In what is for this furriner a somewhat perplexing column, Kathleen Parker, who is supposedly one of the Washington Post stable of writers, argues that the question asked of Republican nominees for presidency - Do you believe in evolution? - was unfair.
I fail to see why. Sure, nobody expects the president to select the next generation of successful breeders for any generation, but this is a good surrogate test of whether or not the candidate thinks science is to be trusted, or whether they think, as this administration odes, that they can choose the reality in which they operate with impunity.
In Seed stablemate Chris Mooney's book The Republican War on Science, the attempts by elected and backroom members of that party to evade and avoid science that happens not to suit them, for political or economic reasons, are documented in great detail. And it is a shocking litany of failures and corrupt acts. So asking this question of the next shift of Republicans is in effect asking them whether they are prepared to lie, act on bad advice, and do whatever it takes either to appease a minority of the electorate (fundamentalists) or not. And you do not want those as your representatives. Decisions made on bad advice are measurably worse than those which are made in good faith on good advice.
Why Ms Parker somehow thinks it is up to a political candidate to choose and pick whatever aspects of science they was to accept is beyond me. Does she really think, like the member of the Bush administration who asserted that they had the power to construct their own reality, that the world will accommodate a political majority (or gerrymander)? Physics and biology will have the last laugh, I'm afraid. And the American electorate will be both the victims and the ones who pay for these mistakes.
So I say, yes! It was a useful, constructive and important question, for if the candidates flub evolution, they are very likely to flub everything else that matters in science. And given the past experience of the post-Gingrich Republican Party on scientific matters, this question above all others is an excellent test of that. Ms Parker is a journalist, and maybe thinks reality can be constructed by the right framing techniques - pomo-PR. But just as Johnson refuted Berkeley by kicking the rock, and no doubt stubbing his toe in the process, reality will be there for the next administration to trip over anyway.
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Quite clearly, Kathleen Parker doesn't understand evolution either.
From her article...
"In a conversation after the debate, Huckabee said, "I wish life were so simple.... If I'd had time, I would have asked whether he meant macro or micro evolution."
She simply doesn't get the point that the Kent Hovind style YEC position on evolution that Huckabee seems to believe in is scientifically untenable.
I agree with everything except the first clause of the last sentence. It's a travesty of an interpretation that lets Johnson's quip count as a refutation of Berkeley. Solidity is a sensible quality according to Berkeley and therefore not a quality of the matter he thinks he's discredited. Of course, I realize I'm being pedantic in the extreme, but I have a soft spot for Berkeley. (And don't get me started on people calling him "Bishop Berkeley" ... ;-))
I too have a soft spot, not just for Berkeley but for idealists in general (particularly the British idealists of the late nineteenth century), but there is a fact of obduracy of phenomena (which Berkeley could explain solely by appeal to the sensorium of God) which Johnson, in his naive and unsophisticated way, is identifying.
Interesting connection there that I hadn't seen before - "perception is reality" is true for both the solipsist and politician.
There is another reason that it is a proper question. On the fairly reliable assumption that no one ambitious enough to want the job will stick at any equivocation in order to get it, the question reveals something about which American political groups the candidate is willing to pander to and to what degree. One of the more interesting things has been the attempts by people like Huckabee and Romney and McCain to "adjust" their answers afterwards and what that may mean about the existence of a more nuanced view of the subject within the electorate than anyone knew.
It's tea leaves all the way down.
I must admit that I read "furriner" as "furrier", and was thoroughly perplexed.
And the article itself was confusing. So, journalists aren't allowed to ask awkward questions, because they might make politicians look stupid?
Bob
I see a difference between "fair" and "just", and you mainly gave reasons why it was a just question.
The reason I think it's a fair question is that culture warriors like Ms. Parker are happy to ask Democratic candidates for office any number of questions that are irrelevant to policy, like "do you like NASCAR?" or about their associations with gay or black people, or the price of their haircut, or whether they are religious or churchgoing (never asking the non-churchgoing GWB that question, though).
So even if "do you believe in evolution?" was irrelevant to policy, it would be fair turnaround for Republicans. Let them take a hit from culture war for a change.
This is indeed a very perplexing column, above all in Ms Parker's rambling I fail to detect any form of logical substantiation for her claim that this is an unfair question. She implies that it is too complex a question to be answered in the five micro seconds that politicians get to express their opinions in this age of the sound bite but all political questions are much too complex to answer properly in the time that TV broadcasts allow between the much more important commercial breaks. Also Ms Parker seems to imply very strongly that the politicians need more time for a complex answer in order to create the multi-layered empty lie that does not offend any of the politicians potential voting blocks not, in my opinion, a very savoury justification.
The question is however not unfair for a very obvious reason. Mr Wilkins has concentrated on the attitude to science that is revealed in the candidates' answers to this question but I think their answers are just as important, if not more so, from another stand point, namely that of education. In the current times education has become one of the most important political themes of all, in every country in the world, and as has been much discussed on many forums the central issue in America in the fight between the scientists and the religious right in what should be taught in American schools. The next generations of school kids and students are America's capital for the future so it is more than legitimate to ask what a potential future president thinks should be taught to those kids in the schools and universities, science or religion?
1. Ms. Parker is typical of the type of morons the Washington Post hires these days. The editor of the editorial page, Fred Hiatt is a first class imbecile who prints the ravings of such clowns as Charles Krauthammer and Robert Novak.
2. The New York Times, the other US newspaper of record, isn't much better, presenting clowns like Thomas Friedman on their editorial page. Some if its coverage of the Dover trial was incredibly bad.
from the cited column:
"To say "yes" would have been to betray many evangelical Christian voters, 73 percent of whom believe that human beings were created in their present form in the past 10,000 years or so."
Since when is disagreeing with someone betraying them? When did that happen in America?
"To these folks, "no" didn't mean anti-science; it meant pro-God and conveyed a transcendent, nonmaterialistic view of the world."
The statement is false, which is fine enough, but then the author follows it up with this as an example of it:
"Huckabee said, "I wish life were so simple.... If I'd had time, I would have asked whether he meant macro or micro evolution.""
Thats not a nuanced position, its a rejection of....basic evolutionary science. We've all seen the 'micro macro' creationist arguement before, and its pure bunkum. Here, a presidential contender has bought it, heck he's even citing it, like he just read it from a Jack Chick Tract or something.
THe author's position is summed up in the closing paragraph, that
"That's a different sort of answer than what is inferred from a simple "no" forced by the manic pace of a 90-minute "debate" among 10 candidates, none of whom is qualified to seriously debate scientific theory"
That, iow, it was an unfair question because the positions aren't as black and white as 'me hate science, listen to jebus' or 'jesus can go to hell, bow down to darwin'. I've certainly met people who were at least skeptical about evolution who had interestingly though out, well researched, and complex positions on the matter, but the 'macro-micro' type of arguement IS in the realm of 'black and white, yes or no'.
If the guys who raised their hands during that debate actually HAD at least an INTERESTING arguement against evolution, then the presentation would've been somewhat unfair. As it was, their 'no, me no beleive in darwinology' answers pretty much summed it up.
And thus is just like so many other questions, such as "Will you promise no new taxes, balance the budget, bring peace to the Middle East, fix social security, and so forth. I don't expect any substantial arguments to be made in such venues; however, the short answer to the question is an indication of whether the candidate is apt to listen to good scientific advice from reliable sources.