Elisabeth Hasselbeck on evolution and intelligent design

Sherri clearly learned her lesson judging by how little she says during this conversation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6apVG6oGM0

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I don't have a problem with schools saying that some people believe evolution is the work of some higher power. But it's not fact that it is. It's merely a theory. And that's fine to present that theory in the right context.

I personally believe that it's foolish to think the Bible should be taken literally. It's metaphor at best. I absolutely agree with those who say you can believe in a higher power and evolution--that evolution would be the method to the madness.

It's an age old debate, but religious beliefs belong in religion classes, not science.

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I get believing in both God and evolution (although I think Elisabeth's argument as to why intelligent design is for real is ridic), but what is Whoopi saying when she says you can believe in evolution and Adam & Eve? What evolution was there if Adam & Eve popped up on Earth as fully formed humans?

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Very true, Mr. Midwest!

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Jerby--nice song!

Maybe the problem is with the term intelligent design. You can certainly have independent beliefs about God and think that God comes into evolution, but I don't think Christianity is compatible. The implication is that a God has a plan, that it does things for a certain purpose. This doesn't really explain the dinosaurs, or species who become extinct because they are evolutionary dead ends. Why would God waste? If animals don't have souls, what's the point?

I think the better term would be the Intelligent Experimenter. I coined it here, folks. I think a lot of people like to imagine that God is a guiding hand in life, and maybe evolution is God's big experiment? He didn't get people right the first time, he had to drown most of them. But it's hard to make that leap of faith, to think of God as an "experimenter"... and that's why I don't think Christianity is, by nature, compatible with the theory of intelligent design. It goes against that whole infallible thing. Or maybe it has to do with the paradox of creating Sin and Hell even though he knows everything we have or will ever think and do...

But people are just gonna go on making up their own religions to suit their political beliefs and superstitions, so why bother?

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It's so funny to me from a religious perspective, because I had questions about early books in the Old Testament, how things worked out (a particular problem I can remember having was with the incest that had to have gone on if the human race started with two people). And my dear father, an Episcopalian priest at the time, sat me down and said that the early books of the bible should be read more as metaphor than fact. Evolution and all of science has always been welcome, studied, and celebrated in my household.

I like this page:



Evolution for Creationists

She admitted to being a "bad Christian" because she doesn't read the Bible as much as she should. Any bets on that she probably never attends church (except on Holidays), and is really just a Christian in name only, because she's straight, Republican, pro-life and anti-gay?

Well, MOST Christians are Christian in name only. Most people don't follow all the rules (and even those with best intentions are just making themselves feel better by trying to make the god of Abraham relevant 2000 years later) but give someone a chance to step on a queer and they're all about the lord!