Science and Religion: A View from an Evolutionary Creationist

NCSE has a guest post by Eugenie Scott, in which she remembers some of the points about Kitzmiller that might not have been public at the time.  It is part one of two.  In the run-up to the Kitzmiller trial, the plaintiffs did not know who the judge would be:

Well, the case was assigned to John E. Jones III, a fiftyish Republican who had been appointed by George W. Bush to the federal bench a few years before. “Intelligent design” proponents were delighted! In their blogs, they were quick to point out that Jones was a mover and shaker in Pennsylvania GOP politics, was a self-described conservative Republican, and was a church-going Lutheran, who certainly would be likely to find the ID policy constitutional.

I must say, our lawyers, who pay attention to judges more than we science types do, were a little apprehensive. What was this guy going to do? He’d only been a federal judge for a couple of years, so there wasn’t much of a record to go on.

His being a person of faith wasn’t an automatic concern. It’s so easy to misconstrue the creationism/evolution controversy falsely as “science versus religion,” when really it is one particular religious perspective versus everyone else’s. People are sometimes surprised to learn that our best allies in support of teaching evolution are other Christians: Catholics and mainstream Protestants— such as Disciples of Christ [with which Transylvania University is affiliated]—don’t want children taught Monday through Friday in science class that God specially created the universe in its present form 6,000 years ago, and then have to straighten them out on Sunday—because their theology is that God created through evolution.

One of the things that came out of the trial was how much the defense lied about what their true motives were. Although her post does not mention these events, it is an interesting account.

In a short note, NCSE is reporting that the Arkansas bill authorizing the teaching of creationism and ID alongside evolution never made it to a vote:

When the Arkansas legislature recessed on April 3, 2017, House Bill 2050 (PDF)— which would, if enacted, have allowed "public schools to teach creationism and intelligent design as theories alongside the theory of evolution" — apparently died.

Introduced on March 6, 2017, by Mary Bentley (R-District 73), HB 2050 was filed as a shell bill, with only its title, subtitle, and a description of its purpose provided. Bentley apparently never provided the text of her bill to the legislature.

And there was much rejoicing.

Yaaayyy.

Raw Story has a postmortem on the 2016 presidential election and focuses on Texas races that went very badly for Democrats.  Kaiah Collier writes:

Republicans seeking re-election to the State Board of Education managed to hang onto their seats Tuesday despite speculation that the unpopularity of the candidate headlining the GOP ticket, Donald Trump, may flip certain races. And one newcomer seeking an open seat in a deeply conservative East Texas district easily bested his Democratic rival.

So, what effect will this have on the teaching of evolution?

The GOP’s good showing Tuesday is a win for conservative members of the state board who are mounting a fight to keep creationism in Texas’ science curriculum standards. Determining the big topics teachers must impart on the state’s more than 5 million schoolchildren is one of the board’s biggest duties, along with approving textbooks.

Let the skirmishes begin.

Phil Plait has a Slate article that squarely takes aim at Donald Trump (A "yuge" target!) and the anti-science views of the Republican party in general.  He writes:

As an astronomer I of course have certain pet projects; I’ve taken on astrology, Moon landing deniers, cosmic doomsday promulgators, and geocentrists. But a background in science allows me to broaden that approach, and I will happily help shoulder the load to debunk the claims of climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, homeopaths, and young-Earth creationists.

Some of these present a more pressing need than others, of course. Astrology is a minor issue compared with, say, someone who supports abstinence-only education.

But they’re all there, all the time, creating a background buzz of hogwash, an atmosphere of denial of science, evidence, and rational thinking … and that can have devastating consequences.

There are many reasons to castigate many republicans for their anti-science views and, in my experience, anti-evolutionary bills in statehouses spring almost uniformly from the minds of republican legislators. Having said that, Plait makes some very hasty judgements and omits some very critical information in his post. First, he writes:

First off, these aren't party planks.  No single Republican, except maybe Jeb Bush (maybe), intended to do away with science education and, in any event, it is doubtful they could.  He notes that Marco Rubio doesn't know how old the earth is.  Maybe not, but in his answer, he deferred to the scientists and said that it didn't matter in his campaign.  Political?  Yes.  Anti-science?  No.  Plait's "intolerance" link points to one Louie Gohmert, a Texas republican who wanted to be sure we don't have "gay space colonies."  I don't know any republican that thinks this way or even have this on their radar.

