Huckabee gives himself away
Governor Mike Huckabee is a Creationist - one of the old kind we thought defeated after the eighties. What is more, his answers reveal a depressing ignorance of the basics of science, a worrying failure in understanding the relationship between science and government, and, what is more surprising, a spectacularly poor grip of theology.
This is the giveaway passage. "I believe there is a God who was very active in the creation process. Now how did he do it, and when did he do it, and how long did he take? I don't honestly know and I don't think that knowing that would make me a better or worse president…. [Y]ou know, if anybody wants to believe that they are descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it…but I believe that all of us in this room are the unique creations of a God who knows us and loves us and who created us for his own purpose."
Let us start from the theology. Huckabee speaks as if there were any contradiction between being being "descendants of a primate" and being "the unique creations of a God who knows us and loves us and who created us for his own purpose." The particle "but" placed between the two halves of his sentence proves beyond reasonable doubt that he is speaking of something he regards as a contradiction - of two propositions one of which must deny the other. It does not take a Pope (but two Popes have pointed it out anyway) to point out that such a contradiction still does not exist. Provided we accept a creator God, it matters very little indeed by what means or stages He created us. Indeed, it is a useful exercise in humility - that most Christian of all virtues - to get it clear in our minds that the clumsy gorilla and the ridiculous chimpanzee are our close relatives. And it is good for the intellect to review, for instance, all the theories that Thomas Aquinas proved to be compatible with the idea of a Creator. (Even, he argued, that of a universe with no beginning or end!) Even my own self can grip such an obvious idea: as I put it elsewhere, God made the toymaker, the toy, and the child who holds the toy. Now theology is a branch of philosophy; and I have to have a poor opinion of a preacher with such a poor grip of what is contradictory and what is not. At best, one could say that he did well to move from the ministry to politics.
Equally bad is his grip of what science is. "[Y]ou know, if anybody wants to believe that they are descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it..." I think that his folksy, confidential use of "you know" (a favourite of Tony Blair and of all kinds of people who wish to sound sincere) makes it even worse. But the essence of this statement is that Huckabee believes all propositions that claim to be scientific to be equally valid and defensible. "...if anybody wants to believe..." He is speaking as if it was the choice - and, one rather surmises, the wilful and selfish choice - of a scientist, indeed of any person, to choose this theory over another. That is not only bullshit, it is potentially appallingly dangerous. Ask any doctor how many cases he knows of "alternative" quacks who have killed people by denying them the proper medicine in favour of crank remedies or "mental" disciplines. Even to sceptics, the proof of the truth of science is in its immense, unmatched record of achievement. It has multiplied the powers and faculties of the ordinary human being a hundredfold (every time Mr.Smith drives his car out of his garage, he is literally controlling more power than many ancient sovereigns did), and access to knowledge and communication beyond comparison. But behind this lies a rigorous intellectual discipline. Whether we understand the heart of scientific method in falsifiability (Popper) or in the improvement of puzzle-solving capacities (Kuhn) or both (and to me, this is one of those contradictions that are not contradictions), it is clear that science progressively enlarges the area of what we know to be wrong. More than one discipline - genetics, paleontology, etc. - has drawn the range of acceptable theories so tight around the human descent from primates, that any other account is simply out of court. In this context, to speak of it as one of many possible beliefs, which a man accepts not because of the authority of science, but out of a mere personal taste, is disgraceful. It is a genuine validation of quackery and arbitrariness - finally, of that very relativism which the Pope has singled out as the evil of our age, and that all thinking Christians since C.S.Lewis if not G.K.Chesterton have been fighting.
Finally, this shows a painful misunderstanding of modern politics. It does not make no difference what view of science the leadership of a country takes. Ever since Prussian Germany discovered that scientific research in its vast universities was a tremendous booster of industrial competitivity and military power, science has been a direct concern of the State. All great powers finance and encourage scientific research and engineering innovation. And it makes an enormous amount of difference whether they pursue the proper kind of science. Hugh Trevor-Roper has given a painfully amusing account of the decline of German science - once the world's leader - under the Nazis; and everyone knows that, by accepting Trofim Lysenko's mistaken rejection of Darwinian evolution (does that sound familiar?), Stalin held back Soviet biological science for a generation and may well have contributed to the enduring disaster that was Soviet agriculture. (Although of course a much more direct and immediate cause of disaster was his forced collectivization.) A modern country cannot afford a leadership that ignores science (Italy has suffered severely for this) or that treats it as a matter of opinion. George W.Bush has been unfairly charged with being anti-scientific because of his doubts about the theories of global warming - doubts which legitimate and distinguished scientists across the world share. But that is one thing, and treating the descent of man as a matter of opinion - and doing so, at that, on theologically untenable ground - is quite another.
