255 Replies to ““Mr. Minister, Mr. Minister, Do You Believe In Evolution?””

  1. Since they discovered the speed of light is not a constant & is actually slowing down. Nothing is out of bounds. Maybe it was 300 times faster 10,000 years ago. frankly we don’t know what happened before us except what we do know is being questioned yet into a new model. By the way find me a transitional bone. Just one please? Not that this effects doctrine for salvation in any way, or even the Bible.
    Evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics though.
    JMO

  2. Depends on which ‘flavour’ of science we are talking about – regular science, political science, or social science.

  3. You know this has Kinsella’s fingerprints all over it. Classic boogeyman gutter politics.

  5. This is far from over!
    Does anyone wonder what Obama’s Civilian National Security Force(CNSF) will be for? It will be for rounding us up; and, our Liberals will want their own as soon as they can.
    The CNSF application form will read something like this:
    Do you believe in evolution?
    Do you believe in AGW?
    Are you a visible minority?
    If you answered NO to any of these questions, please stay put, and an officer will be there to “help” you shortly.

  6. and now they are worried that he doesn’t understand the theory of evolution. I’d bet 99% of these concerned scientists couldn’t accurately describe their pet fund raising AGW theory without looking up which way the feedback loops go.
    Hell 99% of them wouldn’t even know about the feedback part of the theory.

  7. “By the way find me a transitional bone. ”
    There is no such thing, since all life is constantly changing. We are all transitional. If you want to find indicators of vestigial organs, wiki explains it well:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigial
    I like the picture of the whale with undeveloped hind legs, satisfy you?
    Global warming can be easily distorted with numbers, “statistics” and other BS. Evolution cannot be denied in the same way.

  8. Ezra Levant was on Adler’s show today, talking about this subject. Some Leftist dweeb called in, demanding that the Science Minister must recite some statement denying his Christian beliefs. You can listen to it here at 27:15.
    Levant and Adler slapped in down, pointing out thatt we don’t live in Mao’s China or Lenin’s USSR.
    If there was such a thing as a Confessional in the Church of Secular Leftism, they’d be overflowing for years!!!

  9. What I found interesting is the ministers response:
    “I’m not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” he said at the time.”
    As a science minister, he should know evolution isn’t a religion. The G&M is well known for distortion however, so I’m more then ready to give the minister benefit of the doubt.
    It’s a shame others aren’t.

  10. revnant dream:
    Is it realy true that light is slowing down? It is actually being debated?
    I ask because it is the perfect snare with which to catch these ambush journos at their own game.
    Please provide us with a link.

  11. Allan, you may very well be right. But so what? Do you realize by implication that you are saying that a person with religious values cannot be and should not be involved with science? To use your phraseology, please don’t “deny” this.
    Now be a Big Man and send a public letter to the Council on Islamic Relations stating your sentiments that religious people, including devout Muslims, cannot hold jobs related to science.
    Or does your bigotry only extend to Christians?!

  12. Who said I was a bigot?
    I never said what you implied, or even came close. Nor did I come anywhere near what was said on Chuck’s show today.

  13. Just for fun, I wonder if the MSM would like to pose the same question to our Muslim, Sikh, and Aboriginal MP’s
    Some Muslims allow for belief in theistic evolution. Iqbal Hossain, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake said: “If you believe in God and in the Qur’an, you have to believe that everything that was in the universe was created by God. “If there was an evolutionary process, that process was created and put in place by God.” However, others totally attack evolution
    The Real Sikhism web site states: Sikhs believe that God created the whole universe. Earth while being in the universe is a creation of God and all the life on earth is a creation of God. It does not matter to a Sikh whether earth was created in seven days or it evolved in 4 billion years. If the earth was created then God created the earth and if the earth was evolved then God created the evolution of the earth. In addition, Guru Granth Sahib (The Holy Scripture of Sikhs) states remarkable information about the universe, galaxies, stars, planets and the moons. None of the information written in the scripture contradicts with the scientific facts. Furthermore, nothing in Guru Granth Sahib can be disproved with the help of science. However, scientific facts support the teachings of Guru Granth Sahib.
    Many tribes tell a creation story in which their ancient ancestors lived a restricted life in darkness within an underworld, inside their Earth Mother. They emerged through a sacred opening onto the earth, to see the sun for the first time. For example, the Navajo creation story involves insects who inhabited the lowest three of the 6 worlds. They were expelled by the gods upwards to the 4th world where they either became, or helped create, the First Man and First Woman. They and their 10 children climbed up a reed that brought them into the 5th world – the one that they currently occupy. They “created the mountains, weather, plants and animals they had known below. And the brought the gods up to join them.”
    Interesting

