Nope. He really isn’t. He’s actually a disgraceful science denialist.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal dodged three questions on Tuesday about whether he personally believes the theory of evolution explains the presence of complex life on Earth.
The reality is I’m not an evolutionary biologist,the Republican governor and possible 2016 presidential hopeful told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
That’s not an excuse. You don’t need to be a professional biologist to understand the basics of evolution, just as you don’t need to be a master carpenter to understand that wood comes from trees. A good high school course or reading from any of dozens of easily available popular texts is sufficient (I recommend anything by Carl Zimmer). Or, you know, you could maybe get a fucking college degree in biology from an ivy league college. Ask Mike the Mad Biologist, who criticizes one critique of Jindal as being too gentle.
Razib lets Jindal off far too easy. Why? Because Jindal and I both received degrees in biology with honors from Brown in the exact same year. Having gone through that program at the same time, there is no conceivable way that he received his degree not knowing that there is overwhelming evidence from the fossil record for evolution regardless of his focus (“the most minimal details of population genetics” have nothing to do with what Jindal erroneously claimed).
Jindal is not an evolutionary biologist. He just has an honors degree in biology from a university that appropriately puts evolution at the heart of the curriculum. And apparently he learned nothing.
Poor kid! I think that you are a big bully ridiculing such a harmless little boy! Shame on you! He can’t help being stupid.
uh, not the conclusion I would make.
the more parsimonious conclusion is that he is simply lying.
you know, like Jonathan Wells.
so wait; he can’t have an opinion on evolution cuz he’s not a biologist despite having a degree in biology, but he can accuse people of “science denial” about topics in which he doesn’t have a degree? fascinating.
Sure he is. He’s just an equality evolutionary biologist, meaning he has more respect for the unfit than to decide for them they’re not surviving. And he speaks truth to power. Christopherphillips is right; you’re just FTBullying him.
Apparently it’s politically inexpedient to share what he learned. Which is where we find ourselves: the leadership of one of the two major political parties in this country find any accurate knowledge about reality they may possess not only unhelpful in the execution of their duties, but actually detrimental. Wonderful.
Of course he learned nothing. How do you think he got elected as a Republican? If he had learned something, we would never have heard of him.
Woot! To me he looks like he didn’t evolve at all? No offence meant to his ethnicity, religious beliefs, even his looks… just his intelligence and his utterances and what he is forcing on us with his political might.
Of course, he’s going to be a science denialist. His chance at higher office partly depends on it. Well, partly on that and partly on being mean to women and men who are in love with other men. Well, to be fair I should say at least he’ll pretend being a science denialist when giving an interview on television as a politician. Maybe at home he knows creationism is horseshit. Just like the pastors and ministers at the million dollar churches aren’t worried about hell themselves; they just tell poor people that so they keep paying. But hey, how you present yourself to the world is how you are, and from that statement I conclude he’s a creationist nut.
That right there is my ultimate pet peeve: this fucking soft wimpy approach to teaching children the truth about the world. And what the hell does the “as a father and a husband” part contribute to this view? Some things are simply off-limits. Deliberately lying to children in a fucking science class is a deadly sin in my book. So if a sufficient number of parents and school board members decide they want to teach alchemy, that’s all fine, is it then Bobby? Bumbling idiot.
Saad@8: Jindal would be fine with a local school teaching jihadist Wahhabism, right?
What I believe, is that every school should be a secular, public school (That’s right Muffey! No more execlusive private schools for you. You’re going to school with the riff-raff.) which teaches the same reality-based curriculum everywhere regardless of what pandering assholes like Bob Jindal and his redneck, Bible-humping supporters want or believe.
@ PZ;
I am with Ichthyic @ 2 on this – I think it very likely that Jindal knows exactly how overwhelming the case for evolutionary theory is, and I also think he knows that coming out publicly in favour of evolution would more likely than not significantly damage his electoral chances by alienating the conservative religious vote, and so he chose to cynically lie and obfusticate to advance his career, all in the name of placing expediency above integrity…
… Otherwise known as being a politician.
That is how comprehensively American politics has been poisoned by religious fundamentalism. Adopting an openly pro-science position that follows the evidence amounts to political suicide no matter where you fall within the credibly electable political spectrum, and dodging the question is less politically damaging than riling the ‘I ain’t no monkey!’ brigade by confronting them with reality. All the players know this, and construct their election campaigns and public pronouncements accordingly.
At the same time, spouting counterfactual and usually bigoted idiocy can actually win you votes, at least with certain core Republican demographics.
As a result, while not everyone embraces the most egregious examples of religiously motivated deceit and ignorance, the voice of reason and reality is rarely if ever heard at all, and so the inexorable slide toward openly anti-scientific theocracy continues.
Or he’d be a Democrat.
Five bucks says that Jindal has actually convinced himself he’s doing biologists a FAVOR by being governor of that state.
I’ve seen it before; he probably thinks he’s saving science from an even worse fate at the hands of the “real” creationists.
he thinks he’s giving them *just* enough so that he can get them to re-elect him.
