Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Meanwhile, Back to the Ranch...

Oh, and one more thing...

Just a short rant ahead. I've already written about creationism vs. evolution, what else would you expect from a science geek with a blog, so this isn't new. But just last night, I was checking the headlines at news.google.com (my favorite place to stay connected) and started yelling at my laptop!

It seems George W. Bush was headed back to his Crawford Ranch for about the 50th time since he's been president (there's a whole story there!) and was having a White House roundtable discussion with some Texas journalists, when he said he thought the theory of Intelligent Design should be taught alongside evolution. Here's a brief excerpt from a New York Times article that sums up what he said:
In an interview at the White House on Monday with a group of Texas newspaper reporters, Bush appeared to endorse the push by many of his conservative Christian supporters to give intelligent design equal treatment with the theory of evolution in public schools.

Recalling his days as Texas governor, Bush said in the interview, according to a transcript, "I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught. " Asked again by a reporter whether he believed that both sides in the debate between evolution and intelligent design should be taught in the schools, Bush replied that he did, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that intelligent design was an alternative to evolution, but he did not directly answer. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said, adding that "you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
I am definitely having trouble with a world where people can claim to be having a debate, but can't even agree on the rules of reality! There is no debate in the scientific world. ID (Intelligent Design) has no standing as a real scientific theory, but Bush and his right-wing Christian wacko accomplices think that just by sleight of hand, and a few well-placed phrases, they can elevate ID as a worthy parallel to be 'debated' alongside evolution.

My head has been reeling from all the other stuff he's been stirring up, and along with everything else, tries to score more points for the forces of Orwellian logic.

Balderdash!

PS, I found a really well-written article about just how lame Bush is for doing this

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As the saying goes: They don't want to teach evolution because it hasn't happened to them yet.

Anonymous said...

Evolution works in politics as well as any other part of life. Eventually the foolishness of Bush's remarks will become so obvious that even his most ardent supporters will change their minds. This takes a long time. Don't hold your breath!