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We currently have a President who ignored intelligence advice to pursue wars based on ideology. What happens if we have a President who believes science is a fraud (which is essentially what a creationist does by rejecting evolution). What will he do if a science-related crisis occurs? Does he listen to the science experts or his creationist ministers?
US doomed if creationist president elected: scientists
A day after ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee finished first in the opening round to choose a Republican candidate for the White House, scientists warned Americans against electing a leader who doubts evolution.
“The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming,” University of Michigan professor Gilbert Omenn told reporters at the launch of a book on evolution by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
“I would worry that a president who didn’t believe in the evolution arguments wouldn’t believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin,” added Omenn, who was part of a panel of experts at the launch of “Science, Evolution and Creationism.”
“We don’t teach astrology as an alternative to astronomy, or witchcraft as an alternative to medicine,” said Francisco Ayala, a professor of biological sciences at the University of California, Irvine.
On a related note: The Christian Science textbook.
What’s even scarier than a president who didn’t believe in science is that there would be so many people like him/her who helped to vote them in. What does that say about education in the US?
Texas seems to be leading the charge into dumbness lately, aren’t they (MBAs for creationism)?
I fully agree with them. I guess I already answered this post yesterday.
The impact of creationism/”intelligent design” will show in internetional tests.
Good article. Thanks Uncle Dave.
“This is a way of leading our country to ruin”
He says this like we aren’t already there.
#4, #5 – Mister Uncle Ben
I’m sure there are countries in Asia who are willing to get their brains as well… For instance Singapore.
Jägermeister
The impact of creationism/”intelligent design” will show in internetional tests.
The impact of a Spell Checker will show in the correct sequence of vowels and consonants in the word international.
My only question is, after Huckabee is elected president, should we call him “Mr. President” or “Pastor President”?
hmm I find it amazing that that a country that came to be the world only super power founded by men who were creationists and led by presidents who were almost all creationists is all of the sudden DOOMED if we have just one more
The lefts normal scare tactics
global warming
peak oil
Nazi Bush is gonna take over the world
now a president who believes in god is a threat
where did we loose our way ?
Bush used the same sources that Clinton used. Sources Clinton used to justify high altitude bombing.
Know why evolution was so poorly taught in school that creationism has had a chance to gain a foot hold? Do you think books like “Territorial Imperative” were pulled from the bookshelves because of the creationists?
Nope. Evolution contradicts the leftist idea that humans are born a blank slate, that humans do not have instincts. Ideas like the difference between sexes is purely a matter of social conditioning.
A vacuum was left, and garbage flowed in.
I think we’re already ‘doomed’ but a president who believes in creationism would be the last nail in the coffin.
Wow, jumping from creationism to high altitude bombing. Thank God that, well, God is there to justify all these problems and solutions.
I don’t think left/right entered into the problems of these last two presidents. Spinelessness, lack of common sense, and just plain ineptitude may be closer to the truth.
I find it amusing that this scientist is howling at the idea of a creationist president.
When the science community came on board with evolution and it was finally allowed by the courts, the creationists shouted the same thing.
Geez the US is filled with Chicken Littles!
The sky is falling!
Injuns will kill us all!
Slaves if they are freed with rape our women!
The Kaiser will take over the US!
Anarchists are Everywhere!
Hitler will take over the US!
Hito will take over the US!
The commies will get us!
The arabs want to kill us all!
Fear mongering. An American tradition.
Bloody hell!
Cursor_
#9 – PMitchell
“Nazi Bush is gonna take over the world
now a president who believes in god is a threat
where did we loose our way ?”
When adults stopped knowing or caring that the word ‘lose’ only has one ‘O’ in it.
Next time vote for a horny president more interested in getting BJs from chubby interns than a “bastion of morality” too busy reading the Bible to actually care to check the state of the Ecoonomy.
Get OUT NOW! while you still can!
It’s simple: a fundie (of any flavor) that uncritically reads whatever sacred book he’s into, is apparently incapable of separating fact from fantasy, and of making decisions on his/her own.