  14. Don Martin was on CFRA discussing with Steve Mateley what this was all about; how the media had got their teeth into something so unimportant.
    Well, can one say Liberal Partisan Media Shills? Has it suddenly become wrong to believe in God, or have “nuanced” views of evolution? I personally am atheist philosophically and do not “believe” in evolution but accept it as the way the natural world works. However, belief in deity and evolution is not mutually exclusive.
    What the Red Star and Mop & Pail were doing was taking the excuse to decry a non-liberal. “See, he doesn’t believe as we do! He is EEEEEVIILLL”
    These folks make me puke.

  15. Does anyone know Ralph Goodale’s religious affiliation? (Or lack thereof?) I couldn’t find the info at his Wiki page, his Commons’ page or a Sask. politicians’ history site.

  16. “Right from the Left Coast”
    To further expand your last comment, I get a kick out of people who confuse evolution with abiogenesis.
    Or “big bang theory”.
    Three different theories folks. Yes you’re right, theories are not facts. They’re based on facts.

  17. While I don’t think that someone’s religious affiliation should have any impact on their ability to do their job, I’m sure a lot of the Christians coming out of the woodword to defend his non-answer might have questions about say… a Muslim Minister of Public Security. Just sayin’.
    But to be asked if you support the theory of evolution, and respond with “I’m a Christian” is actually a non-answer.
    I’m not saying the question was fair, or even if the answer was relevant. But the minister probably should have chosen a little bit more a diplomatic answer.

  18. Well, I believe in evolution but I certainly don’t believe in neodarwinian evolution, i.e., that random mutations occur and that natural selection ‘decides’ which ones will survive to reproduce. Absolutely not. No. No. And no.
    It was, in my view, completely unacceptable for the reporter to question Goodyear about his religion. There is no validity to the claim that religion and science are incompatible. I’m an atheist – but I don’t conclude that one can be ‘rational’ ONLY IF one rejects religion. Religion and reason are perfectly compatible.
    What is irrational is the refusal to reason about religion or the rejection of a requirement for faith in the examining the questions of science.

  19. “But to be asked if you support the theory of evolution, and respond with “I’m a Christian” is actually a non-answer. ”
    Exactly. And a “science minister” should know that.

  20. I think everyone skipped an important part of the charter of rights…
    2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
    a) freedom of conscience and religion;
    b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
    c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
    d) freedom of association.
    Taken from http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/#libertes

  21. Revnant Dream,
    what’s your tailbone for if you don’t have a tail?
    That’s just one.
    Please provide links for your crazy theories, the burden of proof is on you as the person moving away from scientific orthodoxy.
    Care to explain how evolution contradicts the second law, or is this just another case of misdirection?
    Please take time to read this link so I don’t have to send it again next time science contradicts your simplistic world view. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html

  22. Nullify the Liberal’s hate for religion and they loose one of their most effective weapons. (I am not all that found of it myself, besides the point)
    WK finger prints ? Could be. He hung Barney on Day. Hung religion in Ontario schools on Tory. (With the help of well staged media “news” events) Both allowed a lot of voters to overlook the obvious flaws in Chretien and McGuinty, IMO. It’s how he works.

