Letters to the Editor
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Man from monkeys
Man didn't come from monkeys, both man and monkeys came from protozoans. The whole monkey thing is used to denigrate science because monkeys are supposed to be funny-looking and primitive. The man-monkey progression is like the last millimeter on a ruler ten kilometers long. If Mike Huckabee doesn't get that, Bill Maher certainly should.
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@anonymous
"I feel I have to defend Huckabee on this one because I didn't see anything in this article that contradicted the *philosophy* of intelligent design."
Yes, he does. He says that he doesn't think he came from a monkey. That's typical anti-evolutionary cant, and it doesn't square with I.D., which admits that yes, there were monkeys in our past, but an omnipotent designer played match-maker with them to arrange everything to lead to humans.
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Huckabee and evolution not Huckabee and god
Stay away from questions regarding god or religion. Drill him on his positions on science. He'll try to bring god into it, but don't let him and stay on the science track. He will have to admit he believes in evolution. This will not play with his kooky fundamentalist supporters. He's trying to have it both ways. Make him pick a side.
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re: Man from Monkey
Humans did not evolve from monkeys nor from apes. It is more accurate to say that humans and these organisms share common ancestors, with those common ancestors being more recent in the case of apes than in the case of monkeys. The same with protozoa. Modern protozoa and humans and monkeys share common ancestors in the far distant past. The same is true with all life on Earth (presumably) if you go back far enough. This is a subtle point that can be easily overlooked. Modern organisms did not evolve from each other, but from ancestors that were shared between each other at different points in life's history. That said, monkeys retain more characteristics of the common ancestor they share with us than do we. This is not to say, however, that we are more evolved, as that implies an inherent progressiveness to evolution that really is not necessarily so.
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bad news
I've got some bad news for Huckabee: While humans didn't "come" from monkeys-- we had the same evolutionary ancestors. In fact, we are apes. We are also mammals. I know that's a tough concept to wrap your brain around, but humans are (gasp!) animals. Advanced animals, perhaps (and that could be a good debate, all things considered), but animals nonetheless. I remember attending a conference in Washington D.C. where Carl Sagan was talking about all this; he's the first scientist who really opened my eyes to this concept.
Sooooo, if God created us in His own image, would that make God an animal?? Or, did humans finally create God in their own image, having tired of Sun Gods, Moon Gods, and such? Why not create a religion that gives the whole planet to US???
These conversations are fun, aren't they?
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"I voted for Nader in the past two elections."
Hopefully, you've evolved since then.
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@Athenian 10:04
The best way I've heard to describe this difference between science and religion is that they are answering 2 different questions.
Science can answer HOW. Religion is useful for answering WHY. Creation of the world is a good example. I certainly believe science tells us how this happened. My religion tells me God did it for a purpose. Whether he had a hand in it à la ID, is beyond my ability to understand. I wouldn't rule it out, but it certainly shouldn't be taught as science in public schools either.
This split question also is a very useful to me when I read the Bible -- Dr. Mickey Efird at Duke describes it as inerrant "in faith and practice". If you're asking for a history lesson from the Bible, you're asking the wrong question. If you want to know what God expects from us, you're much closer (and my personal opinion is that is limited to the one answer Jesus gave - "Love God and love your neighbor").
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Still ...
... it's hard to hate Huckabee. I've said for months he's the GOP's best bet. If nominated, he'll do well.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is busy disenfranchising its voters in the Michigan and Florida primaries. Only the DNC could snatch defeat from the most fertile political landscape in three election cycles. They're well on their way to another four years of clueless, spineless opposition to a Republican president.
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@ jcbarr:
Huckabee believes that we are in a "theocratic war" in Iraq--he believes that Iraq is more important than World War Two, because, in his reasoning, WWII was just about "geography". Iraq and the GWOT is about our SURVIVAL as a Christian nation against the radical Muslims. He also says he would ignore Congress telling him "no" and would bomb Iran if he wanted to. The man is stark raving insane, and also has no apparent grasp of history.
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reply to Athenian and The Professor
[athenian] First off, I am in a university right now, as i am everyday.
Second off, no theory (yes even electrons, or gravity for that matter) is ever "proven" in a strict philosophical sense. Theories are induced. Granted, they are the best inductions or inferences we can make within the *rules of science* (e.g., every observation must be explained from physical causes), but that is not the same as "proven". We do not "know" these theories are correct, we believe in them *as long as it is to our predictive benefit*. As soon as the theory no longer makes accurate predictions or some other theory make better prediction, we discard the prior. Any theory that states "well god made that happen" does not predict, and is therefore not acceptable as "scientific", but that is not the same as saying it was disproven.
[The Professor] You appear to be thinking of some specific instantiation of intelligent design. I was thinking of a more general version that simply states "the world/universe was designed by an intelligent creator". No mention is made of when it was created. Some versions say that it was created early and then things evolved. Other versions say it was created more recently and made to appear as if things had been evolving. None of this can be tested of course.