Should Christians Be Involved in Politics?

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Are you telling me the current "fact" of evolution is a different "Fact" than they taught me when I was at school, and that I was believing an untruth?

I do not know where you went to school, nor what curriculum was used at that school.

But Amoeba do not belong to the Animalia kingdom.

TheBicyclingGuitarist, awaiting your post.

@MCalavera
I already posted! What more can be said? If someone is so delusional and misinformed as to deny the fact that humans evolved from non -humans, that takes away their credibility on just about any subject. At the very least they are badly misinformed, and it is also possible that they are either stupid, gullible or insane. None of those sound like good qualities for a leader.

@Nambo
Imagine a candidate for President who seems rational enough until one day he says confidently that we should teach the evidence for the earth being flat in geology classrooms and let the children decide. The situation with evolution is EXACTLY like that. Evolution is an observable testable fact of nature way beyond any reasonable doubt supported by tons of evidence, and there is NO scientific evidence that either falsifies evolution or supports a Young Earth Creationist viewpoint. Anyone who denies the fact of evolution is just as ignorant as if they were to insist the earth is really flat in spite of all evidence to the contrary. That's just the way it is, like it or not. If you don't like it, take it up with your God who apparently made it that way.

Now the thread is a debate on whither Christians should be politicians.
When you get nasty politicians like Stalin or Hitler, many people suffer.
With the nasty insults you enjoy hurling at people who dont share your particular viewpoint, you are giving a demonstration of the personality of a non-Christian to the forum which is most relevant to this thread.
Look, you have even gained the admiration of about the nastiest person on wrong planet, MCalavera.

I may be nasty (that's just your opinion), but I make a lot more sense than you do.

I feel that politicians should be allowed to believe as long as they acknowledge the difference between scientific fact and religious belief and tolerate other views of how the world came into existence.

Admittedly, creationist politicians are tricky issue since its hard to convince them that their views might be wrong.

Here in the UK, when Parliament sits, Members of Parliament firstly chose their seats by attaching a "Prayer card" to the seat they have chosen.
When the days session starts, the first thing that occurs is Morning Prayers where all the MPs turn around, (so their non-existant swords dont damage the leather benches), kneel on the benches for prayers.
In the House of Lords a whole bench is reserved for the Bishops.

Interestingly, one of the most vocal supporters of a Global Government run by the Banking families was British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he was also, as another MP told me, absolutely obsessed with the de-establishment of the Church of England and the removal of religion from Politics.

I think the two are related which wont be of news to students of the Bible.

MOST Christians worldwide belong to denominations that either accept the fact of evolution or say that it is irrelevant to their faith. It is the fundamentalists of any religion, not just Christianity, who cause a lot of misery for everyone else in the world. There are serious logical and theological flaws with the whole principle of fundamentalism. One of the most basic is that it limits God's power to human's understanding of the words in a sacred text, but the same words always mean different things to different people depending on the context in which they learned them and cultural and other factors.

A big problem with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis in the Christian Bible is that such a reading is falsified by the evidence of the physical world. So if a literal reading is the way we are supposed to read Genesis, that would make God a liar for planting all the evidence of the physical world that falsifies such an interpretation. Is your God a trickster? Why would he try to deceive us by saying one thing in His Book that is falsified by all the evidence of the world He created? Even the Bible has some places in it such as Job 12:8 where it says we should learn from the earth.

And it is not an insult to speak facts. IF someone denies the fact of evolution, there are only so many possible causes for this denial. Either they are intelligent but misinformed (and ignorance can be cured), or they are too stupid to understand the evidence, or they are insane, or they know it is a fact but pretend otherwise for whatever purpose (usually to make money from gullible idiots).

I don't agree with the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins, but those possible causes I list for denial of evolution are an expanded paraphrase of a famous remark he once wrote about evolution deniers. It seems to cover all the bases (of course there could be combinations of these reasons, such as stupid and insane, ignorant and stupid and insane, and so on).

