirable in a Vice President … let them go to the dark side … rapture and all!
And evolution is proven ??? Please. There’s a missing link because — it’s Missing. I find it takes more faith to believe that yarn. The intricate and delicate balance of earth and sun, the complexity of creation, the human body insist that an orderly being designed it all. Creation itself reveals a creator.
As to the female/Christian offering being made to us, I hope Christians will not continue to look to such, but will take up our responsibility to pray and look to God, regardless of whom is elected. We have a way of putting a check mark on the matter with the least hint of a Christian background and then ignore our mandate to give the office sustained prayer support. I know where my vote has to go, but regardless of the outcome, my prayers must go forth continually.
Yes, in your terms. In science, something gets the name “theory” when it’s so well demonstrated that it’s known to be extremely predictive — that is, it gets to be called theory when it’s clear it works. Reality is evolution theory is much better understood than gravity theory. Is gravity “proven?” Then yes, evolution is proven, too.
Missing link? You mean in human evolution? We have more than 20 species between modern humans and our last common ancestor with chimpanzees. We have thousands of specimens of many of those links. Is there a missing link? Only to those who have had their heads in the sand for the past 75 years. Even human evolution has mountains of evidence supporting it.
You make a religious statement, but you ignore all of the science. While Christians take it on faith that God is behind creation, creationists insist on dumbing down the science, and make erroneous leaps in logic, to claim they have evidence that simply does not exist.
Sure, it looks designed. We know the processes that give it that appearance. Does that really shake your faith in God? Why not take nature as God gives it to us, instead of insisting God somehow got it wrong?
I don’t think Obama’s overtures on faith can be reduced to either his efficacy with half the evangelical population, or the media’s efforts to expose her position.
I think at first glance most of us on the left saw this as a choice for McCain between catering to the business wing (Romney) or the religious wing (Pawlenty) of his party. Palin came from left field, but clearly her positions alone on education and choice speak loudly enough.
I wonder though, AOG was once a peach church. I wonder what her fellow worshippers make of her position on the war?
God got it right. He always does. That is – the God of Heaven. He created the earth and man. No faith shaken in him. It is well known that there are missing forms in the evolutionary theory. Science itself is dumbed down, unable to produce them. Your practice of twisting around words and ascribing meaning to them is of an ilk with the confusion of evolutionary science, so called. The attempt reminds me of the saying, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance; baffle them with _______________.” The ploy missed it with me on both counts. Don’t try again. You’re barking up the wrong tree.
Way to go weadread. It seems there is always a site sheriff feeling compelled to correct other’s posts, but to contort it the way he did — Guess that’s the only way some people can “fix” their theories. I’m glad the truth is real and solid unlike theories you have to form like silly putty to attempt to make something out of them.
G-d has it all under control. She is pentecostal women with christian beliefs and all the homos, lesbians, baby killers, etc., will be on the run. Their dark world is about to light up and the sins are to be exposed for what they truly are. You have my vote. Go Sarah Palin & John McCain.
Anyone who answers the age of the earth “Might be 6,000 years or it could be more” should be automatically excluded from any elected office or any school board as well. Mike Huckabee falls into this category as well.
I have to admit I did like her dad’s bumper sticker about “Vegitarian – Old Indian word for bad hunter”
I merely noted what the science is — evidence from nature, by the way, which we Christians consider to be a testament direct from the hand of God, regardless what creationists believe.
But don’t take my word for it, go check the stuff out for yourself:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eorigins/index.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/ancestor/index.html
Nice to see Religion doesn’t matter, it only 42 comments to say it….
Remember No News, hell let’s create some….Pentecostals can get the attention of Evangelical’s? now that’s a mouth full….atleast what 5 extra votes…
She’s from Alaska – how many of us east or south of Montana care. The only way she will survive in Washington is around lobbiest, the kids will want to leave in a week.
It’s all for show…
Palin was a wise choice by McCain. You are right and the media will slam her every way they can. She is not a liberal woman in her beliefs, and she will be criticized for that I am sure. I think she will surprise her critics and stand strong. I am anxious to see how this all plays out.
Sarah Palin ran for a three-year term on the Wasilla city council, then won re-election to a second three-year term. So they apparently liked her.
In 1996, Palin challenged and defeated incumbent John Stein for the office of mayor, whom she criticized for wasteful spending and high taxes. She was even praised for cutting property taxes by 40 percent while improving roads and sewers and strengthening the Police Department. She even reduced her salary. She ran for re-election and won. So, once again, they liked her enough to re-elect her. She was also elected as the president of the conference of mayors. Term limits prevented her from running for a third term as mayor.
Here are some interesting quotes regarding Evolution:
“…What about evolution? It certainly has the function of knowledge but has it conveyed any?…It is true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so, I haven’t yet heard it.”
-Dr. Colin Patterson, PhD – Paleontology
“Each species of mammal-like reptile that has been found appears suddenly in the fossil record and is not preceded by the species that is directly ancestral to it. It disappears some time later, equally abruptly, without leaving a directly descended species.” [ New Scientist vol. 93 No. 1295, The Reptiles that became Mammals, by Tom Kemp, March 4, 1982, p. 581.]
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.”
– Francis Crick, Nobel Prize winner, “Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature”, 1981 (p. 88)
“The explanatory doctrines of biological evolution do not stand up to an objective, in-depth criticism. They prove to be either in conflict with reality or else incapable of solving the major problems involved.”
(Pierre-P. Grasse’, Evolution of Living Organisms [New York: Academic Press, 1977], p. 202)
“Evolutionary theory has been enshrined as the centerpiece of our educational system, and elaborate walls have been erected around it to protect it from unnecessary abuse. – – What the ‘record’ shows is nearly a century of fudging and finagling by scientists attempting to force various fossil morsels and fragments to conform with Darwin’s notions, all to no avail. Today the millions of fossils stand as very visible, ever-present reminders of the paltriness of the arguments and the overall shabbiness of the theory that marches under the banner of evolution.”
(Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny [New York: Viking Press, 1983], pp. 112, 125)
“The theory of evolution is universally accepted not because it can be proved by logical, coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible!”
(D.M.S. Watson, Scientist)
“One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet we are here—as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.”
(George Wald, Harvard professor and Nobel Prize winner)
“Take the human body alone—the chance that all the functions of the individual could just happen, is a statistical monstrosity.”
(George Gallup, originator or the well-known opinion polls)
“Even if generous concessions are granted to evolutionists, the probability for the chance formation of an eye is still 1 in 10 to the 266th power!”
(from: Wysong, R.L., The Creation-Evolution Controversy, Inquiry Press, Midland, Michigan, 1981, p. 308)
“The evolutionist’s problems are further complicated by the fact that the evolutionary theory calls for the chance development of the eye several times, not just once.”
(Scott M. Huse, “The Collapse of Evolution,” p. 26)
Isn’t Palin in fact a creationist, radically anti-choice fundamentalist? That’s not wrong to bring to public light: it’s right to expose it as idiocy.
