Canada's Science Minister ends evolution brouhaha? No way! He was able to weasel out of answering the question for a reporter who didn't know the fine points of the controversy.Apparently Gary Goodyear does not think it relevant whether he believes in evolution or not. I happen to think it is. But the report missed the mark wildly when asking him for his views on evolution. He said of course he believes in evolution, and then described a type of evolution that has been accepted by religious people for a couple of thousand years, certainly ever since humans learned how to breed dogs, maybe longer.
Gary Goodyear managed to weasel his way out of the question. He did say he believed in evolution, but his kind of evolution is totally compatible with believing in the "Young Earth" theory and the creation of Adam and Eve.
The question should have been do you believe in Darwinism, or do you believe in man descending from an ape like creature, or do you believe that all life evolved from single celled organisms billions of years ago, or do you believe in Adam and Eve?
In my opinion anyone with fundamentalist religious views should be not be "Minister of Science and Technology", why couldn't they make him "Minister of Faith Healing and Superstition" instead. And that is one of the reasons I will not vote conservative (back in the eighties I did, actually). They are just way too deep into fundamentalist religion. And Goodyear's weaseling around the wording just makes him look all the more like a fake.
Sure - it'd be nice to 'believe' that a politician's religious views have no effect on policy making. But history tends to prove otherwise.
ReplyDeleteIf science policy is to be influenced by 'beliefs' wouldn't it be a whole lot better if belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster had its share of influence?