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Will Mike Huckabee Face Up to His Views on Evolution?
The Disputation
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More in Forward ForumMike Huckabee may very well win the Republican caucus in Iowa on January 3, but he will not be elected president next November. I say this based partly on my own subjective response as a Religious Right voter who appreciates the challenge the ex-governor and evangelical pastor poses to the rest of this campaign’s disappointing field of Republican hopefuls.
Huckabee has a refreshing passion and appears to grasp a certain moral reality: that the country needs more in a leader than just a determination to fight “World War IV” against “Islamofascism.” Unfortunately, the man doesn’t look or sound like he’s ready for presidential prime time.
Huckabee’s speaking and writing lack a sense of groundedness that voters in a general election will require. Maybe he had more solidity before he lost that famous 110 pounds.
Think of it this way: What would a President Huckabee be like in a major September 11-style crisis? I don’t know, and that worries me, as it must many other people. My strong hunch is that in the contest for the Republican nomination, Rudy Giuliani will emerge as the victor. It’s hard to believe that in the end the former mayor of New York, with his vivid and very human personality, will be beaten out by Mitt Romney, who seems computer generated.
But Giuliani will lose to the Democratic nominee. Why? Because the values voters who elected George W. Bush in the last election have not been abducted by space aliens. As you may recall, when voters were asked a week before the 2004 elections what issue mattered most to them, the top choice was “moral values.”
The former New York mayor, with his very imperfect record as a family man, should be able to understand better than anyone else in the Republican field why morals matter in politics, and why those morals need to be grounded in transcendent truths and expressed in practical policies.
While it was Giuliani himself who wrecked his previous marriage, our culture of relativism was surely an aggravating influence on him. He could have been a great witness for traditional conservatism. Maybe he figures, wrongly, that that would make him a hypocrite. On the contrary.
Committed to relativistic positions on the social issues, Giuliani won’t accept the lesson that his own life teaches. This will continue to dismay voters whose enthusiasm is currently being aroused by Huckabee. When Pastor Mike fades, those voters will be left without a strong reason to show up in force to vote in November.
But before Huckabee’s sun sets, I have another prediction. It is that we will hear a lot more not only about the candidate himself but about a topic — evolution — on which he has already been pestered incessantly by the media. Every time another reporter asks again, Huckabee sounds increasingly annoyed.
The questioning will intensify. For Huckabee has said, “Frankly, Darwinism is not an established scientific fact… It should be taught as one of the views that are held by people.” He has also said that his opinion on evolution should have no bearing on what view we take of him as a presidential candidate.
The mainstream media know better. Of course it matters what he thinks of evolution; his opinion on the subject is a stand-in for more sweeping questions about a would-be leader’s worldview, which in turn has huge ramifications for how he would lead.
The issue matters because whether life has meaning depends on whether you think there is a spiritual reality outside our biological existence that bestows meaning. Belief in such a meaning makes no sense coupled with Darwinian theory, the purpose of which is to explain the development of life without reference to any spiritual reality. To imagine that a material creature can bestow authentic meaning on himself is merely a comforting lie some of us tell ourselves.
Lots of good people have avoided contemplating any of this with depth or candor. But preferring not to seriously consider so basic a question is not a desirable characteristic in the leader of the free world.
So far, Huckabee has refused to say exactly what he thinks accounts for the development of complex biological life. Going forward, then, there are two possibilities.
Huckabee may continue to resist defining his views. So the media savants will do it for him. They will peg him as a naive biblical literalist, as they generally do when reporting on anyone who doubts that a purely material mechanism like natural selection alone could do all the evolutionary work that turned non-life into life.
That will hasten Huckabee’s eclipse. A simple-minded scriptural literalism can only be maintained when the believer has not grappled with the relevant science. Scientific naivety is another quality few of us want in a president, or in a political party. If he keeps dodging, Huckabee could give Democrats a crippling weapon against the GOP for years to come.
On the other hand, if he directly confronts the evolution issue, and if he’s well informed about it, Huckabee could spark a healthy national debate. There are still a lot of otherwise smart folks out there who can’t shake the mistaken assumption that there is no middle ground between being a religious fundamentalist and a dogmatic evolutionist.
Even if he never makes it to the White House, Mike Huckabee has a chance to do an educational service to his country.
David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, is the author of the forthcoming “How Would God Vote? Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative” (Doubleday).
Comments
Lets all evolve toward a better America.
Barack Obama for President.
It's time for America to Rise and Shine again.
Why is it that fundies equate evolution with abiogenesis, the very different theory of The Beginning of Life? They are, to grab redundancy by the horns, two very different theories relating to very different fields of study; one is the study of how life started (assuming God did not do it a word) while the other is how life adapts and leads to the eventual generation (not creation) of species. Combining the two is like combining the Bible with the Koran simply because they are both religious texts. It is also specist and wholly misleading.
By the way, there are a great number of "evolutionists" who also believe in God, Christ, and the Bible. The ideas aren't mutually exclusive. Only the dogmatic folks tell us that they are, which is why these people are marginalized (on "both sides" of the lunatic debate.)
Also, of course people will judge the presidential candidates on their opinions on evolution. To imply that Huckabee is somehow a victim because of this is ludicrous; both Christian conservatives and liberal atheists (and everyone in between) judge politicians by their religious values, ethics, and knowledge and understanding of the world in general (ie, evolution, religion, economics, etc.). Again, we are misled to believe that those who reject evolution are unfairly subjected to judgement and criticism--while atheists and Mormons and Muslims would (and are) no doubt put through the same paces; that it is a different group in each case in inconsequential.
But forgive me. I tire of this debate. I'm tired of the lies, the twists, the confusion, and the utter ignorance spread because of it.
