In 1922, Woodrow Wilson asserted: “Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education, I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should still be raised.”
In 1922, this would seem to me to be only an appropriate and logical stance on evolution. In 2007, any deviation from the above is absurd in the highest degree. 100 percent of all elite scientists and biologists have come to a consensus on this subject, and the scientific debate of the extraordinary ability of Darwinian evolution to explain the living world as we know it is long past.
Unfortunately, most Gallup polls, if they are to be taken seriously, report that approximately half of Americans have theories of their own on this matter. While in most nonscientific professions, adhering to a crackpot idea such as underestimating the age of the Earth by a few billion years may be harmless, this is not the case for a president or a presidential candidate.
It is for this reason I say that a national embarrassment occurred during one of the
Republican presidential debates last May when three of the candidates indicated that they do not believe in evolution. Although none of these candidates has a serious chance of winning the nomination, it should still be a cause of concern. I pray that everyone resists supporting a presidential candidate, whether they are a Republican or Democrat, who has such a fundamentally flawed understanding of science.
Leave a Reply