Here are a few more interesting quotes regarding Evolution:
“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” [Stephen Jay Gould, Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging? Paleobiology, Vol. 6, January 1980, p. 127. Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University.]
“Links are missing just where we most fervently desire them, and it is all too probable that many ‘links’ will continue to be missing.” [Jepsen, L. Glenn; Mayr, Ernst; Simpson George Gaylord. Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution, New York, Athenaeum, 1963 p. 114.]
“Many new groups of plants and animals suddenly appear, apparently without any close ancestors. Most major groups of organisms–phyla, subphyla and even classes–have appeared in this way. This aspect of the record is real, not merely the result of faulty or biased collecting. A satisfactory explanation of evolution must take it into consideration and provide an explanation…The fossil record, which has produced the problem, is not much help in its solution.” [The Evolution of Life by Everett C. Olson. The New American Library, New York and Toronto. 1965. p. 94.]
“Joining amino acids into a growing protein chain requires energy and the removal of a water molecule (the removal of an -OH group from the end of the chain and an -H from the incoming amino acid). Therefore this cannot occur spontaneously in a watery environment, such as a primordial `soup'” (Raven & Johnson, 1995, p.69).
“When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 34)
“One can ask for nothing better in such a pass than a noisy and stubborn opponent, and this Pasteur had in the naturalist Felix Pouchet, whose arguments before the French Academy of Sciences drove Pasteur to more and more rigorous experiments. When he had finished, nothing remained of the belief in spontaneous generation. We tell this story to beginning students of biology as though it represents a triumph of reason over mysticism. In fact it is very nearly the opposite. The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a `philosophical necessity.’ It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.” (Wald G., “The origin of life,” Scientific American, Vol. 191, No. 2, August 1954, pp.45-53, pp.45-46)
“The search for ribozymes evokes the same feeling of achievement and beauty in me that I get when I see a skilled golfer playing a difficult course at well under par. To imagine that related events could take place on their own appears as likely as the idea that the golf ball could play its own way around the course without the golfer. We can, of course imagine that natural forces would lend a helping hand. A hurricane could move the ball down the course, and occasional floods might “putt” the ball into the hole. A small earthquake could then remove it and place it on the next tee. Perhaps each of these events could be simulated if we tried hard enough. But to insist that all of these events be linked together and move in an appropriate direction puts our origin into the realm of Morowitz’s odds [(10 to the 100,000,000,000th power) to 1].” (Shapiro R., “Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life beyond Earth,” John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1999, p.104).
“Students all over the world are taught the historical and scientific greatness of the disproof of spontaneous generation (life coming from nonliving matter). Redi, Pasteur, and Spallanzani proved that life can only come from preexisting life. Ideas such as mice coming from dirty undergarments were finally silenced. How ironic it is when these same educators turn right around and assert that spontaneous generation was the mechanism by which life arose! The modern concept of organic evolution, then, is actually nothing more than a refined regression to sixteenth-century scientific mentality, where spontaneous generation is again proposed.”
(Scott M. Huse, “The Collapse of Evolution,” p. 12)
“It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student…have now been debunked.” [Dr. Derek V. Ager (Department of Geology, Imperial College, London), ‘The nature of the fossil record’. Proceedings of the Geological Association, Vol. 87 (2), 1976, pp. 132-133.]
“The likelihood (probability) of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to number with 40,000 noughts after it… It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.” Sir Fredrick Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 148.
“…Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge, apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics…”
-Colin Patterson, from his November 1981 presentation at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City
“Well, here we all are with all our shelves full of books on evolution. We’ve all read tons of them, and most of us have written one or two. And how could it be that we’ve done all that, we’ve read these books and learned nothing from them? And how could I have worked on evolution for twenty years, and learned nothing from it?”
Dr. Colin Patterson, lifelong evolutionist, in a 1981 lecture presented at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History
Here are the results of a ‘woman’s choice/right:’
WORLDWIDE
Number of abortions per year: Approximately 42 Million
Number of abortions per day: Approximately 115,000
[The Alan Guttmacher Institute. (www.agi-usa.org)]
UNITED STATES
Number of abortions per year: 1.37 Million (1996)
Number of abortions per day: Approximately 3,700
1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).
Regarding global warming:
“The weight of scientific evidence shows that “global warming” began 300 years ago, at the end of an unusually prolonged period of comparative solar inactivity known as the Maunder Minimum, and has continued since then at a near-uniform 1 F per century. Throughout most of that long period of warming, we were not numerous enough or industrially active enough to have made any impact on mean global surface temperatures whatsoever (Akasofu, 2007). The last year which set a record for mean global surface temperature was 1998, when an exceptional but not unprecedented El Nino Southern Oscillation caused a sharp spike in global temperatures as stored heat was released from the world’s oceans to the atmosphere. Note that the instrumental temperature record began only in 1880; and, given the long-run rising trend in global temperatures, higher temperatures at the end of the period of record are scarcely surprising.
Since 1998 no new annual temperature record has been set. Since late 2001, linear-regression trends for all four of the major global-temperature datasets have been downward (Figure 1). The drop in temperature between January 2007 and January 2008 was the greatest since instrumental records began in 1880. Whatever else is happening in the climate, “global warming” is not “happening now” and has not been happening for a decade. No new annual global-temperature record is expected until 2015 (Keenlyside et al., 2008). Not one of the computer models predicted this long period of global cooling. In the month of June 2008, exactly 20 years after James Hansen’s forecast to Congress that global temperatures would rise sharply, global temperatures were actually cooler than they had been when he made the forecast in June 1988.”
From:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/scarewatch/global_warming_not_happening.html
As far as gun rights goes, personally, I don’t like guns, and I don’t own one. But some say that private ownership of guns is the only protection against the possibility (which they claim has a good chance of happening) of the government taking over all private property. Personally, I doubt if the private citizen, even if armed, would stand a very strong chance against the government, but, hey, to each his own opinion.
Regarding Neanderthal Man:
A famous anatomist, Dr. Rudolph Virchow, declared, many years ago, that the primitive features of the Neanderthal people were not due to the fact that these people were subhuman, but were due to diseases, or pathological conditions. He pointed out that the skeleton discovered in France was of an old man who couldn’t walk upright because he had a bad case of arthritis! Dr. Virchow declared, further, that all of these people suffered severely from rickets (a condition caused by the lack of Vitamin D) which causes bones to become soft and deformed. For many years, however, evolutionists paid no attention to what Dr. Virchow was saying, because they wanted Neanderthal Man to be a true subhuman ancestor of man.
Eventually, however, other skeletons of Neanderthal people were found that were fully erect, and it was established, by medical research, that the skeleton found in France was, indeed, that of an arthritic old man. X-rays of the fossil bones and teeth showed, just as Dr. Virchow had declared, that all of the Neanderthal people had rickets. Scientists finally concluded that all of the so-called primitive features of the Neanderthal people were due to pathological conditions, or diseases. Museums have removed the old exhibits of Neanderthal people and have replaced them with new exhibits showing the Neanderthal people looking very human, and about 30 years ago, two scientists published an article about Neanderthal people in which they declared that if Neanderthal Man were given a shave, a haircut, and a bath, put into a business suit, and placed on the New York subway, no one would take a second look!
