"The evolution controversy today is, I think, a Galileo moment," says Karl Giberson

Some evangelicals are questioning whether it was ever possible that there was actually an Adam and an Eve who together were the ancestors of all humans.

...some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all."

Researching The Human Genome

Venema says there is no way we can be traced back to a single couple. He says with the mapping of the human genome, it's clear that modern humans emerged from other primates as a large population — long before the Genesis time frame of a few thousand years ago. And given the genetic variation of people today, he says scientists can't get that population size below 10,000 people at any time in our evolutionary history.

To get down to just two ancestors, Venema says, "You would have to postulate that there's been this absolutely astronomical mutation rate that has produced all these new variants in an incredibly short period of time. Those types of mutation rates are just not possible. It would mutate us out of existence."

Venema is a senior fellow at BioLogos Foundation, a Christian group that tries to reconcile faith and science. The group was founded by Francis Collins, an evangelical and the current head of the National Institutes of Health, who, because of his position, declined an interview.

And Venema is part of a growing cadre of Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century. Another one is John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently. He says it's time to face facts: There was no historical Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.

"Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise to be lost," Schneider says. "So Christians, I think, have a challenge, have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings."

Has anyone mentioned this to Michelle Bachman or to "The Family?"

Religion in Politics

Really, when you listen to Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry wrap themselves in god for their political audiences, don't they sound desperate? Here is one view.

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The fundamentalist - conservative mindset.

Steve Benen asked an interesting question about conservatives. "What did the unemployed ever do to offend the GOP this much?"It's part of the mindset of conservatives and religious fundamentalists. To them everything that happens occurs because someone intended it to happen. To them there are no unintended social forces!

If something bad happens to you it is because you did something to cause it to happen to you. People are not unemployed because there are no jobs. They are unemployed because they don't want to work. Blacks are not kept from getting jobs and held back from promotions. They don't want to work hard enough. Steve lists a number of other such statements from conservatives. This is not something that some crazy person says. It is a core part of both American conservative politics and Christian fundamentalist religion.

And if you cannot observe someone who caused the Earthquake - tsunami in Japan then it occurred because someone wanted it to. The need to personalize this malevolent intent is the source of the god symbol. That symbol represents the great "intender" who must exist when no single person can be blamed for their failings.

Very interestingly these individual guilty parties are always someone outside the conservative - fundamentalist tribal group. They can directly observe that those inside their personal tribal group did nothing to cause many of the bad things that happen to them.

Obviously, though, people who cause their own problems will not stop causing their own problems unless they are punished. God forbid that someone ("the government") should help them avoid the just punishment they are being given for their sins. Helping them will just encourage them.

It's a part of the pre-scientific mindset. Before Isaac Newton there were no recognized absolutely predictably impersonal forces. Everything happened because some person or god intended it to happen.

If you want to understand the conservative - fundamentalist mindset, read "Fundamentalism" by the Sociologist Steve Bruce (2000). That fact about there being no recognized impersonal forces prior to Newton is from Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's great new book "The Grand Design." (2010) Warning - the latter is a superb layman's introduction to quantum theory. It's better than "A Brief History of Time."

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Addendum 3:54 PM
Fred is a commenter on the above referenced Steve Benen post. His take on the problem Republicans have with the unemployed dove-tails with mine. Mine shows personal psychology and his shows the sociological workings.

It's not hostility to unemployment, it's hostility to modernity. I see this attitude in the rural area where I live. The best work is for the "haves", the make-do work is for the lower class whites, and the field work is for minorities. By trying to preserve their income level after a job loss, the recently-unemployed are interfering with the natural order, resisting the downward pressure on wages that the GOP's true base seeks. Also, too, the current system imports what should be our home-grown bonded servant class.

The tragedy is that the lower class whites here go all in for this, and wear their difficult lifestyles as a badge of honor in proof of their grit. To see the class system in operation, visit anywhere outside a major city in the Old South.
Posted by: Fred on May 1, 2011 at 1:14 PM

If you want proof of Fred's assertion, look at the county-by-county Democrat/Republican breakdown after the 2000 election. The cities are the bastion of modernity, voting Democratic and the rural areas are Republican. This is especially true in the Old South states and Texas.

