Polish MEP calls for ‘scholarly debate’ on evolution:
‘I am a scientist, I am a geneticist, my specialty is population genetics and I reject the theory of evolution on the basis of the field of science I represent. I find that in many fields of science there are scientists who reject the theory of evolution because in their fields they also find evidence against the theory.’ says MEP Maciej Giertych.
I won’t go through the blow-by-blow. Only two points:
1) It exhausts my creativity how one could reject evolution because of population genetics, seeing as how population genetics as a field emerged in large part as a formalization of Darwinian evolutionary theory assuming a Mendelian model of genetics. To me this is kind of like claiming that the calculus led one to the conclusion that Newtonian Mechanics was a false theory. It might not be logically false, but there is something really peculiar about it all.
2) Poland is of course a Roman Catholic nation, and European Catholicism has had little issue at the commanding heights with the general hypothesis of evolution (the recent flirtation with Intelligent Design I view cautiously, and mostly an issue of bad philosophical communication). Nevertheless, in nations where populist Catholicism is powerful Creationism seems to emerge. To me this illustrates the reality that Creationism exists as a populist inclination invariant of the elite religious tradition.
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