(the above from: http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/evolutionary-manape-myths.html)
(also see “Upgrading Neanderthal Man”, Time Magazine, May 17, 1971, Vol. 97, No. 20)
Consider a famous Neanderthal fossil discovered in a peat bog near Hamburg, Germany, dated by Professor Reiner Protsch. On February 18, 2005, Protsch was forced to retire in disgrace after a Frankfurt University panel ruled he had “fabricated data and plagiarized the work of his colleagues.” Once believed to be a world-renowned expert on carbon dating, Protsch’s entire professional career is now being questioned. The university noted: “The commission finds that Prof. Protsch has forged and manipulated scientific facts over the past 30 years.”
Protsch’s work first attracted suspicion when scientists at Oxford wanted to double-check the authenticity of his dates and verify the ages of many previously reported fossils using modern techniques. Oxford officials insist that this “dating disaster” was discovered during a routine examination, and was not an attempt to discredit Professor Protsch. The fossils he had dated were just in a long line of others that were being rechecked. According to Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax: “[A]nthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago” (as quoted in Harding, 2005).
But the Neanderthal skull was not the only forgery Oxford discovered. Protsch also had paraded “Binshof-Speyer” woman before the public, stating that she was 21,300 years old. Yet the new Oxford date puts this woman living at 1,300 B.C. Protsch also claimed that “Paderborn-Sande Man” walked the Earth 27,400 B.C., and yet the corrected figure reveals that he died only a couple hundred years ago—in A.D. 1750! Futhermore, Protsch also is being investigated for a scandal in which he allegedly tried to sell 280 chimpanzee skulls to individuals in the United States for $70,000.
(the above from: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2711)
As far as the excuse that this is how Science works—that Science is self-correcting—how many times will pre-history have to be re-written, and how many millions of people have been deceived by this and other lies sold to the public as ‘major pieces of evidence?’ (i.e., hoaxes such as Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Java Man, Ramapithecus, Orce Man, Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis, etc.)
For example, how many of us grew up being taught about the brontosaurus, one of the best-known dinosaurs in books and museums for the past hundred years? Well, folks, brontosaurus never really existed! The dinosaur’s skeleton was found with the head missing. To complete it, a skull found three or four miles away was added. No one knew this for years. The body actually belonged to a species of Diplodocus and the head was from an Apatosaurus. (source: Paul S. Taylor, The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible, [Chariot Victor Publishing, 1989], pp.12-13)
Another example:
National Geographic published an article on Archaeoraptor in 1999. And yet, Archaeoraptor was a fraud. It was concluded that the fossil was a composite specimen of at least 3 specimens, with a maximum of five separate specimens.
The Archaeoraptor scandal has ramifications that are ongoing. In 2001, Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas compiled a traveling exhibit titled “Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight.” The San Diego Natural History Museum paid a set fee to the Dinosaur Museum to display this show in 2004. Through March 2009, however, the show is scheduled for the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science in California.
(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoraptor)
Oh, and by the way, Sarah Palin’s dad was/is a Science teacher.
Virchow’s work is archaic, and I believe without exception, refuted. From a lay source, which shows the chief problem with Virchow (age and lack of examination):
(Time, March 14, 1994: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,980317,00.html )
So, you’ve got information current as of 1860. Modern science has moved on quite a bit.
There is no credible claim that all Neanderthals suffered from rickets. One specimen, not the one Virchow analyzed, suffered from arthritis — but arthritis is a disease of old age, age unachievable by victims of rickets. Your claims are self-contradictory.
There are more than 10,000 specimens of Neanderthal known. Surely claims of chronic, population-wide rickets would be easy to confirm — and yet, if one checks the museums, the science journals, one does not find that at all.
These hoax claims of creationists are exactly the sort of unChristian folderol that gives the entire faith a bad name.
Your other claims:
Protsch’s work was not particularly well known. I’d wager that fewer than 1 in 10,000 creationists had ever heard of him, and fewer than 1 in 100 scientists. That the fraud was discovered in the normal course of scientific work is a tribute to science. Protsch’s fraud was discredited; the fraud you’ve tried to advance here by Virchow, though discredited by scientists 130 years ago, is still circulating in creationism circles. If creationism has no means for stamping out well-known frauds in 130 years, why should we put any stock in anything from any creationist organization? With no means whatsoever for checking the veracity of claims, any claim can be made — as you’ve demonstrated here.
Your portrayal of the brontosaurus/apatasaurus nomenclature issue as if the animal never existed is another creationist fraud. The animal certainly did exist. The only question is whether it was two species, or one. Brontosaurus is not a fraud in any way. You don’t get to dismiss the existence of several dozen nearly-complete skeletons by claiming they are fraud, when they are not. (What in the world do you claim them to be?) If you wish to be correct, you’d note that apatasaurus is brontosaurus, but the original discoverer gets to pick the name. The realization that the specimens previously thought to be two species are, instead, one much more widely spread species, is the opposite of fraud. It’s the self-correcting nature of science working. Paul Taylor shouldn’t tell such whoppers — it borders on false witness to impugn the reputation of scientists in such a fraudulent manner.
Archaeoraptor was an accidental “fraud,” but you’re in error when you claim that it disproves feathered dinosaurs. You’ve mistaken the cover story of National Geographic on another species, a species which is very much real. There are more than a thousand, non-suspect specimens known. See here:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0508/feature5/learn.html
So, now we wonder: Will you retract your error? Will you bother to go see the real specimens of real, feathered dinosaurs? Or will you continue to spread false information?
Honesty, or creationism: Your choice.
That’s scary, isn’t it?
Either she didn’t listen to her father — not a good example to set — or he was teaching claptrap.
IMHO, it’s sinful to teach false things to innocent children. I hope it’s a case of her simply not listening to the old man.
they were more impressed by primitive tools and the remnants of extinct animals found near the skeletons. Boule concluded that a Neanderthal had prehensile feet, could not fully extend his legs, and thrust his head awkwardly forward because his spine prevented him from standing upright. In his scientific papers, Boule described the “brutish appearance of this muscular and clumsy body.” This almost simian image persisted largely unchallenged for decades. Indeed, vestiges of it remain today in such manifestations as textbook illustrations, the Alley Oop cartoon strip, and in the pejorative use of “Neanderthal.”
But the image was wrong. In 1957 American and British researchers re- examined the skeleton that Boule had studied and concluded that Neanderthals stood upright; the stooped posture of Boule’s specimen was attributable to arthritis. Also the feet were not prehensile, nor was the spine curved. They further noted that the Neanderthal’s brain was as large as that of early modern humans, a fact that Boule ignored in his publications.
