Dr. Ron Paul, a graduate of the Duke University School of Medicine, seemingly has added his name to the list of those of the Republican candidates for president who have stated that they don’t believe in the theory of evolution. (Two of them, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, have of course withdrawn from the race, while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is now a leading contender for the party’s nomination.) On a YouTube video currently available on the internet, Dr. Paul responded to the question of whether he believed in evolution by answering (in my transcription; I left out the “ers,” the “ahs,” and the most obvious false starts):
Well, at first I thought it was a very inappropriate question, you know, for the presidency to be decided on a scientific matter. And I think it’s a theory, there is evolution, and I don’t accept it, you know, as a theory.
It really doesn’t bother me, it’s not the most important for me to make the difference in my life to understand the exact workings. I think the creator that I know created us and every one of us and created the universe and the precise time and manner and all, I just don’t think we at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side. So I just don’t, if that were the only issue [inaudible], I would think it’s an interesting discussion, I would think it’s a theological discussion, and I think it’s fine, we can have our [inaudible]. If that were the issue of the day, I wouldn’t be running for public office.
Given the recent history of the legal struggles over the teaching of evolution and anti-evolution in public schools and more broadly over the separation of church and state, it should be astonishing that a presidential candidate who has been taken with enough seriousness that he participates in the nationally televised debates can maintain that the issue is not important. Alas, it is not astonishing.
All of this is not just a matter of academic debate. Questions of very practical import quickly arise. To point to just one example, would Dr. Paul not support federal funding of research into, say, the development of new antibiotics, needed because bacteria have so evolved that today’s antibiotics are no longer effective against them, on the ground that the scientific theory guiding our understanding of evolution is not compelling?
There should be absolutely no need for this kind of discussion; we should be well beyond it as even the old Europe is. The next time that I find myself moved to write on this particular topic, I think I will be ready to propose that our accrediting agencies rule that no one shall be so left behind that they graduate from high school without serious and systematic instruction in the differences between and among science, non-science, and anti-science, with religious non-science and anti-science explicitly included in the coverage.
The YouTube video can be seen at “Ron Paul on Evolution” on the onegoodmove site, at: http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/12/ron_paul_on_evo.html.
December 30, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Errr… you mean you’re actually taking anything that Ron Paul says seriously? I’m new to your blog, so I don’t know if you’ve covered this already, but … the man is INSANE. He recently made comments that not only called into question whether or not the outcome of the Civil War was the right way things should have gone, but which framed the issue as if it were something relevant to current politics.
The Republican party has achieved it’s victories over the past 18 years by encouraging people to feel comfortable with their prejudices and empowering the most ignorant and zealous segments of Christianity. We are now seeing them reap what they have sown. The worry is whether the sheer inanity of it all will cause this movement to collapse in on itself or turn the USA into yet another theocracy.
December 31, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I take the views of Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and so many others seriously, not because they have any intrinsic merit, but because because so many of our fellow citizens take them seriously.
A primary reason for my putting up my little blog is that I want to combat the non-rational, anti-rational, and/or irrational views essential to religious fideism.
My first posting, way back on November 20, 2007, “The Aims of ‘Reading Religion Rationally’,” says something about, well, the aims of “Reading Religion Rationally.”
January 2, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Ken Miller (in “Finding Darwin’s God,” especially in chapters 3, 4, 5) points out that the evidence for evolution is so strong that (religiously motivated) evolution deniers must implicitly believe in a God who would be so mean as to rig the world to make it look exactly as if evolution did indeed happen, and then blame us for falling for HIS dirty trick. (In my opinion, Miller, who is a practicing Catholic, fails to face up to the full implications of evolution — but then so did Steven J. Gould, and he was no theist — but Miller’s argument on the above point is among the best I’ve seen).
January 2, 2008 at 7:00 pm
At some point, Craig, I’d like to know what you see the full implications of evolution to be that Miller failed to face up to. Is it that evolution, as fully faced up to, implies that there is no deity, that there is no role necessary for deity, that there is no role possible for deity, or that there is no way to know any of the above?
January 3, 2008 at 2:28 am
>To point to just one example, would Dr. Paul not support federal funding of research into, say, the development of new antibiotics, needed because bacteria have so evolved that today’s antibiotics are no longer effective against them, on the ground that the scientific theory guiding our understanding of evolution is not compelling?
That isn’t why Ron Paul would oppose such funding.
January 4, 2008 at 2:13 am
Of course, you’re right. Perhaps we could say that it is not the only reason or even that it is not the primary reason: there’s that federal government thing, or that government tout court thing. Or perhaps I could say that while his non-belief in evolution would not be the primary reason, it would be a sufficient reason for him not to support federal funding. Or, in yet another alternative, wouldn’t it be a suficient reason for him not to support any funding?
At any rate, I still sit in wonder at the thought that a graduate of Duke University Medical School would be willing to let it be thought that his biological understanding was pre-Darwinian.