Sarah Palin claims dinosaurs and people coexisted
Sarah Palin Claimed Dinosaurs and People Coexisted (Huffington Post).
Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy (LA Times):
Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.
After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.
Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.
The idea of a "young Earth" -- that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on -- is a popular strain of creationism.
Though in her race for governor she called for faith-based "intelligent design" to be taught along with evolution in Alaska's schools, Gov. Palin has not sought to require it, state educators say....
Stein said Palin displayed only hints of her fundamentalist Assembly of God upbringing when he first backed her for a nonpartisan run for Wasilla City Council in the early 1990s. But in 1996, when Palin ousted Mayor Stein with the aid of pink-colored antiabortion mailers and busloads of Christian grass-roots activists, she grew more overt about her plans, he said.
She combined her staff meetings with prayer sessions, Stein said, and upset the town's chief librarian by asking what the process would be for banning books. According to Stein, bans were never carried out only because "the library director was horrified and stood up to her."
Geri McCann, who ran the town museum under Mayor Palin, counters: "Sarah brought it up because she knew there was a moral majority in Wasilla who needed their voices heard."
During an October 2006 debate in the Alaska governor's race, Palin urged that evolution and creationist ideas be taught together in state schools. "Don't be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides," she said....
Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy (LA Times):
Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.
After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.
Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.
The idea of a "young Earth" -- that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on -- is a popular strain of creationism.
Though in her race for governor she called for faith-based "intelligent design" to be taught along with evolution in Alaska's schools, Gov. Palin has not sought to require it, state educators say....
Stein said Palin displayed only hints of her fundamentalist Assembly of God upbringing when he first backed her for a nonpartisan run for Wasilla City Council in the early 1990s. But in 1996, when Palin ousted Mayor Stein with the aid of pink-colored antiabortion mailers and busloads of Christian grass-roots activists, she grew more overt about her plans, he said.
She combined her staff meetings with prayer sessions, Stein said, and upset the town's chief librarian by asking what the process would be for banning books. According to Stein, bans were never carried out only because "the library director was horrified and stood up to her."
Geri McCann, who ran the town museum under Mayor Palin, counters: "Sarah brought it up because she knew there was a moral majority in Wasilla who needed their voices heard."
During an October 2006 debate in the Alaska governor's race, Palin urged that evolution and creationist ideas be taught together in state schools. "Don't be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides," she said....