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“Left” Versus “Right” Science

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MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews goes after Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) on Science.

PENCE: Do I believe in evolution? I embrace the view that God created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that’s in them, and —
MATTHEWS: (interrupting) Right, but you believe in evolution from the beginning.
PENCE: The means, Chris, that He used to do that, I can’t say, but I do believe —
MATTHEWS: (interrupting) You can’t what?
PENCE: — in that fundamental truth.
MATTHEWS: Well — well did you take biology? (screaming) Did you take biology in school? Did you take science, which is all based on evolutionary belief and assumption?
PENCE: Well, I’ve always wanted to —
MATTHEWS: (screaming) If your party is to be credible on science, you’ve gotta accept science. Do you?
PENCE: Yeah, I want to —
MATTHEWS: Accept science?

[youtube KsMGvvUyNDE]

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but Science, at least according to Chris Matthews, is a Democrat thing. Personally, I was unaware that there was a “deomcrat” way to do science and a “republican” way to do science. Someone might explain to me how that works. Is there a “left” scientific method and a “right” scientific method? Matthews certainly seems to think so! How ignorant and disingenous of him! (But, we’re talking about Chris Matthews here, the most misinformed commentator on the networks as far as I’m concerned)

Its worth noting how Matthews tries to build a straw man about YEC and then claim that there a “many” in the Republican party who hold that view and who are “anti-science”. Matthews demonstrates admirably the left’s derision of anyone who would dare question evolution, stem cell research, global warming and who knows what else. Matthews appears clueless about the real debates in science about all these things, and ignores completely any of the moral questions involved, pretending, I guess, that they don’t even exist!

I’ll grant that Mike Pence is not exactly the best spokesperson for Science and scientific issues, but trying to tie him to YEC and Fundamentalism only shows how shallow guys like Matthew and those on the left really are. Matthews did a great job of making a fool of himself…but then, he does that almost every night. That’s why MSNBC has the lowest rating of all the news networks.

Edited to add this:
Some additional thoughts on this from Cornelius G. Hunter from his Darwin’s God blogspot.

Comments
Mr Rvb8, Thank you for your kind words. With respect to 'macro-evolution', it is a term that has appeared historically in the literature. While I accept your comment that it's micro-evolution all the way down, that perspective is not always the most helpful. Sure, we are just fish. Sure, we are just biofilms of bacteria. But speciation is a reality. I'm quite interested in exactly those inputs to speciation that are not reducible to evolution. These might be things like co-evolution and the creation and destruction of niches in the physical environment. I personally see the current state of "we accept micro-evolution, but not macro-evolution" and "evolution works, but only by active information" as a phase in a historical process. So I am happy to engage at the current moment with people using their current vocabulary, where it makes sense. I agree that if someone wnated to make an argument based on baraminology or some other invented stuffs, I would have to ask them to change their vocabulary before we could have a successful dialogue. In the case of macro-evolution, I don't feel that's necessary, modulo checking definitions.Nakashima
May 10, 2009
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Russ: Thanks. (Cf my remarks to DK, here.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus
May 10, 2009
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^but now that i reread your post I think you are just projecting but dont actually hold that misunderstanding. Sorry.Frost122585
May 10, 2009
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rvb8, ID can accept macro-evolution just not in the Darwinian (undirected chance) form.Frost122585
May 10, 2009
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Of course I mean Macro-evolution (ID does not accept), Micro Evolution, (ID does accept). SORRY!rvb8
May 10, 2009
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The argument between 'Macro-evolution'(ID accepts) and 'Micro-evolution'(ID does not accept) is a red hearing, and I'm a little dissapointed in Mr/Miss Nakashima for using these terms; they are the creations of people who need to encapsulate their worlds within boundaries they can deal with. Mr/Miss Nakashima your posts are, to me high lights in generally mediocre thinking. Please don't lower yourself to pandering to a vocabulary, that within the science community itself, does not exist. There is evolution only. If some people wish to dwell within walled worlds, let them, but please don't stoop to using their invented language, and evolved meanings. Rob.rvb8
May 10, 2009
