Blog plug

[mmcirvin]

Chris Mooney's science-and-politics blog has been on fire lately, and is all over the Bush administration's dismissive/manipulative attitude toward science, and the increasingly angry reaction thereto. There really is a pattern here (beyond the workings of normal politics), and the story is becoming huge.

Comments

[jwgh]

I occasionally wonder if our president believes in evolution or not. Then I usually decide that it's better not to think about such things. This afternoon I did some poking around to see if I could come up with an answer to this question. The best I could do was this quote:

I believe in the alignment of authority and responsibility away from the federal government when it comes to issues of governance and schools. Secondly, my own personal opinion is that I believe that it's important for children to understand there's different schools of thought when it comes to the formation of the world. I have no problem explaining that there are different theories about how the world was formed. I mean, after all, religion has been around a lot longer than Darwinism. And I think it's important for people to know what people believe in–but whatever the case, here's what I believe. I believe God did create the world. And I think we're finding out more and more and more as to how it actually happened.

The problem with drawing any conclusions from this is that I'm pretty sure that when a politician makes any statements on an emotionally charged issue like this they are almost always pandering to someone or other.

My reading is that he wouldn't be shocked to find out that evolution was a mechanism God used in creating life, but he thinks the issue is still in some sense open as to whether evolution happens or not.

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

Nature always seems to have editorials where someone is in a tizzy over it. I don't know how much, historically, they've preoccupied themselves with political issues, so I can't say if it's novel or not.