Mike Huckabee is either a liar or an idiot
From a broadcast in 2004, and I quote from Mr. Huckabee:
Because, frankly, Darwinism is not an established scientific fact. It is a theory of evolution, that’s why it’s called the theory of evolution. And I think that what I’d be concerned with is that it should be taught as one of the views that’s held by people. But it’s not the only view that’s held. And any time you teach one thing as that it’s the only thing, then I think that has a real problem to it.
Mr. Huckabee is either a fool, an idiot, or a liar—all of which might normally qualify him to be President in some people’s minds, but not mine. He continues with his drivelicious stupidity:
I think that the state ought to give students exposure to all points of view. And I would hope that that would be all points of view and not only evolution. I think that they also should be given exposure to the theories not only of evolution but to the basis of those who believe in creationism.
I’m sorry Mike (can I call you Mike?), but evolution—or natural selection to use the correct term—is as close to fact as science currently allows. The fact that scientists are unwilling to have the mind-numbingly blind faith in random words on paper that you think are the inerrant word of some sky-father doesn’t mean that it’s anything less than the truth. The fact that you don’t understand the difference, or refuse to acknowledge it, means you’re simply an idiot. Belief ain’t fact.
You aren’t qualified to discuss junior-high science, and you sure aren’t qualified to lead this country into the future. Let’s put this clearly, people: we (e.g., homo sapiens) are descended from other species in the past, which themselves are mutations of previous species. All of this occurred through a process called natural selection. Anything else is simply ignorance masquerading as tolerance, and an insult to the thousands and thousands of scientists who have spent millions of man-years on this research and come to that conclusion.
You, Mike Huckabee, are a fool. There are no other scientifically proven points of view besides natural selection. Everything else is horseshit.
This entry was posted at 10:33 pm on 3 December 2007 and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
Like Governor Huckabee said who are we to deny your right to believe that you came from a primate, personally I believe some Americans had to have come from some type of animal because they sure don’t act human. So if you want to believe you came from a monkey Mr. Petrilli be my guest.
Awww, now I know how PZ Myers feels—at least a little. Introducing Pascal’s wager into the whole thing is laughable, as it’s a silly thing. Who says your sky-father is the real one, and not some false god that you’re not supposed to be worshiping?
The problem with your argument of “scientific faith”, is that that word doesn’t mean what you think. Rooted in the Latin word fides, faith means complete trust or confidence. I don’t know anyone in the science community that has complete trust or confidence in anything. Not even gravity. It’s all up for question. That questioning, however, must be rooted in evidentiary arguments, not some scribbles in a political treatise handed deemed infallible and inerrant.
And yes, I do believe that many, many, many, many years ago, homo sapiens came from monkeys, in the loosest term, as they have also changed. How does that not make our achievements less? How does that change me? It doesn’t. It’s simply evidence. Heck, we transplant pieces of pigs into humans because they are so biologically, and genetically, similar. Doesn’t stop me from eating bacon.
As for the origin of the Universe, I leave that to the astrophysicists, as it is so far from my area of expertise. Perhaps, and equally valid and demonstrable to your “God created it” childhood taunt, is that it was sneezed into existence. I’ll leave you with that origin myth:
In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe it was created by some sort of God, but the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI firmly believed that the entire universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who lived in perpetual fear of the time they called “The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief” were small, blue creatures with more than fifty arms each. They were unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
In the end, nothing those of us on the science side of things can say will shake people’s inerrant belief in faeries until they themselves are willing to forgo thousands of years of mythos and step into the light once more. You can attempt to compare the two things, but that is foolhardy, and it only further illustrates the intellectual dishonesty and laziness of the creationists. Then again, if you weren’t intellectually stunted, you wouldn’t believe in creation in the first place.
People who claim that (macro) evolution is a fact and not theory are as guilty of not thinking critically as the people they accuse of being brainwashed theists. There’s no way to test slow, gradual evolution of the sort that Darwin proposed. All they have is a bunch of stuff they dig out of the ground and no witnesses to what actually happened. So yes, it is a theory only. Insisting that it is a fact over and over again does not make it a fact.
Teaching school-age kids that evolution is a fact does not serve them as well as teaching them to actually think about whether or not evolution is a fact.
Which part of “is as close to fact as science currently allows” did you not understand?