Second, it is easy to find one idiot out there who doesn't have anything better to do than legislate stupid things.  Try extrapolating that to the Republican party as a whole.  You can't.  It is like saying that the protests of the Westboro Baptist church represent Christianity as a whole.

He also omits some critical information that skews his argument.  As Mischa Fisher wrote in 2013, in The Atlantic, The Republican party isn't really an anti-science party. She writes:

I'm the first to admit that there are elected Republicans with a terrible understanding of science—Representative Paul Broun of Georgia, an M.D. who claims evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell” is one rather obvious example—and many more with substantial room for improvement. But Republicans, conservatives, and the religious are no more uniquely “anti-science” than any other demographic or political group. It’s just that “anti-science” has been defined using a limited set of issues that make the right wing and religious look relatively worse. (As a politically centrist atheist, this claim is not meant to be self-serving.)

Republicans, and members of the traditionally Republican coalition like conservatives and the religious, are criticized for rejecting two main areas of science: evolution and global warming. But even those critiques are overblown. Believing in God is not the same as rejecting science, contrary to an all-too-frequent caricature propagated by the secular community. Members of all faiths have contributed to our collective scientific understanding, and Christians from Gregor Mendel to Francis Collins have been intellectual leaders in their fields. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, wrote a New York Times bestseller reconciling his faith with his understanding of evolution and genetics.

Plait seems to be unaware of these examples. Fisher continues:

The more important question on climate change is not “how do we eliminate carbon immediately?” but “how best do we secure a cleaner environment and more prosperous world for future generations?”

It is on this subject that many on the political left deeply hold some serious anti-scientific beliefs. Set aside the fact that twice as many Democrats as Republicans believe in astrology, a pseudoscientific medieval farce. Left-wing ideologues also frequently espouse an irrational fear of nuclear power, genetic modification, and industrial and agricultural chemistry—even though all of these scientific breakthroughs have enriched lives, lengthened lifespans, and produced substantial economic growth over the last century.

As I mentioned above (and she reiterates), it is certainly easy to find Republicans promoting idiotic things, but Plait glosses over the idiocies that are promoted by Democrats, as almost all anti-vaxxers are.  He further conflates scientific issues with social ones (he is not the only one to do this).  He mentions abstinence-only education as if it were a scientific conspiracy theory, when in fact, it is a social/religious position that is disagreed on by conservatives and liberals, not on scientific but on behavioral grounds.   Put another way, the Bible teaches abstinence before marriage and many liberals think that is silly.

Plait's view of republicans is, in my experience, somewhat typical of the left's complete misunderstanding of the conservative mindset.   In his caricature of Republicans, he creates a straw man/cardboard cut-out that he then trashes. This is the viewpoint that he brings with him in his central premise: that anti-scientific tendencies are how we ended up with Donald Trump.  This premise is very debatable.  It is equally plausible that we ended up with Donald Trump because many in the electorate are tired of being told that their values and views are unimportant and insignificant.  They are also tired of federal overreach and see Trump as a (possible) alternative to this problem.  They also don't trust Hillary Clinton.  At.  All.

As governments here and abroad become increasingly plutocratic, it has not been lost on many people that they are losing their voice.  This viewpoint was brought front and center by the vote of the British people to leave the EU.  When interviewed, most of the people that voted “leave” did so because they felt they were losing their national identity and their ability to control any of their own destiny.  Donald Trump is tapping into that feeling.

Does Trump say stupid things?  Yes, he does.  Are some of his viewpoints untenable?  Yes, they are.  But his rise to power has little to do with anti-science views of his supporters. 

A persistent meme among the media is that Ben Carson is a scientifically ignorant guy who thinks the earth was created six thousand years ago.  Not so fast.  The Christian Post is reporting on comments Carson made specifically addressing that issue.   Stoyan Zaimov writes:

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson clarified that he believes that God created the world but does not believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, as young Earth creationists claim. Carson also criticized those who claim there is no way the Earth can be billions of years old, saying that such people put themselves "in the same category as God."I certainly believe that God is our Creator. And interestingly enough, if you look at our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, it talks about certain inalienable rights given to us by our Creator," Carson told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly in an interview.

