thinkevolution.net

In an article in Friday’s New York Times, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “clarifies” his position—which really must be rather uncomfortable—on evolution, which had been reported last week as straddling the precipitous gulf between creationism and science. “Governor Romney believes both science and faith can help inform us about the origins of life in this world,” his campaign announced after Romney did not raise his hand in answer to a May 3 debate question on whether the candidates did not believe in evolution.

But the Times article clears all this ambiguity up:

“I believe that God designed the universe and created the universe,” Mr. Romney said in an interview this week. “And I believe evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body.”

He was asked: Is that intelligent design?

“I’m not exactly sure what is meant by intelligent design,” he said. “But I believe God is intelligent and I believe he designed the creation. And I believe he used the process of evolution to create the human body.”

Nice to see that Romney is terrified of ID; perhaps the wedge strategy has been sufficiently dulled. I don’t care much for politicians who won’t defend a clear position, though, and I don’t think creationists should either.

But most infuriating of all was the egregious error by Times journalist Michael Luo, who described evolution as comprised of “utterly random, naturalistic processes.” Fact: natural selection, the evolutionary process responsible for adaptation, is a deterministic process, the utter opposite of a random one. This type of error is unacceptable. Better science education in schools!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 2:11 pm and is filed under News and reports, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.