Once again Rick Santorum’s past comments about religious and cultural issues are coming back to bite him. This time, it’s a comment he made in 2008 regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools:
One of the issues that I always got hammered for was the issue of evolution. I was the guy who actually put words in the No Child Left Behind Act, which was our big education bill that passed back in 2001 or 2002 that reformed the education system. Well, I had an amendment, it’s a great story, I had this language, because what’s taught in our school system as a result of liberal academia, is evolution is an incontrovertible fact. There is no suspicion of it. It is decided science that cannot be questioned. There cannot be any doubts about it. If you have any questions or doubts, it’s trying to inject religion into the science classroom. So it is above reproach.
I obviously don’t feel that way. I think there are a lot of problems with the theory of evolution, and do believe that it is used to promote to a worldview that is anti-theist, that is atheist.
Here’s what that Amendment said as described by Santorum in a floor speech:
This is an amendment that is a sense of the Senate. It is a sense of the Senate that deals with the subject of intellectual freedom with respect to the teaching of science in the classroom, in primary and secondary education. It is a sense of the Senate that does not try to dictate curriculum to anybody; quite the contrary, it says there should be freedom to discuss and air good scientific debate within the classroom. In fact, students will do better and will learn more if there is this intellectual freedom to discuss. I will read this sense of the Senate. It is simply two sentences—frankly, two rather innocuous sentences—that hopefully this Senate will embrace: “It is the sense of the Senate that—
- (1) good science education should prepare students to distinguish the data or testable theories of science from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science; and
- (2) where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should pre. pare the students to be informed participants in public discussions regarding the subject.
It simply says there are disagreements in scientific theories out there that are continually tested
Of course all the material that Santorum submitted to establish these “disagreements” came from groups that promote so-called “intelligent design” such as the Discovery Institute. In reality there’s no real disagreement among scientists about the basic fact that life on Earth today evolved from other forms over millions, indeed billions, of years. Rejecting that idea is rejecting the building blocks of biology, geology, and anthropology.
As for the idea that teaching evolution promotes atheism, I’m sure the Catholic Church would be surprised to hear that.
H/T: Buzzfeed