In the past few decades, the perception of Neanderthals has undergone still more changes. Evidence from various digs has revealed that they wielded simple tools, wore body ornaments, had religious rites and ceremoniously buried their dead.
So, he stood upright, had the same size brain as modern man, used tools, wore body ornaments, had religious rites and ceremonies to bury their dead. In other words, so-called “Neanderthal” man was really no different than modern man! Thank you for proving my point for me, and proving that “Neanderthal” man is no proof of Evolution at all!
Your portrayal of the brontosaurus/apatasaurus nomenclature issue as if the animal never existed is another creationist fraud. The animal certainly did exist. The only question is whether it was two species, or one. Brontosaurus is not a fraud in any way.
“The” animal? You’re joking, right? You mean to say that, if I find the skull of a dog, and the skeleton of a cow, I can put them together and call it a DogCow, and that would mean that DogCows really existed? And you don’t believe that would be a fraud? Please. Give me a break! You’re not even making sense!
Archaeoraptor was an accidental “fraud”…
Actually, most now believe that it was actually an elaborate and deliberate hoax.
Even back then, a Jan. 25, 1999 article in LIFE magazine (“Dinosaur-bird link smashed in fossil flap”) admitted it could have been a forgery.
Storrs Olson, curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institution’s Natural History Museum and an outspoken skeptic of the bird-dinosaur link, said he warned the magazine in November, when the article was published, that there were serious problems with the fossil. He says he was ignored. “The problem is, at some point the fossil was known by “Geographic” to be a fake, and that information was not revealed,” Olson said.
Olson wrote an open letter to National Geographic, stating, “With the publication of “Feathers for T. rex?” by Christopher P. Sloan in its November [1999] issue, National Geographic has reached an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism.” He continues: “Sloan’s article takes the prejudice to an entirely new level and consists in large part of unverifiable or undocumented information that “makes” the news rather than reporting it. His bald statement that “we can now say that birds are theropods just as confidently as we say that humans are mammals” is not even suggested as reflecting the views of a particular scientist or group of scientists, so that it figures as little more than editorial propagandizing. This melodramatic assertion had already been disproven by recent studies of embryology and comparative morphology, which, of course, are never mentioned.
More importantly, however, none of the structures illustrated in Sloan’s article that are claimed to be feathers have actually been proven to be feathers. Saying that they are is little more than wishful thinking that has been presented as fact. The statement on page 103 that “hollow, hairlike structures characterize protofeathers” is nonsense considering that protofeathers exist only as a theoretical construct, so that the internal structure of one is even more hypothetical.
The exhibit currently on display at the National Geographic Society is even worse, and makes the spurious claim that there is strong evidence that a wide variety of carnivorous dinosaurs had feathers. A model of the undisputed dinosaur Deinonychus and illustrations of baby tyrannosaurs are shown clad in feathers, all of which is simply imaginary and has no place outside of science fiction.”
In 2002 the Czerkases published a volume through their Dinosaur Museum titled Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight. In this journal they described and named several species. Of the six species named in the book, five are disputed. Sure doesn’t sound like a very good case to me!
It’s the self-correcting nature of science working.
Oh, you mean the scientific community peddling fraud as scientific fact, and misleading millions of people into believing lies?
I had a boss at a former job who said that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” is proof of Darwinian Evolution. He told me that he was taught that in 4 years of college. Yet, that theory was proven to be false over 100 years ago! So, if science is so “self-correcting,” why are they still teaching things in college regarding Darwinian Evolution that were disproven over 100 years ago? Talking about continuing to “spread false information!” Sheesh!
Truth, or Darwinian Evolution: your choice.
“The missing link between man and the apes…is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule: the story of life is as disjointed as a silent newsreel, in which species succeed one another as abruptly as Balkan prime ministers. The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated… Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school…” [Newsweek, Is Man a Subtle Accident? Nov. 3, 1980 p. 95.]
“One wonders why, with all the evidence, the (Godless) theory of evolution still persists. One major reason is that many people have a sort of vested interest in this theory. Jobs would be lost, loss of face would result, text books would need to be eliminated or revised.”
(Dr. Emery S. Dunfee, former professor of physics at the University of Maine at Farmington)
“Polls have shown that about 40% of scientists acknowledge a supernatural power. But the majority of the scientific community, especially evolutionary leaders today, hold an atheistic worldview. As support for their anti-supernatural worldviews, these scientists need mechanisms for the origin of life, especially humans.
Atheism needs evolution to escape from any implications regarding a creator. If one starts with Darwinism, certainly it is easy to escape from any obligation to God. Those opposed to their reasoning are branded as obscurantists who are trying to intrude religion into science.”
(Wayne Friar, Ph.D., AIA’s Resource Associate for Science and Origins)
“I shall discuss the broad patterns of hominoid evolution, an exercise made enjoyable by the need to integrate diverse kinds of information, and use that as a vehicle to speculate about hominid origins, an event for which there is no recognized fossil record. Hence, an opportunity to exercise some imagination.” [American Anthropologist, Distinguished Lecture; Hominoid Evolution and Hominoid Origins, by David Pilbeam. Vol. 88, No. 2 June 1986. p. 295.]
“Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true? I tried this question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. – – Then I woke up and realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way.” Dr. Colin Patterson, Evolution and Creationism, Speech at the American Museum of Natural History, New York (November 5, 1981), pp. 1,2. Dr. Patterson is senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History and editor of its journal, as well as author of the book Evolution.
“A scientific study of the universe has suggested a conclusion which may be summed up in the statement that the universe appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician.” — Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, p. 140.
“Curious as that seems, it is a possibility worth weighing — against the only alternative I can imagine: Eddington’s suggestion that God is a mathematical physicist.” — George Wald, “Fitness in the Universe,” Origins of Life, Vol. 5 (1974), p. 26.
It seem to me Jeff has attempted to present accurate scholarly research from the scientists he has read. There are intellectual debates concerning evolution which I am somewhat familiar with, but not expert on. There is not 100% agreement on evolution within the Christian Church.
Even if some creationists did hypothetically support a hoax in regard to evolutionary fact it does give the entire Christian faith a bad name. There are philosophical, theological, Biblical, historical, and archaeological supports the Christian faith and philosophy that would remain untouched even if some creationists and Christians committed intellectual fraud.
Some persons that dismiss Christianity can see any perceived error as a license to view the entire movement in a bad light.
Christian faith and philosophy cannot be so easily dismissed.
Here is yet another case where Evolutionists have claimed evidence which has later turned out to be false:
“In July 2002, anthropologists announced the discovery of a skull in Chad with “an unusual mixture of primitive and humanlike features.” The find was dubbed “Toumai” (the name give to children in Chad born close to the dry season) and was immediately hailed as “the earliest member of the human family found so far.” By October 2002, a number of scientists went on record to criticize the premature claim — declaring that the discovery is merely the fossil of an ape.”
from: http://www.allaboutcreation.org/human-evolution.htm
To call this the “scientific process” is dishonest, because, according to Wikipedia, the ‘scientific method’ means that the “steps must be repeatable in order to predict dependably any future results.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
Even calling ‘Evolution’ a ‘theory’ is not strictly accurate, because “a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations, and is predictive, logical, and testable.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory#Science
The origin of the universe is not repeatable. And evolution of new species is not observable. Therefore, neither one can be proved or disproved by the scientific method; this means that Evolution is a philosophy rather than true Science.
