Mike Pence is Not an Intelligent Man
I’ve made this point before, but one of the salient characteristics of the House GOP’s big “ideas guy” Mike Pence (R-IN) is that he’s pretty dumb. Watch this Hardball interview, for example, and wait about 90 seconds in when Chris Matthews asks Pence whether or not he believes in evolution:
Now the answer Pence gives is stupid and nonsensical. But sometimes a canny, clever politician says something that doesn’t make sense as part of his canny strategy. But watch Pence’s hesitation, his stalling for time, his JV tactic of re-stating the question. He doesn’t know off the top of his head whether or not he believes in evolution. He needs to stall and think it through. It’s pathetic.
Meanwhile, Satyam Khanna reminds us that Pence, along with noted buffoon Michele Bachmann (R-MN), will be crafting their caucus’ energy strategy.
55 Responses to “Mike Pence is Not an Intelligent Man”
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May 6th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I don’t know, it just looks like he’s afraid of the right-wing PC police to me.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:15 am
He doesn’t know off the top of his head whether or not he believes in evolution.
That’s not how I saw it. I saw it as he just didn’t want to declare whatever he actually believes about evolution.
By the way, it is almost comforting to think he believes in evolution but won’t say it because he is afraid of his base supporters. But it seemed to me it is equally possible he just doesn’t believe in evolution.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Obviously Pence wasn’t ready for a quick change in subject from “global warming” to evolution. Conservatives are just going to have to learn to reply that the conservative consensus holds evolution was God’s method of making the world.
Meanwhile I find it funny that rigorous science is discounted as a standard when discussing “warming/cooling/change”. This is just the religion of the left in the Church of What’s Happening Now.
BigY may not thing Pence is smart, but at least he’s intellectually honest. That’s more than I can say for quite a few here.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:23 am
He also says the science on global climate change is mixed (it isn’t) but he believes in clean coal technology because removing carbon dioxide is a positive thing. The only reason to remove carbon dioxide is to avoid global warming (climate change), it’s not accused of anything else. Why spend billions on carbon sequestering if it’s not a problem? I love it when they contradict themselves in the same sentence.
His, and his party’s, energy knowledge is pitiful.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Conservatives are just going to have to learn to reply that the conservative consensus holds evolution was God’s method of making the world.
Except that isn’t the “conservative consensus”, in that too many “conservatives” (aka members of the Republican base) reject that view.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:33 am
While I don’t doubt that Pence is an idiot, that clip didn’t look like a man who didn’t know whether or not he believed in evolution – it looked like a man who was caught between betraying the right-wing yahoos who’d elected him and coming off as an idiot.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Meanwhile I find it funny that rigorous science is discounted as a standard when discussing “warming/cooling/change”.
What does this sentence mean?
May 6th, 2009 at 9:42 am
This is your modern Republican party. The faster these people disappear from public life, the better for this world.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:43 am
It means that shooter242 is a denialist troll who needs to be ignored.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:43 am
“…I embrace the view that God created the heavens and the earth and the seas and all that’s in them…The means, Chris, that He used to do that, I can’t say….”
‘Can’t’ say, sir? Or *won’t* say?
I agree with Matt. A glib pol like Huckabee would have finessed this exchange and made Matthews look like a bully. Pence is as canny and clever as a labrador retriever playing shake the rag.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Re: The only reason to remove carbon dioxide is to avoid global warming (climate change), it’s not accused of anything else.
Well, I believe it may also be accused of affecting the acidity of the oceans. But in general, I agree.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:45 am
While I don’t doubt that Pence is an idiot, that clip didn’t look like a man who didn’t know whether or not he believed in evolution – it looked like a man who was caught between betraying the right-wing yahoos who’d elected him and coming off as an idiot.
Doesn’t much matter though, does it. That’s what he said; that’s how he votes.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Conservatives are just going to have to learn to reply that the conservative consensus holds evolution was God’s method of making the world.
Good luck with that.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Obviously Pence wasn’t ready for a quick change in subject from “global warming” to evolution.
Pence’s unreadiness for the quick change may be related to his dumbassery.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Well, I believe it may also be accused of affecting the acidity of the oceans. But in general, I agree.
Yes, and it’s as severe a threat to us as temperature change.
