Rabbi Sol, it does affect how I view 'W'. If 'W' holds to Creationism it might not make him a bad next door neighbor but in my opinion without something big going for him it makes him too damn ign'ant to be my President. As mentioned above, he has probably by design kept off the topic both to secure his base or avoid alienating people like me who've seen "Inherit The Wind" a dozen times.


Not to put you on the spot, but why do you as an Orthodox Jew, not believe in evolution (if I may ask). I know a few orthodox Jews, and while I do not recall word for word the conversations, I came away from disussion with them that Orthodox Judaism has no quarrel with Darwinian evolution. That would hold with a more allegorical interpretation of the first book of the Torah, which I understand is how most Jews understand it. I also understand that the Catholic Church from the Pope on down does not have a quarrel with Darwin.

Grok, the fact that something is a theory does not make it equal to something else that is also a theory. I know you didn't assert that, but hang on, I'm going somewhere with this. My rubber duck floats and a battlship floats but one has a lot more displacement than the other. Darwinian theory is a battleship. Creationism is a rubber duck, and believe me I'm in danger of insulting rubber ducks. Nevertheless I agree with you that it can all be filed under 'belief'. Even Science ultimately rests on belief. It's just that one can find more use in one set of beliefs than another, and not all beliefs are equally helpful. Is it a fact that the Earth is round, that it orbits the sun? I feel safe calling it a fact, but you could make a convincing argument that it's all only belief.

And evolution (of species) is way beyond theory. Evolution is fact. This is a mistake commonly made by people promoting Biblical Genesis. Creationism is simply a way of explaining evolution that includes God, whereas the Darwinian theory is a more mechanistic method that does not include (nor exclude) God. As stated above, a popular previous theory of evolution was called Lamarckian, and there were others as well, all but displaced by Darwin's Theory.

The Big Bang is a lot of fun, but of course, it is a theory as well, not at battleship status, more of a destroyer if that. And it is totally unrelated to Darwinism as to branch of science, proponents, etc.