Piltdown Man: An Orang-utan Jaw and a Human Skull!
In 1912, a well-known doctor and amateur paleoanthropologist named Charles Dawson came out with the assertion that he had found a jawbone and a cranial fragment in a pit in Piltdown, England. Even though the jawbone was more ape-like, the teeth and the skull were like a man’s. These specimens were labelled the “Piltdown man”. Alleged to be 500,000 years old, they were displayed as an absolute proof of human evolution in several museums. For more than 40 years, many scientific articles were written on “Piltdown man”, many interpretations and drawings were made, and the fossil was presented as important evidence for human evolution. No fewer than 500 doctoral theses were written on the subject. While visiting the British Museum in 1921, leading American paleoanthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn said “We have to be reminded over and over again that Nature is full of paradoxes” and proclaimed Piltdown “a discovery of transcendant importance to the prehistory of man.
In 1949, Kenneth Oakley from the British Museum’s Paleontology Department, attempted to use “fluorine testing”, a new test used for determining the date of fossils. A trial was made on the fossil of the Piltdown man. The result was astonishing. During the test, it was realised that the jawbone of Piltdown Man did not contain any fluorine. This indicated that it had remained buried no more than a few years. The skull, which contained only a small amount of fluorine, showed that it was not older than a few thousand years old.
It was determined that the teeth in the jawbone belonging to an orangutan, had been worn down artificially and that the “primitive” tools discovered with the fossils were simple imitations that had been sharpened with steel implements. In the detailed analysis completed by Joseph Weiner, this forgery was revealed to the public in 1953. The skull belonged to a 500-year-old man, and the jaw bone belonged to a recently deceased ape! The teeth had been specially arranged in a particular way and added to the jaw, and the molar surfaces were filed in order to resemble those of a man. Then all these pieces were stained with potassium dichromate to give them an old appearance. These stains began to disappear when dipped in acid. Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark, who was in the team that uncovered the forgery, could not hide his astonishment at this situation and said: “The evidences of artificial abrasion immediately sprang to the eye. Indeed so obvious did they seem it may well be asked-how was it that they had escaped notice before?” In the wake of all this, “Piltdown man” was hurriedly removed from the British Museum where it had been displayed for more than 40 years.
Nebraska Man: A Single Pig Tooth
In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of the American Museum of Natural History, declared that he had found a fossil molar tooth belonging to the Pliocene period in western Nebraska near Snake Brook. This tooth allegedly bore common characteristics of both man and ape. An extensive scientific debate began surrounding this fossil, which came to be called “Nebraska man”, in which some interpreted this tooth as belonging to Pithecanthropus erectus, while others claimed it was closer to human beings. Nebraska man was also immediately given a “scientific name”, Hesperopithecus haroldcooki.
Many authorities gave Osborn their support. Based on this single tooth, reconstructions of the Nebraska man’s head and body were drawn. Moreover, Nebraska man was even pictured along with his wife and children, as a whole family in a natural setting.
All of these scenarios were developed from just one tooth. Evolutionist circles placed such faith in this “ghost man” that when a researcher named William Bryan opposed these biased conclusions relying on a single tooth, he was harshly criticised.
In 1927, other parts of the skeleton were also found. According to these newly discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor to an ape. It was realised that it belonged to an extinct species of wild American pig called Prosthennops. William Gregory entitled the article published in Science in which he announced the truth, “Hesperopithecus: Apparently Not an ape Nor a man. Then all the drawings of Hesperopithecus haroldcooki and his “family” were hurriedly removed from evolutionary literature.
Ota Benga: The African Native Put Into a Cage
After Darwin advanced the claim with his book The Descent of Man that man evolved from ape-like living beings, he started to seek fossils to support this contention. However, some evolutionists believed that “half-man half-ape” creatures were to be found not only in the fossil record, but also alive in various parts of the world. In the early 20th century, these pursuits for “living transitional links” led to unfortunate incidents, one of the cruellest of which is the story of a Pygmy by the name of Ota Benga.
Ota Benga was captured in 1904 by an evolutionist researcher in the Congo. In his own tongue, his name meant “friend”. He had a wife and two children. Chained and caged like an animal, he was taken to the USA where evolutionist scientists displayed him to the public in the St Louis World Fair along with other ape species and introduced him as “the closest transitional link to man”. Two years later, they took him to the Bronx Zoo in New York and there they exhibited him under the denomination of “ancient ancestors of man” along with a few chimpanzees, a gorilla named Dinah, and an orang-utan called Dohung. Dr William T. Hornaday, the zoo’s evolutionist director gave long speeches on how proud he was to have this exceptional “transitional form” in his zoo and treated caged Ota Benga as if he were an ordinary animal. Unable to bear the treatment he was subjected to, Ota Benga eventually committed suicide.”
http://www.evolutiondeceit.com/chapter9.php
Not portrayed as, called out as…
“God made man, but he used a monkey to do it.”
— Devo
Ok, this is really deep analysis, ok. Ok. Palin is hot for a MILF. I mean, who wouldn’t do her? I can even admit that. But she’d have to keep her mouth shut. There are dentist drills more soothing to the ear than the sound of her voice.
Ota Benga: Is prevarication a suggested tool of your sect, Jenkins? Ota Benga was brought to America essentially by missionaries who had introduced him to a businessman in Congo to find other peoples to display cultural diversity at the St. Louis World’s Fair. The story is appalling any way it’s told, but your misrepresentations of the facts in order to skew the blame is reprehensible — false witness and all that. Church people played a role in complaining about his exhibiting, but they were no better in providing for his cultural needs.
And ultimately, the story has zip to do with evolution. There were all sorts of odd claims made about evolution in dealing with the poor man, but he was not “captured” by scientists (he was a refugee from the violence inflicted on Congo by Belgian colonists, and it was a Belgian military operation that killed his family).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ota_Benga
You fail to mention that those you label “evolutionist” were, just as often, Christian.
You fail to mention that the “treatment he was subjected to” in the years preceding his suicide include forced residence at a church home, attendance at a Christian seminary, and medical and dental procedures conducted by his creationist “captors” (using your language) in order to make him more “civilized.”
Creationist attempts to capitalize on the tragedy of this man are really quite distasteful. Plus, they say nothing contrary to evolution theory. Did you have a point you were trying to make?
Jeff, evolutiondeceit is just what it claims: Deceit.
I challenge you to verify any claim from that site with serious research.
