Whelp, Ron Paul doesn't believe in evolution.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/29/scitech/main20098876.shtml

So, yeah.

A fucking MD who studied biology, and he waves off what makes biology um...work.

He doesn't kow-tow to the Bible-belt nitwits, so...he means that shit.

Nuff of him for me then.

I seem to recall pointing this out before. Tardforge tried to fudge the issue, saying that he wants to "teach the controversy" or some other form of words. But it was plain as day what he meant.

Still, aren't all the GOP candidates creationists to some degree or another?

He's a closet theist, too, isn't he, Rick?

I don't mind him being a theist. There are lots of otherwise sensible theists. But being a creationist undermines any claim to a coherent worldview, and requires a major helping of ignorance or stupidity.

Well that does it, there's no way he'll be our next president now.

Cuz, ya know, one's belief in an interventionist deity who created the universe has kept soooo many people from becoming president in the past!

Well, they feign it for the rubes, hard telling.

This doesn't make any sense, but then again, I shouldn't expect someone who has 'Libertarian Anarchist' as their custom title to make much sense.

Wouldn't all 'sensible theists' believe in creationism at least in some regards?

That's because you fail to understand what words mean.

Not to the extent of disbelieving in evolution.

I prefer not to think about how many people see it as a good thing that a prospective candidate denies reality in favor of his book of fairy tales.

Obviously, I have no problem whatsoever with this.

Conversely, I'm not at all surprised that the people who have a problem with this, have a problem with this.

It isn't the presence of religious belief that draws my disapproval; lots of people with religious beliefs are good, decent, competent, trustworthy, etc. I don't think a person who says "I believe in my heart there is a God and somehow he created us and everything in the world" is somehow disqualified from being President.

But, in my experience, people who reject the Theory of Evolution, do so because they see it as some kind of engineered threat to their belief system. And when you see someone weigh reason against belief and judge in favor of belief, you have to doubt their ability to think rationally, to put aside bias and emotion, to accept things that might be personally objectionable. And that goes to the heart of what I want in a President.

I guess what I'm saying is this: if you say you don't "believe" in the Theory of Evolution, or that it shouldn't be taught in schools, or that you want to give equal time to irrational alternatives like "intelligent design," then, frankly, I can no longer give you my vote.

Going to have to see a link on that, because as I recall, most said his position on evolution is irrelevant because a) unlike Huckabee (who at this point looked like he had a shot in 2008) he wouldn't try to push that view on anyone, and b) because he doesn't want the government - especially the Federal government - teaching kids anything at all

This is my reasoning as well. But when you meet these sorts of people, in my experience, they fall into two camps - macro and micro evolution.

We've seen mutations on a microscopic level, and these can be run again and repeated. I don't think micro evolution is in dispute. Then there is macro evolution, i.e. the turning of one into another. This is where I've talked to doctors and professors who are christians, and a lot don't believe this. They say there can be huge differences within the same species, but it's a pretty huge thing to say that a fish can turn into an amphibian or an amphibian can turn into a mammal. Even going from cold blooded to warm blooded would require quite a complex process that is just not observable.

I think this is where there should be two words for "evolution". When you hear of someone saying they don't believe in evolution, I would want to know what they are referring to. I would vote for Ron Paul if he said he didn't believe in macro evolution. I'd think he's an idiot if he didn't believe in micro evolution.

Usually I just ask them why they believe God made man out of the dust of the ground, yet don't believe that God is powerful enough to turn a fish into a lizard or a lizard into a rodent.

To suggest a clear distinction between micro and macro evolution is wrong, and we've seen evolution of both kinds in any event.

See the Lenski dialogue for a hilarious example fo creationists failing to understand the evidence involved.

I would vote for a hundred Ron Pauls over one Marxist who's been raised by communists any day. Providing he doesn't force his beliefs on everyone else.

That's a long way to go to say the dude is too squirrely to have his finger on the button.

Man, that idiot doesn't know anything!

As proven by the fact that all of his patients, without exception died.

That's right - RON PAUL KILLS!

Welp, I was tempted to actually vote for this guy until this came out. Guess it's a write-in again.

It's retarded to not vote for someone because of beliefs he is never going to force on anyone. Presidents don't plan school curriculum and in this candidate's case, he wouldn't want anything to do with it as it shouldn't be a government issue.

At this point people should be focused on the important things like the economy and foreign relations.

Their personal faith or lack of it is practically irrelevant with all the shit the next president will need to deal with.

On that, I disagree with Ron Paul, but he's still the best candidate, still better than Obama, and I'm still voting for him.

So, you'd vote for JohnM?

Oh, you've actually seen macro evolution? Care to share a YouTube link?

I have no idea how he feels on political issues or if he has ideas worth voting for.

Offhand, I doubt it as he acts like a dumbass prick here, but I don't really have enough info to give an informed opinion.

Yep.
New cat/dog breeds crop up within a human lifetime, and oftentimes they start as random mutations.

Any owner of a house pet has lain eyes on the result of "macroevolution".
Course, that's not even a scientific term, but a debate wedge come up with by the other "side", of a non-existent "debate".

Now, you say "gosh, that's interesting, I've learned something. Sorry for being a braying ass back there".

No, that's not going to happen, is it?

It isn't about him forcing beliefs on anyone, it's like Paladin explained - it just shows me that he isn't as rational as I'd given him credit for. He's not someone I want running the country any more than I want Obama running it, or anyone the media has been saying is up for the ticket.

I've always believed that evolution was one of the dumbest things Christians could get hung up on. Evolution has absolutely zero, zip, zilch to do with faith or salvation.

Likewise, it has zero, zip, zilch to do with this presidential campaign. Whether or not God created Man through the process of evolution has nothing to do with Paul's ideas about how to fix the economy or foreign relations, or government's relationship to its citizens. On those, Ron Paul is still right.

Whether or not he believes in evolution doesn't change anything.

It changes the assumption that he arrived at his convictions through a rational thought process, rather than a dialogue with the voices in his head and/or the invisible man in the sky. Deluded people still occasionally come up with the right answer on accident.

Really? At the time the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) hadn't even been born.

They did pretty well without any concept of evolution whatsoever.

That was cute, but I did not say that a positive belief in evolution was a prerequisite of rational thinking.

Actively dispbelieving it, though, especially for a supposedly learned man of science who had decades of exposure to empirical evidence before I was born, yeah, that does call your rationality into question.