Dark Side of the Sun: 2:12 Evolution

-February 12, 2009, Celebration of Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday in the United States. The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission has scheduled a series of events in Washington, completing(?) the Barak/Lincoln cycle we have seen in the recent months

- Congressional Bicameral Celebration of Lincoln's Birthday in US Capitol Rotunda. Speakers include Speaker Pelosi, Ray LaHood, Sen. Durbin, Sen. Bunning, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Richard Norton Smith and Doris Kearns Goodwin, President Barack Obama and others at Abraham Lincoln's 200th Birthday Party Celebration in Springfield, Illinois - an event sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Illinois chapter of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission



Bailout=Buyout=Nationalization=Fascism=Fasci.

Lincolns so called freeing the slaves only created the hidden/closed corporate slave and now the system is evolving into a full fledged open/revealed Fascist state.





Barak and a few Black Sun kings: Sidney Poitier and James Earl Jones-




Think SpringField



California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bust of Abraham Lincoln are seen in profile during a celebration of Lincoln's 200 birthday held at the California Museum of History, Women and the Arts in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009. Schwarzenegger announced that the museum will be the first museum to host the Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibit after it leaves the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. The exhibit, titled "With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, will be in Sacramento from June 24 until August 22, 2009.




-February 12, 2009, Darwin Day, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Events are already being planned at the London Natural History Museum.

-Darwin's Birthday Poll: Fewer Than 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution

A new poll released just in time for Charles Darwin's 200th birthday found that only 39 percent of Americans say they "believe in the theory of evolution," and just 24 percent of those who attend church weekly believe in that explanation for the development of life on Earth.

The Gallup survey, released Wednesday, found a quarter of those polled do not believe in evolution, and 36 percent said they don't have an opinion either way.

Another survey by the Pew Research Center got similar results.

The Gallup poll of 1,018 American adults found strong ties between education level and belief in the theory of evolution.

"Among those with high-school educations or less who have an opinion on Darwin's theory, more say they do not believe in evolution than say they believe in it," Gallup found. "For all other groups, and in particular those who have at least a college degree, belief is significantly higher than nonbelief."

Just 21 percent of respondents who had up to a high school level of education believe in evolution, compared with 74 percent of those with postgraduate degrees.

Frank Newport, Gallup's editor-in-chief, wrote that attitudes were shaped to an even greater degree by religion.

"Previous Gallup research shows that the rate of church attendance is fairly constant across educational groups, suggesting that this relationship is not owing to an underlying educational difference but instead reflects a direct influence of religious beliefs on belief in evolution," he said.

Among weekly churchgoers, only 24 percent said they believe in evolution, while 41 percent do not and 35 percent have no opinion.

Inversely, 55 percent of those who seldom or never attend church expressed belief in evolution, while 11 percent do not, and 34 percent have no opinion.

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Too Bad

-The Vatican gave the Creationist lobby a left right sign of the cross today, announcing it would stage a conference on Darwinism next month and declaring that it was one of the Fathers of the Church that thought up the idea in the first place.

At one point the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University wasn't going to give Creationism or Intelligent Design a hearing at all. But apparently the organisers have relented, and will consider Intelligent Design as a "cultural phenomenon" rather than as a valid scientific theory, giving US-based IDers the chance to be smirked at by a room full of Monseigneurs, Cardinals and Bishops.

Previewing the conference yesterday, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Church's Pontifical Council for Culture, conceded the Church had been hostile to Darwin on occasion. But, he said, the Church had never formally condemned Darwin, and he noted that in the last 50 years a number of Popes had accepted evolution as a valid scientific approach to human development.

Indeed, he said, evolution could be traced back through Scholastics such as St Thomas Aquinas to St Augustine in the fourth century, who had noted that "big fish eat smaller fish".

Augustine is probably more famous for praying "God, make me good - but not yet." Which also has some evolutionary overtones if you think about it.

Marc Leclerc, a natural philosopher at the University went further, saying Creationists were mistaken in arguing that that Darwinism was "totally incompatible with a religious vision of reality".

The conference, and the Church's endorsement of Darwin, represents another curve ball from the Holy See at other, arguably more fundamentalist, streams of Christianity. In December Pope Benedict tipped his hat to Galileo - who definitely was condemned by the Church - while simultaneously going all New Age by blethering on about the Solstice.

Last May, the Vatican astronomer really went out on a limb, claiming there was nothing incompatible between being a Catholic and believing in Aliens. He even suggested Aliens could be free of the stain of original sin, the stubborn blemish that has condemned humanity to a progressive decline from the Garden of Eden, through slavery, the dark ages, religious strife, atomic war, and now, the credit crunch and Simon Cowell.

Oh and Pope Ratzinger has previously published that Jesus isn't needed too reach Heaven. So much for the infallible word of God.

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