(Which is why the idea of an engineering fix, aimed solely at reducing temps, is such a Bad Idea.)
May 6th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I ain’t descended from no monkey dammit!!
May 6th, 2009 at 10:06 am
He’s wrong about stem cell research, too. The Obama administration didn’t “ignore” adult stem cell research, it simple stopped the Bush Administration policy of blocking human embryonic stem cell research. The data on adult stem cells doesn’t make human embryonic stem cell research unnecessary.
Pence is simply wrong about the science here.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:21 am
It is hard to get a man to admit something obvious when his job is dependent upon him not admitting it and trying to side-step around it.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Too painful to watch. This is incredibly. There are just about a hundred different glib answers out there, and Pence plays dumb.
This is just pathetic beyond belief. I, of all people, could have given a more effective answer than that.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:31 am
I think a lot of conservatives get really frustrated at the very notion that they have to take a stand or decide anything at all about the origins of human life on the planet.
I mean, it’s not like it’s an important question, like tax cuts, or bombing some brown people.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Ordinarily, I’d agree with Joe in the first comment. I’m sure there are plenty of elected Republican officials who believe in evolution, but whose fear of offending their own base would cause them to trip over a surprise question like that.
However, as a veteran Pence watcher, I can assure you that he comes off equally confused and ignorant on just about any subject whenever he loses the thread of his talking points. The man is as dumb as a sack of hammers. Compared to Pence, George W. Bush is a world-class scientific mind.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I don’t like the way Tweety asks him if he “believes” in science. Faith is belief, and science is not faith. You either acknowledge the fact in the scientific method, or you lie about it.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I love it when non-scientists try to debate science in order to create policy. I still cannot find one peer-reviewed scientific publication that refutes global warming.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Pence tried to straddle, as many do. The fact is, you can believe in God or in evolution– but not both.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Why can’t one believe that god created the universe and evolution?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Why can’t one believe that god created the universe and evolution?
There are lots of people who believe in what is sometimes called “theistic evolution”. In fact, that is Roman Catholic Church doctrine, as well as doctrine among several mainline Protestant churches, I believe the Eastern Orthodox Church, and so on.
The problem is that there are also lots of people who believe even theistic evolution is incompatible with their religious beliefs. And many of those people vote Republican.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Why can’t one believe that god created the universe and evolution?
Because the modern Republican party is held hostage by religious extremists who say you can’t.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Pence is as canny and clever as a labrador retriever playing shake the rag.
I thought his “Inherit the Wind” retort was pretty good, for what it’s worth.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
In support of # 11: Carbon dioxide is also blamed for a 0.1 decrease in ocean pH. Remember from high school this is a logarithmic scale of hydrogen ion concentration. In a recent study in PNAS (highly respected science & engineering journal) using model systems of clown fish, a pH of around 7.4 (do-nothing ocean acidification scenario) will prevent some aquatic life from finding a suitable habitat and not breeding with their relatives. After going to the National aquarium this winter, I think a save Nemo campaign could perhaps be more effective than big bad global warming.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Hector and Jeffrey Davis:
The ocean acidity issue is an adjunct of the climate change issue. Carbon dioxide is acidic and a higher atmospheric content causes more to dissolve in the oceans, which lowers the ocean’s pH (increases the acidity). Efforts to lower carbon dioxide emissions into the armosphere will diminish this effect.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Might we please start referring to this man as “Tuppence”?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Because evolution is inherently non-teleological; there’s no room for intent, even for God. You can say that God created man, or that God created evolution; but you can’t say that God created man through evolution because there was no way for God, at the beginning, to be sure he would get man out of it.
Maybe that’s consistent with your beliefs, I don’t know, but for most people “God” means “that big Creator in the sky who knows what’s going to happen before it does and has a plan.” A teleological God, in other words, which can’t even be consistent with evolution.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
The Obama administration didn’t “ignore” adult stem cell research, it simple stopped the Bush Administration policy of blocking human embryonic stem cell research.
FWIW, Bush never “blocked” ESCR – he allowed (for the the first time) federal funding for research, but only on existing lines. It doesn’t really matter, though, since there’s no evidence that any ESCR will ever create any useful treatments or do anything other than support the bio arm of the university -industrial complex.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Because evolution is inherently non-teleological; there’s no room for intent, even for God. You can say that God created man, or that God created evolution; but you can’t say that God created man through evolution because there was no way for God, at the beginning, to be sure he would get man out of it.