"The issue matters because whether life has meaning depends on whether you think there is a spiritual reality outside our biological existence that bestows meaning. Belief in such a meaning makes no sense coupled with Darwinian theory, the purpose of which is to explain the development of life without reference to any spiritual reality."
Why is "spiritual reality" required for life to have meaning? Is it not meaning enough to live and to love and pass our genes down to the next generation?
Imagine if Huckabee were elected president. I'm guessing he'd bring on Joel Osteen as his Science Advisor! (I would have used Falwell or Haggard but...)
It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. -- CS
"Huckabee has a refreshing passion and appears to grasp a certain moral reality: that the country needs more in a leader than just a determination to fight “World War IV” against “Islamofascism.” Unfortunately, the man doesn’t look or sound like he’s ready for presidential prime time."
Oh, so the template for the next president is fighting WW IV? Or are you being sarcastic? Hard to tell in this neoconized era, where every one of the Democratic Party "top tier" also dances to the warmongers' tune.
Earth (created or not) to Klinghoffer & Co: A large majority of all Americans, of all political colors, want a return to our own business, away from "entangling alliances" and going abroad to seek monsters to destroy. They don't give a rat's ass about creationism or Mitt's sacred underpants or how Rudy dumped his last wife but one. They want non-interventionism, a reduction in the burden of taxes and State interference, tight control of immigration... and to be governed by a man whose record of principled consistency indicates that when he promises these things he will deliver.
There is one man, and only one, in this race who fits the specification: Rep. Ron Paul.
Huckabee is a welfare-socialistic southron. Rudy is a neurotic, preening stealer of other men's glories. Hillary is a known quantrity.
That is why hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans are rejecting the controlled media's "vchoice" of "serious" dummies. They are crossing party lines, stirring out of apathy and disgust with Beltway politics as usual, and giving tbeir time and cash to the Ron Paul Revolution, for liberty and the Constitution.
David excellent description and piece on Ron Paul but his anti choice position belies his libertarian position and exposes him for what he is-- a closet facist want to impose his view of religion on the rest of us.
Mr. Klinghoffer wrote: "The issue matters because whether life has meaning depends on whether you think there is a spiritual reality outside our biological existence that bestows meaning. Belief in such a meaning makes no sense coupled with Darwinian theory, the purpose of which is to explain the development of life without reference to any spiritual reality." I could not reconcile those words with the rest of the article, because at the end he says the contrary. What's missing? The "no sense" makes no sense because at the end he says there is a middle ground between the two extremes.
Darwin Shmarwin, are the red states (interesting choice of colors what with the commie color history) going to go for a Mormon or a thrice married New Yorker?
Norm: "...his anti choice position belies his libertarian position..."
Oh sure. Ron Paul is a Constitutionalist- he believes the question of abortion should be decided by the peoples of the several states of the Union, not the Federal government.
And you think that makes him a "closet fascist" because of his own antipathy, as an ob-gyn who birthed 4,000 babies, against killing unborn human beings with State aid from compulsorily taxed citizens?
Grow up and get the slogans and 180-degree-inverted silliness out of your brain. There is a growing percentage of libertarians (not that Dr Paul is one, he's just a conservative) who see the right to be born as the most fundamental freedom of all-- and the procurement of an innocent party's death at the hands of others to suit their selfish convenience as a pretty big abuse of "human rights".
The theory of universal gravitation also purports to explain something, namely the behavior of physical objects in certain circumstances, without reference to any spiritual reality. What's more, it was invented by a Christian Deist and refined (in the form of the theory of general relativity) by a Jewish Deist. Yet somehow we don't see the Klinghoffers of the world fulminating against it in favor of flat-earthism, or of angels pushing the Sun, Moon, and planets around the Earth on crystalline spheres. Why is that, do you think?
I think its you who doesn't understand Darwin. Darwin doesn't deal with what started life on earth only that it started in a simplier form and evolved.
Essentially there are three questions: 1. What started the universe? 2. What started life on earth? 3. Did it start in a simple form and evolve into higher creatures including man or did some creator create Adam in his present form.
I don't know the answer to the first-no one does or can understand it because the creation of the universe occured before time and space started.
I also don't know the answer to the second-its entirely possible that the seeds of life were planted on earth by some extraterrestial force like a comet or as Stanley Miller (University of Chicago) believes that it was created on earth by chemical processes. I even admit that some unkown party (let's call him a extraterrestial chemist) started the first lower form of life. You believe that there is a force in the Universe that does not have to obey the laws of the Universe. I don't.
But I do know the answer to the third. Human beings evolved from lower forms of life. This is a certainty. The biblical stories of Adam and Eve are fairy tales which should be taught to our children just as we teach the Greek myths-as literature-and some of it is good. If Huckabee (or you for that matter) want to believe in a "young Earth" or in the Jesus/Moses miracles or the Islamic stories in the Koran thats okay with me. I'm interested only in how theses beliefs have affected history.
I'm not going to vote for someone as my president who doesn't believe in Darwin-whether he is a Christian, Jew or Moslem. I think there are alot of people like me. I also recognize that there are people like you who think the opposite.
But yes there is a middle ground-it's a belief human beings have evolved to the point that we have morals and ethics-that we help the widow and orphan, that we don't lie or cheat. There are some of us with strong Jewish backgrounds, for instance, who support Jewish secular institutions but don't believe in HaShem. Telling me that there is no middle ground says to me that I can't have ethical values-but I do they them, they are just different than yours-I don't believe that swinging a chicken around my head,wearing special underware, a yalmaka, confessing to a priest or making a pilmagrage to Mecca makes one more more moral. To me its no different than praying to Baal. I see it as a difference without a distinction.