Tom, it’s a valid story about an elected leader who is behaving erratically and irrationally.
Believing the Earth to be more than 9000 years old is not incompatible with any religion and nowehere in the story is that implied.
Claiming to have proof that it’s not, on the other hand…

I’m more concerned about the people who vote for morons like this congressman.

“It happened in 1986, when the 40-year-old baby boomer was into booze and into his fourth marriage already — and having problems with both. Broun was at an NFL football game and drinking heavily when he noticed the fan who was a quasi-celebrity back during the Reagan years, the guy with the crazy rainbow-haired wig who stood in the end zone seats with the sign, “John 3:16.” Broun said in a speech on the floor of Congress after his election to Congress two decades later that he was captivated by this “gentleman with this big type hair wig on.” A few weeks later, after another fight with his new wife, he took out a Bible, read the verse, and decided to dedicate his life to Christ. (Ironically, it was the exact same year and at the same age that George W. Bush quit drinking as well.) Broun now considers his odyssey to the corridors of power the result of Jesus’ calling. He fails to add the kicker to the story, that the wig-wearing fan, a fellow named Rollen Stewart, is currently serving three life sentences for kidnapping.”

Paul Broun Quote

“I believe that death taxes should be zero, I believe that corporate taxes should be zero, that dividend taxes should be zero, and that all taxes should be very low.”

http://www.salon.com/2010/08/31/will_bunch_the_backlash/

If you listen to the DUP in the north , they spout the same claptrap!

I’m sure there are quite a number of politicians who feign or espouse religious beliefs in order to gain political
Power. Religion is like a drug and believers are like junkies. They get hooked young and find it hard to kick the habit , withdrawal can be extremely tough. Witch doctors , priests etc are like the drug dealers and religious organisations are like cartels. They target the young and vulnerable with their opiates.

He is running unopposed. There is no choice, so you can’t blame the voters (this time!)

And this guy is a medical doctor? Does he bleed patients? Use leeches? Raise them from the dead?

Wouldn’t go to him with a tumour, that’s for sure.

But we were…Fred told me himself when I was a lad

I also forgot to mention they are doomsday preppers too…… I may ask them to give me their money as they won’t be needing it anymore for the endtimes.

“No matter how much evidence there is they ignore it or come up with some pseudo scientific explanation.”

Same like lefties and their economic policies.

Careful there, Dom.
Right wing economics are not looking too rosy at the minute. And history is splattered with the blood of right-wing economic cleansings..not least our own little island with its recurrent famines, land-wars, disemployed human resources and emmigration.
The essence of left economics is that there is actually enough for all if we ever get around to curtailing the gluttony of the insatiables. Unfortunately, anytime anyone tries another system that challenges the imperial ambitions of our hereditary elites they come under imediate siege by the united forces of the armed right. It doesn’t improve economic prospects. Or maybe if you were black you’d prefer to live in Haiti than Cuba?

https://controversy.wearscience.com/design/devil/ you should wear this shirt to work :)

I’ve stopped trying to reason with people who deny reason. I now just agree with them that there is a god. They get upset when I add that god is a grad A C*NT. All the evidence of this is in his biography.

The US is FULL of politicians who deny reality! Hey, now that I come to think of it so is Ireland!!!

Doubtful. His mother shares similar beliefs :-)

Haha bazinga!

Get it right! According to Bishop Usher the earth was created on the morning of Sunday October 23 4004 BCE. He did the bible maths.

hahahaha usher was another idiot

Ah sure what’s 3000 years amongst raving lunatics.

“Free Presbyterian Church”? Kinda seems like an oxymoron.

No more than Democratic Unionist, I guess!

@ sluazcanal

ditto!!!!!! hhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaa! and he’s supposed to be educated, a degree probably and is on a science committee. Sweet Jis, give me a break. The world is 9,000 years old! Somebody please send him back to school and I don’t mean religion school.

He’s a doctor, Shiela, and it doesn’t say of divinity…they must be licencing witch-doctors in the states…be very…very..

Just goes to show you… People in power will say anything to hold on to it!!!

don’t bet…evictions are on the up

No but the big bad wolf might ;)

Of course he’s for real! As real as he can put on for the sake of votes!

Aha…it’s the Wolfe that blows the house down ;-)

Them 3 little pigs work for a bank now and instead of blowing it down, they’ll repossess it when you default!…modern fairytales

But they do still build their houses out of wood. He he he

the wolf blew down their little houses!

I haven’t heard this theory on the pigs before, is there any empirical evidence regarding these new accusations? And is their any truth to the rumour that the pigs were also harassing Red Riding Hood and a boy named Peter?

the democrats are equally ignorant with some of their ideas, unfortunatly most of the democrats idiocy seems to be in the field of economics.

