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Entry #26
"If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, that's fine."
Posted by Ross Dec. 25, 2007 @ 3:49 AM ESTOne of the big stories recently in the land of American politics has been Republican Mike Huckabee and his dramatic leap in popularity in the 2008 presidential primary polls. His rapid ascension from marginal candidate to front-runner has been largely attributed to the other candidates' lack of appeal to evangelicals - one of the GOP's core constituencies.
On first consideration, I can see why Republican voters like this guy. He's folksy and down-to-earth, he tells jokes, he plays guitar in his band, he was fat but got skinny (the American dream, circa 2007), and his relatively moderate views on immigration stand in contrast to the xenophobic views put forth by some of the other Republican candidates.
Huckabee is also an ordained Southern Baptist minister, and here's where my biggest problem with him lies - he doesn't believe in evolution. Not only does he reject evolution, but he also believes that students should be exposed to creationism (the idea that the universe did not evolve, but was created by an "intelligent designer").
This should set off loud warning bells in the head of anyone who believes in rational thought and appreciates the majesty and accomplishments of science. Evolution is not a theory, as some religious people would claim; it's scientific fact. It's not immediately verifiable in the way you can drop a rock and observe gravity, but it's universally accepted and has led to breakthroughs in a wide range of fields. Creationism, on the other hand, is a pseudoscience with no basis in fact.
Huckabee says that his opinions on evolution have little impact on his ability to be president, but I disagree. Our president will be our emissary to the world - what kind of message would it send if the USA, home of so much innovation and technological achievement in the past 200 years, elected a president who simply tosses out one of the ideas at the core of all that science? What does it say about Huckabee's capacity for critical thinking when he so willingly sides with the Bible over science? If he wants to be a man of faith, that's fine, but our president needs to operate on facts, not faith.
It blows me away when people treat belief in evolution as a matter of personal opinion. Do you also make up your individual mind about whether or not you believe in the combustion engine? How about microwave ovens? Or maybe cell phone technology? Science has brought us all of these things and far more, and we accept them unconditionally - yet people treat the topic of evolution as a "yes or no" question. Sorry, but it's not a question - evolution is real, whether it jives with your religious beliefs or not, and electing a president who doesn't understand that would make us officially the dumbest electorate on Earth.
(Not to mention that we're currently mired in a bloody mistake of a war thanks to an administration that went with truthiness over facts. Isn't it time we elected a leader who's not allergic to logic?)

The People Have Spoken
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