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Jerry, that is correct and that is for two main reasons- one he has an agenda pure and simple- and two because he is not intelligent enough to debate the subject fairly enough in real time. If Mathews even was intelligent enough to debate this issue on its merits he still would be in the troubling postions of being wrong from the start- that is he conflates poltics with sceince religion and philosophy so that he doesn't have to address the truth- that they are seperate spheres of thought with seperate questions and issues that need to be indivudually adressed. Mathews just simply wanted to try and up his ratings by creating a hot topic - one that will grab people's attention back to his show by insulting them- this segment should have been called "Republicans don't believe in evolution because they are anti science"- which is a massive generality- and bigoted statement. This is why I will never watch his show- it is completely unintelligible as it reflects the host and the BS.NBC channel as a whole.Frost122585
May 9, 2009
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This interesting exchange between Pence and Mathews illustrates one important point: we do not want the media, nor politicians to do our bidding in questions of science, no matter what our philosophical perspective. Yet it seems that we all appeal to these lowest common denominators. Are we gluttons for punishment, or what?CannuckianYankee
May 9, 2009
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<blockquote<kairosfocus [12], there are only 24 hours in a day. Hey! David Kellog. Lay off kairofocus. He's one of the most interesting commenters here. If you think a particular post is too long, skim it and go on to the next one. ;)russ
May 9, 2009
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The bias with which he interviews conservatives and especially republicans (since he is a democrat who use to work for the DNC)Chris Mathews is disgusting to me.Frost122585
May 8, 2009
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I just watched this video and there was lots of shouting or screaming if you want to call it that. I have seen Matthews hundreds of times and this is typical of how he interviews a Republican or a conservative. It is rapid fire, talk over the other person, interrupt often. He has a template and wants to pin the person to it. It is similar to the what the anti ID people do here. Except they do not want to talk about evolution because they know they will get their clocks cleaned.jerry
May 8, 2009
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Mr DonaldM, That could well be true, depending on what kind of work they doing in his lab. That doesn't invalidate the example I gave above about herbicide design. Mr DATCG just asked for a single example, not an average across all drug design efforts in every company. I think that in the area of human specific drug design, these concerns with macro-evolutionary events would come up mostly in HIV related fields, and other fields where disease vectors have resevoirs in other species and occasionally jump to humans. Another possible area in which it could be important is drugs with accidental or intentional impact on development, because it is in metazoan development that we can see the constraints caused by our distant ancestors, our inner fish.Nakashima
May 8, 2009
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Reg
Posting inaccurate stuff from places you don’t remember isn’t a good way to come across as doing science. By the way, that site you found the transcript on - are you sure it want’t the reliable Mr Limbaugh? That’s the only site I could find with google which matched what you quoted.
As I said, I didn't get it off a website, but from an e-mail from an associate of mine. The actual transcript of what was said is accurate and that's all that matters. The parenthetical comments can be taken as one wishes, it changes nothing about the point of my OP and this thread. Its a dead horse already...put away your stick.DonaldM
May 8, 2009
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Mr DATCG, Your description of a scientist working with data such as the nested hierarchy in a purely operational way is extremely strained. The data cannot be just used, it has to be understood. Otherwise you cannot do inferences about the data. I'm quite familiar with the New Scientist article on the failure of the tree model at the base of the tree of life. This does not invalidate its utility for metazoa.Nakashima
May 8, 2009
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Nakashima
Drug design certainly needs to understand evolution, for example to calculate how long it will be effective against an infection.
A good friend of mine leads a major research team at a major pharmeceutical company. I once asked him what role evolution played in their research for new drugs and treatments. His answer was "None!" He said there wasn't a single scientist on his team who paid any attention at to evolution for their research because it simply plays no part in it.DonaldM
May 8, 2009
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I want to be clear. Evolution happens. But the events, speciation, "Tree of Life" models predicted in the past are failed models according to many scientist today in this battle. There is a discontinuity of patterns along with a continuim in areas of core processes. From NewScientist; Jan 21, 2009.
"Doolittle made the provocative claim that "the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree" (Science, vol 284, p 2124). "The tree of life is not something that exists in nature, it's a way that humans classify nature," he says."