He still doesn't like evolution. 

Republicans fire 2016 starting gun at Christian college that teaches world is 6,000 years old

It didn't take the media long to latch on to that one, did it?   From the story:

The first Republican candidate for the 2016 US general election will officially declare his campaign on Monday at an Evangelical university that denies Darwin’s theory of evolution and teaches that the world is only 6,000 years old.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Tea Party darling from Texas with a reputation as a firebrand rhetorician, will announce his candidacy at Liberty University, a college for Evangelical Christians in the state of Virginia that claims to be the largest Christian university in the world.

This is the first of many such characterizations that will come, I am sure.

She is right.  To a large extent, what a president thinks or does not think about evolution is largely irrelevant to the daily tasks of running the country.  We found that out with Ronald Reagan. In the current political crisis, involving what Scott Walker did or did not say with regard to evolution,  she writes:

I was at a dinner the other night where the very high percentage of Americans who believe in young-earth creationism was submitted as evidence of the failure of the U.S. school system. I don't think that's right. People forget most of what they learn in school almost as soon as they learn it -- I got an A in sophomore chemistry, and all I can tell you about it now is that it's sometimes measured in "moles" and there's something called a covalent bond that ... well, actually, I forget. And before you start looking all superior, STEM majors, what is the difference between the conditional and the subjunctive, and can you name four causes of the Thirty Years' War without resorting to Google?

Most of the people who "believe" in evolution don't have much more scientific foundation for their beliefs than a young-earth creationist does for theirs. I would be slightly surprised to learn that the reporters asking the questions -- or, for that matter, President Obama -- could deliver more than a few vague sentences about how evolution works, desperately dredged up from the Life Sciences module of their seventh-grade science class.

At the end of the article, she hints at why the question was asked in the first place: Scott Walker is a republican and, therefore, the natural subject of attacks by the press who are trying to trip him up. A starker contrast could not be found than the current issue with Hillary Clinton's private email accounts, about which the mainstream press is asking No Questions Whatsoever. 

They didn't ask Scott Walker a question about evolution because they wanted to know what he thought about it. They asked it because they know good and well that there is an established track record of republicans saying stupid things about science, publicly. That was their real target.

David A. Graham, of The Atlantic, also wonders why support is dropping among Republicans for Evolutionary theory.  He writes:

One possibility is that respondents who identified as Republican and believed in evolution in 2009 are no longer identifying as Republicans. Fewer scientists, for example, are reportedly identifying with the GOP, and the overall trend is for fewer Americans to call themselves Republicans. But both Gallup and separate polling from Pew found approximately the same party ID in 2009 and 2013.

Another is that the rise of "intelligent design" education has helped to swing younger Americans against evolution. Yet the age breakdown remains similar in 2009 and 2013, with respondents ages 18 to 29 most likely to believe in evolution.

What does that leave? Maybe the gap represents an emotional response by Republicans to being out of power. Among others, Chris Mooney has argued that beliefs on politically contentious topics are often more rooted in opposition to perceived attacks than anything else—an instance of "motivated reasoning." Given that Democrats have controlled the White House and Senate since 2009, this could be backlash to the political climate, though it will be hard to tell until Republicans control Washington again.

Given that people do not tend to change their religious perspectives based on who is in office, I do not think this is it, either.  Something is being missed here. I think it is possible that the rise in Republicans who reject evolution is being influenced, at least in part, by the uptick in the number of self-described conservatives being home schooled.  From an Education News story in March:

More than 2 million children around the U.S. are homeschooled, a number that is 75% higher than it was in 1999. And the number is expected not just to grow, but to grow exponentially over the next decade — especially since the advent of free virtual public schools and quality curriculum all around the country.

While the story is quick to point out that the parents of these children are increasingly choosing this route not just because of religious reasons, conservative Christians are still vastly the bulk of those being home schooling.  I have found very few home school curricula that do not exude antipathy toward evolution.  This  has been the case for some time. Arguing against this perspective is the fact that a higher percentage of younger people accept evolution.  However, we don't know about the educational breakdown, apart from "did you graduate from college or not?"  How many of those evangelical protestants that reject evolution were home schooled?  It would be nice to know.  In any event, however, it can only be one factor of many due to the relatively small number of children involved.  The reasons behind the drop in support are likely multifaceted.

