Ron Paul, Evolution, and Iowa

The latest polls in this week before the Republican caucuses in Iowa show surprising levels of support for the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. (Frankly, at this point in the fascinating prelude to the "silly season," with polling showing a dizzying sequence of "flavors of the month," I'm not sure we should be surprised by anything.) And so I find myself doing some reading about what Congressman Paul has to say (and has said over the years) about issues of importance to me.

Dr. Paul was an obstetrician/gynecologist before he went into politics. Despite the fact that he has now been in politics for many years (a member of the House as far back as the 70s), he has nevertheless been more than willing to tell people what he really thinks about a broad range of issues. This, for those of you who completely ignore the U.S. political scene, is most unusual.

There was an interesting recent thread on a listserv to which I subscribe, one whose members are interested in emergency care. My colleagues on this list go "off topic" (meaning they discuss things of marginal relevance to emergency care) quite often, which is maddening to some and quite entertaining to others. One of the frequent contributors is an ardent proponent of libertarian political philosophy, and he has taken opportunities to enlighten the rest of us about some of Congressman Paul's views.

Those who are disposed to challenge the libertarian perspective - and who don't much care for Ron Paul - have posted messages about controversial statements made by Dr. Paul over the years. And so a recent thread was launched (perhaps I should say spun, as one would surely find a challenge in the physics of launching a thread) about whether Paul believes in evolution.

It seems the good doctor has some uncertainties about this, and this has led many participants to draw conclusions about his critical thinking skills and about whether all of that education in the sciences was somehow lost on him.

So I did a bit of reading on the Web to find out what the congressman has actually said, and I find myself inclined to agree with him. Not about the soundness of the theory of evolution, but about its place in public discourse in the context of a presidential campaign.

The Republican caucuses in Iowa are strongly influenced by Christian conservatives, and these are people who typically have very definite views about evolution. They tend to believe that evolution and intelligent design are competing theories about how life as we know it came to be and that these theories should be taught side by side in public schools.

Professional educators - particularly those who run public schools - are fiercely opposed to this notion and say it is preposterous to expect teachers to present articles of religious faith alongside scientific theory with some sort of implication that they are equally "plausible" - when, in fact, they represent two entirely separate ways of thinking about life.

So it isn't possible to have a public discussion of evolution and creation and how these ideas relate to each other without getting into the morass that is the highly politicized and emotionally charged controversy surrounding public education and its connection to separation of church and state.

I might like to know what Congressman Paul has to say about that - and I consider it much more important than what he thinks about the theory of evolution. The libertarian position he espouses actually makes his answer to this question pretty straightforward: questions about evolution are strictly a matter of one's personal beliefs and inclination to think in scientific versus spiritual terms, not terribly relevant for a politician, unless one gets into the messy argument over public education, which can be largely avoided by getting the federal government entirely out of the business of public education and giving parents tax credits to let them choose whatever schools they want (or none at all, opting for home schooling).

Yet we will still have public schools (there seems no easy way around that), and so we will have state and local school boards making decisions about curricula. If they decide to include intelligent design, there will be challenges in the federal courts on church-state-separation grounds. Thus it becomes more important to ask Ron Paul how he is going to find Supreme Court appointees who agree with his originalist interpretation of the Constitution. That means what the framers had in mind, which was simply that there should be no official Church of the United States as there was a Church of England - not that religion or religious teaching should be excluded from all spheres of life touched by public dollars. And if he can find some, can he get the Senate to confirm them? Good luck with that, Congressman.