Governor Palin’s Ted Stevens Problem

Just treating her to the same welcome that Joseph Biden got.

Of course, a woman that doesn’t understand the basic age of the Earth goes very well with someone who graduated at the very bottom of his class.

I’m not talking about touched by gods … I’m talking about someone that has some basic intellectual achievement / development. You know, like you expect from people you ask to run things.

“She’s mentally retarded because she doesn’t think like you? Wow, the arrogance of the Obama/Biden campaign has taken over your brain.”

I refer to the fact, as pointed out above, that she is a Creationist. When it comes to the real world, I tend to expect my leadership to have some basic grasp of how things work. Creationism isn’t about “thinking like” the others, it is about literacy of basic scientific fact.

Bingo. If you want to be a private citizen, you can have all the beliefs you want. If you want a job that has consequences for other people, you’ve got to deal with what’s real.

I don’t think we’ve ever had anything but.

Doug,

I’m totally down with a wide variety of religions. But again, my requirement for those in public trust is that when push comes to shove, science and analysis must be able to win out. Maybe not immediately or easily, because there is a lot of ideology out there, but it has to be possible. As soon as you get the “it can only be this way because this one book says so,” we’ve got ourselves a breakdown in any kind of exchange that can lead to productive solutions.

There are a lot of areas in which the contradiction between science and religion are not so obvious, and in that area, hey, flip a coin.

As for the Bush evidence, there was a desired outcome, and evidence filtered to reach that particular outcome. Secrecy of the source information, sign-off by what should have been neutral parties, and a political environment where no answer was acceptable except “bomb the hell out of them” gave us a pretty nasty railroad effect.

There were also quite a few Democrats that called BS on the whole thing, and I think they did quite well in doing so.

Actually, Ronald, I would very much like to see creationism and the various tactics creationists use taught in school. It would have the potential to show just how quality research and inference is conducted in comparison to a combination of sloppy and wishful thinking … including the misapplication of the Law of the Excluded Middle to scientific theories (falsity of evolution does *not* lead logically to special creationism). I think the creationism story is an excellent tool for the instruction of the scientific method, which is not very well taught in public schools. Maybe some practical applications of philosophy could be tossed in there.

Also, Pluto as a planet was a taxonomic issue, not a factual one. Our knowledge of Pluto did not change, simply the context of the solar system within which it existed. It was a choice between grandfathering Pluto in and promoting many objects to planet status.

The resolution was actually pretty elegant and insightful. The idea of “planetness” coming from being the dominant mass within a given orbit was quite a good one.

Also, “the more concepts the better” is a false canard. There is only a limited time in the curriculum. And I must remind *yet again* that we are in intellectual competition with many foreign nations, which is a competition that will partly determine the standing and wealth of our nation.

At some point, you must scope your curriculum. And to include spurious concepts (except to explain both why they initially had some credibility, and then why they were subsequently tossed aside) is a waste of time and resources.

Also, for every known concept and theory, there were multiple alternatives … which do we consider closed and which to we then open? And which of the alternatives do we teach?

I only have anecdotal evidence, but about every creationist I’ve dealt with has proven to me otherwise.

They start by attempting to demonstrate that they have the “scientific facts,” get crushed in that domain, retreat to “teach the controversy,” get beaten around the ears on that one, and then just go to “agree to disagree.”

In other words, not confidence instilling.