For example, with reference to the pig teeth that a Christian Nebraska farmer found, misidentified by his Christian local dentist as hominid, you claim Osborn “declared” he had found a tooth, as if Osborn made some fantastic claim. If you bothered to look at Osborn’s article, he accurately and carefully described the situation (a tooth found by a farmer, identified by a local dentist), and he asked journal readers, “what is it?” Within weeks after publication, another paleontologist contacted Osborn to say it looked like a tooth from an ancient, extinct peccary. Osborn found similar teeth catalogued that way in the AMNH collection, and he published a second article correctly identifying and describing the results.
A London, England, tabloid newspaper, the World News Daily or National Enquirer of its time, claimed it as “Nebraska Man.” They paid their staff artist to depict some ancient, primitive looking ape-like humans as illustration for their story in the newspaper.
William Jennings Bryan was prepared to rail against “Nebraska Man,” but to no avail. At the Scopes trial in 1925, everyone was well aware of Osborn’s research showing it was not a hominid. Bryan was not criticized for his claims on Nebraska Man, because they were never made public during the trial.
Fiction on top of inaccuracy.
Were there any science behind creationism, how could we find it behind the fog of fancy, fantasy, and outright lie?
I don’t like to discuss things with people who dishonorably misrepresent what I write, and dishonorably misrepresent the work of serious scientists. Your actions are juvenile, and I wish you’d stop.
Neanderthal was a different species, easily distinguished by skeleton. Neanderthal had a larger brain, a larger head, but a different brain structure than Homo sapiens. Homo neanderthalensis was better adapted to a cold climate, had more robust bones, and in other physical ways was clearly a different species. Efforts to check DNA bear this out.
But of course, were you to look at the links I gave you, you could see that. Did you bother?
I said: “Your portrayal of the brontosaurus/apatasaurus nomenclature issue as if the animal never existed is another creationist fraud. The animal certainly did exist. The only question is whether it was two species, or one. Brontosaurus is not a fraud in any way.”
Jenkins said:
No, I mean to say your dishonesty in claiming brontosaurus didn’t exist is not much different from the dishonesty you would display if you make a fictional chimerical creature as you describe.
You fail to say, for example, that the head erroneously placed on the one display was done accidentally. You imply, falsely, that it was done to mislead purposely. That’s dishonest. Stop it.
You fail to note that the description of brontosaurus in the science journals is still good. You claim it’s a false creation, when the reality is simply that there were two publications done of a description of the animal, each without knowledge of the other. Two separate discoveries of the same beast. In science, the first-published description wins out. Apatasaurus was the name applied in the article published first.
Is that so difficult to understand, really?
All this bickering over Darwinian Evolution aside, and getting back to the main idea of the blog post; will the fact that Palin is a Christian help McCain? Absolutely. I think it is funny that many people that commented here seems to forget that a vast majority of the United States believes that there is indeed a God.
It is also a fact that McCain needed to solidify the base, and energize it at the same time; that is what a Palin pick does. Thank goodness they both believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for all humans including the innocent unborn babies. For those of us that recognize that you must be allowed LIFE in order to pursue happiness, and for those of us that think it should be illegal to kill babies, this is indeed a big deal. Does Palin’s religion affect this stand on abortion, yes, I believe so.
Kliska
TheChristianScribbler.com
But you think they’re too stupid to notice that McCain isn’t much of a devout Christian, certainly less so than either Obama or Biden?
Sure, Palin helps McCain. It’s a pretty sad comment on anyone who thinks her faith makes the ticket somehow superior to the Democratic ticket. Clearly, Christianity is not the criterion — wacko beliefs probably are.
There is indeed a God, and as most Christians in the U.S. believe and as the vast majority of Christian sects hold forth, nature manifests God’s intentions, even or maybe especially when nature manifests evolution. It’s pretty sad when people think that teaching solid science, good academics, is contrary to God. Jesus came to take away our sins, not our minds, as a kid in one of our Sunday school classes noted. It’s even more tragic when people give their own faculties away. For anyone who is concerned about rights, the McCain claim that women cease to be citizens, that they become Dred Scott-decision subhumans, should be worrying. A woman’s citizenship should not be trumped by a fertilized egg, half of which God Himself will take. (Okay, let’s use your language: Half of the babies are killed by God.)
How do you propose to police the vaginas of fertile women to be sure the eggs’ rights are protected? Who will go to jail when God aborts?
If that’s the issue, let’s stick with people who have seriously thought out what the issues are, and what the law should be to deal with human reproduction, beyond offensive bumper stickers, eh?
Is prevarication a suggested tool of your sect, Jenkins?
A false, incriminating insinuation.
”… your misrepresentations of the facts in order to skew the blame is reprehensible — false witness and all that.”
I have posted quotes found by my research. I have represented the facts to the best of my knowledge. Again, you make a false accusation and you attack my character. Whether intentional or non-intentional, your insinuation is a lie.
And ultimately, the story has zip to do with evolution.
The link you provided disagrees: “Gordon also considered the exhibition hostile to Christianity, for its promoting Darwinism: “The Darwinian theory is absolutely opposed to Christianity, and a public demonstration in its favor should not be permitted.”
And a page linked from there says, “where he lived in the monkey house as part of a human evolution exhibit.”
Also:
“To the black ministers and their allies, the message of the exhibit was clear: The African was meant to be seen as falling somewhere on the evolutionary scale between the apes with which he was housed and the people in the overwhelmingly white crowds who found him so entertaining.”
“…the Ota Benga exhibit, as Mr. Gordon of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum said, ”evidently aims to be a demonstration of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“As for the press, The Evening Post reported that Ota Benga, according to the zoo’s animal keepers, ”has a great influence with the beasts…including the orang-outang with whom he plays as though one of them…and chattering to them in his own guttural tongue, which they seem to understand.”
“The New York Globe printed a letter from a reader that said: ”I lived in the south several years, and consequently am not overfond of the negro, but believe him human. I think it a shame that the authorities of this great city should allow such a sight as that witnessed at the Bronx Park — a negro boy on exhibition in a monkey cage.”
(from: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E4D9113FF935A3575BC0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all)
You fail to mention that those you label “evolutionist” were, just as often, Christian.
The purpose of the quote was to show one effect of the teaching of Evolution, which affects Christians as well as non-Christians. The fact that there are Theological Evolutionists/Long-Day Creationists has nothing to do with the point I was getting across. I provided a quote, which summarized the story, and I provided the full quote, so I did not “fail’ to mention anything. Besides, if I were to attempt to post every detail of the man’s life, and every detail of all the events related to the story, my post would become ridiculously long.
You fail to mention that the “treatment he was subjected to” in the years preceding his suicide include forced residence at a church home, attendance at a Christian seminary, and medical and dental procedures conducted by his creationist “captors” (using your language) in order to make him more “civilized.”
Since you keep accusing me of “failing” to mention things, let me also mention this:
“The public, at any rate, had not yet had its fill of Ota Benga, whose name was now a household one. Though no longer on official display, the African was still living at the zoo and spending time with his primate friends in the Monkey House. On Sunday, Sept. 16, 40,000 people went to the zoo, and everywhere Ota Benga went that day, The Times reported, the crowds pursued him, ”howling, jeering and yelling.”
