Shameful Acts: 3. Flirting with creationism

When asked by The Globe and Mail if he accepted evolutionary theory, Conservative Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear offered a curious 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.

Around the country, scientists were shocked that the federal Minister for Science interpreted a question about his acceptance of evolutionary theory as an attack on his religion. Some likened his response to a refusal to answer whether or not he thought the earth was flat due to his religious beliefs.¹ Others were more blunt, wondering how the chiropractor-cum-cabinet minister could possibly retain the science portfolio if he rejected one of the world’s most well-established scientific theories.

The issue is particularly troubling given the Conservatives’ gutting of research-based science funding in their January budget. With a focus on the commercialization of discoveries to “bring them to the marketplace” quickly, important areas of scientific study remain woefully underfunded.² Whereas in the United States the Obama administration has pledged $10 billion USD to fund basic research, the Conservatives have forced research agencies in Canada, including those responsible for studying stem cells and climate change, to cut spending by $148 million. It is not difficult to see Conservative ideology at work here. Add to that the unrestrained hostility that Mr. Goodyear and his staff have for lobbyists acting on behalf of the scientific research community — witness his boorish behaviour of loudly accusing them of lying whilst an aide screamed at them to “shut up” mere moments into a scheduled meeting — and it is no wonder that scientists in Canada see no alternative in such a climate but to ironically move Stateside to what is now a more hospitable environment for scientific research.³

A history of holes

Goodyear is not the first Conservative cabinet minister to display pride in a preschool ignorance of evolutionary theory, or outright hostility to it. Stockwell Day, the Conservative Trade Minister and former leader of the party while it was incarnated as the Reform Party, is known for his creationist views, which, together with a suitable compendium of gaffes, likely cost him the 2000 election.

In response to their respective creationist kerfuffles, Mr. Day and Mr. Goodyear and other government spokespeople have rightly said that MPs, including cabinet ministers, are entitled to their beliefs. They have said the government is not in the business of promulgating either creation “science” or any other viewpoint. Those would be comforting words but for the fact that Mr. Day lamented that creationism was not taught in public schools, and that Mr. Goodyear controls funding for an area of science he is openly hostile to, in a Ministry he has demonstrated is controlled by ideology over need. They would be comforting words but for the fact that Day, Goodyear, and their apologists shrilly cry foul when their views are challenged by the media, because somehow their religious beliefs are sacrosanct and untouchable, even when they themselves present them to the public, or offer them up in some unpalatable concoction of public policy and private piety.

Furthermore, when a creationist openly ridicules evolutionary theory and its scientists on the floor of the House of Commons, the public venue entrusted to him by his riding constituents so that he may represent their most fundamental needs, he has made two fatal errors: he has abrogated his political responsibilities, and he has polluted his public office with his private religious beliefs contrary to the stated aims of even this Conservative government. On April 2, 2009, James Lunney, another chiropractor and now Conservative MP for the British Columbia riding of Nanaimo-Alberni, addressed Parliament.⁴ Evolutionary scientists are arrogant anti-scientists, he said. He claimed that all the millions of Canadians who believed in a creator were being ridiculed in the debate surrounding Mr. Goodyear’s curious response to a question about evolutionary theory. Lastly, and ghoulishly if not laughably, he said that, since Charles Darwin could not be conjured from the grave, today’s evolutionary scientists could not disprove that the father of evolutionary theory would not today abandon it if presented with the “discoveries” of the likes of creationist and Seventh-Day Adventist Robert V. Gentry⁵ — discoveries dismissed as amateur pseudoscience after peer review.⁶

A concession, of sorts

In the end, Mr. Goodyear was forced to affirm a “belief” in evolution, some suggesting that those in the upper echelons made him do it to avoid yet more Conservative controversy. Unfortunately, his espousal had nothing to do with evolutionary theory, and only underscored the Science Minister’s appalling ignorance of science. “We are evolving every year, every decade,” he said. “That’s a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment.”⁷

Yet again, Canada seems destined to belatedly follow the United States in areas of public policy and cultural myopia. We can only look forward to the day when we also follow their political lead, and discover energizing politics, youthful ideas, a devotion to reason, and dynamic leaders once again.

1. Anne McIlroy, Minister won’t confirm belief in evolution, The Globe and Mail, March 17, 2009. [↩]
2. Carolyn Abraham, Researchers fear ‘stagnation’ under Tories, The Globe and Mail, March 2, 2009. [↩]
3. Ibid. [↩]
4. Aaron Wherry, James Lunney v. Evolution, Macleans.ca, April 2, 2009. [↩]
5. Darrell Bellaart, Darwin would think again, Lunney tells House of Commons, Nanaimo Daily News, April 4, 2009. [↩]
6. Polonium Halo FAQs at The TalkOrigins Archive. [↩]
7. Anne McIlroy, Goodyear continues to deflect questions on evolution beliefs, The Globe and Mail, March 18, 2009. [↩]