BTW: there is one very unusual response collected by the poll that I missed the first time around.  Among self-described mainline protestants that accept evolutionary theory, 36% think that evolution was guided by God and 36% think that God was not involved.  If you are a self-described mainline protestant in the second batch, how does that work exactly?  You believe in God but you don't think He has acted in the evolution of biodiversity on the planet?  What does He do?

The Pew Forum has released the results of a new poll that seem to indicate that acceptance of evolution has stayed relatively unchanged in most demographics since 2009.  Among Republicans, however, it has dropped.  They write:

About half of those who express a belief in human evolution take the view that evolution is “due to natural processes such as natural selection” (32% of the American public overall). But many Americans believe that God or a supreme being played a role in the process of evolution. Indeed, roughly a quarter of adults (24%) say that “a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today.”

These beliefs differ strongly by religious group. White evangelical Protestants are particularly likely to believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Roughly two-thirds (64%) express this view, as do half of black Protestants (50%). By comparison, only 15% of white mainline Protestants share this opinion.

There also are sizable differences by party affiliation in beliefs about evolution, and the gap between Republicans and Democrats has grown. In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.

Other items of interest revealed in the poll:

• It did not seem to matter whether or not the questions focused on humans or other animals in terms of acceptance of evolution
• men accepted evolution more than women (65% to 55%)
• College graduates had higher rates of acceptance than people with high school education or less (72% to 51%)
• younger respondents had much higher rates of acceptance than retirement age people (68% to 49%)

It is not a surprise that Republicans are moving away from evolution.  The party as a whole has beeen pushing away from that position for years and most of the recent Republican presidential candidates had (usually uninformed) anti-evolutionary position.  Only Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney deviated from this view.  As the public schools continue to degrade and more conservatives tune out public education in favor of home schooling, the acceptance rate will continue to drop and I predict a greater partisan discrepancy three years from now. 

The Atlantic doesn't think so.  In an editorial called The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party, Mischa Fisher makes the case that the blame can be equally spread around and that rank-and-file Republicans are every bit as educated in science as democrats. I confess that I have, perhaps, fallen into this trap, profiling, almost with glee, such scientific giants as Paul Broun of Georgia, and Don McLeroy, of Texas ("I disagree with these experts. Someone has got to stand up to experts").  Indeed, Fisher writes:

I'm the first to admit that there are elected Republicans with a terrible understanding of science—Representative Paul Broun of Georgia, an M.D. who claims evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell” is one rather obvious example—and many more with substantial room for improvement. But Republicans, conservatives, and the religious are no more uniquely “anti-science” than any other demographic or political group. It’s just that “anti-science” has been defined using a limited set of issues that make the right wing and religious look relatively worse.

Perhaps this is true but that, in a way, makes them look even worse because, if they accept the rest of established, accepted science but can't wrap their brains around evolution and global warming (lets call it what it is), then the legitimate reasons for rejecting those areas scientifically crumbles. How did everybody else get the science right and the evolutionary biologists get it so wrong?

This paragraph, however, surprised me:

Numerically speaking, according to Gallup, only a marginally higher percentage of Republicans reject evolution completely than do Democrats. Yes, an embarrassing half of Republicans believe the earth is only 10,000 years old—but so do more than a third of Democrats. And a slightly higher percentage of Democrats believe God was the guiding factor in evolution than Republicans.

When one reads newspaper accounts of democrats and science, the first revelation is revealed nowhere.  Reports always indicate that democrats are enlightened and Republicans are  scientifically illiterate.  On the other hand, while the last part of this paragraph is probably true, the reason for that may be reflected in the fact that a higher percentage of Republicans think that humans were created ex nihilo around 10,000 years ago.The percentages just got shifted from one column to the other. 

To me, one of the most interesting things about the table that is quoted in the paragraph is that only 20% of those questioned think that God had no hand in either the creation or evolution of humans.  I make this statement with the understanding that I am making a large assumption here: that those that think that humans were created in the last 10,000 years think that God had a hand in it.  The reason I think it is a valid assumption is that I have yet to find anyone, anywhere that accepts the creationist account of origins and who is not a fundamentalist Christian. 

The rest of the article is damning in its examination of bad science policy on both sides of the aisle and should be read by anybody interested in this area. 

