Politicians and science
ID'ers and regular Repoofs are having a fairly productive discussion about how politicians should answer hot-button "scientific" questions. The discussers seem to be conflating two categories that need to be separate. In some controversies, your firm belief morally and logically drives you to take certain policy steps. In others, your firm belief is interesting but doesn't drive anything.

Taking the four hottest at the moment, in descending order:

(1) "Global warming". Belief requires action. If you believe the repeatedly and consistently disproved CO2 religion, you are morally and logically required to destroy civilization. If you prefer to go with facts, you are obliged to oppose the destruction of civilization.

(2) Immunization. Belief requires action. If you believe 200 years of consistent life-saving proof, you must require vaccination for some contagious diseases. Not every vaccination is worth the risk. Flu vaccines are often ineffective, so shouldn't be mandatory. But for the Big Ones like measles and polio, the proof is very old and very solid, and the risk is vastly smaller than the benefit.

(3) Evolution. Belief has no effect on life or policy. You can do the exact same actual science or actual medical work no matter how you believe. If you're working with DNA, it doesn't matter if you think God made it or Random made it. The DNA is still there and still responds to your breeding or replication in the same way. Even the handful of theorists who construct theories based on evolution for a living don't need to believe in the theory they're analyzing. In fact they'd be better theorists if they didn't believe. [That's supposed to be the whole point of science!]

(4) GMOs. This one is just dumb. Not even worth categorizing. GMOs are already pretty much universal, and the alleged problems aren't showing up. I suspect this argument is basically over.

  ¶ 5:59 PM