Sunday, September 21, 2008

US is about to elect a vice president who thinks that Earth is 7000 years old...

This wasn't the first time Sarah Palin expressed her support for creationism, According to Philip Munger, Palin was part of efforts to get an evangelical, creationist school board in Mat-Su Borough: "I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."

http://atheism.about.com/od/sarahpalinreligion/a/PalinEvolution.htm

Wow... just wow...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You continue to show just how biased (and ignorant) you are yourself, Sergey. You have pulled a quote out of an article that is written by someone with no real credentials that contains a quote from someone with even less credibility that purports to quote Palin.

My only response is "Wow... just wow."

Sergey Solyanik said...

To anonymous,

Here's the same thing from someone with more credentials than most: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/15/bess/print.html

Direct quote, fact-checked.

BTW, dear Anonymous, this blog is decidedly rooted in "reality-based community".

Since it sounds like you're one of those people who still believe in "nucular" weapons in Iraq, may I suggest a more appropriate site for you? http://www.foxnews.com/

BadTux said...

Remember, Ignorance is Strength. It says so right on the top of the Ministry of Truth. I love Big Brother. Don't you love Big Brother too?

That ornery old misanthrope H.L. Mencken once called democracy the notion that "the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." If McCain/Palin become President... wow. Just wow. Talk about prescient.

nathan3700 said...

I don't have a problem with Palin's beliefs. A great number of successful U.S. presidents believed the same thing. She isn't running for museum director.

I believe in God. I also believe that earth is 5 billion years old. But I'm not so dogmatic about it that I can't allow for at least the possibility that we've made mistakes in reconstructing earth history.

Could there be a mistake in our assumptions about carbon dating? What if God changed one or more physical constants sometime in the past? Look, I don't think such a thing happened, but it doesn't make one "stupid" to allow for the possibility.

People who believe in worm holes, multiple universes, self-aware AI, and the like are in this same category. Their ideas shouldn't make them pariahs.

BadTux said...

Nathan, your argument boils down to "my invisible friend can beat your invisible friend." The thing about invisible friends is that, well, it's nice to have an invisible friend, I'm sure it's reassuring and all, but when you want to start dictating how science money is doled out based on what you think your invisible friend wants you to do, rather than based on, well, science... err. No.

In my opinion, folks with invisible friends telling them how to govern are akin to the folks muttering to their invisible friend down near the waterfront, the ones who smell and are pushing shopping carts as they mutter to their invisible friends, except that the first group is better dressed than the second. I don't want either group anywhere near the nuclear button. Sorry!

nathan3700 said...

BadTux,
You assume too much. You assume that current science expenditures are based on science. They aren't. They are based on various interest groups' priorities.

You assume that because people entertain unknowable theories, they are unfit to govern. That would disqualify every U.S. president who ever took office. So by your criteria, Mr. Obama might go off on the deep end and push the nuclear button.

I don't buy it. But I do see where you're coming from, and I respect that.

I don't think Palin would push creation science at the federal level or anything like that. And if she did, it would be just token support. No big deal. The only thing official from the McCain campaign is they want to increase stem cell research.

BadTux said...

Nathan, Palin is a Dominionist. She believes that her invisible friend is the only guide to governance. Thus the deal with cutting rape kits out of the budget in her town -- contraception is murder, according to her invisible friend, so a rape kit containing emergency contraceptive could not be allowed. Then we have Palin ordering the Alaska state biologist to shelve a scientific report about polar bear populations because it did not agree with her Dominionist faith, which says that the Earth is here to be exploited and that the Rapture will happen within her lifetime so things like conservation do not need to be done. Once again, her invisible friend told her the "truth", so

I don't have any problem with people believing in any invisible friend they want, whether they call their invisible friend Joe, Allah, The Invisible Hand Of The Market, the Great Penguin, or Jesus. But when the core belief of their faith in this invisible friend is that the government should be run like their invisible friend wants it to be run rather than according to sound principles of fact-based governance... move away, sir. Slowly move away.