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 dont give a rats 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 Wisconsins thuggish Democrat-run public-sector unions and triumphing over the Gestapo-style John Doe inquisition launched against him by an unethical Democrat-run prosecutors 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 Tysonmeme-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 earths gravity accelerate toward the pavement at 9.8 meters per second squared they know. As an intellectual matter, Scott Walkers proclaiming that he believes in evolution would be precisely as meaningful as his proclaiming that he doesnt 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 doesnt carry a similar pop-culture charge: Does Harry Reid believe that Ezra Pounds 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? Id be surprised if hed 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 hed 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 hasnt 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 youd 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 doesnt want to talk about something that he doesnt 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 youre 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 hed have a ready answer for that question.
Unless he doesnt know what Reiki is, in which case, he has my vote.
Exactly. When your house is on fire, do you stop to question the firemen, and turn away anyone who has a different religious interpretation of human origins??
In many respects, you are correct. But I would hate to think that the only alternative to "Darwinism" is young earth creationism. Because I am a Christian who finds the latter to be ridiculous.
I know a number of people who believe this. Although we disagree completely on the age of the universe, we get along fine in every other way and I don't think they are creepy or weird in the slightest.
However, if they told me they would not vote for an otherwise conservative candidate who disagreed with them on this point of theology --- yeah, that would creep me out. It would be a conservative analogue of "low information voter"
.
Thou sayest!
.
He should have said, “Do you believe in space exploration?”
or “Do you like movies about gladiators?”
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.