This is the giveaway passage. "I believe there is a God who was very active in the creation process. Now how did he do it, and when did he do it, and how long did he take? I don't honestly know and I don't think that knowing that would make me a better or worse president…. [Y]ou know, if anybody wants to believe that they are descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it…but I believe that all of us in this room are the unique creations of a God who knows us and loves us and who created us for his own purpose."
Let us start from the theology. Huckabee speaks as if there were any contradiction between being being "descendants of a primate" and being "the unique creations of a God who knows us and loves us and who created us for his own purpose." The particle "but" placed between the two halves of his sentence proves beyond reasonable doubt that he is speaking of something he regards as a contradiction - of two propositions one of which must deny the other. It does not take a Pope (but two Popes have pointed it out anyway) to point out that such a contradiction still does not exist. Provided we accept a creator God, it matters very little indeed by what means or stages He created us. Indeed, it is a useful exercise in humility - that most Christian of all virtues - to get it clear in our minds that the clumsy gorilla and the ridiculous chimpanzee are our close relatives. And it is good for the intellect to review, for instance, all the theories that Thomas Aquinas proved to be compatible with the idea of a Creator. (Even, he argued, that of a universe with no beginning or end!) Even my own self can grip such an obvious idea: as I put it elsewhere, God made the toymaker, the toy, and the child who holds the toy. Now theology is a branch of philosophy; and I have to have a poor opinion of a preacher with such a poor grip of what is contradictory and what is not. At best, one could say that he did well to move from the ministry to politics.
Equally bad is his grip of what science is. "[Y]ou know, if anybody wants to believe that they are descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it..." I think that his folksy, confidential use of "you know" (a favourite of Tony Blair and of all kinds of people who wish to sound sincere) makes it even worse. But the essence of this statement is that Huckabee believes all propositions that claim to be scientific to be equally valid and defensible. "...if anybody wants to believe..." He is speaking as if it was the choice - and, one rather surmises, the wilful and selfish choice - of a scientist, indeed of any person, to choose this theory over another. That is not only bullshit, it is potentially appallingly dangerous. Ask any doctor how many cases he knows of "alternative" quacks who have killed people by denying them the proper medicine in favour of crank remedies or "mental" disciplines. Even to sceptics, the proof of the truth of science is in its immense, unmatched record of achievement. It has multiplied the powers and faculties of the ordinary human being a hundredfold (every time Mr.Smith drives his car out of his garage, he is literally controlling more power than many ancient sovereigns did), and access to knowledge and communication beyond comparison. But behind this lies a rigorous intellectual discipline. Whether we understand the heart of scientific method in falsifiability (Popper) or in the improvement of puzzle-solving capacities (Kuhn) or both (and to me, this is one of those contradictions that are not contradictions), it is clear that science progressively enlarges the area of what we know to be wrong. More than one discipline - genetics, paleontology, etc. - has drawn the range of acceptable theories so tight around the human descent from primates, that any other account is simply out of court. In this context, to speak of it as one of many possible beliefs, which a man accepts not because of the authority of science, but out of a mere personal taste, is disgraceful. It is a genuine validation of quackery and arbitrariness - finally, of that very relativism which the Pope has singled out as the evil of our age, and that all thinking Christians since C.S.Lewis if not G.K.Chesterton have been fighting.
Finally, this shows a painful misunderstanding of modern politics. It does not make no difference what view of science the leadership of a country takes. Ever since Prussian Germany discovered that scientific research in its vast universities was a tremendous booster of industrial competitivity and military power, science has been a direct concern of the State. All great powers finance and encourage scientific research and engineering innovation. And it makes an enormous amount of difference whether they pursue the proper kind of science. Hugh Trevor-Roper has given a painfully amusing account of the decline of German science - once the world's leader - under the Nazis; and everyone knows that, by accepting Trofim Lysenko's mistaken rejection of Darwinian evolution (does that sound familiar?), Stalin held back Soviet biological science for a generation and may well have contributed to the enduring disaster that was Soviet agriculture. (Although of course a much more direct and immediate cause of disaster was his forced collectivization.) A modern country cannot afford a leadership that ignores science (Italy has suffered severely for this) or that treats it as a matter of opinion. George W.Bush has been unfairly charged with being anti-scientific because of his doubts about the theories of global warming - doubts which legitimate and distinguished scientists across the world share. But that is one thing, and treating the descent of man as a matter of opinion - and doing so, at that, on theologically untenable ground - is quite another.