Posted on 02/12/2015 12:29:02 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The amazing muroid hind anatomy of Rattus norvegicus may be the product of eons of mind-bendingly complex Darwinian refinement, but I still don’t give a rat’s ass what Scott Walker thinks about evolution.
And neither does anybody else. Not really.
Governor Walker, making the rounds in London as part of his plan to relocate from Madison to Washington — the presidency is a roundabout affair — was asked whether he “believes in” evolution. “Believes in” is key language — nobody ever asks a politician whether he knows anything about evolution. It is a safe bet that Walker, famously a college dropout, has not been undertaking graduate-level studies of evolution in his spare time, assuming he has any time at all left over from knocking the stuffing out of Wisconsin’s thuggish Democrat-run public-sector unions and triumphing over the Gestapo-style “John Doe” inquisition launched against him by an unethical Democrat-run prosecutor’s office — and winning three elections in four years. Between kicking ass and taking names, Scott Walker probably does not have a great deal of time left over for biology.
When someone asks a politician whether he “believes in” evolution, he is not asking for a scientific opinion. If you want a scientific opinion, you ask a scientist, not a politician. What is instead being sought with that question is one of two things: 1) a profession of faith, not in science but in the half-informed worldview of the “I F******g Love Science,” Neil deGrasse Tyson–meme-affirming, enjoying-scientific-prestige-by-proxy crowd, or 2) a shameful public confession that one is a knuckle-dragging science “denier” who believes that the fossil record is a conspiracy of archeologists who get up in the morning and go to bed at night fuming about how much they hate the Baby Jesus. It is a purely political and rhetorical exercise.
The relevant scholars in the field do not “believe in” evolution, any more than a physicist “believes in” the proposition that objects subject to earth’s gravity accelerate toward the pavement at 9.8 meters per second squared — they know. As an intellectual matter, Scott Walker’s proclaiming that he “believes in” evolution would be precisely as meaningful as his proclaiming that he doesn’t “believe in” evolution — he has little or no relevant knowledge about the subject, and his choosing the right answer would be as intellectually significant as a chicken playing tic-tac-toe or infinite monkeys banging out Shakespearean sonnets on infinite typewriters. This is obvious if you ask a similar question about a field that doesn’t carry a similar pop-culture charge: Does Harry Reid believe that Ezra Pound’s contributions to The Waste-Land were in fact so profound and meaningful that he should be considered something like the coauthor of the poem? Who knows? I’d be surprised if he’d read The Waste-Land.
There are some boobs out there — some of them in the Republican party — who would, if entrusted with the awesome powers of the presidency, attempt to use those powers to strong-arm high-school biology teachers in Poughkeepsie into including the Genesis account of creation as part of their science curricula. If you want to know whether Scott Walker is one of them — or whether as president he’d insist that NASA use a pre-Copernican model of the solar system the next time it launches a Mars probe — then ask that question. Walker hasn’t given any indication that he is in fact such a politician, but if it sets anxious minds at ease, then, by all means, make the relevant inquiry.
I have made the point here a dozen times — and you’d think that one of these big-on-science guys like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye would take up the cause — that there is in reality an important federal project under way giving rank pseudoscience and pure hokum the force of law: Obamacare, which, thanks to the efforts of Senator Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), will oblige taxpayers to subsidize all manner of scientifically illegitimate “alternative medicine.” Everybody wants to know what Scott Walker and Sarah Palin think about evolution, but almost nobody is asking what Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama think about homeopathy, acupuncture, aromatherapy, and the like. The same people who are scandalized that Walker doesn’t want to talk about something that he doesn’t know the first thing about celebrate as the most important health-care advance in a generation a law that treats as legitimate sundry species of quackery based in pure mysticism.
Why?
As usual, it comes down to aesthetics: If you’re a coastal progressive type, people who believe that every word of the Bible is literally true in a natural-history sense are creepy and weird, but when Dr. Moonbeam McEarthgoddess promises to manipulate your mystical energy pathways so that your qi cures your osteoarthritis — then, bring on the federal subsidies.
Strange that nobody has asked Scott Walker whether he believes the federal government should be subsidizing Reiki. I suspect he’d have a ready answer for that question.
Unless he doesn’t know what Reiki is, in which case, he has my vote.
That's a great line!
There is a great deal of diversity of thought on the right about Creation and Evolutionary theory.
Frankly I think we should start nailing the left on their lack of diverse thought on just about every subject. I call it ideological stagnation.
“Why Yes, I do believe that evolution is a theory.
Isn’t that why it’s called “The Theory of Evolution?”
next question?
I think democrats evolved from pond scum!
[ There is a great deal of diversity of thought on the right about Creation and Evolutionary theory.
Frankly I think we should start nailing the left on their lack of diverse thought on just about every subject. I call it ideological stagnation. ]
A LOT of Liberal Evolutionists are resisant to theories that even tear apart their “onto the savanna” theory that they hold so dear. One of them being the so called “aquatic ape theory” of human evolution that Academics have really worked hard to try to destroy because it tears down their existing scientific orthodoxy on the subject.
That's an affront to pond scum.
Lol!
Scott-Walker!
Only Progressives want the Conservatives to Believe in Science, even though they ardently claim on the other hand that science is not a belief system......
The left’s fetish for Darwinian evolution seems to me to be cover for the radically anti-empirical approach to public policy the left exhibits: loudly call your opponents “anti-science” when your own program would be gutted by applying the scientific method to questions actually at issue in political debate.
In point of fact, a great many policy positions the left takes run contrary to what a real believer in Darwinian evolution would believe: They would have us believe that human populations which subsisted in radically different environments for tens of thousands of years will exhibit no measurable differences in anything other than skin, hair and eye color, and thus any disparities in career choices or social outcomes must be the result of invidious discrimination. Likewise, they have no regard for the Darwinian basis of the institution of marriage: that human young are optimally reared by those most genetically similar to them (a consequence of the most radically materialistic explication of Darwinism, the “selfish-gene theory”) with their absurd push for “gay marriage” which misunderstands marriage as nothing more than a “celebration” of at best romantic love at worst lust called “love”.
Darwinism serves the left not as a scientific theory actually informing how they understand the world, but as a shibboleth for anti-Christianity.
Unless, it's climate change - that is their religion.
I think I would have answered it, “I’m not so sure about evolution, but I will fly when I visit Europe so I won’t sail off the edge of the earth on a boat.”
A little ridicule is in order for those types of questions from the Republican candidates.
Good answer ... then add, "what does it have to do with being President?" If the report brings up education, it the perfect opportunity to say that there is nothing in the US constitution that empowers the federal government to be involved in education - it is a state and local manner.
I loved walker’s answer.
Rhett Butler had my attitude about right = ‘Frankly I don’t give a damn’
Should have said:
“I agree with what Darwin wrote at the end of his life, expressing doubts about his entire theory of evolution.”
This gets me through family get-togethers with the evangelicals and the Ph.D's without getting involved in the argument and taking sides. I hope Scott Walker comes up with some neutral answer; since he is such a savvy politician, I'm sure he will.
Nobody ever asks a lefty politician if he believes in some of the metaphysical nonsense many of them believe. I mean, has anyone ever asked Al Gore if he really believes there are such things as Chakras - or does he use it as a line to get laid?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.