In what has turned out to be the most memorable moment of Thursday’s Republican presidential debate — “Is there anybody on the stage that does not believe in evolution?” — an interesting discussion has emerged about the right, science, and modernity.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, one of three Republican candidates who rejects modern biology, was disappointed he couldn’t elaborate on the point during the debate. He told reporters yesterday that he isn’t opposed to evolution in the classrooms; he just doesn’t believe it. “If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, I’ll accept that…. I believe there was a creative process.”
Obviously, phrases such as “came from apes,” as opposed to “share a common ancestor,” reflect a disturbing ignorance about basic science, but Huckabee added an even more provocative point.
The former Arkansas governor said about the evolution question: “I’m not sure what in the world that has to do with being president of the United States.”
At first blush, this might sound vaguely compelling. The president isn’t going to write science curricula for public schools. He or she doesn’t have to know much about science at all.
But I’d argue that it nevertheless matters. In fact, it matters quite a bit. For an educated adult in the 21st century, who wants to be the leader of the free world, to reject modern biology, reflects a certain lack of intellectual seriousness. It speaks to how earnestly a man or woman takes evidence and reason, which in turn tells the nation quite a bit about how this person would make decisions in the Oval Office.
For Huckabee (and Brownback and Tancredo) to reject biology is to announce that scientific consensus has no meaning to them; they prefer dogma and pseudo-science.
We’ve had quite a bit of this the past six years; we don’t need more of it.
Indeed, I’ve been amazed at times at how the current president processes information. Confronted with evidence of global warming, Bush rejects it. Confronted with evidence that Iraq had no WMD, he denies it. Confronted with evidence of steroids in baseball, he doesn’t believe it. Confronted with evidence of evolution, he discounts it. As Kevin Drum wrote a while back, “It’s like listening to a small child. He doesn’t want to believe it, so it isn’t true.”
Now, in the case of Huckabee, Brownback, and Tancredo, we don’t know if they prefer a Bush-like blissful ignorance on everything, but the fact that they’re willing to concede disbelief in “the cornerstone of modern biology” doesn’t reflect well on their understanding of facts and evidence. If they reject the overwhelming proof on evolutionary biology, how will they deal with evidence of global warming? Or stem-cell research? Or a public health emergency? Or any public policy that deals with science?
This is why it matters. If Huckabee prefers the science of 1807 to that of 2007, that is his right. But if Huckabee wants to lead the executive branch of government, he doesn’t get to tell us it doesn’t matter.
Post Script: As long as we’re on the subject, I should note that the NYT ran an article today exploring the conservative debate over whether evolution is consistent (or consistent enough) with their broader ideology.
For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they abhor. As an alternative to Darwin, many advocate intelligent design, which holds that life is so intricately organized that only an intelligent power could have created it.
Yet it is that very embrace of intelligent design — not to mention creationism, which takes a literal view of the Bible’s Book of Genesis — that has led conservative opponents to speak out for fear their ideology will be branded as out of touch and anti-science.
Some of these thinkers have gone one step further, arguing that Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and that natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.
“I do indeed believe conservatives need Charles Darwin,” said Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, who has spearheaded the cause. “The intellectual vitality of conservatism in the 21st century will depend on the success of conservatives in appealing to advances in the biology of human nature as confirming conservative thought.”
I suppose this is at least mildly encouraging, though the fact that the right still needs to debate this seriously doesn’t speak well to the movement’s intellectual underpinnings.