And you labeled me a non-Christian when nothing I have said indicates that. Accepting the fact of evolution does not automatically make someone a non-Christian. I do disagree with the fundamentalist interpretations of ANY religion, not just Christianity, as being logically flawed and falsified by evidence. I do not believe in a trickster God (although in many ways that makes more sense than most conventional belief systems).

I don't follow religions of man even when they call themselves Christian, and I dont follow the religion of Evolution, I see too many instances were those who lead us and shape our thoughts are not to be trusted such as those "specialists" who assured our governments of Iraqs weapons of mass destruction, or the "scientists" in the pay of conglomerations who use their science to deceive for their paymasters benefits.

The only "Person" I trust is God, and the only word he has provided is the Bible, and so that is what I chose to trust, sure a man in a white coat might tell me he has proved a fact that contradicts the Bible, do I take his word for it?, no, he might be mistaken, I understand evolution is still called a theory, why is this if as you suggest, it has been proven?
Or maybe the message of the Bible is still unclear in its entirety, it says it Daniel 12 it will only be fully revealed in the last day and to Gods servants.
As such, I have experienced something that is missing from your scientific analysis that is subsequently flawed if elements are missing, namely a personal relationship with God through Holy Spirit, obviously this is absurd to all who haven't experienced it, but those of us who have know that those who haven't are not in a position to see the full picture, hence we will not pronounce you "stupid and insane, ignorant and stupid and insane, and so on", this is the only criticism I have of your stand for I used to share your view of evolution, but never felt the need to defend it via the use of vicious attacks and insults, such methods do not arouse trust in me that the "truths" you propose are benevolent.

Evolution is not a religion. It is based on evidence, more evidence of more different types than support most scientific ideas, all pointing to the same reality. When you say you consider evolution to be a "religion," it apparently shows you have a different definition for religion than most people do. Most people who argue against evolution show by their arguments that they do not understand what they are arguing against.

For example, some ask why are there still monkeys, without realizing that this is equivalent to asking that if you and your cousin both descend from your grandparents, why does your cousin exist?

Or they ask to see proof of a cat giving birth to a puppy, or a dog giving proof to a kitten, without realizing that evolution does not expect or predict such a thing to happen, and if it DID happen instead of being "proof" of evolution would actually present some new problems needing to be explained.

Some creationists also show their ignorance by asking for a fossil of a "Crocoduck" (body of a duck, head of a crocodile) as an example of a transitional fossil. Scientists HAVE found a common ancestor of ducks and crocodiles (you have to go back a ways in the fossil record). As it turns out, there are numerous examples of transitional fossils that ARE real but the creationists ignore, deny or distort these findings because it threatens their world view. Creatures such as Tiktaalik showing the transition from fish to land tetrapods, or Archaeopteryx which even though it was one of the first fossils found of the evolution of birds from dinosaurs still remains one of the best examples of a transitional form. Or Lucy, three and a half million years old with many features intermediate between humans and other modern great apes.

ah well, nothing personal Nambo. It seems I have the evidence of reality on my side though, that's all. I would hope that your denial of evolution is based mostly on ignorance rather than the other factors mentioned. I ask you, why, if the Bible IS true, why oh why does EVERYTHING we can observe and measure regarding biological evolution clearly show that humans have evolved from non-human ancestors? And why does that conflict with your book anyway? Who can say for sure whether or not God took dirt and made people out of it using evolution as a tool over billions of years? That seems to be the way most Christians reconcile what we can observe and measure of reality compared to their religious beliefs.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 20 Oct 2013, 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually now, if these are the sort of Christians you have been meeting, I can see why you consider them insane.




As for the above, and as Ive spelt out on another debate here, its just two different interpretations of the same evidence, you see similarities as evidence of a line of evolution, I see similarities as evidence of coming from the same manufacturer, for instance.
I was very interested in science and natural history as a child, I wouldn't say it was ignorance, in fact it had been so indoctrinated in my mind, I had great difficulty letting go of it.

I believe in some aspects of evolution, natural selection for example, I just dont see that as being able to create life in the first place, I wonder how much evidence for something like natural selection is being used to support evolution?

I believe in devolution if that's any help?

