Polish MEP calls for 'scholarly debate' on evolution:
'I am a scientist, I am a geneticist, my specialty is population genetics and I reject the theory of evolution on the basis of the field of science I represent. I find that in many fields of science there are scientists who reject the theory of evolution because in their fields they also find evidence against the theory.' says MEP Maciej Giertych.
I won't go through the blow-by-blow. Only two points:
1) It exhausts my creativity how one could reject evolution because of population genetics, seeing as how population genetics as a field emerged in large part as a formalization of Darwinian evolutionary theory assuming a Mendelian model of genetics. To me this is kind of like claiming that the calculus led one to the conclusion that Newtonian Mechanics was a false theory. It might not be logically false, but there is something really peculiar about it all.
2) Poland is of course a Roman Catholic nation, and European Catholicism has had little issue at the commanding heights with the general hypothesis of evolution (the recent flirtation with Intelligent Design I view cautiously, and mostly an issue of bad philosophical communication). Nevertheless, in nations where populist Catholicism is powerful Creationism seems to emerge. To me this illustrates the reality that Creationism exists as a populist inclination invariant of the elite religious tradition.
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For what it's worth I'd like to point out that this is Giertych (snr) from the LPR (League of Polish Families) -- a fruit loop from a party of fruit loops* -- and should not be considered representative of my birth country as a whole. D:
That is not to say that there isn't a lot of disturbing mainstream fundamentalism emerging in Poland now, but this extreme and colourful example is more the LPR being crazy than Poland as a whole being crazy. Although the fact that this guy's son, who is also a LPR politician, is the current minister of education does not bode well for the future.
* As an expatriate I'm not qualified to judge current political trends with great accuracy, but enough people in Poland dislike this party and its politicians that Giertych junior has been consistently googlebombed to the top of the .pl domain search results for "idiota" for several years now.
What's even more depressing, Poland's deputy minister of education called the theory of evolution "a lie" and said also "we can do without tolerance in society".
It's worse than Afghanistan: we have fucking Taliban, but no opium to smoke.