I think the day that a scientist is not skeptical of any theory no matter how much proof they have is when science is doomed. All one can REALLY say is that evolution is more probable than creationism. That’s it. We have no smoking gun in either case, and if you do please write the paper and publish so the scientific community can rip it to shreds. Some of you believe in evolution just like some of you believe in creationism.
This is absurd. Everyone know the local preacher who reads his bible for pay, is much better skilled in knowing how things happen than some liberal dude who spent his life reading science books and testing theories. All they ever gave us was the medicine and technology we enjoy today. We can easily accept the principles of those folks in the mid-east and take up their mud house and always hungry but very religious life style throwing away all that scientific stuff unless it’s used to make bombs.
I don’t see how a creationist prez could do any more harm than the DemoRepublicrats in Congress who have failed to provide anthing near adequate funding for science.
THAT plays right into the hands of the not-so-intelligent design creationism folks.
#21 Jon Noring,
Fortunately, these folks seem to be in the minority. They just talk louder than the majority, trying for some reason or other to “convert” all others to their “Right Way” of thinking.
Thanks for the comment, you saved me a lot of time. 🙂
#3, you’ve pretty much said it.
I was going to ask if we already haven’t elected one in the current administration.
Can’t God do something about these assholes?
Who are we kidding? Science or creation has nothing to do with it. This nation has been doomed ever since the majority of people became dependent on the government. The government needs to do this or that. What can the government do for me? I don’t have to do anything because the government will handle it.
What makes someone qualified to run a country just because he gets more votes than some other moron equally unqualified from other morons who can’t read the writing on their high school diploma.
All politicians should be forced to eat their own limbs. At least it would be more entertaining than the crap we are forced watch on these stupid debates.
Sorry, I can only bitch so much… I hate government.
#21 – Jon Noring
“Scientists must not mix belief with rational thinking, and this goes for the many scientists touting “global warming is all caused by man” who are clearly pushing it as fact (or better described as a “belief system”) rather than theory. They believe in this theory, and that’s fine – but to place their belief under the banner of science and the scientific method is simply wrong, completely dishonest, and much more dangerous than whether or not our next President believes in creationism.”
What you don’t recognize, and it is the most common failing of those in the physical sciences, is the disconnect between what science defines things as, formally, and what the average citizen misunderstands. Simply put, when it comes to psychology, particularly those aspects which bear upon communications between differing cultures, physical scientists are rarely any more knowledgeable or adept than a layperson.
It’s all well and good that one scientist speaking to another observe the scientifically necessary precision in exchanging data and observations. Each understands, as you alluded to, the FORMALLY very important distinction between, say, a phenomenon which exhibits a 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 probability and one that is flatly impossible. It is a vital distinction, but it is worse than meaningless to the lay public. In fact, it impedes understanding.
Earth orbits Sol: (just to throw out illustrative numbers)
99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999 probability that that is the case.
Russell’s Teapot orbits Sol:
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 probability.
Any competent scientist recognizes the usual necessity of strictly avoiding the 0 and 1 probabilities – but laypeople don’t, not even remotely. The average mind grasps absolutes. Things are absolutely so or absolutely impossible. And that certainly works for everyone, scientists included, the vast majority of the time. But scientists routinely make probabilistic distinctions that are not only of no use to laypeople, they muddy the waters, and are also subject to abuse by unscrupulous parties with partisan axes to grind, such as large for-profit corporations and religious leaders.
The average Westerner’s inability to grasp even grossly disparate relative probabilities is legion. It is commonplace to encounter people who will purchase $50 or $100 worth of lotto tickets – at the same time as buying cigarettes.
The probability, certainly higher than .5, that the cigarettes will negatively impact that individual’s health is brushed aside as a very low probability event, due to the mechanism of denial. But the extremely remote probability of winning the lotto jackpot is actually entertained as something with a significant chance of occurring.
And that is typical “thinking” – far from unusual. The very real risk from smoking is ignored while the pipe dream of wealth is expected to come true.
And when such people are presented with 2 choices, say, between two theories, they are not competent – EVEN AFTER BEING SPECIFICALLY WARNED – to estimate the relative probabilities involved with any semblance of objectivity or accuracy.