Classification does not match reality. In most fields of hard engineering sciences, this is a failure. This is why there are so many stories of maybe, might-be's, could've, may have and possible evolutionary events many contradicting another. Each TOL scientist has a story to tell. And he may be right about his particular search space. Brilliant minds work on this, so the problem is not them. It is the theoretic construct and the fact that history, HGT, Endosymbiosis obstructs them from ever finding the one true Tree of Life. Battle comes to a head
The battle came to a head in 2006. In an ambitious study, a team led by Peer Bork of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, examined 191 sequenced genomes from all three domains of life - bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes (complex organisms with their genetic material packaged in a nucleus) - and identified 31 genes that all the species possessed and which showed no signs of ever having been horizontally transferred. They then generated a tree by comparing the sequences of these "core" genes in everything from E. coli to elephants. The result was the closest thing yet to the perfect tree, Bork claimed (Science, vol 311, p 1283). Other researchers begged to differ. Among them were Tal Dagan and William Martin at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, who pointed out that in numerical terms a core of 31 genes is almost insignificant, representing just 1 per cent of a typical bacterial genome and more like 0.1 per cent of an animal's. That hardly constitutes a mighty oak or even a feeble sapling - more like a tiny twig completely buried by a giant web. Dagan dubbed Bork's result "the tree of 1 per cent" and argued that the study inadvertently provided some of the best evidence yet that the tree-of-life concept was redundant (Genome Biology, vol 7, p 118).
Quoted from Genome Biology and other excerpts... "the tree of 1 per cent" argues in favor of those seeking other models. This is the problem also of excluding non-coding regions from the start as JunkDNA, but I digress. Endosymbiosis blurs the picture as well.
"The neat picture of a branching tree is further blurred by a process called endosymbiosis. Early on in their evolution, eukaryotes are thought to have engulfed two free-living prokaryotes. One of these gave rise to the cellular power generators called mitochondria while the other was the precursor of the chloroplasts, in which photosynthesis takes place. These "endosymbionts" later transferred large chunks of their genomes into those of their eukaryote hosts, creating hybrid genomes. As if that weren't complicated enough, some early eukaryotic lineages apparently swallowed one another and amalgamated their genomes, creating yet another layer of horizontal transfer (Trends in Ecology and Evolution, vol, 23, p 268)."
So, evolutionist moved away from a simple Darwinian view of RM & NS with Modern Synthesis and new mechanisms in the last few decades. But in doing so, they allowed in the door a proponderance of evidence that they can never track back gradualistic trees of life history. It is an argument that can never be solved because the information is not available in gradual steps.DATCG
May 8, 2009
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Current State of affairs in Macro-Evolution, that Chris Matthews did not report to his audience: I did not look far to find evidence of "Evolution, a theory in crisis"(ty Michael Denton; 1985). Some scientist say the problems started happening in the 90s(when they discovered problems), but the truth is the failed Darwinian model has misled scientist for 150yrs. They were merely unable to extract data to ascertain the failures until recent history of vast computer power to sequence genomes. Matthews reports none of this to his audience. Evotionary News quotes an evowed evolutionist interviewed by New Scientist.
“For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life,” says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence.
Bapteste is being honest. And he does not deny evolution happened. But the single TOL model is a failure. If the trunk is a failure, then what happens to the branches? Facts that Matthews did not inform his audience of in regards to current science. Because he does not care about science, he cares about winning political seats and power. Bapteste says...
Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded.
Matthews does not report this. Fact. Many biologist now argue a model is obsolete after 150yrs since its original concept. How much damage is done? It contributed to a fruitless endeavor, a waste of time for historical fancy. Imagine all the scientist who wasted time, money and mental capacity on categorizing organisms based upon failed models and elaborate fictional novels of what-if stories? Yes, I said "fictional because if the Trunk of the models are false, so to are the books based upon them. Building up one false phylogenetic tree after another. Great adventures in story telling. I'm talking about a purely historical belief system, not operational science.
