Mitt Romney's stances on science

[prog]

I got called out about insinuating in an earlier post that Romney would institute an ultrapatriarchal dystopia should he become POTUS. Listing my justifications for this hyperbole, I came to the realization that, while he is famously anti-abortion and anti-teh-gay[1], I wasn't able to name his stances on the big political-scientific issues. So let's do a little research, shall we?

Generally, I get the impression that he doesn't really give a shit about any of this stuff and is willing to say whatever his machine thinks the base - that magical 27 percent - wants to hear, with each position given the little "but we don't know for sure!" wink meant to mollify more moderate conservatives cough cough. But I did find at least one surprise here.

Global Warming: As his governorship started to morph into a presidential run, he publically mumbled that maybe there wasn't any global warming, and later backed the state out of environmental responsibilities. Now his campaign issues press releases talking about "the radical environmental ideas of the liberal left ".

Stem cells: Oh, I remember this now. He's been openly anti-stem-cell-research for years, telling researchers in his own state to stuff it. He hasn't changed his mind in current press releases, where he speaks of how, after he thought about it for a while, it became clear to him that stem cell research is a dead end, and nevermind what some ethically challenged eggheads up in their towers think.

Evolution: In a recent interview, Romney said he found it reasonable to believe that God set evolution in motion - a common position for non-backwards religious folks to take, and one I don't have much of a problem with. This surprises me, because it's not the obvious cynical "Teach the Controversy!" play to the jesus-base. Keep your eye on this one; it's a clear outlier and I bet it changes.

This all just confirms for me that Romney's down in the "I'd vote for a random number generator over this guy" category, much like our current president. I don't know if the lack of a bumbling-manchild vibe makes him more or less likable than GWB. But really, it doesn't matter.

[1] Yes yes, lol flip-flop. Listen, that's allowed. In 2004 I spit acid at those who mocked Kerry for changing his mind on positions ever, and I reserve the same treatment for those who challenge Romney on the same grounds. You get some spit in both eyes if you defended Kerry then and attack Romney now on this non-issue. There are so many more valid targets than this, folks.

Comments

[jadelennox]

the idea that God set evolution in motion is actually a completely reasonable idea for a theist. It's what my parents taught me growing up and back when I was a theist I had no problem with it. Many theists believe completely in the discoveries of science, they just think that instead of natural law happening because of random chance and a few basic natural laws, that it is because a divine power put those natural laws in place and said "go". I have zero problem with that notion; there is absolutely no observable evidence that can approve or disapprove why The world is the way it is; just that can prove or disprove what
.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The frustrating thing is that the Intelligent Design people intentionally couched their peculiar form of creationism in language intended to make it sound like they were advocating this position, which muddied the waters considerably and cast unfair suspicion on theists who reconcile their theism with an acceptance of science. Most people who follow the issue to any degree seem to have caught on by now, but it still occasionally causes confusion.

unfalsifyable but harmless

[prog.livejournal.com]

Right. "God" basically maps to "the universe before the Big Bang" here, a force lurking around before things had a chance to get interesting. :)

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of important details here. What does "set in motion" mean? What, if any, are God's intended outcomes of the evolutionary process? Intelligent design deliberately uses language like "set in motion" to mean continuously guide. Even in a strictly hands-off view (God set the initial conditions, pressed "Play," and hasn't touched anything since), you can still run into trouble. The hands-off scenario can still require evolution to follow a specific program of development geared towards a specific endpoint. (Usually, the endpoint is humans.) There is no evidence that any evolutionary development was preordained, and all the available evidence points toward humans either being a transitionary species towards some future species or going extinct. (Humans are like every other form of life that has ever or will ever exist in that respect.)

While a belief that God set evolution in motion with the intention of creating humans is probably preferable to a belief that God created humans directly out of clay, it's still bad science.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

It is also bad morality, as any god who chose to create humans by such a cruel and grossly inefficient means must absolutely hate them.

If you were a Supreme Being and wanted to create humanity, and you had the choice (which you must have, being supreme and all) to either create them ex nihilo without without generations of painful, pointless and apparently random death, or to create them via a billion years of apparently random disasters, extinctions and lethal mutations, which would you do?

Any god capable of choosing evolution by variation and natural selection as the preferred means of creating humanity is a monster, worthy only of hatred.

And any god who is not capable of creating humanity without using evolution is clearly not a god at all, but merely a servant of some higher power that is imposing the restriction that evolution must be used.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8Q57VP00&show_article=1