It's good to have friends. In this case, specifically, Jason Rosenhouse, who has taken on a few of my critics for me.
The gist is this: Some conservatives, in response to my arguments in The Republican War on Science, have been trying to make it look as though "intelligent design" is not so heavily backed by the GOP. For instance, Rosenhouse cites Adam Keiper in National Review, who has argued that "Conservatives are not politically unified in, not especially motivated by, and in a great many cases simply annoyed at, the intelligent-design debate." He also cites Kevin Shapiro in Commentary, who argues that
Intelligent Design is an unscientific theory, but the Republican party has hardly made a systematic effort to promote it; the effort has instead been spearheaded by private institutions with only vague ties to some conservative politicians.
In response, Rosenhouse shows that although we should be glad that some conservative intellectuals feel uneasy about this, the Republican Party cannot easily distance itself from ID: 1) Scores of prominent Republicans have spoken in favor of ID, but only one (that I'm aware of) has spoken negatively about it; 2) the Discovery Institute, the center of ID activity, is politically of a Republican tilt, as I explained in my book; 3) at the state level, all all pro-ID initiatives have come from Republicans as well. But most importantly, Rosenhouse notes that all of this is exactly what we would expect to see, given that ID creationism is fundamental to the Christian Right, and the Christian Right is a core part of the Republican political base. This is undeniable, and it explains why support for ID is predominantly a Republican political phenomenon.
Now, does this mean that no Democrat has ever said anything troubling about evolution? No. I can think of Al Gore's remarks on this subject during the 2000 election campaign, for example. But there's no serious comparison between the two sides of the aisle on this question.
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In a journal submission I am working on based on national survey data I collected in spring 2005, using confirmatory factor analysis, we identify two latent variables that tap separate but related dimensions of conservatism. The first we define as Christian conservatism and the second Partisan conservatism. In the SEM model, the strongest support for teaching alternatives to evolution in science class derives from respondents who score high on Christian conservatism, though Partisan conservatism remains significant but weaker in its influence after all controls including education, age, income, race, gender, knowledge of scientific consensus, news attentiveness, and opinion cues encountered at church. We will be presenting the data at the upcoming AAAS meetings and the American Association for Public Opinion Research meetings in Montreal in May.
Chris-
You claim that "support for ID is predominantly a Republican political phenomenon." This is over stated when compared to actual data on political affiliations and perspectives on ID. The reality is far more complex than political affiliation alone can explain.
Have a look at the data summarized here from a poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.:
link
Of the 53% of Democrats who believe that humans evolved over time, fully 20% believe that evolution was "guided by a supreme being." For Republicans the numbers are 40% and 18% respectively. In other words, given the survey's margin of error, the exact same percentage of Democrats as Republicans believe in "Intelligent Design" (ID). (Republicans do outnumber Democratic Creationists, 51% to 38%.)
When the filter is ideology, there is a similar parity. The poll looked at four "ideological" categories, Conservative Republicans, Moderate/Liberal Republicans, Conservative/Moderate Democrats, and Liberal Democrats. Of these four categories, the percentage of each that believe in ID are respectively 19%, 19%, 22%, 17%, just about within the margin of error. There are more Conservative Republican Creationists than Liberal Democratic Creationists (59% to 29%), but in the middle there are just about no differences: 37% Moderate/Liberal Republican Creationists, 41% Conservative/Moderate Democrat Creationists. I'm not surprised to see where there are more Creationists, but I am surprised at the relative numbers in each category.
There are some other interesting findings in the data, such as similar support across party lines for "teaching creationism instead of evolution" (R = 43%, D = 37%) and "teaching creationism along with evolution" (R = 67%, D = 61%). And there are some pronounced differences according to party identification, such as "who should have primary responsibility for deciding how evolution is taught" (Teachers? R = 19%, D = 35%; Parents? R = 51%, D = 35%). But even here the differences are not as large as one might think (or, at least as much as I would have thought).
You seem to be conflating debate among the most extreme, elite political perspectives in the U.S. with the perspectives held by the vast majority of people, either Democrats or Republicans. Have a look at Morris Fiorina, "What Culture War?" at:
http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/fiorina.html
Do you have, somewhere, a list of links to ALL reviews of your book, be it in newspapers, magazines, blogs, radio, etc?
Intelligent Design is an unscientific theory, but the Republican party has hardly made a systematic effort to promote it
Nice admission, maybe Shapiro should pass the word on to, oh, the editors of Commentary.
During the 2000 primary, the only runner who made a statement unfavorable toward ID was Republican Arlen Spector. On the other hand, practically every news item I see that deals with ID and politicians (especially politicians promoting bills to mandate teaching Creationism) identifies the politicians as "(R-[name of state])." Former Dover school board members? Kansas state school board wingnuts? President of the US? All Republicans.
