US Doomed If Creationist President Elected: Scientists

Speaking at the launch of an updated NAS pro-evolution handbook, University of Michigan professor Gilbert Omenn told reporters:

“The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming. . . . I would worry that a president who didn’t believe in the evolution arguments wouldn't believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin.”

Omenn was speaking obliquely about rising-in-popularity Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, who raised his hand in a debate last May to indicate he does not believe in evolution. However, Governor Huckabee has downplayed how much this anti-evolution stance would effect his presidency.

While it is not our role to weigh in on the political arena by even hinting that we support particular candidates, we do find it interesting—though in a disappointing way—that belief in creation is once again being maligned as potentially “dooming” the United States. And yet these secular scientists who preach against creation are often the same who claim science and religion can coexist—provided, of course, religion kowtows when the two conflict!

Omenn added, “Scientific inquiry is . . . about exploring nature, so there really is not any place in the science classroom for creationism or intelligent design creationism.” Omenn conveniently omits the possibility that exploring nature may lead us to recognize a creator / intelligent designer.

Omenn is also wrong when he claims that the same logic is used to determine the hazard of smoking as is used to “convince” scientists of evolution. The demerits of smoking, for example, are studied using observational science—comparing the health of smokers to non-smokers over multi-year periods, for instance.

Evolution, on the other hand, is alleged to have occurred over more than a billion years of the unrepeatable past, and lab tests cannot confirm (or deny, we might add) the evolutionary story, but instead can only confirm certain elements of it that creationists agree with (for example, that selective pressures result in population changes), but not that primordial slime can yield intelligent life when time and chance are added.