@Nambo
It is NOT just similarities that you and I choose to interpret differently. Consider the following:

The patterns of nested hierarchies (picture a drawing of a family tree) in many types of genetic data only make sense if different species had a common ancestor, not a common designer (UNLESS that designer wanted to make it LOOK like they had a common ancestor, back to the trickster God again).

Also the family tree of life from genetic studies matches what we find in the fossil record. There is a particular valley in Africa where we have a whole series of hominid fossils over a long time with a clear progression from more ape-like to more human-like features over time. Why would we find that? And why aren't there any fossils of rabbits in Pre-Cambrian rocks?

See, it is not just "similarities" or interpreting the same evidence different ways. Evolution makes sense, is consistent with the evidence and explains the evidence quite nicely. It makes predictions that can be tested and has been observed in the field and in the lab.

Most importantly, Evolution does not have anything to do with the creation of the universe or the origin of life. It does not answer those questions and does not address them. This is perhaps the biggest misunderstanding critics have about evolution. They think if it cannot explain everything, then it explains nothing. That is faulty thinking on their part.

I wouldn't necessarily use genetic progression as a proof or attribute it to a trickster God, I can envisage a manufacturer having created a creature and just needing to slightly alter the genetic code to make a similar but different creature as a logical move, rather than starting all over again, whilst this is no more a proof than your interpretation, the fact these creatures exist prove it can work this way.

Coming now from a different angle, I have quite a few books that address ancient artifacts, there is ample evidence just lying on the ground that indicates Human civilisations where far more advanced than they are today, engineering feats beyond our current technologies from a time we are lead to believe man was primitive.
Ancient Indian sanskrit documents describing the construction of Vimanas, backing the "legends" of their ariel wars.

The whole world has legends and depictions of man interacting with dinosaurs which where then called Dragons, yet because science wants us to believe dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, such discrepancies to their world view are simply suppressed, ridiculed, or ignored which is why I refer to evolution as a religion because it uses the same sort of self-deciept religions use to protect their faith, simply replacing a belief in God with a belief that we are our own God.

If a scientific theory is presented with an obstacle to that theory, obviously the theory needs to be adjusted until such is no longer an obstacle, simply ignoring it is not science, just another faith.

No, science does not censor or suppress evidence if it conflicts with what someone wants to believe. That would be religion that does that. IF any evidence disproving evolution were to be found, I for one would be delighted. The simple fact is that no such evidence has yet been found.

Also, you do not seem to understand what patterns of nested hierarchies are. The point is that whether or not different species have a common ancestor, family tree patterns exist for many different types of data that only make sense if they did have a common ancestor, and what we see in the fossil record matches the predictions made from the genetic data as to how long ago different species would have split off from each other.
So yes, if it did not happen that would make God a trickster to make it look so much like it did happen.

The genetic information matches the fossils in the rocks, with older fossils having different forms than newer ones and with a clear progression over time from ancestral species to sometimes quite different modern species. For example, there did not use to be separate dogs and cats. Go back forty or fifty million years and both these modern "kinds" were the same type of critter from the same ancestral population. Another thing that needs to be understood to see the fallacy of some creationist arguments is that it is not individual organisms that evolve. It is breeding populations of organisms that evolve.

Many times the past twenty years or so I have noticed that most people who think evolution or creation is just a matter of how to interpret the evidence usually know very little about the nature of that evidence, or they have been very badly misinformed (LIED TO) about it. I'm sorry but your "explanation" of the genetic evidence makes it clear to me that you do not know very much about the nature of that evidence. It does not look at all like a designer adjusting code from one species to the next but instead shows clear signs that different "kinds" used to have a common ancestor, and what's more that prediction is backed up by what we observe in the fossil record. Your explanation also does not account for the progression shown in the fossil record. Why are there no fossils of rabbits in PreCambrian rocks? Because that was millions of years before they EVOLVED!

I never even heard of nested hierarchies.
Regarding the dogs and cats example though, the creation argument doesnt say all species of dog and cat were created separate, but they all developed from a single common ancestor, creationism just doesn't acknowledged that they evolved from a different kind, ie a dog from a cat.