“We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality,” says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change.2
Please read Bapteste statement again. He said, "We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality". and... "our fundamental view of biology needs to change". It should be a shocker to Matthews, who touted his educational past. Instead, it shows how clueless he is to reality in science today. This should be big news for everyone irregardless of sides. But again, Matthews, MSNBC, does not report it and instead slings mud as the propaganda piece of GE and Obama. "Fundamental views" must change because past heuristics failed. It depends upon which genes you select and sequence and which target proteins, or RNA, etc., to make comparisons. This blind chance technique gives rise to scientist producing research papers that look more like basketweaving. Each new opinion overlappng each others research opinion, than any real breakthroughs in Tree modeling. I'm not saying information cannot be gleaned from the research. Indeed a good meta-analysis of all the research data may turn up patterns that are fruitful, but not to the original Darwin TOL. Instead, today, based upon Bapteste statements, we end up with "Endless Trees Most Beautiful", but not a successful model for research. The single Tree model by many is now considered broken. Matthews did not inform his watching audience of this either, did he? If Matthews wants to argue about todays evolutionary science, he should pick up a few science magazines and tune into reality of the current crisis that Michael Denton described over two decades ago. Otherwise, he needs to admit the tingle he felt in his leg for Obama is a virus. A virus of radical fascism that disallows dissent and shouts down opponents with insults, lies and strawman arguments. He's been infected and the odds are long that he will ever recover.DATCG
May 8, 2009
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kairosfocus [12], there are only 24 hours in a day.David Kellogg
May 8, 2009
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Truth is Pence did a bad job articulating his view and the predominant view of conservatives- which I would have explained as... I do not believe that evolution (which has several different meanings) is a complete explanation for the existence of things- primarily complex things such as life- consciousness or mind. I do think there is a scientific argument for universal common ancestry but that it is not a proven theory yet - for every intermediate of fossil found there are thousands that have not been proven to have every existed. This does not mean I reject or think it a false historical construct but that I am not convinced 100% of its total truth- and more over i am not a scientist privy to all of the information and evidence needed to make an honest educated assessment of the theory's overall strength. I am aware that there is a majority concensus on universal common ancestry but i am also aware that lke with all controversial matterts there are credntialed vioces on the opposing saide as well. This eally is not a difficult issue to articulte. I however warn everyone o nthis site that the primary reason Mathews is brining this issue up is to CREATE controversay by attacking poeple's most cherished belifes- all i na nattemp to increase his audience. We would be smart to ignore Chris Mathew's publicity stunt which is the result of his low ratings due to the fact that people are wising up and moving on away from his garbage TV show.Frost122585
May 8, 2009
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Nakashima, Below is not a direct post to you. But a general post containing information about TOL and media bias. Discard the media portion and discuss the science if you like. I think the information about the TOL effects future research on functional information instead of nested historical information that are at best guesses depending upon sequencing of targeted data. The fruitful approach is functional search, where time is meaningless across any tree, branch, or twig.DATCG
May 8, 2009
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DonaldM said "A friend of mine, who alerted me to this interview copied the transcript off another website, I’m not sure where, and I just took [(interrupting) and (screaming)] as it was for convenience." In future I'm sure many in the internets' community would appreciate it if you would clearly flag up stuff which you "took for convenience" but doesn't actually match what can be seen and heard in the attached video in some way, perhaps by use of footnotes or an alternative typeface. Otherwise it almost looks like someone is being lazy and mindlessly copy/pasting what a friend sent to them. Certainly nobody screams during the posted exchange. Did you not bother to watch the video before posting it alongside the transcript which you copied from a source which you can't remember? Posting inaccurate stuff from places you don't remember isn't a good way to come across as doing science. By the way, that site you found the transcript on - are you sure it want't the reliable Mr Limbaugh? That's the only site I could find with google which matched what you quoted.Reg
May 8, 2009