The Missouri State legislature failed to move on several bills, letting them die in committee.  The first one would have promoted "critical thinking" and allowed for opposing views and discussion of "differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution."  Here is the text of the bill, HB-179.

The second one, HB 291, is no better, since it specifically supports the teaching of ID.  It is somewhat dishonestly called the "Missouri Science Standard Act," since it carries no provisions for any scientific disciplines other than evolutionary theory.  If critical thinking is desired, why don't we apply it to all scientific disciplines?  How is it that all of the rest of science has gotten it right and the evolutionists have gotten it wrong?  Equally maddening is that all of the topics covered in the language of the bill (lack of transitional forms, irreducible complexity, reuse of proven designs) have been discredited by mainstream science.  The people promoting these bills either don't care or can't be bothered to learn any of the science involved.

Once again, more badly thought-out legislation sponsored by Republicans who don't know any better.

Hat tip to Robert Luhn. 

U.S. Representative Joe Barton, of Texas (do I need to give the party affiliation?), has made the news based on his views on climate change. It is not just that he disagrees with the consensus about climate change, it is why he disagrees. As the Star-Telegram puts it:

Environmentalists have railed against the Keystone pipeline, which would carry natural gas from Canada to refineries in Texas.

"I would point out that if you're a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy," said Barton, chairman emeritus of the energy committee.

Barton's allusion to the Great Flood and, by extension, Noah's Ark, sparked lots of online commentary and a jab from 2012 Democratic opponent Kenneth Sanders.

"Joe Barton is a disappointment to Texans who count on him to represent their interest; his understanding of God's holy word is somewhat suspect as well," Sanders said in a statement. "As a person of faith, I'm personally disappointed that he has looked into the Good Book and found evidence to deny any human impact on climate change.

I am always a bit suspicious when people use the phrases "person of faith" and "The Good Book" because it usually means they don't take much stock in either. However, Barton's interpretation of the scriptures is suspect and his understanding of climatology even more so. Here is what you find when a real geologist examines the geological record:

No geologic evidence whatsoever exists for a universal flood, flood geology, or the canopy theory. Modern geologists, hydrologists, paleontologists, and geophysicists know exactly how the different types of sedimentary rock form, how fossils form and what they represent, and how fast the continents are moving apart (their rates can be measured by satellite). They also know how flood deposits form and the geomorphic consequences of flooding.¹

How do you make a reasonable assessment of climate change when you have Noah's Flood as your point of reference? The scientific problems in accepting that version of events are insurmountable. He has no basic understanding of modern geology or climatology. How do people like this get on science and energy committees in the first place? We need a basic science literacy test for these committees. As Glenn Reynolds would say "Faster, please."

¹Hill, Carol A. (2002) The Noachian Flood: Universal or Local? Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith, 54(3): 170-183

Joshua Swamidass, writing in the Wall Street Journal admonishes us to remember that acceptance or rejection of evolution is not a core Christian belief. Jumping off the recent Marco Rubio flap, he writes:

The evolution debate is not a scientific controversy, but a theological controversy about a non-central Christian doctrine. In terms of policy, neither evangelicals nor Republicans should expect secular schools to litigate doctrinal controversies in science classrooms. And Christians who try to push their view of creation through political coercion are misrepresenting their faith. The "good news" is how God saves us. Not how he created us. And it is through persuasion rather than force that he brings us to knowledge of Jesus.

Republicans have a clear path through the minefield of how-old-is-the-Earth gotcha questions. Let's leave science curriculums to scientists.

As for Democrats: Please ditch the "war on science" talking point. It only pushes Americans apart, into their respective corners. In the two-party system, both sides need to be able to freely embrace science as a cultural common ground.

The sad thing is that, at the core of the messages and platforms of groups like the Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, and the Creation Research Society, the scientific controversy and the theological controversy over evolution are one and the same.  For people like Ken Ham and John Morris, these are inextricably linked.  You cannot be a Christian and accept evolution.  For them, any movement toward the evolution camp is headed  down the slippery slope.  This is the tragedy of young earth creationism.  The republicans, as a whole, will never accept Dr. Swamidass' ideas because too many of them think like Paul Broun. As long as the two are linked, the vast majority of those espousing a young earth model will never address the evidence for evolution because it violates their theological understanding of the universe. 

