TheApple

I think this race is too much about Gov. Palin and not enough about Sen. McCain. That said, why is Gov. Palin being shelterted from the media? Is it, perhaps, because her handlers fear how she might react if she were asked tough questions (something that did not happen in her ABC Netwro9k debut)? If she can't handle the NY Times, Washinton Post and MSNBC, how is she going to be tough enough to face-down Washington insiders used to running circles around neophytes like her.

Palintology and Paleontology

I try not to get too involved in what celebrities say about politics, but there is suppossed to be something interesting that Palin has stated currently or in the past about dinosaurs.  Has anyone heard anything about it?  When I tried doing my research about it (which I'm usually pretty good at doing), all I came up with was a video with Matt Damon questioning Palin's views on the dinosaurs.  Yes, he is a hottie; but not sure where his comments are coming from.

Have you heard anything about this?

Governor Palin rejects the theory of evolution?  Is that true?  I thought she was educated.

I knew I could count on you, John!  Thanks for the fill-in!

Unfortunately, this political drama has caused some drama in my friendship circle.   I can't wait  until it's all over.

johnslat says ...

 

But Sandra, I think you may "catch some flak" about this:  

"Governor Palin rejects the theory of evolution?  Is that true?  I thought she was educated."

 

There ARE "educated" people (scientists and PhD holders) who "reject evolution" and embrace "creationism:

 

"Creationists holding DOCTORATES IN SCIENCE

(partial list, in alphabetical order)"

 http://www.christiananswers.net/creation/people/home.html

 As many years in the teaching biz have shown me, having gone to college, holding a degree, even a Ph.D, or even being a scientist does not necessarily make you "educated" - at least as regards how, perhaps, you and I might define that term.

  

I'm sticking to my guns on this one.  They may be educated, but they are educated in ignorance.  A person can have faith and accept evolution.  Creationism is not science and does not belong in a science curriculum.  "Creationists holding Doctorates in Science"?  Just going to college and getting/buying a degree does not make you an educated person. It gives you a better chance, but it can't make you something you don't want to be.

 I just received the following, thought it might go here.

Grieving State of Mind -- Obama and The Palin Effect

From: Deepak Chopra | Posted: Friday, September 5th, 2008 http://www.chopra.com/wordsfromdeepak

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure.

Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes dee per. She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.)

I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin's message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision. 

Look at what she stands for:

• Small town values -- a denial of America 's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.

• Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair America 's image abroad.

• Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.

• Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.

• Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.

• "Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all right, Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good.

The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness. Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict.

 

The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.

 

Would you be so kind to explain to me how creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive? What other creatures were around when your version of God put humans on earth and how long ago did that happen?

I think my understanding of faith is perhaps a slight bit greater than your understanding of evolution. As I understand it, having faith is believing in something both because you want it to be true and you think it is true. I have faith, though not in anything you would consider to be God or godlike. I cannot explain the origins of the universe, but I do not believe there is or ever has been an ultimate force acting with intention of creation. To me, the creation of earth and its eventual population with organisms, including humans and dung beetles, is a happy accident. Which brings us to evolution, something that you do not seem to understand very well. That is not surprising because schools do not do a very good job of teaching it, and newspapers and other media do a worse job reporting on it (and that goes for almost all of science).

Species don't change because their survival depends on adaptation. Species survive because random changes in their genes prove to be advantageous in some way. Anteaters did not evolve long snouts for the purpose of eating ants, for example, but those earlier anteaters who happened to have longer snouts and stickier tongues were able to eat more, grow larger, be healthier and reproduce more, the latter being most important becuase it allowed those long-snout-sticky -tongue genes to get passed along and become the dominant genes in the anteater gene pool. The net result is all antteaters who inherited the long-snout-sticky -tongue genes survived and those anteaters who were not so lucky to get those spectacular genes ate less, reproduced less and died off.

That last sentence, particularly the part about how characteristics die off, leads us to the next part of the lesson on evolution, the part where we come to undersrtand why the species that lead from apes to humans are not around much anymore. Once again, there was not intention among a branch of the ape family to evolve into some other species, it just happened. It happened over a very long period of time, and it continues today.

