Sunday, January 05, 2014

Democrats say they believe in evolution

Dana Milbank writes in the Wash. Post:
For several years, the two major parties have been moving gradually toward opposite poles: Democrats growing more liberal and secular, Republicans becoming more conservative and religious. But a survey out this week shows just how far and how fast the GOP has gone toward becoming a collection of older, white, evangelical Christians defined as much by religion as by politics. ...

Forget climate-change skepticism: Republicans have turned, suddenly and sharply, against Darwin.
This poll is not so much about science, as in using "evolution" as a code word for secularism. More and more, Republican is the Christian party, and Democrat is the anti-Christian party.

Peterike comments on the same Pew poll:
But the truth is that Progressive Liberals don’t believe in Evolution. They are Creationists.

If they believed in evolution they would necessarily have to concede that humans “evolved” differently over time and in different places, adapting to their environments the same way animals did. It would then follow that different groups of humans — which we conveniently label as “races” — would not be identical, and that includes above the neck as well as below the neck.

Yet Progressive Liberals DO believe that humans are “created” equal — there’s that word. They believe there is no substantial differences between races that cannot be explained entirely by the local environment and nurturing the humans receive. This is as stupid and unscientific as any Evangelist saying the earth is only a few thousand years old.

Liberals believe all kinds of other pseudo-science, but to say they believe in evolution is not consistent with what they say about human development. Just because they say they believe in it doesn’t mean they actually do, or that they understand the implications of what they claim to believe. The main reason Liberals “believe” in evolution is because they’ve been told that’s what smart people believe in. If the media went into full-blown campaign mode for creationism — a campaign similar to their pro-gay campaign, for instance — then ten years from now the majority of Liberals would say they are Creationists.
Milbank concludes:
But give Republicans credit for this: They don’t just doubt the theory of evolution; they’re out to prove it wrong. If they believed in the survival of the fittest, they’d be expanding their racial and ideological diversity. Instead, they’re trying to demonstrate that devotion to God can trump the Darwinian rules of politics.
No, Milbank is the one who misunderstands evolution. If human differences stem from inherited characteristics, as is the basis for human evolution, then Republicans might be better off concentrating on its main constituency of white married Christian taxpayers, as opposed to the non-white unmarried non-Christian freeloading Democrats. Republicans would shut down immigration, both legal and illegal.

Update: According to this, the belief in evolution may not have changed. The Pew claim about a trend is probably wrong.

1 comment:

Gwen Kelley said...

The distinction must be made, that Republicans are moving toward the religious - that is, that there is a God who is there and must be dealt with, but the RNC and national leaders of the GOP have for a while been moving toward veneration of Big Government and its power to cure society's ills. What does history tell us happens when the leaders and followers are going in different directions (when there is a second power base, the Democrats)?