Constitutional America is under attack by religious zealots

Sarah Palin complains that Obama's mythical"Death Panel" could kill her down syndrome baby. She also quoted a speech by the whacked out Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), (reported by Erik Kleefeld,), in which she [Bachmann] warned of the "dastardly involvement of Rahm Emanuel's brother, who is a doctor, in the health care debate:"

Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president's health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.

Actually I see Palins' reference to Bachman as one wigged out evangelical fundamentalist shouting out to another. Palin, Bachman, and Katherine Harris from Florida are all female members of the political attack on America by the Dominionists. We can see the male equivalent in the C-Street crew such as Sanford, Ensign and others as well as those who are attempting to push the crap put out by the Discovery Institute opposing science and Evolution.

Congress members who stay or stayed at residences owned by the family include

Boarders at the C Street Center currently include Senators Tom Coburn, R-OK; John Ensign, R-Nev.; and Jim DeMint, R-SC; and Representatives Mike Doyle(D-Pa.); Jerry Moran (R-KS); Joseph Pitts(R-PA); Bart Stupak (D-MI); Heath Shuler (D-NC); and Zach Wamp (R-TN).^{[23][50][27][51]}

Other members, some of whom have lived at C Street Center or the Cedars, include Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Charles Grassley (R-IA), James Inhofe (R-OK), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Thune (R-SD), and Bill Nelson (D-FL); Representatives John R. Carter (R-TX), Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), Jo Ann Emerson (R-MI), Mike McIntyre (D-NC), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Jim Slattery (D-KS), Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), Frank Wolf (R-VA), as well as former Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN), Pete Domenici (R-NM) Don Nickles (R-OK), George Allen (R-VA); Conrad Burns (R-MT), Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR), and former Representatives Steve Largent (R-OK); Mark Sanford (R-SC), Chip Pickering (R-MS), Ed Bryant (R-TN), John E. Baldacci (R-ME), and J.C. Watts (R-OK).^[17]

This from the wikipedia entry on C-Street is very interesting.

The C Street Center is immediately behind 132 D Street SE, the "safe house" used by Fellowship member and former Representative and Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-TX, and several associates.^[86] The "house with a red door" had been purchased by the U.S. Family Network, an organization founded by Ed Buckham, a former Delay advisor, in 1999, and housed the offices of Buckham's Alexander Strategy Group and Delay's political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC). After the District of Columbia Zoning Administrator intervened, the rowhouse was sold to former Representative Jim Ryun, R-KS, in 2000.

The Dominionists look back to Rousas John Rushdoony, who is the protestant equivalent of the Islamic fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb

Two good books on the subject are American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips
and the more recent The Family by Jeff Sharlet.

This really is an organized effort to subvert America and eliminate the Constitution, replacing it with the Bible and some kind of board of whacked out preachers in a government structure much like that of Iran.

Faith is personal; Politics is public; Personal faith cannot make public political decisions in a democracy

It's political season again, and the Christian evangelical politicians are back to making their claims that somehow atheists and liberals are trying to force "Christians" out of American public life.

What it their evidence for this? Well, they define "Christian" as "someone who believes what I do." Then they are motivated by their "Faith" (whatever variety it is) to enter politics where public decision-making occurs. When they do, they find that a great many people who don't believe as they do, and those others also don't think that their personal Faith automatically trumps any other Faith or secular reasoning that participates in the public decision-making process. The so-called "Christian" evangelical politicians think they must be given control of the public decisions because of their personal faith. They know they are right and everyone else is wrong because their God is The God and no one else has any truth to support their views.

I consider myself a Christian and person of Faith; and I do not recognize the strange doctrines of the so-called self-described "Christian" fundamentalists and evangelists as being either Christian or even true "Faith." Since I am neither an evangelist for my personal Faith, nor am I searching for a teacher in the murky waters of fundamentalism (Christian or otherwise), my personal religious beliefs is not open to discussion with politicians or evangelists. Nor do I want to convert any fundamentalists from what I consider their heresy of Christianity. The issue is simply not open to discussion at anyone else's instigation. My beliefs and my faith are my business, as yours are your business. Period. End. Full stop.

