Evolution Denial

Razib Khan points out that a healthy number of prominent politicians—potential U.S. presidential candidates, no less—are “rather frank Creationists”. Maybe the biggest problem is how this isn’t shocking to a lot of people.

He notes:

Creationism doesn’t really have the same valence as abortion as a “culture war” issue, but, it is useful in being a distinctive marker for social conservative candidates. Mitt Romney is now notionally as pro-life as the social conservatives, but it seems unlikely that he’ll flip his position on evolution since he expressed himself so explicitly in the 2008 debates.

And in a follow-up post, he adds:

Obviously a particular combination of policies and beliefs would lead to different assessments of a candidate’s viability to different individuals. Many of Ron Paul’s enthusiastic supporters backed him not because of 100% agreement with all his views, including his skepticism of evolution, but because of core substantive agreement with is policy prescriptions. On the other hand, some weird beliefs probably would serve as a way to filter out genuine loonies who rely on non-mainstream sources of knowledge.

For all the observant things said here, its unfortunate that his very last point is made so casually. Not due to fault on behalf of the author, but rather due to the reality that Creationism doesn’t live under the larger tent of “loonie-worthy concepts” in the greater public consciousness. Said otherwise, it’s incredible that Creationism isn’t a disqualifying factor in mainstream American politics.

Recently, researchers discovered Ardi, one of our 4 million-year-old bipedal ancestors. So, as yet another piece of evidence added to the theory of evolution, it is more than clear that the misinforming power of Creationism is eating away at what should be a straightforward, science-based history of humanity on Earth. Yet such a belief still stands front-and-center on politicians’ public platforms.

One of Khan’s commenters says “I don’t…grant that mormonism is that crazy; catholicism’s transubstantiation isn’t weird because it is widely held.” A good point—that wide acceptance of an idea can lead to cultural normalization.

However, with transubstantiation (the Catholic belief that the Eucharist is actually the body of Jesus Christ), the concept doesn’t necessary contradict decades of scientific research. If you choose to believe that you are consuming God, that is your choice. In the same way—it should be mentioned—that the idea of Intelligent Design doesn’t necessarily contradict the theory of evolution. If you believe that God “chose” a certain branch from the tree of humanity to become man as we know it today, that is fine. (Just don’t pretend it’s a scientific, since you can never actually test that belief of yours.)

But the problem with Creationism? It tries to contradict an exhaustively strong scientific theory. With no evidence to present on its own behalf. Such blatant denialism should have no place in a voting booth.