  23. I missed that one. Since when does conservation of energy physical laws have anything to do with evolution?

  24. I think what Allan is saying is that no-one who is unwilling to follow the methodology of science should be allowed to be in charge of it.

  25. Jesus. Do you guys take pills that make you this stupid, or were you born this way?
    He’s the science minister. If he rejects evolution, that means he rejects the Scientific Method, the basis for all scientific understanding. That means he’s unqualified to do his job.
    Evolution has been proven through thousands of experiments over the past 150 years. There is absolutely zero doubt that complex lifeforms emerged from simpler forms. (Present company excepted)
    He’s cleared things up. Time to move on.
    And for the record… it wasn’t the CBC who asked him the question in the first place. It was the Globe and Mail. At least try and get part of the story right.

  26. This is all good. There are gullible practising Christians, Muslims, and Jews on the left, and there is no way they are going to be forced to denounce their god for the liberals.
    Kinsella, the catholic of convenience, denounced his god, and no doubt the hypocrite sits in the front pew every Sunday to show just what a loser hypocrite he really is.

  27. Sorry people – anyone who doesn’t accept evolution as a fundamental part of how we came to be who and what we are has no right to be involved in telling the rest of us how to run the country.
    Further, anyone who believes that christianity and appreciation of evolutionary development are incompatible is equally inappropriate for any role in our governance.

  28. Ezra’s on the Michael Coran show tonight for those of you that watch the show and I’m sure this topic will be front and center.

  30. Creationists believe in science and tend to be pretty good at it (think Isaac Newton). The witch hunt folks chasing Goodyear don’t differentiate between observational science and historical science.
    Observational science is based on repeatable experiments done in the present – it’s the kind that allows us to build computers, fly space shuttles, search for cures to cancer, etc…
    Historical science is the kind that lets us make dogmatic statements about things that allegedly happened 4.5 billion years ago based on the unprovable assumption that every natural process has been linear for those 4.5 billion years.
    The witch hunt guys also fail to distinguish between the type of evolution that is natural selection within species and the type that involves species changing from one to another.
    Creationists have no problem with natural selection, the idea that creatures with preferable traits for survival will prevail over those of the same species who who have less preferable traits for survival (ie longer legs, a longer beak, or shorter legs or a shorter beak depending on the environment, moths that change colours to better hide, etc…). All of these traits are genetically coded into the species and the ones who are born with the preferable traits tend to survive better and over time the genetic information is lost for the less preferable traits, since those animals die out. But a dog is still a dog (be it with longer or shorter legs), a cat is still a cat, a bird is still a bird, a moth is still a moth etc…
    Creationists do question species to species evolution, since it is not observable today (ie birds aren’t becoming cats, fish aren’t becoming dogs, etc..), and after over 100 years of searching the fossil record, the best we have to show for it is a very few debated examples of species in transition. Don’t take my word for it. Ask your local evolutionist to show you the millions of transitional fossils that should exist based on evolutionary theory. He won’t show you because they don’t exist.
    I have noticed however, that the witch hunt guys are incredibly good at drive by smear jobs. They don’t bother to inform themselves about what creationists actually believe and say, nor do they seriously consider the big problems with evolutionary theory (the statistical impossibility of all the random things happening just right for life to begin, as an example, is less than 1 in a number greater than all the atoms in the universe). They just say that if a guy doesn’t believe in evolution, he doesn’t believe in science and must be a medieval quack.
    It is plain to see for anyone who investigates it, that creationists believe in science and use it all the time. They just question the unprovable, highly speculative, philosophical assumptions that evolutionists make which have little to do with real science and everything to do with their own biases. Of course creationists have biases too, but that makes them no different than evolutionists.
    Goodyear may or may not be a good science minister, but his beliefs about origins of the world will not determine his competence for the job.

  31. John:
    There is certainly a massive amount of evidence supporting evolution, but very few actual experiments.
    It’s like astronomy and archeology in that way.