Chet is right in a way, but it’s really a lot simpler than that. Fundamentalists and literalists believe that God created each species separately; and that’s just flatly incompatible with evolutionary theory.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Re: The ocean acidity issue is an adjunct of the climate change issue. Carbon dioxide is acidic and a higher atmospheric content causes more to dissolve in the oceans, which lowers the ocean’s pH (increases the acidity). Efforts to lower carbon dioxide emissions into the armosphere will diminish this effect.
Well, yes, Mudge. The question though was originally whether rising temperatures is the only affect of increased [CO2] that we should be concerned about. I pointed out that even leaving temperature out of it, there are concerns with increasing acidity of the oceans.
Incidentally, I’ve heard it argued that the increasing acidity of the oceans could lead to degradation of coral reefs, and as coral reefs are a carbon sink, their breakdown could lead to more CO2 getting released into the atmosphere. A good case can be made that due to these kind of positive feedback events, the climate is well and truly f*cked beyond any possibility of repair in the medium term.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
evolution is inherently non-teleological
Neo-Darwinian evolution is inherently non-teleological, true – but one does not have to believe that the world is 6000 years old or that living things have not changed over time to dispute the mechanism proposed by neo-darwinians to account for those changes. The problem is, Darwinism is based on an a priori assumption of non-teleology – i.e., “We know that there is no purpose or design, even if it looks like there is, so any evidence that seems to point that way is simply stuff we haven’t yet found an explanation for.”
There are and always have been non-christian scientists who, while accepting the fact of evolution, question the darwinian mechanism. Once upon a time, it was even an opinion they could express publically. In these partisan times, however, anyone who doesn’t express fealty to Darwin is seen as being on the side of the “Fundamentalists who want to go bac kto the middle ages”, and expressing even the slightest doubts about untrammled wonder of Natrual Selection is enough to destroy your career – so not many do.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Pence is an ideas man, Matthew. I think he proved that with Fuck Mountain.
In all seriousness though, what a jackass.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Jimbo burbles:
“there’s no evidence that any ESCR will ever create any useful treatments or do anything other than support the bio arm of the university -industrial complex.”
There is at least as much evidence that ESCR well produce useful treatments as there is that any research will produce useful treatments.
Embryonic stem cells improve nerve repair and function:
http://stemcells.alphamedpress.org/cgi/reprint/26/5/1356.pdf
Transplanted human embryonic stem cells can treat diabetic mice:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/health/research/21stem.html?ref=health
There are two examples from a quick google search, Jimmy. You could find dozens more if you weren’t just a liar. And a stupid, lazy liar at that.
Smarter trolls, please.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
No, that’s exactly wrong. Pence is smart but intellectually dishonest. He knows full well that evolution is plenty well supported by evidence, but he has to feign skepticism for his constituency. Incredibly bad for his party as a whole, but very good for him personally if he wants to get re-elected.
Matt should post a poll of constituents of the remaining Republican senators and representatives to see how popular they are among their own electorate.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Jimbo, don’t forget that GWB vetoed legislation expanding stem cell research. That counts as blocking, you know.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
@JImbo
How do you develop a hypothesis about the design and purpose of an organism or species? How do you test for the presence or absence of design or purpose? What are the units of purpose and design?
May 6th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I don’t know – how do you quantify the difference between Mt. Rushmore and the Old Man of the Mountain? How do tell the difference between static and an encrypted signal?
I’m serious about not knowing, BTW – these seem like things that are, in principle, possible to do, but how do you draw a line? I mean, we know that Mt. Rushmore was designed because we know who did it. But say we land on Mars and find a similarly detailed, chiseled sculpture of non-human lokking faces? If it’s just a few well-placed rocks, you can put it down to seeing something that isn’t there. But past a certain level of detail, one would have to reasonably conclude it was an artifact. But when? I dunno. But it seems unreasonable to say, before you’ve even looked at it, “This cannot be an artifact, therefore it must be the result of random geological processes”. Isn’t it?
May 6th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
But it seems unreasonable to say, before you’ve even looked at it, “This cannot be an artifact, therefore it must be the result of random geological processes”. Isn’t it?