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Nakashima, And that is comparative science of pattern recognition systems. The cladogram can be wrong from 150, 100, 50, 10yrs ago in some areas dependent upon models used in the past. It can change depending upon new phylogentic trees of new contemporary models. What one scientist says 10 years ago is changed by todays latest research dependent upon which protein, rna is targeted for comparison charts. You are describing a functional, operational science that depends upon a pattern matching technique. The selection process is a intellectual exercise that does not depend upon a billion year history intepretation. The plants can be a thousand years old or a billion years old. I do not care. I only care about detecting the patterns. You only need to care about the information content and pattern recognition. Nested hierarchies are not macro-evolutionary dependent across long periods of time. These events can happen rapidly. There is much debated on that topic about whether it is a true nested hierarchy. Because we know that research finding changes this sometimes monthly or yearly depending upon targeted sequences. The designs are functionally dependent for a herbicide to exclude or include others. Time is meaningless. What is releavent is the information in the actual plants. Do you understand now what I'm stating? This has nothing to do with time or macro events in past history. If you want to infer historical events over long periods of time as an answer for your beliefs, thats fine. Even if I agree. It still does not matter if for operational science. Pattern recognition does not require the Darwinian model. It requires a functional search. Othewise, the search is useless. Let me provide another post for fodder on the Tree of Life.DATCG
May 8, 2009
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Mr DATCG, I'm not sure why you bolded 'design'. Design was part of your question. Let me be more specific. Say I work for a drug company and I have to design a new herbicide. It has to affect grasses, but not dicots, or vice versa. I need to know which features distinguish them. This is based on the cladogram of plants. Knowing the cladogram, the nested hierarchy of macro-evolutionary differences, will let me design a drug (a herbicide in this case) that will target some plants and not affect others. Reaching further back in the cladogram, I might be able to avoid affecting animals, also.Nakashima
May 8, 2009
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Nakashima, "Drug design certainly needs to understand evolution, for example to calculate how long it will be effective against an infection." You outlined a micro-evolutionary timeline. No one is arguing this point. Please note I said macro-evolutionary history. Your example excludes macro-evolutionary story telling. This is another strawman argument. The same problem with Matthews original and misleading argument. Creation scientist(young earthers), theistic scientist, and IDist or Design Theist of all kinds, recognize micro and macro evolution. They disagree if it is directed or non-directed. And they "certainly" have no problem solving scientific problems like Designer Drugs or new genetic "species" of bug resistant maze for example. That is operational science. Not a belief system. What you describe is micro-evolution. An observed, testable, repeatable and operational science. No one disagrees with you. Scientist, doctors, geneticist, drug makers do operational science today that do not "believe" in macro evolutionary events as theorized or hypothesized by Darwin and/or Modern Evolutionary Theorist. The macro theory is in crisis. Everyone here knows Darwin's original theory is dead, thus Modern Synthesis, now it to has wilted, in comes HGT to the rescue, but that spawns even more problems for the Gradualist than the problems it solves. This is the problem of Matthews hit piece. He does not explain any of this to the audience. Most are left clueless and blind by a biased journalist if they do not know the current state of affairs in evolutionary science.DATCG
May 8, 2009
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Mr DATCG, Drug design certainly needs to understand evolution, for example to calculate how long it will be effective against an infection.Nakashima
May 8, 2009
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Nnoel, Another strawman, another lie. Please tell me what macro-evolutionary event in history from Darwin's storytelling do you need to operate on a heart? Or to design a new drug? This is not a right/left issue. Matthews makes up bogus arguments as a form of propaganda tool to demonize the right. Thats his job for his messiah and king, Obama.
"Matthews prefaced his argument with, "There are people on your side of the argument who believe that all the prehistoric bones we've discovered in this world, all the dinosaur bones and all that stuff was somehow planted there by liberal scientists to make the case against the Bible.""
Who said that? What is Matthews source? To bad he does not mention Pilt-Down or Nebraska man as a matter of unbiased reporting. Due to his bias, he leaves out the truth of fraud in the past on his side of the argument. Pence could do exactly the same thing back to Matthews. He could have said,
Chris "tingly legs" Matthews, there are people on your side who believe that creationist made up all the missing links like Piltdown and Nebraska man. That Creationist somehow planted fraudulent missing links to make the case against atheistic evolution and to discredit Darwinist."
