Rick Santorum Quotes
What we should be teaching are the problems and holes and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution. And what we need to do is to present those fairly from a scientific point of view. And we should lay out areas in which the evidence supports evolution and the areas in the evidence that does not.
Santorum, Rick. "Rick Santorum Interview." The Diane Rehm Show, NPR, 29 Aug. 2005.
The school board had been pressured by religious fundamentalists throughout the state of Georgia to affix these stickers to all textbooks as there were no textbooks that met curricular standards that did not teach evolution. As soon as they started this practice, a suit was filed in the Federal District Court which found the practice violated both the Federal and Georgia State Constitutions ({586989}). The only reason that the stickers had been used was to try and placate those religious fundamentalists of the community who were opposed to the teaching of evolution. See {586968} for a quote from the legal opinion.
The Science Guy
The fundamentalist majority of the school board agreed, but the minority did not. Nor do virtually all the leading scientists in the country. The word “theory” as it is used to describe Darwin’s construct or in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity refers to an intellectual construct for which there has been continuous empirical demonstration since is was first promulgated. The attorney general and the school board, not being scientifically trained, mistakenly believe that a scientific theory is like a general theory which is a set of hypotheses which are established (proven) or not. But scientific theories are not proven or disproven per se. Various elements of them are, and elements of a scientific theory are modified and altered over time and research. Few scientific constructs has had as much empirical demonstration of the various elements as Evolution.
The Bible contains two separate and somewhat contradictory versions of creation (Adam & Eve vs. the 6 day creation).
While many people in America say they do not “believe in” evolution almost all of them do not know what evolution is much less understand what it is that they think is false. There are very few people who have studied evolution who reject it as being without merit in explaining life forms and their history. Almost all who are against it are religious fundamentalists who take the Judeo-Christian Bible literally. For their particular religion, evolution is a false doctrine, but there are many major religions in America for whom evolution is no problem. For example, Quakers, Unitarians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Reform Jews, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox just to list some. Creationism, of which the quote author is an advocate, is an excellent religious solution to the contradiction between Evolution and the literal word of the Bible, but it is such terrible science, that it is not even considered science or taught in science curricula.
Richard John Santorum is an American politician, attorney and political commentator. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007 and was the Senate's third-ranking Republican from 2001 to 2007. Santorum ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, finishing second to Mitt Romney. In January 2017, he became a CNN senior political commentator.