There are not absolutes in science; there is only currently accepted theories, which may, at some point, with enough evidence, be disproved. Nobody has submitted a theory that has proved to be a viable alternative to natural selection. Fact is something you can measure, theory deals with the why and how. The more facts you accumulate, the more confidence someone can have in the theory, but it never ceases to be a theory.
You can dig out the “we can’t see it” rubric all you want, but there’s a heck of a lot more evidence for natural selection than there is for some sky-father who inspired some book written thousands of years ago. Science is always willing to re-evaluate and revise its views based on evidence. Testable, documented, valid evidence.
I presume you are responding to my post with the “Which part of… did you not understand?”
Evolutionists may have some facts, but even taken together these do not make Darwinian evolution a fact. One important fact that is missing is proof that macro evolution happens at all. Saying that it must happen because we’re here isn’t really science.
You make it sound like someone who doesn’t believe in macro evolution can’t think scientifically. You mention that science is testable. Evolution isn’t testable. Proponents of evolution have nothing better to put forward so instead of just admitting it and looking for a better answer they cling to what they have. This is a very human response, but they even refuse to admit that much.
If evolution is science, it is very bad science. If scientific answers to life origins are so important then why not look for a better, more testable theory?
Wow, just wow. If you don’t think that macro-evolution is testable and lacks evidence, then you’re simply not paying attention, and too busy regurgitating other people’s thoughts. Documented natural selection has existed since the time of the HMS Beagle, and is in fact what drew Darwin to his ideas of natural selection.
If you have a more testable and survivable theory for the nature of things, then I’m sure the scientific community would love to hear it, and would likely end up with a Nobel prize. Baring you actually having something better, I see it as little more than faith attempting to wave a shiny lie to distract people from what’s going on.
Natural selection is not only science, it is outstanding science. It is the foundation of nearly all modern biology, as well as pharmacological research. You can say it’s bad science, but that’s little more than puffery. Hundreds of thousands of man years have gone into testing, evaluating, re-testing, re-evaluating and digging into it.
“and too busy regurgitating other people’s thoughts.”
Perhaps. Are you sure that you aren’t doing just that?
Evolution is as much a social and political movement as anything else. As soon as human motives become engaged in any scientific endeavor it becomes suspect.
Natural selection is a scientific theory, and nothing more or less. Claiming it is a “social and political movement” is both disingenuous and a fabrication of the largest order and demonstrates a staggering ignorance of the nature of science, scientific inquiry or the general logic principles upon which is is founded.
I’m quite sure that, while I have been accused of many things in my life, “regurgitating other people’s thoughts” is not one of them. If anything, I have been accused of being overly rigorous with logic, and thereby “cold”. If the alternative is a blissful ignorance of the world and a willful participation in the unwinding of the Enlightenment, I will gladly be called cold. The cold nature of continuous inquiry will always interest me more than the warm certainty of faith.
How can you even begin to say that evolution is not a political and social movement? There is hardly a more high profile cause and evolution has been most durable since Darwin championed it.
Evolution is not just some dry theory of physics or fact of biology. It profoundly shapes the way that people view themselves, others and the world around them. To claim that it hasn’t been used to forge sweeping political and social change for the last century and a half is as you put it “disingenuous and a fabrication of the largest order and demonstrates a staggering ignorance”
Natural selection is a scientific theory. “Evolution” is a wide-sweeping label that is often used by those opposed to scientific progress to generalize for fear of having to address complex scientific issues. While it may inform, and guide many people socially and politically, it is, at its heart, a scientific issue. I will note that it was not nearly so politically charged until the later half of the 20th century when it was cause célèbre of the religious fundamentalists who believe in a literal interpretation of a musty tomb of writing, which is itself little more than political writing.
The fact that one side sees it in such terms does not suddenly make it a fact. A discussion of the impact of nuclear power has both a scientific component and a sociopolitical component. Nuclear power itself is purely a scientific concept. It is only how we react to it that becomes sociopolitical. Confusing people’s hypersensitive over-reaction to the nature of scientific inquiry for the nature of scientific inquiry itself is the mistake.
There is no scientific foundation for using any other model other than natural selection as the currently accepted theory that best explains the way species have changed over the millions of years that this planet has been around. If instead you think we should teach mythology as fact, then that’s a sociopolitical discussion, but it sure as heck ain’t science.
Don’t forget, scientists have observed macro-evolution/speciation, despite what people like Carl might believe:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html#part5
U da Fool, fool.- God created. End of story.
