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Creationism

Posted by DRC on February 15, 2005

In Reply to: Creationism posted by Lewis on February 14, 2005

: : : : : : : : : Q1) The divide in the U.S.A is often referred to as "blue-state Americans v.s. red-state Americans".

: : : : : : : : : Why blue for more liberal Americans (Democrats) and red for more conservative Americans (Republicans)?

: : : : : : : : : Q2) Is it true that in some schools in red states Creationism is taught in a science class and Darwinism is dismissed or ignored as unimportant or just a fiction? If true, how long has this been going on? Which states?
: : : : : : : : : I was so shocked when I heard this from an American friend....

: : : : : : : : Starting with Question 2. Yes, evolution vs. creationism or some variation is still a hot issue in some states. See article below. Bringing this around to phrases, recently a school administrator thought she'd found a solution by referring to "processes over time" rather than to the word "evolution." It didn't work out. On a personal note, I believe the Earth and everything else was created by God. But I've never understood why people think that is not compatible with evolution. See Genesis. It's all there.

: : : : : : : : Evolution ruling gets cheers from scientists
: : : : : : : : Friday, January 14, 2005 Posted: 10:51 AM EST (1551 GMT)

: : : : : : : : ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Since 2002, Dr. Kenneth Miller has been upset that biology textbooks he has written are slapped with a warning sticker by the time they appear in suburban Atlanta schools. Evolution, the stickers say, is "a theory, not a fact."
: : : : : : : : www.cnn.com/ 2005/EDUCATION/01/14/evolution.stickers.ap/

: : : : : : : I googled "Safire, red states," figuring William Safire would be all over this. The following doesn't completely answer the question. But it did mention another book I'm going to have to buy:

: : : : : : : William Safire Explores Ideas Of 'Swing Voter' and 'Battleground States'

: : : : : : : William Safire, The New York Times, 03 Oct. 2004

: : : : : : : "...For red state/blue state, I have in hand 'Hatchet Jobs and Hardball' (Oxford, $25), a new dictionary of political slang. Though the editor, Grant Barrett, provides no context for his entries, the citations often define themselves. Perhaps because color television was not universal until a generation ago, electoral maps were not consistent until the campaign of the first President Bush against Bill Clinton.

: : : : : : : But on Oct. 15, 1992, a Boston Globe writer noted, 'But when the anchormen turn to their electronic tote boards election night and the red states for Clinton start swamping the blue states for Bush, this will be a strange night for me.' (By digging further on the Web, the reader can find that the coiner, or at least an early user, was David Nyhan, then of the Globe staff.)...That poses (not begs) the question: Why are Republicans red and Democrats blue? In France in the 1780's, revolutionaries sported a red cockade; in the European revolutions of 1848, 'Red Republicans' advocated the use of force to overthrow governments and red became the color of communism. The Times of London wrote in 1848 about the battle in France 'of the red Republic, as the Ultras there call themselves, against the blue -- colours being used to designate the parties as much in provincial France as in our counties in England.' (A nice find, but somehow that doesn't strike me as the reason that solidly G.O.P. states in the U.S. are colored red on maps. Sometimes, as Sigmund Freud is said to have said, a cigar is just a cigar.)..."

: : : : : : : The article also discusses "swing states" and "battleground states."
: : : : : : : hnn.us/roundup/comments/7824.html Accessed February 12, 2005.
: : : : : : :

: : : : : : During the Cold War, who would've wanted their states to be "red"?

: : : : : In the UK the colours are reversed - red for leftish trends and blue for rightish ones. This is true for most/all of the rest of the wo rld. How did they become as they are in the US?

: : :
: : : : = I am astonished there are people who truly believe in this in the 21st century. Roughly how much percentage of Americans believe this?
: : : : Does that mean American adults also believe in Santa Claus?

: : : Believe in a Creator? Quite a lot of us.

: : If it helps at all... I think American religiosity seems odd to Europeans because most Europeans rejected religion at one point or another in their history. This isn't to say that it wasn't re-established and even encorporated into some modern European states. Oddly, connection with the state seems to have tarnished the appeal of the Church in many places, Ireland, for instance. The United States separated religion and the state, not as a way of protecting the state from religion so much as protecting religion from the state. As a consequence there has never been an popular anti-religious in the US. America is far more religious then than most European countries. Religion plays a role in American society that it couldn't play if it were officially sanctioned. There have been waves of religious revivalism throughout American history, particularly in times of uncertainty and social transition. I suspect we'll look back at this period of history as one of these.

: : Camelita
: : Earnestly cramming complex social phenomena into crass little nutshells, as always.

: the problem is not really 'creationists' v evolutionists, but 'literalists' v the rest - some folks take what is written in the Bible as literal truth not open to interpretation, whereas others read it as more figurative/allegorical
: being a literalist puts the person in the situation in which they must defend every error in scripture, rather than acknowledge that scripture was compiled by inherently flawed humans. there was a 'Sinners' Bible' in which the "not" had been omitted from the commandment forbidding adultery - was that Bible the unerring word of God?
: if typographical errors can occur, why not others?
: lots of scripture was omitted from the Authorised Version of the Bible, but that is not to say that other scripture should have been excluded or was wrong, just that the Bishops who decided on the New Testament were not convinced that it should be included.
: literalists have lots of problems of that nature and few are sufficiently well-educated enough to understand the problems around their 'tradition'.

: To the hard-core creationists internal difficulties like 'day' and 'night' being used as measures of time before 'day' and 'night' were created is no problem - anybody thinking it does not mean 24 hours is an heretic and should be sent to the Inquisition or 'shunned'.

: Life is complicated and such people want simple answers to complex questions, IMO.
: I knew a very highly-qualified physics professor who had many doubts about the mechanisms of evolution and of science that was self-referring. He wanted people to understand that "evolution" was often simplified and wrongly taken as absolute truth, rather than a working theory and it should be recognised that any scientist that dares to think/explain so is treated as much as an heretic in the scientific community as a non-literalist is in fundamentalist religion.

: FWIW, I think we are talking about the mechanics of creation, not about purpose, meaning or the distinction between cosmic accident and the power of Life.

: I am appalled when instantaneous creation is given as much credence as 'processes over time' -
: but who knows? the joke may be on us for doubting that it is possible.

: we could all be Sims...

: ;-)

: Maybe one day we will all see clearly, but for now, we need to tolerate each other and accept we may be wrong.

: L

L you said "there was a 'Sinners' Bible' in which the "not" had been omitted from the commandment forbidding adultery" .

Perhaps this is the version that Bill Clinton was using.</ p>

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