…without realizing that is STILL causing huge damage, by showing authoritarian support for fucking nonsense, which only encourages the numpties to push ever harder.
if the man had any brains, or guts, he’d either stand up to the numpties, or step down.
really, for every “true believer” that somehow manages to get into politics, there are at least 10 who only pretend just to make sure they placate the authoritarian base.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair; I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935)
very apt quote.
So if you have to be an evolutionary biologist to believe in evolution, who would bother to become an evolutionary biologist? It sounds like a field of education to get into because you realize that evolution occurs, and you really want to understand the hell out of it. But if you don’t think evolution occurs, why would you bother? It’d be like getting a degree in Triagonal Numpty, or in Boofberry Frappage, or in Bobby Jindal.
chrislawson #9,
If he’s a man of his word, yes.
The 1st name of the Governor of Louisiana is Piyush, not Bobby.
I’m sure Bobby is aware of that, but still, you better tell him all the same…
http://www.bobbyjindal.com/
From Jindal’s comments:
“What I believe as a father and a husband is that local schools should make decisions on how they teach,” he said. “And we can talk about Common Core and why I don’t believe in a national curriculum. I think local school districts should make decisions about what should be taught in their classroom. I want my kids to be exposed to the best science, the best critical thinking…”
Paint yourself into a corner much?
“I am not a <insert field of science> scientist, but blah dee dah…” Is the new Republithugs answer to every policy question these days. Purely a weasely way to answer questions with a non-answer. Not surprised Jindal has acquired this mantra for his non-answers.
Just another example of what I call PT Barnum politics in the US. These days, it’s all based on “You can fool some of the people all of the time”.
Saad @ 17
Not if Jindal’s fellow Republicans are any indication.
“And apparently he learned nothing.”
Meet today’s Republican party. Willful ignorance is not an ideology. Political games and corporate interests trumps reality. Anyone who votes for a candidate who publicly disavows or equivocates re: evolution is a fool.
Just like he can’t have a position on exorcism since he’s not a priest… oh wait.
http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/bobby-jindal-the-exorcist-pro-or-con/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Gov. Piyush is no fool; that’s why he calls himself Bobby and lies about his knowledge of evolution. And no, we biologists did not elect him. There are plenty of folks who can be fooled “all of the time” down here.
Aaah, so his real name is Bobby PIYUSH Jindal, is it? Does Rush Limbaugh know this? And more importantly, where was Bobby PIYUSH Jindal born?
Off topic, but is Razib Khan(the dude mentioned in this video) a HBDer or a Dark Enlightenment disciple? I remember him talking about “cultural marxism” and such unironically.
Not much of a biologist, but he’s the best(and worst) exorcist we’ve had in the Governor’s office!
I frequently drive through the neighborhood he grew up in here in Baton Rouge. They erected a sign at the entrance: “Welcome to the childhood home of Gov. Bobby!” It was repeatedly vandalized, changing one letter in Bobby. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
It always surprises me that this people (republicans, climate change denialists, creationists et al.) think it’s valid to use this “I’m not an expert” defense to dismiss experts’ opinion in any particular field. Shouldn’t it go more like “I’m not an expert so I’m going to agree with the consensus of the people that ARE experts, the people who’s actually studying and investigating their asses off on this field”?
If “evolutionary biologist” isn’t redundent, it should be.
philipelliott @ 30,
Nobby?
Isn’t evolutionary biologist like saying logical mathematician?
actually, I think you have the middle and first names mixed up.
Piyush is his first name, bobby the second, and he goes by bobby for reasons you can likely guess.
you have a point, actually, but the label is accurate, nonetheless.
it really should just be “evolution biologist”
like “ecological physiologist”.
frankly, I hadn’t thought about it before you mentioned it.
;-)
I’ve got it:
Lobby.
Ichthyic, I changed the order for effect – to mock Limbaugh and the other mouth breathers who disparage Obama by exploiting his scary, foreign name.
oh.
mouth breathers
hey, what has my non-functional nose ever done to you :-p
Would I reduce the collateral damage of my insult if I referred to members of the right wing noise machine as knuckle draggers?
I checked the link. (headdesk)
We used to have Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter. Now we have governor Jindal, exorcist.
BTW if he creates a Golem to fight Obamacare and it is a better one than those he made before, does that count as evolution?
He learned to lie without remorse?
I suppose that’s not fair. Maybe he’s feeling some remorse.
He’s not a coastal geologist either. Whoda thunk it?
In his book entitled The Origin of Species, 1st ed. (1859; rpt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1985), pp. 173-174, Charles Darwin stated, “The male and female sexual elements seem to be affected before that union takes place which is to form a new being.” In his book entitled Man’s Place In Nature (1863; rpt. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2003), p. 82-83, Thomas Henry Huxley stated, “So that it is only quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its development as the man does.” In his book entitled The Descent of Man, 1st ed. (1871; rpt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), Volume 1, p. 14, Darwin quoted Professor Huxley’s reference to “the young human being” in the uterus. Indeed, in The Descent of Man, id., Volume 1, p. 113, Charles Darwin referred to “the infant in the womb.”
http://410us113.wordpress.com/2014/08/06/the-big-lie
Liedetector, what is your point in quoting Darwin? Darwin made several wrong presuppositions, due to lack of knowledge, in his book. Science knows better now, and is continually improving.
Wrong? Really? Please explain.