  32. JLC that I completely disagree with. First of all he doesn’t “tell the rest of us how to run the country”. He’s in charge of science, and may or may not be a christian. Many evolutionary biologists are also christian. Ken Miller is a fantastic evolutionary biologist that is also Catholic. Look him up on youtube.

  33. OK a bit incoherent.
    Evolution and Christianity are completely compatible. There is no dichotomy, whatsoever.
    Evolution works in mysterious ways, but it works to effectively fill all niches available to be filled.
    People who refuse to accept the generally understood development of the universe are not Christians. They are philosophical luddites.
    The important point to emphasize is that there is no conflict between Christianity and the evolving theory of evolution.

  34. Tim S,
    No,
    Scientists have to prove their biases in peer reviewed papers. You sound like a 9-11 conspiracy theorist when you assume “scientists” are just confirming each others stories to make sure that liberalism takes the place of theism.
    For 150 years scientific journals have confirmed and reconfirmed that species evolve from previous species. Fish do not evolve into birds, but fish do evolve into bigger fish, as dinosaurs evolve into birds and whales evolved from land mammals (as shown by the legs).
    Science isn’t a religion, but a method of identifying bullshit in someone’s argument. That’s why we roll our eyes at creationists.

  35. Also, it should be pointed out that nobody, NOBODY believes that CO2 is unnatural. It is blisteringly dishonest to characterize it this way.
    Everybody knows this is a natural element. But just because something exists in nature doesn’t mean it can’t be toxic when you produce too much of the stuff.
    You know what else is natural? Ozone. Why don’t you go huff some and see what happens?
    Keep on screechin’.

  36. jon…a tail?
    How about getting your mind around the sodium-potassium pump and very precise movement of ions in the very tiny cells of your heart that cause the electrical activity to be produced in thousands of myocytes 60-100 times each second in order for you to have one common electrical impulse thru your heart to cause it to beat once. That is an absolute science, and it does nothing to support a theory of accidental production of life on earth.
    But I digress.
    Kinsella is desperate.A belief in evolution or creation has nothing to do with the politics of our country.
    Or perhaps it does,
    How many lefty policies can be propagandised and promoted if they are based on a theory that life means nothing?…I’m thinking abortion, evolution and religious persecution, to name a few.

  37. If the “Theory” of Evolution is such a slam dunk proven fact then why isn’t it the “Law” of Evolution? Isn’t part of the scientific process to question something until it is proven beyond doubt?
    I am not religious and do not go to church but frankly I find very little difference between the modern scientist and priest. Both are driven by greed and will spew forth anything to keep the money rolling in.
    The global warming cult has shown us that “peer reviewed” in the most prestigious science journals means nothing more than you if you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. Anyone calling themselves a “scientist” today in my books has less credibility than a used car salesman or ambulance chasing lawyer.

  38. Allan – I am a practicing catholic (mas o menos and what I am trying to say is that there is absolutely no conflict between mainstream christian (i.e, catholic) beliefs and evolutionary theory.
    In my view, anyone who rejects (not qualifies or queries) evolution cannot be either a scientist or a christian.
    I’m not saying that the tire boy is a nutcase, but he’s climbing out on a limb.
    I’m saying this as a long time tory. We have enough difficulty getting a common sense message across without providing fodder for the media lunatic fringe.

  39. Tim:
    The “lack of transitional species” argument is a load of hogwash. First, the very definition of “transitional species” is vague. Any species which eventually evolved into another species could be labelled as such.
    In practise, the way biologists use the term practically guarantees that transitional fossils will be rare compared to other fossils. But although rare, many examples do exist.

  40. “He’s in charge of science”..!!
    He a minister in charge of the portfolio…do you really think he’s going to nosing in to every bunsun burner and engineering experiment …give your head a shake!
    Did Prentice have to become Native for his portfolio?
    Did Mckay have to be a soldier?
    I don’t even want to think about Liberal Ministers.
    Do you really believe cabinet ministers are experts in those subjects? They are Members of Parliament.
    This is a witch hunt but the media nothing else.
    How silly!