The newspaper reported, ”Some of them poked him in the ribs, others tripped him up, all laughed at him.”
(from the same website mentioned above)
Regarding Nebraska Man: it is still used in some modern textbooks. You agree that it was a fraud (which was my main point), and yet it is still being taught.
I don’t like to discuss things with people who dishonorably misrepresent what I write, and dishonorably misrepresent the work of serious scientists. Your actions are juvenile, and I wish you’d stop.
I used your words (“ stood upright;” “They further noted that the Neanderthal’s brain was as large as that of early modern humans;” “wielded simple tools;” “wore body ornaments;” “had religious rites and ceremoniously buried their dead”), and then made a logical conclusion from that (i.e., “so-called “Neanderthal” man was really no different than modern man!”). How is that being dishonest? Again, you make false accusations, and resort to name-calling.
Neanderthal was a different species, easily distinguished by skeleton. Neanderthal had a larger brain, a larger head, but a different brain structure than Homo sapiens. Homo neanderthalensis was better adapted to a cold climate, had more robust bones, and in other physical ways was clearly a different species. Efforts to check DNA bear this out.
But of course, were you to look at the links I gave you, you could see that. Did you bother?
I was replying to your comment that you posted, in which you said, “They further noted that the Neanderthal’s brain was as large as that of early modern humans…”
“You fail to say, for example, that the head erroneously placed on the one display was done accidentally. You imply, falsely, that it was done to mislead purposely. That’s dishonest. Stop it.”
I was not being dishonest. What I stated was true. More false accusations on your part.
You fail to note that the description of brontosaurus in the science journals is still good. You claim it’s a false creation, when the reality is simply that there were two publications done of a description of the animal, each without knowledge of the other. Two separate discoveries of the same beast. In science, the first-published description wins out. Apatasaurus was the name applied in the article published first.
Is that so difficult to understand, really?
Your argument concerns semantics. “In the last 20 years, however, this name has disappeared from books and museum exhibits about dinosaurs.” It disappeared because it was incorrect. That’s why I say it never existed. If my statement is so “dishonest,” as you falsely claim, then why did this happen:
“The question of the popular Brontosaurus name verses the technically-correct Apatosaurus name came to a head in 1989 when the U.S. Post Office decided to release a set of four stamps illustrating “dinosaurs.” One in the series was a picture of a large sauropod labeled Brontosaurus. This upset some dinosaur enthusiasts who accused the Postal Service of promoting scientific illiteracy, an ironic accusation given the number of museums that had the animal mislabeled for decades.”
(from: http://www.unmuseum.org/dinobront.htm)
In addition to the staggering lack of evidence and all the hoaxes/frauds, the very foundation that Darwinian Evolution is based on, which is spontaneous generation, was disproved long ago. That alone makes Darwinian Evolution impossible.
From another source:
by Dr A J Monty White, CEO, AiG (UK/Europe)
24 November 2003
Britain’s Greatest Hoax. That was the title of the ‘Timewatch’ investigation of the Piltdown Man fraud, shown on BBC2 television recently.1 Viewers were presented with a great British ‘whodunnit’ that tried to identify those who made monkeys out of the scientists of the day.
The history of the discovery of the earliest Englishman (as Piltdown Man was so often called) is fairly common knowledge. A laborer was supposedly digging in a gravel pit near the village of Piltdown in Sussex in southern England when he found a piece of bone. He passed it to the local amateur archaeologist of the district, Charles Dawson, who verified its antiquity and pronounced that it was part of a skull which was possibly human. Dawson began to search for the rest of the skull and, in 1912, a jawbone was discovered. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum verified that the skull had human features and the jaw was ape-like. The fossils became known as Piltdown Man and were called Eoanthropus dawsoni which means ‘Dawson’s Dawn Man’. In 1915, another Dawn Man was found a couple of miles away from the site of the first find. Fossil remains of animals that lived with Piltdown Man, together with the tools that he used, were also found at the two sites. At last, here was ‘proof’ that apes had evolved into humans in England.
Almost forty years later, in 1953, Piltdown Man was exposed as a forgery, mainly through the work of Dr Kenneth Oakley. He showed that the skull was from a modern human and that the jawbone and teeth were from an orangutan. The teeth had been filed down to make them look human. The bones and teeth had been chemically treated (and sometimes even painted) to give them the appearance of being ancient. In addition, it was also shown that none of the finds associated with Piltdown Man had been originally buried in the gravel that had been deposited at Piltdown. The Piltdown Man fraud was a great embarrassment to the UK scientific community and questions about it were even asked in the House of Parliament.
At the time that the discovery of Piltdown Man was announced, it was believed that the remains of the Neanderthals that had been found in Germany were ape-men and it was believed that the cave paintings that had been found in France had been painted by ape-men. The British evolutionists, however, had other ideas. They believed that apes had evolved into humans in the UK—preferably in England. Piltdown Man was ‘proof’ that the first ape-man lived in the garden of England! The desire to find the earliest Englishman had blinded the scientists of the day, so they uncritically accepted Piltdown Man as being genuine. No scientist is a seeker after truth in some sort of idealized neutral fashion—in this case, they interpreted their finds within their (evolutionary) world view, fashioned by parochial prejudice.
So, who perpetrated this deception? Many names have been put forward, and because all those involved in the discovery of Piltdown Man are now dead, it is virtually impossible to say with certainty who was actually responsible for this elaborate hoax.
Some have suggested Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He lived seven miles from Piltdown and would have had opportunity to place the bones and artifacts at the sites where Piltdown Man remains were found. It could be argued that he left clues in his book ‘The Lost World’ where one of his characters argues that a bone can be as easily faked as a photograph. However, Conan Doyle seems to have been a very honest man and it would have been completely out of character for him to have been involved in such a hoax.
Others have suggested Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. He was without doubt Piltdown Man’s greatest advocate. Had he carried out some basic scientific tests and a more detailed examination of the finds, he would have realized that he was dealing with a hoax. He retired from the British Museum in 1924 and spent the next 20 years, until his death in 1944, digging at the Piltdown Man site in Piltdown searching for more finds. He did not find any. Surely if he was the perpetrator of this hoax, he would not have wasted the last 20 years of his life in what he would have known to be a futile search.
It would appear that the best candidate for being the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man fraud is none other than Charles Dawson. He was always vague about the events surrounding the initial discovery and after he died in 1916, it was realized that all the historical artifacts that he had supposedly found and that were on display in Hastings Museum were forgeries. However, it appears that Martin Hinton of the British Museum suspected that Piltdown Man was a hoax. Hinton, himself, was one who enjoyed playing hoaxes and jokes on others. In 1915, Dawson and Woodward found a curious bone implement under a hedge at Piltdown. This implement had all the hallmarks of a Hinton joke for it looked like a cricket bat—presumably the first Englishman loved his game of cricket! It is quite likely that Hinton fashioned this implement and placed it at the site in the hope that it would be found and that as a result, Dawson would know that someone knew that Piltdown Man was a forgery. Unfortunately, this plan backfired and a description of this implement was written up and published!
