You Got Religion In My Science, Again

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Wednesday December 10, 2008 · 5:40 PM PST

2008/12/10 · 17:40

The Philly Inquirer has a great article about outgoing EPA chief Stephen L. Johnson. This part caught my eye:

Johnson majored in biology. At Taylor, that includes discussion of creationism. Taylor biology professor Timothy Burkholder, who was Johnson's adviser, said, "We would adhere to the view that God is the creator of all things and in charge of our lives, and I think Steve recognizes that and did from the beginning."

Asked about this, Johnson declined to express his views on the evolution-creation question.

"It's not a clean-cut division," the career EPA scientist said. "If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there's theistic or God-controlled evolution and there's variations on all those themes."

If you're at a loss as to what the hell that means, join the club. If he's saying that evolution is consistent with theism, i.e., theistic evolution, no objections here. But it could also be interpreted as a tacit endorsement of creationism of ... just about any vague kind. Maybe that's the whole point? He's intentionally trying to straddle a razor sharp fence between gobs of contempt from the antiscience brigades formerly known as the GOP base, and still avoid ridicule from his peers who surely know better. Either way, won't it be nice when we don't have to try and discern from scattered-brained phrases and fragments if our senior science agency appointees are poorly informed flakes, or just cynically exploiting the folks they purposely misinformed.

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You Got Religion In My Science, Again

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