First of all, lets get rid of the idea that humans evolved from apes. That is not true. Both apes and humans evolved from a series of earlier simian creatures that went through a series of genetic mutations over a long period of time that caused them to diverge into a variety of different species of creature. Some of these early simians developed gene mutations that were environmentally advantageous and led to the eventual development of apes. Other of the early simians developed a somewhat different set of gene mutations that, again over a very long period of time, proved to be environmentally advantageous for the development of a whole new species of somewhat less-simian and marginally more human-like creatures. Those prospered for a while and developed more gene mutations that proved to be environmentally advantageous, and so on until you and I and many of the other five billion or so people on earth. Those earlier species are not walking around anymore because they have unintentionally evolved themselves out of their existence and into our existence.

And the process continues. All of us humans who reproduce pass along genes and sometimes those genes mutate. Occasionally they mutate to cause autism, cyctic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, gross obesity and other environmentally disadvantageous features. People with those disadvantageous genes tend not have as many opportunities to reproduce as other humans whose genes mutate in such ways that produce characteristics that are environmentally advantageous, perhaps greater intelligence, the ability to thrive on polluted air and water, or altruism (we won't really know what was advantageous untill well in the future when that process of evolution has progressed a bit further).

Of course, now we have intent. Humans have, from time to time, attempted to engineer certain characteristics and eliminate others among future humans. That was one of Hitler's intentions, for example. Other humans are busy using gene manipulation in engineering certain characteristics into plants and animals. While that is not the way evolution has worked in the past, the ability of some humans to develop that ability is a result of earlier evolution.

Because the processes of evolution are constant, it is highly unlikely that humans as we know them will be around in a couple of hundred million years, pretty much in the same way that humans, in the form of homo spaiens, were not around a couple of hundren million years ago. We homo sapiens are just a whistle stop on the continuum of life, much the same way the dinosaurs, Moses, Jesus and our great-great grandparents were.

And if you need any other proof of the processes of evolution, just read back through all the messages on this thread leading to this one and you will see a model of the processes of mutation and divergence in action.

Devin, Thank you for explaining in greater detail than others have before. I really do want to see other points of view. Perhaps it is my misunderstanding that what I see as adaptation is really that of mutating genes which makes creatures change or  "die off". Do you see these random changes in genes as just reactive to the environment challenges or do you see any design in the changes?

I will tell you that my education in this area is somewhere in the middle. I am more educated in science than many, I graduated from Texas A&M however, not near as much as others who majored in the area of science.  Being that I was at a research university, I had to suspend my thougths/ponderings as I attended the required science basic classes. I never felt as if I could challenge or ask questions...cooperate and graduate, you know the drill when you are 18-19 years old.

I think that is my point, if creationism/evolution is not allowed to be taught/discussed/debated side by side.  It leaves me to deal with my (mis) understandings on my own. That is why I would advocate teaching both with respect and honor side by side. I can well imagine that is not what you or Sandy would advocate.  How will you be able to understand where other's get their ideas?  You have acknowleged that going to church each Sunday is not neccessarily on your schedule,ha ha.

But perhaps I assume you all want to understand the basis of creationism.  What are you thoughts?

You are right about the church on Sunday..that was a joke. However, where would you have been taught about creationism? You stated you don't understand the basis, so where would you have been exposed to it?  Either through your own reading and interpreting of what the Bible says or by attending a religion class of some kind.  That is my point, why if our world and our culture has many, many people who believe in creationism, why should it not be explored in the realm of education?

Ironically, my church is about to start a series of class on science and creationism. I look forward to learning more.

My question  to you is how will you learn more about creationism?

" . . . why should it not be explored in the realm of education?"

I believe it belongs in a study of philosophy, religions, or faiths.  A public school course would obviously need to teach a comparison of various faiths and not just one.  But it certainly does not belong in science.  And I think you misread: I do have an understanding of creationism.

