Jeff's Lunchbreak

Prompted by a recent political discussion with someone I know who's a big fan of Ben Carson, I've decided to take a closer look at this potential politician. For links to all of the entries in this series, go to the index.

I've written about Carson a few times before on this blog, for his opposition to marriage equality, his anti-science position in denying evolution (both covered here - Local University Invites Creationist to Give Commencement Address), and his mangled interpretation of the Establishment Clause and the separation of church and state in response to a minor controversy over Bibles in Navy hotel rooms (A Response to Ben Carson's Comments on Navy Bible Kerfuffle). With those three strikes against him, I wasn't all that interested in digging into his positions on other issues, but that discussion prompted me to do so. I figured that maybe by basing my impression of him on only three issues, I'd been being overly critical.

I went to his official website, RealBenCarson.com, where he puts links to articles he's written and had published elsewhere. To get a decent sampling of his opinions, I read each of the articles featured on the home page (at least the articles when I first went there - it's taken me a little while to put together this response, so he's put up more articles since then). While there were some points he made that I agreed with, I found myself in disagreement with him over many issues. I'd started to write up responses to the articles that I was going to send as an e-mail to my friend, but my responses were getting too long for an e-mail. So instead, I sent a shorter reply and decided to turn my responses into blog entries. In the coming weeks, I plan to post those entries as I complete them.

For today, I'll focus on just one issue, one of the first issues I'd ever heard about him and one that I've already discussed before - his rejection of evolution. There's a portion of an interview where he discusses evolution available from the Wayback Macine, Adventist Review - Evolution? No. Here's an example of Carson's abysmal understanding and rejection of evolution.

Even if you accept evolutionary theory--developing a more sophisticated organism in this theoretically "logical" fashion, then there should be a continuum of organisms. And why did evolution divert in so many directions--birds, fish, elephants, apes, humans--if there is some force evolving to the maximum? Why isn't everything a human--a superior human? Darwin specifically stated that his theory hung on the discovery of intermediate forms, and was sure that we would find them. More than a hundred years later we still haven't found them. Even the earliest fossils don't show such intermediates.

If you don't remember enough from high school biology to know why that's such a horrible statement, I wrote an article that addresses some of it, Local Church Misunderstands Evolution - Why Are There Still Apes?.

Here's another quote where he denies a separate area of science, the Big Bang.

So how could our incredibly organized universe come about as the result of a big bang? This flies in the face of the second law, which says it would be less organized as a result, not more! Scientists have to be consistent.

Carson's rejection of evolution is a huge red flag to me. First, there're the obvious reasons - evolution is one of the most well supported concepts in science, and it's been known of for over 150 years, so for a reasonably intelligent person to reject evolution must mean they're either ignorant of science, and/or willing to put ideology ahead of evidence. Ignorance can be cured with education, but putting ideology ahead of evidence is a huge problem for a political figure.

A perhaps less obvious problem, but which seems to be the case given Carson's answers, is arrogance. This comes in two ways - first, thinking that he knows more than the countless scientists and researchers who have devoted their careers to this topic (see the related entry, The Economy & Expertise ). The second is that he spoke so confidently about a subject about which he obviously knows so very little. In fact, this is my main issue with his rejection of evolution - not that he's merely ignorant of the science, but rather that he's so sure of himself when he's so obviously wrong. Elected officials don't need to know everything, but they do need to recognize the limits of their knowledge, and know when to defer to the experts in various fields.

(If you're interested, here's a degreed biologist's response to Carson's comments on evolution, showing just how misinformed those comments were - Afarensis - Stupid Creationist Quote of the Week: Ben Carson on Evolution.)

Anyway, from his articles and what I'd heard of Carson before, although I agree with him on some things, I find myself in disagreement with him over many, many other issues, and have seen a few red flags to make me question his credibility. I have no doubt he's a very talented surgeon, but his political views leave something to be desired.

In the coming weeks, I will post responses to his articles, and maybe a few other things if I get particularly ambitious.

Image Source: Christian Post, Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Update 2015-01-22: Added quotes from interview & slightly rearranged other portions to accommodate quotes.

Update 2015-02-10: Removed index from this page to create a stand-alone index page. Slightly reworded opening paragraph on this page to link to the index, and split it into two paragraphs.