  41. Fritz:
    Only physics and to a lesser extent chemistry use the term “law”. Most other sciences don’t. Astronomers don’t, for example, refer to the “law of heliocentric orbits”, but the earth circles the sun nevertheless.

  42. I don’t recall Irwin Cotler being having to deal with this kind of nonsense as Minister of Justice.
    Science, Justice, Whatever – if it is a Liberal involved, the MSM will not touch the subject – period.

  44. Global warming can be easily distorted with numbers, “statistics” and other BS. Evolution cannot be denied in the same way.
    Posted by: allan at March 18, 2009 6:58 PM
    Allan, you’re blowing smoke — evolutionists themselves are divided over how evolution ‘works’; there are those who hold to a gradual evolution, and others who hold to punctuated bursts of evolution.
    In the end, the statistical improbability that life arose from nothing is not only unscientific (Allan wasn’t there to view it) but also illogical. Mutations must work in an upwards fashion, not backwards (as most mutations do) and you would require multiple trillions of them to add information. Evolution cannot work as a mechanism — so what do evolutionists do? They fear monger, intimidate, and silence their opponents — just like in the article.
    And yet, these are the same folks who hold other preposterous ‘scientific’ views, some of which contribute to the untold suffering of human beings; the idiotic banning of DDT for instance.

  45. bluetech, obviously not, but they should believe in what their position stands for.
    It would be like having Lucien Bouchard as our PM.

  46. Man, is there ever a buttload of ignorance in the comments here, and from both sides of the aisle.
    Intelligent Design and/or Biblical literalism is both bad science and bad theology.
    Having said that, the witch hunt against Gary Goodyear is nothing but a Lib-Left hatchet job. The question asked of him was “Do you believe in evolution?” or words to that effect. But the key term used was “believe in”. Evolution is NOT something you believe in, i.e. accept as a matter of faith. Evolution is an observable fact, and Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection (as it is currently understood) is the best available explanation for that observable fact. The question was framed badly, probably on purpose, to put him on the spot.
    Frankly, as a person with a science education, and working in a science-based industry, and as an agnostic, I don’t give a fat rat’s ass what Gary Goodyear believes viv-a-vis evolution, as long as he does his damn job properly, and I have yet to see any credible evidence that he has failed to do so. If it comes to my attention that he is making bad policy in his ministry as a consequence of his beliefs, or for any other reason, for that matter, I will oppose him on that. Not for what he believes in his spiritual life.

  47. In practise, the way biologists use the term practically guarantees that transitional fossils will be rare compared to other fossils. But although rare, many examples do exist.
    Posted by: rabbit at March 18, 2009 7:48 PM
    This is known as elephant hurling — what are the ‘many’ examples rabbit? Do you realize you would require billions of transitions? Stephen J. Gould knew this, which is why he came up with the punctuated equilibrium theory to account for the absence of such fossils.
    I should’ve have mentioned that evolutionists have propped up complete b.s. themselves for years, such as the ridiculous Haeckel embryonic fraud or the equally pernicious peppered moths fraud.

  48. Intelligent Design and/or Biblical literalism is both bad science and bad theology
    This has very little value coming from a confessed agnostic — you probably haven’t read the Bible at all, or read seriously any of the ID proposals.
    I would agree that it matters little what you believe in terms of origins science — you don’t need to believe in evolution to promote scientific theories (Galileo, Newton) or to come up with medical breakthroughs (Joseph Lister). It’s an militant secularist tact to attack and demonize people who do not ascribe to evolutionary theory.

  49. Creationists argue that evolution is “only a theory and cannot be proven.”
    As used in science, a theory is an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena.
    Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts.
    Which means that Fritz needs a new line of reasoning.

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