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Preferring snark to thoughtfulness

Jack Kelly

By Jack Kelly

Published Feb. 23, 2015

  Preferring snark to thoughtfulness

In the 44th minute of a 45-minute news conference, a reporter for the BBC asked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, while he was in London on a trade mission, if he believed in evolution.

“I’m going to punt on that one,” Gov. Walker replied. “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or another.”

His response became the Big Story from the news conference. “Walker weasels on evolution,” said the National Journal. “Scott Walker punts on evolution,” said MSNBC and Politico. He should “man up,” said Time magazine.

Gov. Walker’s dodge is what you’d expect from a college dropout, snarked several liberal journalists on Twitter — who know next to nothing about evolution themselves, Sean Davis of the Federalist discovered when he asked them: “Do you believe in phyletic gradualism, or punctuated equilibrium?” 

Crickets.

Both phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium posit life evolved without assistance from G0D. But if one is true, the other can’t be.

Phyletic gradualism is a fancy name for Charles Darwin’s assumption that species evolved gradually through slow, steady changes.

Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould — like Darwin, an atheist — developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium to address two big problems with Darwin’s theory.

Evidence in the fossil record of the “transitional forms” on which it depends is sparse. But because fossils are created chiefly by catastrophic events, this is not quite as big a deal as it sounds. A lot that didn’t make it into the fossil record could have been going on between catastrophes.

A bigger problem is the scientific consensus for the “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe.

When Darwin wrote “The Origin of the Species” in 1859, the “steady state” theory (the universe was always here) was in vogue. Darwin assumed there was an infinite amount of time for the small, gradual changes he posited to take place.

According to the “Big Bang” theory, the earth was created 4.54 billion years ago — give or take 50 million years. That’s a long time, but not long enough to exempt Darwin from the Law of Probability.

The odds of abiogenesis (life emerging from the primordial soup) are one in 10 to the 40,000th power (1 followed by 40,000 zeros), calculated Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), the famed British astronomer and mathematician.

“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein,” he said.

Sir Fred had a way with words. It was he who gave the “Big Bang” theory its name. He also may have been the first to use the words “intelligent design” to describe the origins of the universe.

Like Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould, Sir Fred was an atheist. He ruled out G0D as the Designer. Life may have come from outer space, he speculated.

If more evolutionists shared the view of the father of modern physics, Max Planck (1858-1947), they’d be less likely to run afoul of the Law of Probability.

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together,” he said. “We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”

For many liberals, belief in “evolution” is a proxy for disbelief in G0D. It’s foolish to make it a political litmus test. “G0D created humans in present form,” said 42 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll last May. Humans evolved, but G0D guided the process, said 31 percent. Just 19 percent think “humans evolved, but G0D had no part in the process.”

Evolution isn’t one of them, but some scientific controversies do bear on public policy. Alas, journalists are more inclined to play “gotcha” games than to explore them. When was the last time a journalist asked a Democrat: “Do you believe life begins at conception?” Or “is carbon dioxide harmful?” Or “are vaccines/?nuclear power/?fracking safe?”

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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.

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