The prior probability of something being produced by a very particular sort of cause (in this case, some ill-defined intelligent maker) is rightly set at a low level (not zero, but low) when we have no previous evidence to support the existence of the relevant sort of cause. In other words, it usually makes sense to start your causal investigation with possible causes known to exist before leaping to completely hypothetical causes.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
The ocean acidity issue is an adjunct of the climate change issue. Carbon dioxide is acidic and a higher atmospheric content causes more to dissolve in the oceans, which lowers the ocean’s pH (increases the acidity). Efforts to lower carbon dioxide emissions into the armosphere will diminish this effect.
My point was about people who want to embrace an engineering solution — spritzing tons of SO2 into the atmosphere, for example — rather than a solution based upon reducing greenhouse gases. As long as we keep huge amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, we’re going to have a serious problem on our hands. Atmospheric temperature isn’t the only issue.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
@Jimbo
We’re switching to geology now? I’m now on much less firm ground.
We have to be careful, because as humans we tend to see patterns, even when they aren’t there. Which is why we conflate things like the Old Man of the Mountains and Mount Rushmore. If you can’t make a prediction and test it, you aren’t really asking a scientific question.
So if you say “well, if we look at enough biological structures (or geological formations), we’ll see patterns” you are right. Because people see patterns; sometimes where they exist and sometimes where they don’t. And patterns can be used to derive information. If you say “we’ll see patterns AND those patterns come from some agency outside the natural forces that we can know”, you are no longer asking a scientific question. You are now asking a philosophical question, which science is ill equipped to deal with. Because you can’t falsify whether this outside agency is responsible for those patterns.
For your martian rock structure, you might say “well, if this was purposefully made, then there should be more of them. Signs of a civilization, artifacts of tools, etc.” If these other things don’t exist, then you are looking at a random structure.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Is there the political will to lower our CO2 production rate fast enough to make a difference? How do we draw down the anthropogenic CO2 that is already there? Is a carbon neutral society possible at current population? Geoengineering might be the worst idea except for all the others.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
You are now asking a philosophical question, which science is ill equipped to deal with. Because you can’t falsify whether this outside agency is responsible for those patterns.
Exactly.
For your martian rock structure, you might say “well, if this was purposefully made, then there should be more of them. Signs of a civilization, artifacts of tools, etc.” If these other things don’t exist, then you are looking at a random structure.
Really? So you find a sculpted rockface, with a finely detailed scene of some sort of creatures standing around, maybe an accurate astronomical chart, and some regular markings that repeat in patterns and look for all the world like letters, and you would respond “Well, there’s only one, so it’s just some random structure.” As I said, past a certain point, the probability just becomes vanishingly small.
And note, when it comes to biology, I’m not even postulating and sort of Designer. There could be, as Micheal Denton believes, some sort of deeper naturalistic, law-based evolutionary imperatives that allow for biological forms to “self assemble”. Or Rupert Sheldrake could be right, and there could exist “morphic fields” that have “memory” and evolve through a sort of “resonance”. But there seems to be this philosophical adherence to a completely random, non-teleological view of evolution that goes way beyond any empirically provable facts, and anyone who doesn’t buy it it labeled a “Creationist”, and deemed “unscientific”, no matter what eveidence they may have.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Right. And that ain’t science. I’m still not seeing any evidence for direction or design in biology. This is philosophy, which I find uninteresting, which is probably why I’m a scientist, rather than a philosopher or lawyer.
Again: I don’t care whether or not you are postulating a designer. How is the idea of some naturalistic laws incompatible with evolution? Denton doesn’t seem to think so. Is the metabolic theory of ecology incompatible with evolution?
How can you fairly test Sheldrake’s theories? Thats been a problem in the past, you know. What predictions do they make?
As for the rock face on mars, you seem to have gone from
to this:
Those aren’t the same cases. And this is a hypothetical, not an actual example, but okay, before straw-me writes this perfect sculpture off as a “one-off random structure”: Have I checked Mars carefully for more? Looked underground? Have any been buried by dust? Can I determine the age of this carving? In short, is there no other evidence for an indigenous martian society that created it? Okay, if not evidence of “intelligent life” (capable of creating regular carvings), hell, are there interesting bacteria biofilms living on it that have used quorum sensing to dissolve the rock in these patterns to channel nutrients or water?