 Well, in 2005, this is what a federal judge ruled:

"HARRISBURG, Pa. - In one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania public school district Tuesday from teaching “intelligent design” in biology class, saying the concept is creationism in disguise.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

The ruling was a major setback to the intelligent design movement, which is also waging battles in Georgia and Kansas. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force."

And the Supreme Court ruled earlier:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that teaching creationism violates the constitutional separation of church and state.This is the text of the 1987 United States Supreme Court decision striking down a Louisiana law that required if evolution is taught in public schools then creationism must also be taught. This 7-2 decision ended any prospect of public schools in the United States being legally forced to teach explicate creationism. 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/edwards-v-aguillard.html

So, unless those decisions are reversed, it looks like teaching creationism in public schools is not legal.

Let me add that I lived for nineteen years in a theocracy (Saudi Arabia) and I saw first-hand what it's like when there is no separation between mosque and state. It made me so very grateful that I live in a land where there IS that separation. So, I would hate to see the USA start down a slippery slope towards that kind of society.

Lisa,

I do not see gene mutations as reactive to environmental challenges or any thing else. SOME mutations MAY be caused by environmental factors like stronium-90 in the water supply, but that does not mean that the mutations are reactive to the environmental poison becuase there may be a wide range of gene mutations. When those various gene mutations play out over time it is likely that some will prove to have been disasterous and possible that some will prove to have been advantageous, but even if you can identify all the gene mutations that occur it is still impossible to say which will prove to be advantageous and which will not.

Part of the problem is that genetics is random and it may be that those genes that would allow certain people to survive stronium-90 in the water supply pass along other genes that have the potential to make the breathing of exygen fatal if they happen to be mated to certain other genes On the other hand, perhaps the cancer caused to one woman from drinking stronium-90 in the water supply will cause massive debilitating birth defects in her child who, without the stronium-90 in the water supply would have grown up to drop the hydrogen bomb on New York City.

It stuff like that that keeps life exciting, albeit on a low-key long-term basis. This excitement not a particular reason not to belive in the existence of some force many people call God(s) by one name or another (with each thinking their name(s) is/are the right one(s)), but the existence of a god, God or many gods would take a lot of the fun out of it.

I should also point out that perhaps the vast majority of genetic mutations occur spontaneously and a great many of those genetic mutations have no discernable effect, at least not one that has been identified so far. It is totally unclear, for example, if the genetic mutation that produces voilet eyes has any particular advantage or disadvantage other than making Elizabeth Taylor, and perhaps some other people, somewhat more attractive (or unattractive, to some) than they might otherwise have been. The long-term effects of that increased or decreased attractiveness might not be readily apparent and the full-effect of Liz having a kid (did she?) with any one of her husbands may not reveal itself for many, mnay generations, way past the time that anyone would care to, or even be able to, trace things back to those magnificent eyes.

The net result for me is that I have no idea whether the is one god, many gods, no god or, as the Shinto believe, spirits in rocks, trees and anything else they happpen to run across, and I really don't care one way or the other. Here's why: if there is/are no god/gods/spirits/whathaveyou, then I'd be a fool for believing there were. I don't much like being a fool and try to avoid being one as much as possible even if I do fail at not being a fool much of the time.

If there is/are god (etc.), I am sure he, she, it, they or whatever are far too busy managing the thrillions and  trillions (and though I underestimate, that is as far as I, a non-mathemitician, can count) of organisms on earth, not to mention the rest of the universe, the other universes and whatever else is out there, to worry much about whether or not I believe in god. The fact of the matter is that my belief or non-belief doesn't reallty matter very much to anyone or thing, least of all me.

What might be somewhat odd is that I have a fairly religious wife and a fairly religious son. We keep a kosher home, and are members of our local conservative synagogue where I volunteer from time to time but never go to services. I consider myself a very spiritual and highly ethical person whose life practices and values are right in line with the values, ethics and life practices of any of the more standard religions on the Jewish/Islamic/Christian continuum even though I incorporate ideas contained in Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and other religions into my thoughts.

Oh, just one more thing. My name is spelled DevEn. It is all over this thread, so if you get confused about how to spell it, just scroll down a bit and check.