I think you’re ill informed Stephen, the GOPs tactics at the moment is to attack Obama on the economy through propaganda and misinformation. Every claim they’ve made about the economy has been debunked by fact checkers. Even take the stimulus that was going to break America, you don’t hear them mention it anymore, because it worked. Experts say unemployment would probably be around 20% now instead of just under 8, if the stimulus wasn’t used.
The world is just a few thousand years old… Jesus hates all people, who are not white conservative Americans… There is no global warming… The bible is the literal word of god… Etc etc. Ideology shared by the majority of Republicans, scary scary stuff.

re rational!
there in lies the problem, its the rational part that those in the Bible Belt, middle a
America folks sort of miss out on.

1,000,000 turnips?

To drop on Roisin Shorthall?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA comment of the year!

Just the word of “god” apparently.

I sure did, Hawking’s ‘oh no, another fainter’ response was a scream

LOL…brilliant show.

Yeah it is also well documented that he wasted the last 20 years of his career searching for God.

That’s a great letter and worth reading. Einstein clearly believed the belief in religion was childish and primitive. I hope religious people realise this before claiming he was a theist. Einstein didn’t spend his latter years looking for God, he was looking for a unification theory.

I don’t think they ‘see’ any thing accept their own teachings, blind faith !
if you talk to any of these people you can see it burning in their eyes, burning blind faith.

the problem Dave is that they believe what they say and pass it on to the next generation
much the same as the hand me down God squad in any country, and it sticks !!like sh***t to the blanket

Sorry people. Had a problem posting this comment and used cut and paste which seems to have copied more than pasted!

If the world was gonna begin, I’d put it to start on January the 1st, not nearly through the first year.
Some people.

Wait till he maybe tries to run for President some day, they will somehow dig up Irish roots!

may not be Irish/ American, but Ireland has had it’s fair share of zellots ! is that how you spell it ?
and sheep like followers, who never thought for a second that they could be wrong.
following behind the guy in the black suit, begging to be forgiven and to be saved, living for the after life.
Talking of going to a better place, bla bla bla!!
there was a time when the weather and the after life were the main topics.
have you ever wondered what makes people tic ? why the need to believe in some thing, why the need to follow any thing aside from good sense and have an educated mind.
It use to drive me mad when I was growing up in Ireland in the 60s that every one had to believe and follow.

To be fair World of Warcraft is a massive pile of crap.

No one cares for your opinion druggie cheating man.

Eh?

You do realise I’m not ACTUALLY Lance Armstrong, right?

Can’t believe you lied!

Whatever Lance, we’ve heard all your lies already.

Sounds like he had none to begin with.

they really believe what they are saying ! you could not make up that sort of crap! they have faith in the Lord and know/ believe he is the one who chose them to do his work, ie; stand for office etc. have the faithful follow , and they do.

Maybe he knows he demograph well enough to know that more than 50% of them are die hard religious freaks! :)

Or he believes what he is saying, could it be as simple as that ?.
I remember Ireland when the Church ruled , when the priest could do or say no wrong, if you were of independent mind and were the type to question and not be lead blindly it was not easy to live in Holy Ireland.
I am so glad that people now speak out ! and have the right not to believe in a teaching if they don’t want to.
There are many issues to be addressed in Ireland (as other countries in the World ) but you do have ”people power and free speech ” and the church no longer has the ‘hold ‘ on the community.

soft landing was another quote Bertie used s lot during his latter years….

Actually radioactive dating methods are quite fallible, research into it…it’s well known. And there are fossils that are under 200 years. What it takes to make a fossil is mud/water and a massive amount of pressure, you can make your own if you want to…and it doesn’t take a mission years

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, Labour not far behind them!

I guessed that. ;)

Sorry double post gremlins at work again!

if you’re explaining, you’re losing

You lost me with “the Bible is the word of god”.

Please provide evidence to support your initial premise.

So Joe, are you saying that death, disease and suffering existed before Adam and Eve were created? If you are saying that then you put yourself at odds with the bible which says that death only entered the world after “The Fall”.

Skip to the end!

TL;DR

Stopped reading after the first seven words.

“The word of God hijacked by religion”….seriously ……..its a book of man made old fashioned parables and fairy tales and any reasonable educated person can figure it out to be such , thankfully the days of having rammed down people’s throat are on the decline and the sooner we move the kids into the next century without all that bible thumping nonsense the better for everyone

S..t I gave him a thumbs up by mistake. Could it be That there is a god that guided my clumsy big thumbs , surely this is a sign . ……that I should not be
Responding to religious drivel .

A mistake I’m more than happy to make Gavin.
The Big Bang theory may be far from perfect, could be completely wrong even.
But people are using the knowledge available to them to try and form theories. People are striving for more and more information to better them theories.
Your theory is based entirely on the belief in a creator who exists outside the laws of physics and about whom nothing is known or understood. Without a single scrap of evidence to back it up.
I don’t see any arrogance on my part in refusing to believe that.

