Thought you guys might like this one...Follow

I read this earlier and this caught my eye:

I heart Huckabee!

Me too, especially when he says things like:

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth," said Huckabee. "A person either believes that God created the process, or believes that it was an accident and that it just happened all on its own."

Obviously, it's either one or the other.

I also liked his definition of "6 days".

"Whether God did it in six days, or whether he did it in six days that represented periods of time, he did it. And that's what's important."

And of course his carefully constructed view of evolution:

"If anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it."

In fairness, he did also say:

"I'm not planning on writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book. I'm asking for the opportunity to be president of the United States."

Which is fair enough, but surely the President of the United States should be able to at least understand an eigth-grade science book.




Now, I know I'm just some red Eurotrash with too much time on my hands, but could some nice and slighly clever Republican (like Moe or Nepth) explain to me how this works? How you can have a serious and respected candidate (I assume), who doesn't believe in one of the most basic principle of science? Is it purely to get the religious votes, or is he really that stupid? Could any of you Reps vote for a guy who believes more in creationism than in evolution?


The movie was pretty cool, though.


Edited, Oct 24th 2007 10:57am by RedPhoenixxx

Well, our bipeds are already on that slippery slope, since we are in fact primates ourselves. Dunce.

Besides, President Huckabee? Ain't gonna happen.

FFS, living in the same state as this man is bad enough, i hope they don't let his degenerate mind take control of the oval office. The school system in Arkansas is shot to hell and serves onl to stagnate the minds of children. It's all about getting them to reach a certain level of standard proficiency and has nothing to do with criticle thinking skills or the advancement of learning.


He has almost no chance to make it into the oval office this year, but if he ever makes into the final rounds of preliminaries, be afraid.

Ok. But not a single quote you posted does not fit into that allegorical standard. Heck. He even talks about how he doesn't know how long those 6 days where, but that what was important was that God did the creating.

Exactly how much of his faith must he back off of before you think it's ok?


It certainly sounded to me like you were saying that he should not only back off of the "it happened in 6 days" bit, but maybe leave some wiggle room in there for whether there was a deity involved in the process either...



Yes. You are.

You're bashing him because he believes that God created the universe and that God created man in his image. These are kinda core things within his religion. You are making repudiation of his faith a prerequisite for holding public office. That may fly in your own country, but here we don't discriminate against people because of their religion.


Somehow, I tend to think that his policies are more important then his faith. We are talking about someone running for public office, right?

He was asked what he believed. Not what policies or changes to science and whatnot he would want to see if elected president.

You do see the difference, right? I don't care if someone believes that the world was created by a giant laser-beam-eyed snail wiggling around leaving a slime trail. I care about what policies and positions that person is going to take with regard to the office he's running for.

A point which Huckabee also addressed (and you trimmed out when mentioning this bit):




He clearly believes that this is a matter of his own personal faith. Asking the question does indeed imply some sort of religious "test" for holding public office. An idea that I personally find reprehensible.




What part of "A person's personal religious beliefs do not necessarily have any relevance to his ability to fulfill his obligations in public office" do you not get? He was asked what he believed, not what he thought should be taught in public school (a point he made *very* clear). Do his beliefs invalidate him for office? Cause it certainly sounds like that's what you're trying to argue.


We should judge candidates by their positions on matters of policy and law, not their personal religious beliefs. Cause opening up that can of worms leads you pretty quickly to rejecting any politician who has any sort of faith. They pretty much all require some belief in something unprovable and really pretty unlikely if you stop and think about it. Why stop at just questioning his position on creation and evolution? Afterall, the guy believes in some old man in the clouds. That's just crazy, right?

Your fist mistake was assuming that being Liberal was in any way related to being open minded. Common mistake though.




Or we can assume that they automatically do, and that a person of faith has absolutely no ability to separate what he believes for himself and what he does professionally. So no firefighter can be religious cause he's going to believe that if God sent that fire, it's not his right to stop it, right? And that policeman? He can't be religious either because he might just decide to follow the laws of his religion instead of those of the city he works for. And that airline pilot? Can't be religious either, because if God had meant for man to fly, he'd have made them with wings, right?

Goes both ways. See. I'd rather look at a prospective candidates record rather then assuming that he's going to do things I don't agree with because he happens to hold religious views that I don't agree with.




Lol. You realize you've just now proven my point?

You still going to argue that you don't require a repudiation of faith as a requirement for office?




He didn't say that. You made it up. Strawman.



He didn't say that either. Another strawman.



He didn't say this either. Yet another strawman.



Lol. Methinks you're the one with the skewed perspective. You so obviously dislike anyone with strong religious beliefs, so much so that you'll invent reasons why they're unfit to hold public office.


Silly me. I actually look at the candidate and his history in public office. You seem to broadly paint all religious people with the same brush (and assume the worst). Funny thing is that I agree with you. I don't think he'd make a good president. But not because of his religious beliefs. I just happen to not agree with many of his political positions and ideas.




Yeah. Could. But I've seen far more bad policies come out of purely secular motives then the other way around. Honestly, for every single time some local school board does something that steps across the boundaries between state and religion, there are a hundred other things that are done that are far worse with far broader implications and that have nothing to do with faith based anything.

I'm not going to blind myself to the real issues because I've been convinced that the religion boogeyman is going to get me if I don't pay enough attention. I'm far more worried about the freedoms I lose each year to the social liberalist boogeyman, but thank you for being so concerned.

I seriously hate that man.

It's mostly a bunch of smaller things he's done as my state's governor that annoys me about him.

I'll see if I can dig up the things I remember.

I'm having trouble finding documents on it, but the first one was when he started requiring the regents from each university to submit undated letters of resignation before he would approve their appointment. (I've found a little bit on it, but it's mostly an editorial and I'd rather submit news articles).

The others, I'll admit, were run of the mill state political scandals that I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to.


I really wish I could remember more, but I have to be perfectly honest, other than the University thing, it's a bunch of little things and I've pretty well been ignoring him for the last year or so.

I was just able to read this again...and as for the bolded part, I guess I can be the first person you've met with those views.

Not in the relevance of our timeline. I think when God created these things, and called it "6 days", he wasn't using our timeline of "days." In Revelations, for example, it says in Heaven one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like one day. I do believe the things in the Bible actually happened, all of them, but I also believe we must find practical ways of living the guidelines he sets out. Kind of a don't make the same mistake twice thing.