While I agree with Dr. Swamidass' admonition to the democrats to “ditch the ‘war on science,’” why would they when it obviously brings in great returns?  Each time a Republican beclowns him- or herself on this issue, it is fodder for the Democrat base and reason enough for the independents out there to be wary of the Republican party. 

The Associated Press is reporting on a speech given by Georgia congressman Paul Broun, who is quoted as saying:

“God's word is true,” Broun said, according to a video posted on the church's website. “I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

Evidently, he was also quoted as believing that the earth is around 9 000 years old and was made in six days.

The truly scary thing about this is that he has a post on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. How does someone this scientifically stupid get on a committee like that?? Once again, this calls for some kind of rudimentary test of basic science knowledge and understanding to weed people out before they are appointed to these kinds of committees. In any sort of formal discourse, he will be next to useless because he doesn't accept the basic tenets of so many different scientific theories.

It is yet another example of a Republican congressman demonstrating for all to see that his education in science has completely failed him.

It is also an example of the narrow mindedness of modern fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, a movement that seeks to divorce itself from any deep historical roots or modern academic understandings of the world in which it finds itself.  I am reminded of what Bruce Waltke said about this movement:

“If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult ... some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God's Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness,...”

Amen.

Writing for HufPo, Leonard Steinhorn has some comments on the GOP and the race for their nomination.  He writes:

It would be easy to take this Republican drift from reality and rationality as evidence that the party is comprised of know-nothings and the uninformed. "Anti-knowledge" is how New York Times columnist Paul Krugman labels the GOP. But in truth there are as many educated, thoughtful Republicans as there are Democrats, people who in their lives and businesses apply strict standards of evidence and rationality to their daily decisions. Perry is certainly no rube, having governed the second largest state in the nation for ten years, and Bachmann is a former tax attorney. If higher education is any gauge, Republicans and Democrats typically split the vote of those with a college degree.

It is quite unusual to read a political commentator writing these things since it seems to be a meme in the media that Republican = ignorant. Anecdotally, it is also hard to counter this meme.  Many of my friends that are democrats tend to view me as an anomaly: a thinking republican.  But someone can be very intellectual and thoughtful and yet have no knowledge of a particular subject.  I don't know beans about psychology and couldn't tell you a single theoretical construct in the field. This doesn't make me stupid or anti-intellectual. It does, however, make me ignorant.  He mentions the GOP distrust and general disdain for liberalism in this way:

This disdain for liberalism has an interesting genesis given that so many red states have benefited from liberal governance in the form of rural electrification, water projects, and transportation infrastructure, and indeed many white southern and Great Plains politicians were once ardent New Dealers. That all changed, of course, with civil rights, which turned many white Americans from friends of liberalism to its most ardent foes. By enforcing civil rights, liberalism became a literal enemy of their way of life and a figurative threat to anyone who didn't want to accept the reality of a plural, diverse, and cosmopolitan America.

I have difficulty accepting all parts of this hypothesis.  For one thing, your average Republican doesn't mind paying for infrastructure such as roads, electricity, running water and so on.  They do, however, mind paying for things like Solyndra, rapid transit between large cities and the incredible expansion of the welfare state, including many benefits for illegal aliens.

For another, it flies in the face of much evidence that the conservative churches were some of the driving forces behind desegregation. For another, one is reminded of pictures taken at the time of conservative Charlton Heston marching in civil rights parades.  It is more likely the association between liberalism, atheism and evolution that is driving their distrust.

Most conservative Christians that I know tend to view evolution (and maybe climate change, I am not sure) as a tag-on.  They see people living what they see as good, Godly lives with proper theology and behavior and see that as desirable.  If these people also happen to reject evolution and climate change, so much the better.  This does not require an examination of these theoretical constructs, only an acceptance of others' perspectives on them.

Of all of the presidential candidates, only Ron Paul (who has since dropped out) and Rick Santorum openly ridiculed evolution and suggested that it was not a Godly perspective.  Indeed, most candidates don't so much reject evolution as include intelligent design in an almost ecumenical fashion.  Michele Bachman, for example, wants both taught so kids can choose which one they want to believe in.  While this is ignorant of science, it is not caustic or hateful.

