Sarah Palin - The Debate

Ok then! On the Right of this debate we have none other than Melanie Phillips, declaring her admiration and support for Republican VP Sarah Palin:

A Star is Born

The woman is a natural. Watch her performance last night here -- and you'll see why the left is in such a panic.

Middle America has found its champion: someone who embodies its values and makes it proud to hold them. She has pulled off something that the left assumed was as likely a development as the sun rising in the west: she makes conservatism attractive, optimistic and fun. She is totally authentic, the real deal: she turns the values of small-town America that she so proudly embodies into a lethal boomerang against the sneering elitists who scorn them. The repercussions will cross the Atlantic: British Tories who have tried to reinvent conservatism as social liberalism may well be sucking their teeth if Sarah Palin actually makes it to the White House.

Well okay, say her detractors, so she’s a good performer -- but she’s still way out there in fruitcake-land because she’s a creationist. Well, if she is I’d like to see the evidence -- because so far all I’ve seen is one statement by her which falls far short of supporting creationism, plus enormous confusion and ignorance among commentators about what creationism actually is. As far as I can see, all she has ever said on the subject, as reported in the Anchorage Daily News two years ago, is that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in schools. The following day she explained that all she had meant by that was that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms: ‘I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum’.

She would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum. She simply didn’t think that any views should be excluded on the basis of religious or scientific opinion. It seemed that she had never even thought much about creationism. She was simply expressing a liberal view about the flow of ideas.

But here’s where the confusion among commentators kicks in. Palin is a Christian, which means she believes that the world had a Creator. She shares that belief with other Christians along with Jews and Muslims the world over. Unless one takes the view that all religious belief is certifiable, there is nothing remotely odd about a person of faith believing in God. Indeed, one might say this is a prerequisite (unless one happens to belong to the Church of England). But various commentators have committed the howler of assuming that belief in a Creator is creationism. Not so. Creationism is very specifically the belief that the world was literally created in six days. Millions of believers in God agree that this is absurd and irrational.

Then there is the further confusion – fomented in large measure by the astoundingly ignorant assertions made by lawyers and judges in the various US court cases over the teaching of creationism in American schools – that creationism is the same thing as Intelligent Design. It is not. Intelligent Design simply holds that life could not have originated spontaneously, but must have been at source the product of some kind of purposeful force. It does not deny evolution, rather the claim that evolution somehow spontaneously created itself. It is a view held by growing numbers of scientists, several of great distinction, and arises out of the very complexity of life that science has uncovered. Whether or not this is a well-founded theory it cannot be argued that, like creationism, it stands in opposition to science and reason. Yet the furore over Sarah Palin has persistently elided both creationism and ID with each other and with her actual belief in a Creator.

Maybe she is a creationist – but so far it’s just another smear."

And on the centre Left here is Oliver Kamm, no Palin fan, disagreeing with Melanie Phillips on more or less everything:

"I'm sorry to write yet again on this subject. But before moving on, I'll comment on a relevant and enthusiastic post about Sarah Palin, entitled "A star is born", by the Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips on her Spectator blog. And before doing that, I'll say a word about the author herself.

I know, like and respect Melanie. She has shown a good deal of courage in expounding her views on, among other things, the threat of radical Islam - an issue of immense importance on which she is essentially right, and about which she has been writing for a long time. I'm very much in disagreement, however, with her view that "if liberal values and democracy are to be defended, their Christian roots have to be vigorously defended, upheld and reasserted". On the contrary, one of the most vital principles of liberalism is the secularist insistence, codified in Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786, that there be no religious test for public office.

Christianity has proved compatible with literally any ideology, even in recent history: consider the racist justifications for apartheid offered by the Dutch Reformed Church; the Social Gospel preached by the Baptist reformer Walter Rauschenbusch; or the strong Tory pro-appeasement sentiments of Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1930s. I'm not concerned in public affairs with people's beliefs about first and last things, but only with whether they accept the implict social contract on which a free society depends. Moderate religion, whether or not you find its doctrines credible, accommodates itself to secular education and secular government, and is thereby a matter of private conscience.

And here we come to the issue of Melanie's post. Melanie believes that Sarah Palin is the victim of a smear campaign to suggest that she is a biblical Creationist. For my part, I'm not convinced - because the relevant data are not in the public realm, as far as I can see - that Governor Palin, whatever her faith, has made her accommodation with the secular principles that are integral to American goverment. The reason I'm not convinced is that she is on record, in public debate for an elected post, as stating that Creationism should be taught alongside evolutionary biology. This is not disputed by Melanie.

I've said nothing about whether Ms Palin is herself a Creationist; I don't know whether she is or not. But if she believes that religious dogma belongs in science education - possibly for a non-religious principle, such as not offending the sensibilities of believers - then her position is illiberal and must be opposed. To raise this question is not a smear, as Melanie believes. It's an important issue of public policy. And because Melanie has certainly and demonstrably misunderstood both the science and the pseudoscience in question, I hope she will reconsider her views."