President's Day and Darwin - Science versus superstition

Today is the federal holiday when we celebrate the combined holidays of the birthday of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln; some use it to celebrate the legacy of all of our presidents. It is worth noting that our Constitution, written by our founding fathers obviously, and supported by our Presidents in their oath of office makes specific mention of promoting science in the reference to doing so by the establishment of our patent office in Article I, Sec. 8.

Charles Darwin was coincidentally born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln, February 12, 1809, a curious coincidence that I am taking as the premise for my post today.

We still have a problem with the more ignorant among us, especially those on the right, not believing in science generally, and not in evolution specifically. This level of ignorance is to the detriment of our nation.

On the holiday celebrating our Presidents, most particularly George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, we should be aware that our founding fathers were themselves well educated, products of the Enlightenment era that promoted the potential of reason.

Those who reject science, who reject learning, who reject fact in favor of ideology or superstitious religious belief.  A May 2012 Gallup poll showed 46% of Americans rejected the theory of Evolution, with only 15% of the American population accepting the theory of evolution, and 32% claimed to believe in sort of odd hybrid of God-guided evolution, sometimes termed theistic evolution.

Creationist believing / evolution rejecting Americans tend to be more religious, more conservative / Republican, and less educated. This is not a new development; those numbers have been approximately the same since 1982.

At least we are seeing progress in support for anthropogenic climate change.  The most recent surveys showed that 70% of Democrats believe in climate change from human causes, with only 27% of Republicans doing so, but another 43% admit it is probably occurring.

We have seen similar divisions in research and funding for other aspects of science and scientific research, notably stem cell research.

That represents progress, but the Republicans are still catering to the religious right over science, fact, and objective reality; the Republicans are still the party of stupid. A Pew poll done in 2009 found that only 6% of scientists identified as Republican, while 66% identified as liberal or very liberal Democrats.

We need to be reality based, we need to be objective and rely on our reason; all common ground must first begin with an acknowledgment of fact, not superstition masquerading as religion.  That was how our founding father's were educated. OUR students should be educated in science more current than when Darwin was born in 1809.

With the exception of Jon Huntsman, every candidate from the right in the last two presidential election cycles has rejected the theory of evolution, rejected science generally, and embraced a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Most of our presidents, certainly both Lincoln and Washington, were educated men, either formally educated or more self-educated. With the exception of Dubya-for-Dumb president, all of our presidents have supported rational thinking, reason, fact, education, and been pro-science.  Dubya of course, was the president who was caught suppressing science, and who refused to take a position on the age of the earth or on evolution.  This was made evident, among other examples, with the suppressed 2009 document on climate change, and as was noted by Robert Kennedy Jr., in 2004

Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends."

I cannot recall, either in my lifetime or in my reading of presidential history, any prior president who had so actively interfered with science, suppressed science, or been opposed by sixty prominent figures in science, including Nobel laureates.  George W. Bush was truly in this context an Un-American president, who did a grave disservice to the country in the aid of serving and servicing special interests and right-wing anti-science pandering.

So we can pick this, above; or we can pick this, below.  Science will advance this nation; opposition to science will result in our destruction and decline. The idiot below is who the GOP put on the House of Representatives SCIENCE committee. Far below, Todd Akin, who believes, or used to believe, that women couldn't get pregnant by rape.


 or Todd Akin, on evolution

or Michele Bachmann on intelligent design; the overwhelming majority of scientists support the theory of evolution; those engaged in 'junk science' - science that is bought and paid to support a pre-determined outcome, not honest science consistently disagree.

 

Bobby Jindal was correct that the Republicans are the party of stupid, and they are getting a firm reputation as the party of lies and liars, voter suppression and denial of civil liberties, and of revisionist history along with the suppression, rejection and denial of science.  The right won't rest until they make the rest of us as ignorant as they are, as noted in this recent article about the right wing nut legislation that is trying to get opposition to Darwins theory of evolution mandated in schools.   The theory of evolution has survived scientific challenge since the 19th century, and been revised and improved by it.  The opposition to Darwin's theory is so 19th century; the problem for the right is that this is the 21st century, and we're not going backwards just to make them happily stupid and comfortable. The rest of us in this country and in the world want to know and support fact not faith-based stupidity, superstition, and ignorance.

We should celebrate today all the Presidents who have supported science, which pretty much means all of them except George W. Bush.