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More On Senator Marco Rubio's Geological Knowledge

He's been called one of the rising stars of the GOP and one of the symbols of the future.

He's also got a lot to learn about science.

Take a look at this from GQ (h/t to ThinkProgress). When asked how old he thought the earth was, he responded:

I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Yes, there are "multiple theories" about how the universe was created (some of them actual science, most of the others are not), but that's not what he was asked.  He was asked about the age of the earth - and to that question he said he wasn't sure "we'll ever be able to answer that."

But he's wrong.  It's not much of a mystery and  - that age isn't much in dispute.  It's about 4.54 billion years old (give or take 50 million).

The funny thing about Rubio is that he's not even being consistent with his own church.  He told Christianity today that:

I'm a Roman Catholic. I'm theologically in line with the Roman Catholic Church.

Ok, so what does the Roman Catholic Church say about the age of the earth? Let's take a look at this document from the Vatican website:

According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the “Big Bang” and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago)...[Emphasis added.]

So Rubio disagrees with his own church?

More anti-science from the GOP - the future of the GOP.

More Anti-Science From God's Own Party

From Representative Todd Akin, some more crazy nonsense:

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), whose Senate campaign against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has been largely disowned by national Republicans after his false comment that women's bodies can prevent pregnancy in cases of "legitimate rape," said this week he also doubts the scientific basis of evolution.

"Well, I've taken a look at both sides of the thing. And it seems to me that evolution takes a tremendous amount of faith," said Akin, in audio of a tea party group meeting on Thursday, obtained by Think Progress. "To have all of a sudden all of the different things that have to be lined up, to create something as sophisticated as life, it takes a lot of faith. I don’t see it as even as a matter of science, because I don’t know if you can prove one or the other.

Then there's Representative Paul Broun (R-GA):

Evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are major underpinnings of mainstream science. And Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun, a physician who sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, says they are “lies straight from the pit of hell.” [Emphasis added.]

And a paragraph later:

Here are his remarks:

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.” [Emphasis added.]

In case you didn't know it, Akin is also on the House Committee on Science Space and Technology.

Hardly surprising, then, that 58% of Republicans polled by Gallup dismiss reality and believe with no evidence whatsoever that God created humans in their present form sometime within the last 10,000 years.

As I've said before, if we are a nation in decline, this has to be one of the reasons: an ignorant, stubborn, faith based anti-intellectual retreat from science.

But Galileo Was Wrong!

From Tony Norman's column today:

"Galileo got outvoted for a spell," [Texas Governor Rick] Perry said, defending his utter indifference to the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. It was one of the most preposterous and audacious quips ever by an American politician whose suspicions about science are notorious and well known.

Who's this Galileo and why was he outvoted?

I believe that Perry is not only on the wrong side of this metaphor but that we should be teaching both sides of the the Aristotelian/Copernican debate in our public schools.

Both sides. Let the children decide for themselves which one is right - the eternal word of God or the "opinion" of some unnamed fallible "scientists" who are probably mostly atheists anyway.

Some background:

Galileo Galilei was an early 17th century astronomer who favored the now-current scientific "theory" (and remember, it's only a theory) that the sun is at the center of the solar system and not the earth.

Which ran him straight into conflict with Scripture. Galileo said that the earth moves around the sun but Chronicles 13:30 says quite clearly:

Tremble before him, all the earth!
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

And this is echoed by in Psalm 96:

Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.

Not only that, but Scripture is very clear that it's the sun that moves. Ecclesiastes 1:5:

The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

The Joshua 10:12 tells us that the sun was the thing made to stand still - not the earth:

On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”

Scripture says it's the sun that moves and the earth is immovable. Galileo was wrong, Perry was wrong and scripture is always right.

We should be teaching both sides of the controversy - that's the only way proper science works!

A Creationism Update

I've said it before. If we are a society in decline, this is one of the reasons - a willful, stubborn, arrogant, religiously-supported scientific ignorance.

From the NYTimes:

Teaching creationism in public schools has consistently been ruled unconstitutional in federal courts, but according to a national survey of more than 900 public high school biology teachers, it continues to flourish in the nation’s classrooms.

Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.

That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise.

So less than three in ten do it right. One in eight get it completely wrong and the remaining "cautious middle" do their students a grave disservice by compromising.And:

The survey, published in the Jan. 28 issue of Science, found that some avoid intellectual commitment by explaining that they teach evolution only because state examinations require it, and that students do not need to “believe” in it. Others treat evolution as if it applied only on a molecular level, avoiding any discussion of the evolution of species. And a large number claim that students are free to choose evolution or creationism based on their own beliefs.

As Neil Degrasse Tyson said on Real Time recently, the beauty of science is that it's still true, even if you don't believe it.

There should be no compromise with science.

GOP = Scientific Ignorance

Some more evidence (as if you needed it):

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, Sarah Palin's successor, appeared stumped by a question about the age of the earth Thursday, choosing not to answer a multiple choice question regarding the matter during a gubernatorial debate.

"Only God knows," Parnell responded, when asked if the earth was more accurately described as "6,000" or "six billion" years old.

Democratic candidate Ethan Berkowitz wasted no time, telling the moderator, "I'll go with six billion."

Parnell's answer did not go over without some skepticism, however. One person in the recording can be heard laughing, and another asks, "you really don't wanna answer that?"

"I really don't know," Parnell then said. "For either one of us to do it is quite speculative."

There's no speculation involved - it's science. According to science, the age of the earth is calculated to be 4.54 billion years old give or take 50 million years or so.

The calculations are done by something called radiometric dating. The idea is that unstable radioactive isotopes "degrade" from heavier isotopes to lighter isotopes at a pretty constant rate. By isolating the relative amounts of the isotopes within a given sample and comparing how much there is of one as opposed to another, scientists come up with a fairly accurate number. It's a solid (ie non-speculative) method. If it's wrong then whole huge chunks of physics are also wrong.

On the other hand, the Bible says 6,000 years. So I can understand Governor Parnell's confusion. Or perhaps his unwillingness to offend the faithful.

Evolution, Climate Science, and now radiometric dating - can someone please explain to me why such anti-intellectionalism is almost always found in the GOP?