Okay, so all of the above are no. I’m left with this obviously planned carving that without a shadow of a doubt is he probability is randomly small in your hypothetical.
Then I have to assume some agency external to Mars. But only after I’ve eliminated all other possibilities.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Matthews hit on the question that could unravel the Right’s non-position on Creationism but did not press it home. Get specific. Ask them their position on dinosaurs.
Johnny Q. Public cannot think in terms of tens of thousands of years, let alone asking him to think it terms of millions or billions of years. Evolution and Creation are just vague concepts of the same thing. But Johnny Q. has seen Jurassic Park.
There are only two theories on dinosaurs you can subscribe to if you are a fundamental Creationist. One, dinosaurs bones were planted by the devil to lead mankind astray. Two, dinosaurs roamed the earth within the last six or seven thousands years and interacted with humans.
Ask politicians in detail which of these two theories they support and why; then watch the Republican Party crash and burn.
I have been watching the Left for three decades lose this simple intellectual struggle because they make it too complex for the average American. Hammer home the dinosaur question. Make the Right defend in detail either one of their two ludicrous positions. I guarantee Johnny Q. Public will figure it out and come to the conclusion fundamental Creationists are lunatics.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
1. There seems to be come confusion here between theism and deism. A deist (e.g. Albert Einstein) believes that the universe and the laws of physics were initiated by some sort of intelligence (e.g. god) and thereafter that intelligence withdrew never to be heard from again. A theist (e.g biologist Ken Miller) believes that the universe and the laws of physics were initiated by god who subsequently intervenes occasionally (e.g. Red Sea parts, virgin birth and resurrection of Joshua of Nazareth).
2. Mr. Jimbo is evidently unaware of how science operates. Science is best described as methodological naturalism in which it is assumed that the world can be understood by natural explanations. Supernatural explanations are not part of science because they are unconstrained (e.g. god can do anything). As an example, Issac Newton developed the laws of motion and the inverse square law of gravity. However, although they explained the orbits of the planets around the sun, he was unable to determine the gravitational effects of each of the planets on the others and hence could not probe that the solar system was was stable over long periods of time. Since the general belief at the time was that the solar system was stable, he assumed that every once in a while, god intervened to preserve that stability. This is a supernatural explanation. About 100 years later, the French mathematician Laplace developed a method called perturbation theory which allowed him to compute the gravitational effects of each of the planets on the others and proved that the solar system was stable over long periods of time. Famously, when he presented his treatise on the subject to Napoleon, the latter, after scanning it quickly asked Laplace what part god might play. Laplace responded that he had no need of that hypothesis.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
There certainly was a “pregnant pause” when Chris M. asked Pence about evolution. But Pence certainly found his voice when holding forth on Good Old King Ronnie Reagan — my god, one gets the impression Pence would fellate him if he were still alive.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I think the comments would give a seriously better conversation if we all ignored Al, Mixner, shooter, Richard Hack, Don Williams, fostert, Hector, SLC, and so on. We dont get anywhere talking to those people.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
The really interesting thing is the manner in which climate alarmists defend the failing CO2=AGW with the same sort of faith that Bible literalists defend their own vision of creation. The one won’t critically examine the fossil record, and the other won’t critically examine the temperature record, which is cooling.
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May 7th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Why can’t one believe that god created the universe and evolution?
Because evolution is inherently non-teleological; there’s no room for intent, even for God. You can say that God created man, or that God created evolution; but you can’t say that God created man through evolution because there was no way for God, at the beginning, to be sure he would get man out of it.
Maybe that’s consistent with your beliefs, I don’t know, but for most people “God” means “that big Creator in the sky who knows what’s going to happen before it does and has a plan.” A teleological God, in other words, which can’t even be consistent with evolution.
You don’t appear to know the difference between “room” and “need”. God is entirely superfluous to the system; but for precisely that reason, there’s no way to rule out a divine input.
As to the idea that a deity couldn’t be sure of the results of an evolutionary process, I suggest googling the term “omniscient”.
Also, what SLC said.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
This is just special pleading for God.
Omniescent implies that God knows all that can be known, not things that it would be impossible to know.
Most of this, of course, is simply redefining “God” to address objections to the consequences of the last definition.