The charge of anti-intellectual populism is harder to shake.  I think that there are two large issues here: the growing liberalism of academia over the last four decades, and the general contempt that many in academia feel for what they consider the uneducated masses.  I spent enough time at the University of Tennessee (nineteen years) to know that, at least at that institution, both of these perspectives are entrenched.  When you add to this the vocal hyperatheism of Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all of whom are intellectuals of one sort or another, many conservatives have no problem rejecting the whole package.

He continues:

Let's be clear: science and religion are not incompatible. The Catholic Church has made its peace with evolution and has no problem with the science of climate change. The current director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis X. Collins, is a born-again Christian who accepts evolution and simply sees the hand of God in its creation.

But for many evangelical Christians it's far more convenient to reject science than to deal with the dissonance between scientific explanations and what's written in the Bible. To them, science is yet another tool in the secular assault on their religiosity. Unlike the good book, it is not to be trusted. The Scopes Trial remains very much alive for them.

It is not so much that they are rejecting science as much as they are rejecting mainstream science.  Most evangelicals are quite happy with the brand of “science” that is promulgated by organizations such as Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research which teach the straight recent earth creation model.  It is this brand of science that has quite literally taken over the home schooling market—crowding out any mainstream curricula.  Most aspects of modern science are seen to be at odds with the evangelical mindset and many evangelicals, and those who write for these institutions have adopted the Henry Morris viewpoint: “When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.” (source unknown) This meme is so strong that many evangelicals would rather, as Steinhorn notes, avoid the science question altogether than delve into the evidence.  It makes complete sense that their candidates would do the same.

 

I saw this in another place, but Panda's Thumb has a video of amateur historian David Barton who, well, let's let Mother Jones tell us:

On Wednesday, Right Wing Watch flagged a recent interview [David] Barton gave with an evangelcial [sic] talk show, in which he argues that the Founding Fathers had explicitly rejected Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yes, that Darwin. The one whose seminal work, On the Origin of Species, wasn’t even published until 1859. Barton declared, “As far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, they’d already had the entire debate over creation and evolution, and you get Thomas Paine, who is the least religious Founding Father, saying you’ve got to teach Creation science in the classroom. Scientific method demands that!” Paine died in 1809, the same year Darwin was born.

Here is the video




Barton runs the website WallBuilders. Here is part of their mission statement:

WallBuilders is an organization dedicated to presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built – a foundation which, in recent years, has been seriously attacked and undermined.

Let's hope the rest of their “forgotten” history is better than this.

Alasdair Wilkins over at io9 has been wondering the same thing that I have: how will the Republican takeover of congress and the local statehouses affect science policy. Here is what he writes:

The Republican platform, "The Pledge to America", never mentions the words "science", "technology", "NASA", "research and development", "evolution" or "intelligent design", "climate change", and certainly not "global warming."

That isn't, in and of itself, a bad thing. It just means the 2010 election cycle wasn't predicated on scientific issues. It does, however, make it rather more challenging to predict how government and science are going to interact over the next two years. And while it would be easy to say the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives is bad for science, the truth is a bit more complicated than that.

Wilkins agrees with most other pundits that, in so much as the Republicans turn their thoughts to science, they will focus on climate change and that this area of research will be hit hard. Here, the attempts to link attacks on climate change skepticism with attacks on ID will fall flat. The brouhaha from the emails at East Anglia last year still has legs and will be front and center in any deliberations involving climate change and funding. It doesn't help that many of the detractors of anthropogenic global warming are, themselves, climate scientists. But what about evolution?

Republicans have taken a stand that is certainly non-scientific and arguably anti-scientific. And it doesn't help that other planks of the Republican platform, such as their opposition to evolution, fall so ridiculously far outside the scientific mainstream. (Thankfully, evolution almost certainly won't come up in the next two years. That's the sort of thing that only gets aired out when Republicans have complete control of Congress, and even then it's tough to say what they could actually do about it.)

It is not from congress that the problems for evolution will come. Congress has rarely said anything about evolution and that is not likely to change. The problems will come from the local statehouses—where Republicans have taken 680 seats from Democrats. Even under a Democratic house and president, we still had attacks on evolution education in Louisiana, Utah, Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania. Given that there is much data linking anti-evolutionism with being a member of the Republican party, these will not only continue, their proponents will be bolder. Even as the Republican Congress debates climate change on the national level, I suspect that their supporters will be debating evolution at a local level.