The processes of the average mind tend to round any split probability – 40/60, 10/90 or 0.01/99.99 – to 50/50, unconsciously. It’s about the ‘he said, she said’ fallacy of implication. In the absence of all other understandable input, people assume by default that an issue on which two parties take opposite and mutually exclusive stands is a toss-up. And any evidence lending weight to one side or the other will be subjectively adopted, according to that person’s preexisting prejudices.
I’m trying to keep this straightforward and widely comprehensible rather than go off into mind-numbing arcana in the interest of strict accuracy. So, granting a degree of oversimplification, I’d like to think I’m being clear so far… am I?
And in a nutshell, the vast abyss between the relative probabilities of the ToE and creationism is taken for granted by scientifically-literate people. But your average, quasi-religious citizen sees a “he said-she said” conflict between two roughly equal schools of thought. They automatically assume that certain factors (which they do not recognize as irrelevancies – e.g., the sheer numbers of superstitious illiterates who believe in absurd folk tales – ) have a bearing on the likelihood of those tales actually being true.
Don’t say you’ve never heard, “Oh, yeah? Well, if the Bible isn’t true, then how come so many millions of people believe it, huh? And how come there’s so few atheists?”
…and so we come, as Joyce put it, by a commodicus vicus of recirculation, back to this; it (the ToE) is, as I have been emphasizing to certain religious types, only a theory by scientific definition. Most of humanity does not need, nor can they make intelligent use of any finer distinction than, for all the intents and purposes of nonscientists, the ToE is a fact, and distinctly not what they erroneously call a ‘theory.’
I’m saying – the hairsplitting has it’s place in the lab, not in public discourse. We don’t help matters by handing antievolutionists a technicality which they turn around and abuse, as an offensive weapon.
No, it not a fact. But when directly contrasted with the Bibble and such other pre/antiscientific stupidity beloved by those of lower intelligence, there is nothing dishonest in calling it that. Making a gratuitous public distinction between effectively a fact and literally a fact does not help the cause of truth and scientific progress, is what I’m saying.
…and for a totally unexpected change of pace, an actual OT answer to the Q posed in the headline.
Any person so mentally disabled as to believe such a thing is absolutely unqualified to lead any group of people larger than a bowling team.
Would the country be doomed if such a person made it to Pres?
Absolutely. It would spawn innumerable, incurable social cancers throughout American society – and beyond.
from the Article Authors Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Omenn
he served as “Associate Director, Office of Management and Budget, in the Executive Office of the President in the Carter Administration. ”
me thinks I smell a partisian in scientist clothing.
Let’s see. Newton-creationist. Pascal-creationist. Yep, we’re screwed.
oops, not the author but the subject of the interview/article
Oh, I forgot – Unca Dave, the ‘CS textbook’ is a hoot! 🙂
The primary reason I couldn’t vote for a Creationist president, given any reasonable alternative, is that it would call into question his/her ability to evaluate evidence and come to the most logical conclusion based on that evidence. It is becoming increasingly critical to do just that, and “oops, we got it wrong” may get an even less forgiving reception the next time around.
We may not be able to afford a president whose belief about something gives him artificial certainty that emboldens him to act, even as the evidence suggests caution and more data are needed before risking lives that aren’t his to risk. I’m also concerned that a president with an unfailing certainty in an afterlife will automatically place less value and significance on this earthly life.
Can a scientist be correct when commenting upon political/social issues? Maybe so, but not because they are a scientist.
The missing item is a careful study of the candidates established hypocrisy and to what degree they are pandering to their base.
Now, any “true believer” in “anything” should not be elected to office. To do so is in the nature of electing Kings for 4 year terms. No, whats needed is someone who flip flops with the polls–ie, a leader that follows the majority will. A summary look at American History will show that majority political will has been pretty much ignored to the detriment of GOUSA for about the last 30 years?
So, Huckleberry and Romney are both religious nut cases, but they are also hypocrites. Huckleberry appears more a true believer than Romney, but both have long track records as fairly effective Govenors. Can they be trusted to be poll driven once elected King?
Hard to say, and certainly past the prejudices of scientists to predict.