I remember liking the guy some fifteen-ish years ago. Either he’s changed, or I’m just paying more attention now. He’s become an antisemite, hanging out with really unsavory white supremecists, and now comes this attack on “Darwinism”.
Darwinism claims, for example, that matter evolved from non-matter — i.e., something from nothing — that life evolved from non-life; that, through natural selection, rudimentary forms evolved into more complex forms; and that men are descended from animals or apes.
Now, all of this is unproven theory. And as the Darwinists have never been able to create matter out of non-matter or life out of non-life, or extract from the fossil record the “missing links” between species, what they are asking is that we accept it all on faith.
Liar, liar, pants on fire. Note how Buchanan constructs a straw man here. First he uses the term “Darwinism” to make it sound like a political philosophy instead of what it is: the theory of evolution. Then he makes all sorts of wild-eyed claims about what “Darwinism” says. For one thing, evolution is completely silent on the origins of life. It only explains speciation. Then he spins madly off into some sort of inebriated metaphysics talking about how “matter evolved from non-matter”. Huh? I don’t even know what that sentence is supposed to mean. If you can find one life scientist making such an absurd claim let me know.
The only part he gets sort of right is “rudimentary forms” evolving into more complex ones. If the fossil record is clear on one thing it’s that. But that old “men descended from apes” business is tiresome. That is not what evolution says. What is known now beyond a shadow of a doubt is that we share a common ancestor. But in Buchanan’s world it’s apparently possible for your cousin to be your ancestor. I’d hate to look up his family tree.
Then it’s on to the “unproven theory” canard. What this shows is that Buchanan either doesn’t have a clue, or chooses to lie about, the meaning of the word “theory” in the context of “the theory of evolution”. It doesn’t mean a guess. It means it’s an accepted rule which can consistently and successfully be used to make predictions about the natural world. If the theory of evolution is “unproved”, so is the “round earth theory”. And spare us, Pat, the goalpost moving of transitional fossils. The claim (which I used to believe) that there are huge “gaps” in the record is a lie. The fact is that every time a new transitional species is found the creationists claim there are two new gaps! I’d love to know what they think about the fossil record of the Picasso Fish. No doubt they see three gaps instead of a continuum. The fact is that absolutely nothing in biology makes any sense without the theory of evolution. And every day more evidence is piled on.
There is none so blind as he who will not see.
Buchanan has a lot of gall to say science wants us to accept evolution on faith. It is creationism which absolutely requires faith. So why does he think faith is a bad thing when it’s required by his opponent and a good thing when he requires it? Science doesn’t require faith in anything. It requires observation, skepticism, and honesty.
The Pat Buchanan I once thought I admired was an honest man who called ’em as he saw ’em. Well, I’m calling this one as I see it: Pat Buchanan is an antisemitic bone-head; not to be admired.