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Well, the Republicans won 58 seats in the house that they didn't have and now have a 239-185 majority and they gained five seats in the senate resulting in a 49-46 minority. The media is painting the tea party as extremist and, to be sure, there are some extreme elements in it, but the same can be said for the "Rally for Sanity," (about which Mary Katherine Ham demonstrates that there is idiocy on both sides of the electorate). In any event, the next two years ought to be interesting. Here are some predictions:

Good things:

• more fiscal responsibility
• a thorough reading of Obamacare (which even many Democrats admit they hadn't read) to see just what exactly is in it.
• a relaxation of the stranglehold that the unions have over jobs and businesses
• less willingness to bail out entities that do not deserve it (e.g. California)
• more accountability in spending (The WaPo discovered that the TARP money went from the taxpayers to the companies to the politicians who voted for TARP. Neat circle there.)
  

Bad things:

• the introduction of more "academic freedom" bills in statehouses across the land
• more attempts by emboldened young earth creationists, under the cover of "a mandate from the people," to introduce creationism in public schools all across the country
• less science funding in areas of biology and genetics—anything that can be connected to evolution.

I hope I am wrong about the bad things but I am betting not.

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There are races all over the country and one of the topics on everyone's minds seems to be evolution. From the Kansas City Star we have this:

The Kansas Board of Education 1st District race features newcomer Willie Dove against incumbent Janet Waugh...Waugh believes science “should be taught as recommended by the mainstream science community, which includes evolution.” But she supports creationism being taught in other classes, including comparative religion, history or government.

Dove supports teaching alternatives to evolution but didn’t clarify if he supports teaching alternatives like creationism as part of the science curriculum.

From the Fort Collins Coloradoan, we have this:

Anyone who reads the Coloradoan's endorsement of [Ken] Buck on Oct. 22 should read all the newspaper. The front-page story is about Buck's claim that climate change is a "hoax." Buck is now retreating from that statement, but he asserted that James Inhofe of Oklahoma was the "first person to stand up and say this global warming is the greatest hoax that has been perpetrated." He added, "The evidence just keeps supporting his view and more and more people's views of what's going on."

Inhofe is the point man for the right-wing fringe. He wants a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and another to make English the official language of the United States. Inhofe also thinks evolution is a hoax and that creationism should be taught in public schools. If Buck views Inhofe as a leader whose ideas are worth repeating, it says a lot about Buck.

On the Alaska race, from the Daily Caller:

Alaska Senate hopeful Joe Miller focused on GOP rival Sen. Lisa Murkowski during the last debate before next week’s election, seeking to shore up his conservative base and win over voters following a series of high-profile campaign stumbles...
The debate touched on topics such as whether creationism should be taught in schools: Miller said yes, along with science; Democrat Scott McAdams and GOP write-in candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski both said it shouldn’t be.

I suspect that this is playing out all over the country, with the Democrat candidates forcing the issue. I would if I were them.

Politico is reporting on a poll of Republicans done by the Daily Kos (okay, stop and think about that one for a minute) that reports on a number of interesting issues:

According to the survey, 36 percent of respondents do not believe the president was born in this country, and 21 percent think the liberal advocacy group ACORN stole the election for Obama.

Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of the Republicans polled, 23 percent, want their state to secede from the union.

It continues:

Fifty-one percent of those polled believe sex education should not be taught in schools; 77 percent want creationism taught in schools; 31 percent want contraception outlawed; and 34 percent believe birth control is “abortion.”

Some comments about these people. These are the same sorts of things that Charles Johnson was saying just before he cut his ties with the right. The poll is of "self-identified" Republicans. Most of the people that I go to church with do not identify themselves as Republicans, they identify themselves as Christians who just happen to vote Republican most of the time. I wonder what a similar poll of self-identified Democrats would reveal? What percentage would support Code Pink? How many think that Abortion should be on-demand and paid for by the state? How many are self-described socialists?

The point is that most people exist somewhere in the middle. Quite a few people on the right were upset when Don McLeroy and his supporters forced creationism on the School Board of Texas. Further, I know no one who identifies with the Republican party that wants to secede from the union or that believes that birth control is "abortion."


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