Sarah Palin: Evolutionist or Creationist?

As is de rigeur for political candidates on the national level, Palin—last week’s surprise nominee for vice president from the Republican Party—is undergoing scrutiny from all angles to see if she’s fit for high office. What isn’t surprising is that evolutionists are sounding the alarm because of a few pro-creation/creation education comments Palin has made.

Creation is not an “idea” of man, but is the revelation of mankind’s Creator.

For instance, Massimo Pigliucci writes that Palin is a “worrisome character from the point of view of science education” whose comments on creation in education are “disingenuous at best.” He compares debating origins in classrooms to debating whether or not the earth is flat, snobbishly concluding that “most kids would probably conclude that the earth is flat,” anyway! Apparently he has such a low opinion of students’ ability to discern that he prefers outright indoctrination. Never mind that the issue of a flat or spherical earth can be tested by operations science, whereas the very philosophical issue of how life came about is in the untestable domain of origins science. (Read about the difference in Do Creationists Reject Science?)

Pigliucci adds that creationism is “not even in the ballpark of the best ideas ever produced by humanity,” which, of course, isn’t the point; there are many ideas that are true even if not particularly difficult to understand (and thus not so brilliant in their realization); furthermore, creation is not an “idea” of man, but is the revelation of mankind’s Creator. It is also a basic paradigm that can hold together the undisputed facts of biology, unlike any other. In the sense that Darwinian evolution is also a paradigm, it is not particularly difficult to understand, either. The author continues:

Learning critical thinking . . . proceeds through learning about logic, about assessing evidence, and about the many ways in which human senses and reasoning abilities can fail us if we are not on guard. If students really do assimilate all of that, just one look at creationist claims would make it painfully clear that they don’t need to be further entertained.

Teaching the skills of logical argument, assessing evidence, and understanding faulty senses is of course fine with creationists. As a matter of fact, we believe critical thinking and assessment of all evolutionary data free from dogmatic interpretation will show the bankruptcy of that paradigm—regardless of whether the topic of biblical creation is discussed.

Pigliucci finishes up his tirade by flipping the old canard that the same science that gave rise to evolution also gives rise to modern technology—a patent falsehood which we also explored in Do Creationists Reject Science? “[I]f you are from . . . the Ignorance Belt you can keep falling behind in quality of life and ability to compete in a world where science plays an increasingly central role in our lives,” he ridicules ambiguously while gibing at Tim LaHaye.

As for Sarah Palin, you can read more about what she has said and what she believes in our special, in-depth look, Is She Really a Creationist?