@Gavin obviously you have not read, or have clearly misunderstood the theories of the beginnings of the universe as we know it. None of them claim that “no thing” existed before the singularity. Most scientists say that despite a number of theories they honestly do not know yet as we have not reached the level of scientific knowledge to understand the state that existed prior to the singularity. It is arrogant of anyone to claim that religion has the answers. Religion has evolved from mans superstitious beliefs when so much of the earth’s natural events were attributed to the supernatural. The answers are not in the bible or any other religious text. Belief and faith in God is not proof of the existence of such a being. There is absolutely no proof that any being of godlike powers exists.

The Universe could be anything. It is probably something so outrageous we could never understand it. Who is to say its not a type of cell which is part of some gigantic living thing. About as plausable as the idea of a creator I would say. We dont know yet.

Who created the creator then Gavin.
Did he just come from nothing?
Your theory fails because of your very own theory. Ridiculous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTg3TrDyZ20&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Very good James and I agree that evolution of the eye is possible. My difficulty is understanding how the first light sensitive indentation gave enough of the creatures enough of an advantage to be the best survivors. It’s more of a probability problem than a religious belief with me.
s

A gene mutates..
One generation of gnats has developed a light sensitive cell..
The others has nothing.
A predator turns up.
The gnats with eyes spots this and runs..
The other gnats gets eaten..

Gnats with eye goes on to breed more gnats.
Survival of the fittest in a nutshell

Believe me I’m giving thumbs up for these answers and not worrying about the red thumbs too much. But there is a big difference between a single cell mutation and an eye. How or why would a gnat that can’t see anything or even know that others are being eaten up interpret the vague new signal from their skin as a sign of danger? Or, more logically, interpret the lack of a signal (shadow) as danger? Once we get a workable scenario for one eye evolving it’s even more difficult to consider how stereoscopic vision and its advantages came about. Actually I’m coming to the conclusion that it has to be evolution by subtraction. The whole being initially being light sensitive but unable to survive in sunlight with the least sensitive being the ones that thrived. We wittled down from a light sensitive body to two highly evolved light sensitive organs. :)

The eye has evolved several times. If you don’t understand evolution then learn about how it works.
The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins would be a good start.

Also trying to understand the time span involved in evolution might be useful for you. 545 million years since the cambrian explosion is a hell of a long time for mutation to occur.

It started with very tiny creatures in the sea which depended on sun light to survive. Clearly such a creature that could tell the difference between night and day or a cave or a shaded mangrove would have a better chance of survival. The better the eye became at these functions the greater the chance of survival. Creatures grew in size and the eye gained more function. Some became predatory creatures where a complex eye is of even more value. Most predatory animals have great eyesight, while non-predatory animals rely on other senses such as smell or hearing (I believe!!!)
As for two eyes. With one eye you do not have any depth perception. So two eyes is a great advantage over one for the simple reason of depth perception and much wider peripheral vision. 3 eyes, what advantage would 3 eyes give you? And what cost would 3 eyes have? The eye is a very vulnerable spot. Easy to get infected, easy to damage. The more eyes you have the greater the chance of damage. Two eyes gives you all the advantage you need with the minimum risk. Also you have to consider brain function for understanding what the eye sees. the more complex eyes you have the more complex the brain function needs to be. The early creatures may have had a sheet of light sensitive cells that over time reduced in numbers and increased in complexity.

Eyes have had a long long long time to evolve. It is hard to imagine the time scales, I guess thats your problem.

All – Thanks for the replies which were (except for the verging on arrogant assumptions of complete ignorance and lack of comprehension on my part ones!) Very informative. The nub of my problem with the evolution of the eye is succinctly answered by Bryan with ” The early creatures may have had a sheet of light sensitive cells that over time reduced in numbers and increased in complexity.” This deals with the transition from no eyes to having eyes – rudimentary eyes were there to begin with as all cells are sensitive to light. Problem solved for me now. As I said to begin with, I’ve no problem if something is already there to be evolved further.

Nydon – it hurts less if you can just believe that god created everything.

Just don’t ask anyone where god came from. happy to accept that one as a mystery.

F*ck off red thumpers. I’m trying out humour today. Don’t judge me, it’s my first time……

Yes it’s now unacceptable to lampoon fools who base their idiocy on a magic book…no, actually that was just the middle eastern explodey types and it was only a temporary pause, get back in the stocks and explain your point of view, we wanna laugh some more

Surely the bible is king if inbreeding. Adam and Eve had 2 sons. Who both lived to be 800 years old.
Damn right it’s bash the creationists hour. Bunch of crazies.

You’re being sarcastic? right?

A Troll, Maybe he is right? We have a Troll in Munster, and a shower of idiots that believe Noah’s Ark happened? May God help us all, Ooooops?

@Kevin there is no scientific evidence to support the young earth hypothesis. There are pseudo scientific theories created by religious academics who are not scientists. I would be very interested if you can point me in the direction of one serious piece of accepted research on the subject. You cannot because it does not exist.

Where did you get the idea of an extremley advanced being? Oh right, the book, silly me. Who said we came from nothing? The fact is we dont know and are in the long process of finding out.

*reads Gavin Conway’s post*

*punches self in face*