Joke of the Week: Brownback on Evolution

Senator Sam Brownback (or his speechwriter) came up with a choice OpEd in the NYT today on the evolution question:

The premise behind the question seems to be that if one does not unhesitatingly assert belief in evolution, then one must necessarily believe that God created the world and everything in it in six 24-hour days. But limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason.

The problem with this is that the false dichotomy was created by the creationist/IDers. Of course, Brownback isn't going to take responsibility for that because . . . well, just because. It's also a fairly stupid question: "Do you believe in evolution?" equates to "Do you accept the results of rational inquiry based on objective evidence?" It's sort of indicative that Brownback says not.

He sounds good for the next couple of paragraphs, and then falls flat on his fundmentalism. See Tristero's comments at Hullabaloo for the whole question of scientific materialism and what it means. And also note that, after calling the false dichotomy, Brownback goes on to do his best to obfuscate the issue, using the tried and true Christianist tactic of slipping between multiple meanings of a term without distinguishing them.

It goes steadily downhill from there. In fact, it winds up with a call to put science and reason under the thumb of received superstition. (The inevitable PZ Myers takes him apart quite nicely.) I'm not by any means an atheist, but demagogues like Brownback could easily turn me into one.

Since there was a snowball's chance in hell that I would have voted for Brownback anyway (the essential hypocrisy of a statement such as "I firmly believe that each human person, regardless of circumstance, was willed into being and made for a purpose" coupled with Brownback's hostility to equal rights for gays is enough on that score), my evaluation is probably beside the point. However, I see two possibilities in this screed: either Brownback is mendacious, which is not beyond the bounds of possibiity, or he's stupid.

Neither one qualifies him to be president, in my book.

Update:

Jack Balkin does very tidy dissection, and comes down on the mendacious side of the conclusion. He's much more polite than I am about it, though.