What he said

Blogger Tom Meyer on those reponses to the evolution question in the GOP debate.

"What is crucial in the next election — and if we learn nothing else from the president's bungling of the Iraq War, let it be this — is that we must have a president who can consistently dismiss preconceived beliefs if he finds they are contradicted by reality. By stating that they don't believe in the foundational theory of biology, these three men are admitting they are incapable of doing that."

[Derb] He has a point, though it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me personally.

On the whole, same here. However, I do weight it fairly heavily. This follows this post, in which Derbyshire says, among other things:

The issue of whether Darwinism—or any other large theory about the world—is good for conservatism, or for liberalism, or for me, or for you, or for society at large, should alway be secondary to: Is it true? The truth/falsehood, on the one hand, and the utility/inutility to any particular social program, on the other, are independent of each other. .... Reality, as someone once said, is the stuff that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. Conservatives should be realists. Wishful thinking is for children and lefties. Big, fat, solid, scientific consensuses that have survived decades of inquiry, like the one that exists on evolution, give us our clearest insights into reality.