Either argument by Matthews or the above proposed reply is absurd, a lie and a strawman. It is Matthews ideology however that selects one absurd argument over the other. While I agree, this type of idiocy is useless to anyone informed. Pence and others must be better prepared to argue the points and ask hard questions back to fascist propagandist like Matthews. Because unfortunately, audiences at propaganda networks like MSNBC rarely get the truth on such complex subjects. Their audience is largely blind being led by the blind ideological far left.DATCG
May 8, 2009
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To follow CBass's comments: Good theories generally have their predictions validated. When Newton watched the apple fall, he predicted that the same force acting on the apple acted on the moon, stars, etc. His predictions, bot general and specific, were mostly correct. Poor theories predict poorly. Darwin saw finch beaks and expanded that to life forms as a whole. He drew predictions. Those predictions fared very poorly, and had to be replaced with explanations instead. He did not follow the evidence where it lead, but covered over the trails as he went.SpitfireIXA
May 8, 2009
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When someone on the ‘right’ says it, they mean prove the bible and gods are real, and when someone on the ‘left’ says it, it means ‘follow the evidence wherever it leads’.
Let's fix that for you: "When someone on the ‘left’ says it, they mean prove the bible and gods are not real, and when someone on the ‘right’ says it, it means ‘follow the evidence wherever it leads’." That's the problem with unsupported assertions -- they do nothing to actually foster discussion. Spitfire has some solid points that I suspect you won't address. The Cambrian Explosion is real evidence against the Darwinian model. So is the copious stasis in the fossil record and the information content of DNA. These items along with the fine tuning of the Universe, the cosmic background radiation, etc., can be seen as evidence against a maerialist world-view, all of which hard-core materialists tend to downplay or ignore. So, who is or isn't following the evidence where it leads? (The question is rhetorical, of course. I don't expect an honest answer from those who cling to materialism, and I do not believe it is as politically dichotomic as you imply.)C Bass
May 8, 2009
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Nathaniel in #6
It doesn’t matter what Matthews thinks about science, he asked direct questions that Pence had every opportunity to directly answer. But he didn’t! He reflected, and started saying vague things about God creating the seas. That’s not an answer. Either you accept the scientific theory of evolution, or you don’t. Maybe you even know enough to offer opinions on the theory, but refusing to answer at all shows insincerity in no other person than Pence himself.
I disagree. Pence is smart enough to know that Matthew's question "Do you believe in evolution" is a rigged question. The very fact that Matthews put it that way shows how little he understands the issue. Evolution is not something one "believes" in. Now, if Matthews had asked "Do you accept the theory of evolution as a true explanation for the diversity of life on earth?", he would have shown that he understands the science. But he doesn't. And, as I already pointed out, Pence would not be my first, second or 39th choice to discuss science. Even in Congress, there are more knowlegable sources on this particular issue.
I like the (interrupting) and (screaming) parts you objectively injected in your transcript. Nice touch!
Actually I didn't add those adjectives. A friend of mine, who alerted me to this interview copied the transcript off another website, I'm not sure where, and I just took it as it was for convenience. Make of the parenthical comments what you will. The conversation remains the same. The bottom line for me in this exchange is the straw man put forth by Matthews that it is only the Dems who are pro science and the Reps who are "anti" science. For guys like Matthews things like evolution, embryonic stem cell research or gloabal warming are all "settled" science. Matthews will never understand that there's no such thing as "settled" science (perhaps he should read Kuhn!). And anyone who dare oppose these "settled" matters is "anti science". That is utter non-sense!!! That is the real point of this interview in my mind, and why I choose to blog on it here.DonaldM
May 8, 2009
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Nnoel said: When someone on the ‘right’ says it, they mean prove the bible and gods are real, and when someone on the ‘left’ says it, it means ‘follow the evidence wherever it leads’. You mean, like how darwinist scientists follow the Precambrian Explosion where it leads, or the fixed forms of the fossil evidence where it leads, correct? APPARENTLY the ‘right’ thinks everyone with their fancy technology and advanced medical knowledge have been on the wrong path all this time, hence avoiding the question. Darwinist evolutionary scientists aren't building my iPod or coming up with better knee surgery. Engineers and surgeons are, because they suffer negative consequences when they don't follow where truth leads.SpitfireIXA
May 8, 2009
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