Wetterling on ID

I have confirmation from both my son (who was there) and Eva that Patty Wetterling did address the question about whether ID ought to be taught in the schools in a recent debate. Here’s what she said:

We need to teach the truth about science. Evolution is scientifically accurate. We can’t let our science curriculum to be based on religious beliefs.

Exactly right. That’s not hard to say, you know.

There were a few comments in that prior thread that were trying to argue that, since the 6th district has a conservative population, Wetterling was a bad choice to run there—that the DFL should have tried to find a conservative Democrat for a candidate.

I think that’s insane.

  • Wetterling is running a good, hard campaign. She’s putting up a fight, and she’s made it a competitive race. Why in the world should the DFL ask good, progressive candidates who are willing to work a district to step aside? She stands for our values. We ought to be pushing that, rather than looking for some proxy Democrat with Republican values to run.

  • Just curious, but when was the last time you saw Republicans arguing that they ought to be fielding moderate candidates anywhere? Far right wingnuts seem to be happily seized upon as perfect choices to forward the Republican agenda, and the arguments always seem to be about how to get money and support to their people. (Katherine Harris seems to be the rare exception. There are limits to the insanity and incompetence Republicans will endorse, which is good to see.)

  • It seems to me that putting up strong opposition to Republican extremists is exactly what we ought to be doing. Make ’em have to struggle and bleed a little to win when they put up kooks like Bachmann; better yet, make ’em lose to liberal candidates. Let the Republicans look at these races and decide that they need to field a moderate to get a lock on the district. Make them shift a little closer to the center, rather than always ceding that the Democrats must shift a little closer to the right. That’s how we win in the long run. That strategy of always forcing the races rightward and making the Democrats chase after them is how the Republicans have been winning.

One funny thing about that strategy is that it will even make some Republicans happy to see their extremist fringe kicked in the tush a few times. The voters who would switch to a conservative/moderate Democrat would probably prefer to see the nutjobs who are leading their party marginalized and replaced with centrists—and that would be a net gain for the country.

Bachmann on ID

Eva sent me a link to a wingnut’s account of a debate between some 6th Congressional District candidates: Patty Wetterling (Democrat), John Binkowski (Independent), and Michele Bachmann (Rethuglican). It’s not a very good transcription—for one thing, the wingnut’s commentary is all tangled up with the words of the candidates, making it hard to tell who said what—but there’s one part of interest. They were asked the ID question.

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Science educator/evangelist needed for hazardous duty!

Salon has an article on a new up-and-coming star of the evangelical movement: Stephen Baldwin. Stephen Frickin-Dumb-As-A-Lizard Baldwin!

For Dobson, Baldwin and young Americans the nation over who yearn for the certainty this brand of Christianity pitches, the personal is political. Absolutism reigns in the new evangelical youth movement, shining through the chaos of modernity, global terror, media bombardment and glorious moral relativism. Baldwin pitches the ultimate dumbed-down fundamentalism, offering reductive, brainless theology. “I sleep good at night because I am totally content in the knowledge that God is in control,” he writes, a conviction glittered up with the fact that it sprung from the mind of an honest-to-God celebrity.

Intentionally or accidentally, Baldwin has braided together what young Americans seem to crave most today: fame, cool and answers. Answers to the questions of who will look out for them, who will love them, who will tell them how to live. Answers from a man who called himself the son of God, and another one who calls himself Stevie B.

…and calls everyone “dude”, and uses the word “gnarly” non-ironically.

Jebus, but we are in trouble. When someone with as little charisma and intelligence as Stephen Baldwin can be popular and draw in thousands of kids for right-wing fundamentalism, that tells us that the bar is set very, very low. And when we then note that no one on the evolution side can rise to that level…well. This is bad news.

We need a scientist who is willing to snort cocaine for a couple of years, sleep willy-nilly with models and any half-naked starlet with no taste, and bash himself repeatedly over the head with blunt objects until his IQ descends to perilously low Stephen Baldwin levels, all so that we can enrapture the precious skateboarding teenager bloc. Any volunteers?

(Paulie Z? Oooh. <shudder>. I just don’t think I’m brave enough to sink that low. I fear we also need someone younger, with the stamina to cope with the kind of abuse and degradation needed for this job.)

Evo-devo is not the whole of biology

Sometimes a plan just comes together beautifully. I’m flying off to London tomorrow, and on the day I get back to Morris, I’m supposed to lead a class discussion on the final chapters of this book we’ve been reading, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. I will at that point have a skull full of jet-lagged, exhausted mush, and I just know it’s going to be a painful struggle. Now into my lap falls a wonderful gift.

There was a review in the NY Review of Books that said wonderful things about Carroll’s work, and in particular about the revolutionary nature of evo-devo. This prompted Jason Hodin, an evo-devo researcher himself (whose work I’ve mentioned before) to write a rebuttal and send it off to NYRB…which they chose not to publish. So he sent it to me, with permission to post it.

(If Pharyngula is going to be second choice to the NY Review of Books, I’m not going to complain.)

Anyway, I’m almost as guilty as Carroll of hawking the wares of the evo-devo bandwagon and traveling roadshow, so this is a welcome balancing corrective. The complete text is below the fold.

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