Which god? My money is on the Flying Spaghetti Monster (RAmen!), but there are so many others, how do I know I’ve picked the right one?
Thanks for the link Rian. I’m certainly happy to read up on this sort of thing.
Chris makes a good point in drawing a distinction between the pure science of natural selection and the broader aspects of evolution. My concern is that social and political pressures do affect the quality of the scientific work. Very real human frailties produce a very flawed outcome. Even peer reviewed work can be bad work because people are afraid to rock the boat or risk looking like a fool.
So natural selection is the only standing theory, and I admit that I don’t have a better scientifically testable theory. I don’t see how that makes evolution from simple chemicals to complex life good science. It’s the only game in town, so that makes it right? So I’m not convinced, but you knew that already. I don’t have to believe it, and that doesn’t make me stupid. I know that I’m not.
To be frank, it rubs me the wrong way when people denigrate others just because they hold different views. I have friends who believe things that I don’t embrace or relate to, but I respect them in any case. There are so many people who don’t hold scientific perspectives on life, and they never will. There are also many people who will never believe in God. Some people believe in crystals or pyramid energy or reincarnation or pick your own favorite. There are factions within each group as well. The different groups think very poorly of each other. Everybody is so certain that they have all the answers, and of course nobody has all the answers.
Why is there so much intolerance? Why is it okay for one person to call the other a fool, an idiot or a liar? How is that supposed to be enlightened thinking?
Evolution does not explain the origins of life. That would be Abiogenesis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life
Evolution is the not the only game in town. It’s the most likely game in town by an incredible margin because it explains the existing data better, and provides more accurate predictions than any other competing theory/hypothesis.
The idea of Intelligent design doesn’t qualify as science, let alone as a competing scientific theory.
Apart from Brett, McFox and Sassy’s comments, which statements have been derogatory?
It is one thing to hold a belief that red is a more attractive color than purple, or that you prefer trucks over hatchbacks. These are areas where personal opinion is a driving factor in the answer. Then, there are those that believe that the Earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around the Earth. Given the settled nature of heliocentrism, I see no issue in ridiculing people like that.
Natural selection, like heliocentrism, is a settled scientific theory that has no alternatives currently under any serious evaluation. While there are nuances of exactly how it happens at various levels that are still under research, the overall process is not. Like much in this country that passes for discourse, we want to be “fair and balanced”, and thereby give equal time to 2 views which do not have equal weight.
On one side you have tens of thousands of scientists, hundreds of thousands of man-years of research, thousands upon thousands of tests and re-tests, and deep exploration of the crevices of the theory’s impact on the world as it exists. On the other side, we have a book written by people 2 thousand years ago, changed repeatedly over it’s life for political purposes, translated poorly, repeatedly, which is itself internally inconsistent with its own dogma, and yet believed by many to be inerrant.
Someone’s walking on quicksand, and it ain’t the scientific community. Whatever place it may hold elsewhere, faith has no place in scientific inquiry.
passmore wrote:
I would rather err on the side of God. Your faith or my faith – which is more valid ?- Ill take faith in a loving God.
i’m fascinated. i’m not sure how belief in “a loving God” automatically shuts the door to belief in either evolution or natural selection. unless by belief in “a loving God” passmore means “uncritical and literal interpretation of a document written by men who believed the earth was flat.”
i’m also not sure how passmore has addressed the validity of his belief in “a loving God.” he has asserted such belief, but provided no argument to support its validity.
finally, i have to wonder what passmore is scared of, that belief in “a loving God” is preferable to belief in a scientific theory.
Aren’t churches built to teach religion. They why do they consistantly try to get in our schools?? Brainwash the children before they get older?
Huckster hides behind his religion. The guy killed more people with the death sentence than almost George Bush. Now he’s let a convicted rapist out of jail who goes to murder and rape another lady right after. He needs to go.
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You, Chris Petrilli, are the fool. Don’t be so closed minded that you cant see the the issue with evolution – there is no way that the theory of Evolution, or natural selection as you would prefer it be called, can be valid – you can point to all the theories you want to, but it still boils down to faith in something. When you get to the beginning of your evolutionary journey, you have to make assumptions and guesses that amount to a type of faith. These are not provable events, just as God is not “provable”. I would rather err on the side of God. Your faith or my faith – which is more valid ?- Ill take faith in a loving God. Do more research.