The exposure of Piltdown Man as a fraud is not unique. The famous ‘peppered moth’ scenario is another example of something that was expected within the evolutionary world view and yet has been exposed as being false. The half-bird/half-dinosaur Archaeoraptor has been shown to be a fake—two completely different fossils glued together—and there have been others, as we have shown over the years.2
Evolutionists often express irritation when Piltdown Man and other fakes are raised by their opponents. A common attempt to put a ‘positive spin’ on the whole affair is to portray it as a ‘plus’ for science, demonstrating its allegedly ‘self-correcting nature’. After all, we are told, it was evolutionary scientists themselves who discovered the fraud. However, the issue is not the hoax as such; the scandal of Piltdown is that such an amateurish, clumsy and obvious fraud (even showing filemarks on the teeth) went undetected for over 40 years. Generations were indoctrinated into the ‘fact of evolution’ via Piltdown gracing countless textbooks and encyclopedias.
Many scientists, including people writing doctoral theses, had access to the bones, and they were laboriously studied. No-one saw the hoax at the time, but afterwards, it all seemed obvious; things like the file marks suddenly sprang into view. It was clear that even highly qualified scientists had simply seen what they were looking for and ignored that which did not fit their preconception. It is also no surprise that the hoax was not uncovered until after other ‘plausible candidates’ for man’s evolutionary ancestry were on the horizon.
The same phenomenon still happens today, even where no hoax is involved; the top-ranking candidate for the ‘ancestor prize’ in the sorry saga of ‘human evolution’ is never publicly dethroned until some other is available to catch the public imagination. No-one in the field any longer believes that Ramapithecus was our ancestor, or Leakey’s ‘Nutcracker Man’, for instance. But the abandonment of each only took place after other ‘ancestor candidates’ could be seen to fill the vacuum in the evolutionary psyche. The famous ‘Lucy’ and her ilk should really have no more credibility as human ancestors, given all the evidence that has accumulated since their first discovery. But one can be sure that until there is a whole new class of possibilities, they will not be allowed to go quietly off the evolutionary stage.
Facts have to be interpreted. Evolutionary scientists are no more objective than others.
Attempts to post my reply comment are unsuccessful: “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!” (Unless my reply comment is awaiting moderation/approval, but I just posted that last comment as a test, and it posted immediately.)
Heh, maybe God is stopping me from posting a harsh reply, and saying something I may regret later. Maybe He is (gently) reprimanding me. Maybe that’s His way of telling me to stop “bickering,” as Kliska put it.
Ah, well, the truth is that God created the universe, and He did it the way the Bible says He did it.
The main thing is, Jesus is the only way to Heaven.
And, as Kliska also said, “getting back to the main idea of the blog post,” I personally don’t think any of the available candidates are perfect choices.
She has stated she is in favor of teaching creationism and evolution. A person can then choose. It a matter of belief because it is for sure nobody knows for certain. We don’t have a single eye witness. Unless, of course, you count God
That’s like saying pointing to the Gulag is to show the effects of a church-inspired education, as Stalin had — which affects Christians as well as non-Christians.
There is no point of evolution demonstrated by putting Ota Benga on display. He was not brought to St. Louis to show evolution, but rather to show the diversity of human culture and human life. So your blaming of evolution is off the mark.
If it appears in any textbook, it is to demonstrate the dangers of Christian hoaxers. But, having looked at almost every public school biology textbook published in America since 1955, I can tell you I’ve never seen it cited.
Can you name for me one book that cites the case?
The display of Ota Benga is regrettable. It wasn’t done to demonstrate evolution, since there is no advantage to showing an African over showing a Caucasian, or a Frenchman, or an Englishman (the English will still take offense at that). Blaming this display on evolution assumes that all scientists accepted evolution at the time — which you have not shown and is not so — and assumes that all scientists shared the erroneous belief that Africans were not exactly human — which is a contemptible misrepresentation of the facts. The claim that evolution demonstrated Africans were inferior was a religious claim, made by creationists and other Christians, denied by Darwin.
In short, you’re misplacing a subrosa claim of racism on evolution, when the racism had no basis in evolution at all.
And what of the sins of the Christians? They made the poor man change his identity, tried to force Christianity down his throat, and tried to deprive him of his culture. The found money to send him to be Christianized, but wouldn’t buy him a ticket home.
So he committed suicide. There’s lots of blame to spread around — but it wasn’t evolution which suggested Ota Benga’s very teeth needed to be made “more Christian,” nor was it evolution theory that said he’d be fine if only he accepted Jesus.
It would be bad enough if this were the only example of Christian-inspired bigotry in history, but it’s not. President McKinley famously promised to “education and Christianize” the Filipinos, not out of any scientific notion, but purely for the sake of American imperialism. This led directly to a brutal 15-year war that remains a stain on America’s reputation — roughly contemporary with Ota Benga’s life, and driven by much of the same bigotry and racism, combined with ignorance.
How many other examples do you want? There are dozens of example, millions of lives ruined.
Evolution is not the basis of racism. Anyone who seriously studies evolution understood, as Darwin noted, that humans are all one species, one race. DNA now confirms it. The sad life of Ota Benga is not an argument against the validity of evolution theory in any way. It does point out that the human animal has less virtue than almost every other animal, as Mark Twain noted. Do only humans have enough sin to require salvation? he wondered. Human sin says nothing contrary to evolution theory.
Where were the Christians to argue for Ota Benga’s life and culture, Mr. Jenkins? Especially when Christians had control of Benga, why did they continue the assault on his culture and heritage, driving him to suicide?
Sorry about the editing jumble. At least the paragraphs stick together.
So much error, so little time.
Her religion matters because anyone who thinks the Earth is 4000 years old and that we are all descended of the same 2 people has a problem with logic and should not be in a leadership position. The inability to recognize facts due to religions blindfolds will influence important decisions. Think of the jurors on the OJ murder trial as a comparison.
On teaching creationism:
Which creationism? There are thousands of gods throughout history. I suppose she supports the christian fairy tale of creation. But if we put add creationism, we must add the hundreds or thousands of other creation stories as well. They have just as much clout as hers. I guess “The Epic of Gilgamesh” should really be considered to be the most likely, since it is the oldest creation story that we know and I think as witnesses go, one is most likely to believe the one closest to the event. I think we should just leave out fairy tales, and teach the fact AND the theory of evolution. Yes, there is both.
I am all for morality in public office, but keep your gods out of it. Decisions based on religious beliefs will only hurt us in the long run.
And to those can’t see me I will try and speak loudly to make sure you hear: Evolution does not try to explain the origin of the universe. And please take off your blindfold.
aeroadc11 – In all courtesy and deference, you go first with the blindfold removal. No… it’s alright. Really. Go ahead. You go first.