In a journal submission I am working on based on national survey data I collected in spring 2005, using confirmatory factor analysis, we identify two latent variables that tap separate but related dimensions of conservatism. The first we define as Christian conservatism and the second Partisan conservatism. In the SEM model, the strongest support for teaching alternatives to evolution in science class derives from respondents who score high on Christian conservatism, though Partisan conservatism remains significant but weaker in its influence after all controls including education, age, income, race, gender, knowledge of scientific consensus, news attentiveness, and opinion cues encountered at church. We will be presenting the data at the upcoming AAAS meetings and the American Association for Public Opinion Research meetings in Montreal in May.
The point is which Party officials endorse and encourage IDC, not what the population believes. The population at large is preety woefully uneducated about science. As Roger states, approximately same proportions of both Party members believe in some kind of creationism, yet the two parties have a very distinct response to this. Democratic Party has no inclination to humor some of their consituents by endorcing IDC - in the contrary, they are mostly working on imporoving science education and on protecting scientific research and teahcing from the fundamentalists. On the other hand the GOP panders to their creationists, because that is their base. The Dems would like to eductae their members, the GOP wants to get re-elected and everything goes.
I should use Preview and check my spelling before posting. Also, where is my coffee?
Mr. Pielke,
I believe you are making an error when you state:
"Of the 53% of Democrats who believe that humans evolved over time, fully 20% believe that evolution was "guided by a supreme being." For Republicans the numbers are 40% and 18% respectively. In other words, given the survey's margin of error, the exact same percentage of Democrats as Republicans believe in "Intelligent Design" (ID)."
Theistic evolution is NOT the same as ID.
Believing that a supreme being guided human evolution is not synonymous with believing in ID. Probably all theistic evolutionists believe that God guided human evolution in some sense, but they do not necessarily believe that there exists empirical evidence of this, much less that this belief qualifies as a scientific theory that must be taught in schools. And the ID movement, for its part, does not like theistic evolutionists at all.
...Fully 20% [of Democrats] believe that evolution was "guided by a supreme being." For Republicans the numbers are 40% and 18% respectively. In other words, given the survey's margin of error, the exact same percentage of Democrats as Republicans believe in "Intelligent Design" (ID).
This assumes that "guided by a supreme being" means the same thing as Intelligent Design. I don't believe that's true. Theology can be pretty sophisticated. You're making the same assumption that Chris made earlier, that if you're a Christian and not a Deist you must believe in Intelligent Design. I don't think this is true. What about Pantheists and Panentheists? (Too little room to go into these terms here--Wikipedia could probably fill in the details.) I'm not saying that all theists are this sophisticated. But it's probably safe to say that not all of your 20% believe that evolution was "guided by a supreme being" in a way that made evolution look like an episode of Bewitched...
Republicans are more willing to pander to the ignorance and worst instincts of the masses. That's why they keep winning.
To expand, for Mr. Pielke's benefit, the above similar comments of GCT, Reuland and Winsor:
The unique core claim of ID is not "God-guided" but rather that ID is a *scientific theory*. Its secondary claim (necessary fallback because that core is false) is "Teach the Controversy" which in effect means that various criticisms are powerful, that evolutionary biology is a sort of conspiracy, knowable natural (or what appear indistinguishable from natural) processes are insufficient, etc.
Mr. Pielke's mistaken conflation demonstrates that the ID people, professional marketers to the Big Tent that they are, chose their slogan wisely - to seduce sympathy from the "God-guided evolution" folk by equivocation, while painting opponents as monolithically hostile to theism.
For everyone's benefit, but especially Pielke Jr.'s, here's the NCSE's Creation/Evolution continuum.
link
Depending on the meaning of "guided," the survey question would include everything from theistic evolutionism backwards, and potentially even deism.
I'm actually quite surprised the figure is so low, it suggests that American non-theists are significantly undercounted.
All-
Interesting comments all. The basic implication here is that the D's interpret the survey question to mean "theistic evolution" and the R's to mean ID. Not sure I buy that, particularly given the full scope of the survey, such as the part of the data that follows:
"There are some other interesting findings in the data, such as similar support across party lines for "teaching creationism instead of evolution" (R = 43%, D = 37%) and "teaching creationism along with evolution" (R = 67%, D = 61%)."
Any explainations for this part of the survey results? No confusion about terms here I would think.
I'm not sure that one could even say that D's interpret the survey to mean "theistic evolution" while R's think "ID". I would say that it is inconclusive on that score. My comment was simply meant to point out that theistic evolution is not synonymous with ID.
I think, from the masses, we do see similar numbers, but that's not what Chris is arguing. He's arguing that we see more support from the Republican heirarchy than the Democrats and the Republicans use (or rather misuse) ID in order to suit their own means and keep their religious fundamental base in their corner.