>
> I checked the video. Ron Paul definitely did *not*
> say he didn't believe in evolution. He said that
> evolution is a *scientific* question about which he
> lacked qualification, but that he did not accept
> "the theory of evolution." So what did he mean by
> "the theory of evolution?"
> Presumably the standard textbook "NeoDarwinian"
> explanation of the *fact* of evolution by gradual
> mechanical/ecological/statistical processes to the
> explicit exclusion of any factors implying
> consciousness or teleology. He rejects that theory,
> he says, because he believes that there was a
> Creator of the universe (and surely belief in a Big
> Banger is at least as reasonable a belief as belief
> in the Big Bang), with the argument implicit that
> such a Creator would continue to exert a meaningful
> influence over its Creation.
I really don't want to talk theology here, but you really feel that a big explosion and a unique, omnipotent, omniscient, universal and immortal consciousness are equally likely? But never mind!
> So Ron Paul is--who'd a thunk it-- a theist.
>
> But of course belief in the Christian God is
> scarcely necessary to reject NeoDarwinism as a
> general model of evolution. NeoLamarckian approaches
> are powerful alternative explanations for the
> rapidity of evolutionary change under radically
> catastrophic stresses.
You seem to be very-close-reading Dr. Paul's one-liner. Yet you'd think one wouldn't oppose or support a politician so much for the logical consequences of the things he says, as an exercise in philosophical exegetics, as for what it seems he would be likely to do if he wins the forthcoming election. Especially because of all professions (except, maybe, that of preacher) the politician is most likely, each and every time he speaks, to be blowing smoke up your ass.
> I wonder--is the tendency of some here to trash a
> politician who differs from almost all his peers by
> his antiwar and pro civil liberty statement and
> convictions somehow a displaced resistance to a
> temptation to support one or another of the rest of
> the bourgeois politicians playing in this primary
> circus.
I would think any politician, even the forthright Dr. Paul, who says "I do not accept the theory of evolution" may or may not be making some particular point regarding epistemology and stuff, but he is definitely indicating that he's willing to support anti-evolutionists in the public schools, which means that he's willing to allow one specific group - American evangelical Protestant fundamentalists - to grant themselves veto power over every detail of everybody else's public education. Also, Dr. Paul is equally willing to allow American evangelical Protestant fundamentalists veto power over other women's pregnancies. That there's a solid, real reason to gripe about the jerk.
No, I really don't think that anybody reading this list is secretly itching to vote for the bourgeois Hillary Clinton (yay WTO!!!1!) but has chosen to distract the rest of us from his or her shame by trashing the sometimes charming but always loony Dr. Paul. Not a one!
Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net