That said, I can respect that the personal faith that others have motivates them into the public arena to participate in the political process of public decision-making. The key point everyone must recognize is that a person's Faith is a personal decision, not to be interfered with against that person's will. But a person's faith does not give him or her priority in public decision-making, either. That is a form of authoritarian government called "Theocracy" which has no place in a Republic.

People of faith have every right to enter the public decision-making process that we call politics. In a Republic they must be allowed to vote, to speak freely, and to run for office as the preacher Mike Huckabee has done and is doing, and as Jessie Jackson did in the past. Their personal faith should be respected because it apparently motivates them to work for the good of society and the nation.

Or so they say. The problem with personal faith in politics is that we have only the individuals unsupported word for what it is, what it means, that he or she even has it, or that it truly motivates him or her over other motivations. No one knows what another person's faith really means. The only real public evidence is their word for it. There is no external evidence that a televangelist acts out of faith or out of desire to live the high life on donations from the suckers, for example. We have only their word for their faith and its motivating power, and many of us see the behavior of such persons living in great wealth and doubt - but do not know - that we are seeing faith at work.

A lot of people may agree on what they say is their personal faith and say they share it with others, but that still boils down to each person, who does not know any more of what is in an other's heart, vouching for what is in some other person's heart. So they wave a copy of the Bible (or some other holy book - the Koran or the Book of Mormon, for example) and claim that it is the revealed word of God so that it must be the truth. Is it truly the revealed word of some entity labeled - in the limited symbology of human language which clearly cannot embrace the infinite - is it truly from "God"? How do we know? Someone else tells us so. Based on that witness, we can either accept it on faith or not, but it is still nothing more than someone else telling us that it is true. Whether we accept that witness is a personal decision.

It is not disrespect of another's faith to say that when they express it in the political decision-making process and try to make it the law of government, others apply their own beliefs and faith and reject their beliefs as government policy. The expression of private faith by one person does not automatically become public policy in the face of disagreement, but that disagreement does not challenge their personal faith. Being unwilling to enshrine one person's private faith as public policy does not diminish that private faith. It merely means that the secular arguments needed to convince people who have a different and conflicting private faith or beliefs will not accept what is, after all, merely faith and not rational as guide for public government policy. The description "merely" applies only in the realm of public decision-making and has nothing to do with the power of the faith to the individual who professes it.

Public political decisions in a democratic Republic cannot be made because one person declares that their faith demands it. Such decisions, based on the totally personal faith of one individual, or even a small group, is what John Locke called arbitrary decisions. He then explained that a democratic nation must operate under the Rule of Law. Government based on arbitrary decisions is authoritarianism, not democracy.

Protecting democracy from the arbitrary personal decisions made by individuals motivated by their personal faith does not disrespect their personal faith. It only acknowledges that public decisions have to be made by political means using persuasion rather than the arbitrary command that faith demands that government act a certain way.

The political process is a set of procedures we use to make public decisions for government. European history has clearly demonstrated the danger of basing government decisions on the arbitrary commands of a few who claim that their faith requires the government act certain ways ways and refuse to listen to those who disagree. When those who profess one personal faith control government and declare that those who reject their government decisions are heretics are setting up the basis for a revolution or war. The declaration that government serves those who hold one faith and rejects those who hold another faith undercuts the very legitimacy of that government. None of us accept being taxed by government to support someone else's personal beliefs.

So the solution that has worked is that government must not intrude on personal religious faith unless it presents a clear public secular threat. The public decision-making process must not be allowed to reject any person because of their personal religious beliefs, but those beliefs are permitted, even expected, to motivate individuals to enter the public decision process we call politics. But the decisions made by government officials much be based on reasons other than someone's personal faith, and must be approved by a large cross-section of individuals throughout the nation.

