A new entry at talk2action.org recounts two versions of a discussion between Sarah Palin and McCain's campaign guru Steve Schmidt over her precise position on evolution versus creationism.
http://www.talk2action.org/...
However, BOTH versions indicate she believes that lifeforms have evolved over time - a position that must put her deeply at odds with her extremist Christian following.
In Palin's version of the discussion from her own book, she called accurate:
"Parts of evolution. But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt."
To outsiders, this might seem a position that Christians could embrace. Indeed, most of them have, but Palin's Christians are not normal Christians.
The issue is Biblical literalism. Creationism as a movement exists for no doctrinal purpose other than to defend the Bible as a literal recounting of events, down to time scales.
This is not like the creationist position that existed at the time of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial in the 1920s. Because Christianity was broadly indoctrinated into the educated population, educated Christians had come to accept that the world was much older than the actual words of Genesis seem to indicate, that the seven "days" of creation referred to eras, but still felt secure in their faith that God had initiated these events. This is known as "Old-Earth Creationism".
As more and more of the educated population has parted company with narrow, literal faith, what has become of those left behind? An extraordinary reversion to ancient mythology. Old-Earth Creationism simply died out as active theology. Years later, "Young-Earth Creationism" arose as part of a broader reactionary movement against modern values, humanism, the Civil Rights Movement, and integration. Quite simply, Young-Earth Creationists require the age of the Earth to be the result of simple math: 7 days, plus the age of Adam at the time of his son's birth, then the age of that son when his son was born, so on and so forth all the way to Jesus, as recounted in the New Testament in Luke 3.23-38, plus the years since then. Because the names were listed, it has to be this way. All of the supporting beliefs of the movement have been fabricated to support the timeline, down to humans cavorting with dinosaurs and the refusal to accept the origins of petroleum as fossil fuel.
Now as recounted at sites like talk2action, Palin's New Apostolic Reformation buddies have many wacky ideas that seem more self-serving than Biblical. However, they are few in number in the US and they openly hunger for dominion over the larger Christian fundamentalist movement which any Republican seeking the White House must court. One of the fundamentals of fundamentalism is supposedly following the exact wording of the Bible as an instruction manual for present-day action. If Palin accepts Old-Earth Creationism, then she implies that Luke's genealogy list might be missing a few links, or even that a long time passed from "Let There Be Light" to Adam.
This is not a small thing with religious extremists. The more they are ridiculed for their beliefs, the more intensely they search for someone who rejects the entirety of the modern world. Their relationship with Palin has become very intimate due to that desperation - "At last someone understands!"
Let's turn their own paranoia against her.
Since Palin's words are in her book, probably unnoticed by fundamentalist enforcers in her spew of goofy verbiage, once they are called attention to, she cannot retract them without looking weak. Yet as someone who thinks the Bible is metaphorical about one thing, she can never fully be trusted again if she refuses to recant. She's not just asking for a vote, she's asking for the overthrow of modern civilization. That requires more than average trust from her followers. Young-Earth creationism is absolutism literally for the sake of absolutism, and Palin must deal in absolutes. Make her deny it, over and over again.
Note: I discount the relevance of the Intelligent Design movement. It's not a movement, it's a front. It implies Old-Earth creation to create doubt and uncertainty among the "enemy", because this gives pleasure to the believers. The believers are completely uninterested in the contradictions between Intelligent Design and the exact wording of the Bible because they just use ID as a wedge to reduce opposition to their real agenda, stone-cold literalism and theocracy. Here's how you can tell. There's people who will die and kill for Biblical literalism and thus Young-Earth creationism. There are probably scientists who would die rather than recant their belief in evolution.
No one will die for Intelligent Design, because it's just a paid gig or a way for the real creationists paying the bills to hurt people they hate. What people are really willing to die and kill for is the establishment of legitimate authority to rule our lives, and ID demeans both the Bible and the scientific method as authority.
Of course, so does Sarah Palin. It's all about her authority.