The religious politicians appear not to understand the very basis of democratic public decision-making in a Republic. The religious politicians are trying to use alleged threats to the personal faith of their followers as motivation to spread their personal faith to control government even when the majority of the population objects. They want to eliminate the very basis of democracy and put the government back into the arbitrary decision-making based on the personal faith of government leaders, and they declare that anyone who opposes their destruction of the Constitution and democracy is a liberal, secularist or atheist and is attempting to somehow marginalize their personal faith.

This is not a religious battle. It is a political battle in which religious organizations are being coopted as part of the political machinery. The religious politicians must be stopped. And they will be. This is the essence of the truth of separation of Church and State. Church is personal, and state is public.

The public truth is that America is not a religious theocracy which allows private religious faith the preempt public democratic decision-making. America is a democratic Republic and the basic law of the land is the U.S. Constitution.

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That's my view. See also Michael Berube's article Skepticism about Faith, which clarified my thoughts on religion in politics. If we disagree, then I stand behind what I wrote above.

Supreme Court deals loss to women's reproductive Rights.

The Supreme Court has effectively outlawed the surgical procedure called technically "intact dilation and extraction" or politically called "partial birth abortion" by the anti-abortionist's. See Kevin Drum for a short discussion and relevant links.

Ed Kilgore provides an interesting analysis of today's 5 to 4 decision upholding the federal law banning the so-called Partial Birth Abortions:

Ginsburg's opinion for the four dissenters is a model of comprehensive clarity, nailing the majority opinion (penned by that perennial abortion rights weathervane, Anthony Kennedy) for its stealth attacks on the Court's precedents, especially the health exception, the viability standard for scrutiny of abortion restrictions, and the treatment of evidence about the "medical necessity" of various abortion methods.

And the incredibly succinct Thomas-Scalia concurrence, which simply and directly attacks Roe, also challenges the majority to come out of the closet and reverse abortion rights.

There's no question that the majority opinion erodes some of the underpinnings of how the federal courts have applied Roe and Casey. And it opens the door to further abortion restrictions.

But on the basics, this decision may prove to be a pyrrhic victory for the anti-choice forces. Every time the Roberts Court validates a technical and largely marginal exception to abortion rights by claiming to respect abortion rights, it will become more difficult to overturn those rights altogether. If, however, a Republican replaces Bush in 2008, and gets another chance to reshape the Court, then I have no doubt future appointees will find a way to get the job done.

While this may open the way to other state laws that chip away at the forms and conditions for surgical abortions, the inability of the five Justices to agree on a joint rationale for approving it will not make the anti-abortion forces at all happy.

In the meantime, all the younger women who did not consider themselves feminists may suddenly realise that their control of their own bodies is under serious attack.

The result is that this decision offers two possible futures. It may be the breakthrough the anti-abortion forces were looking for and lead to doing away with legal abortions (Digby thinks this is the future,) or it may be the high-water mark for the anti-abortionists that activates the opposition into a force that relegates them back to the shadows where they belong.

I suspect the decision regarding which direction the future is going to take will, like many other things, be revealed in the 2008 elections.

Some of the problems caused by a politicized federal civil service

People who got their job because they were Bush loyalists rather than experts at what they do have filled the federal civil service from top to bottom. Monica Goodling, Rachal Paulose, and ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown are only a few of the more obvious examples at the top. But they were political appointees and will be easily to replace. What about the same type of people who have been filling the protected civil service positions for the last six years? These are the ones chosen for loyalty to Bush rather than for competence.

Go read Kagro-X at the Next Hurrah for examples, and drift down to the comments for ideas on how to handle the problem.

One thing to think about. Since the Department of Homeland Security has no organized employee unions or civil service protections then there will be no problem replacing incompetent Bush Loyalist employees.

Vignette from "The Looming Tower"

Robin Varghese posted a small story about Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri (the second in command of al Qaeda) from his time in Sudan. It is so short I can't post just a part of it to tease you into reading it, but it is so graphic that you will not forget it after you have. Please go to 3QuarksDaily and read it.

If the book interests you, here is a link to it at Barnes & Noble.


The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11