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Welcome back to the United States House of Representatives quest to choose a Speaker. Now in week 4.
The current Republican Candidate is Mike Johnson (R-LA). There hasn't been much by way of public dissent from Republicans on Johnson (at least that I've seen) so he may be someone that has a real chance. Frankly I'd be a little surprised that Reps opposed to Jordan would be fine with Johnson given their similarities. There has been little public dissent and allegedly was not much dissent in the Republican Conference after he was selected. First vote expected to start shortly.
ETA:
By a vote of 220-209 Mike Johnson becomes the new Speaker of the House on the first ballot.
A literal young-earth creationist is now Speaker of the House. I'm surprised that we don't have more people upset about this on a rationalist forum. That he was elected should be a pretty damning indictment of the US Republican party---anyone here voting for them better have a really strong benefit in mind that is worth this crazy of a trade-off.
I'm just going to abstract the speaker's powers as significant influence over which bills get passed in Congress---we can assume that the speaker being one person instead of another pushes these towards that speaker's particular idiosyncratic beliefs. I hope this simplification is acceptable.
So first, what practical impact does it have if the US government is passing laws significantly closer to a young-earth creationist's belief than otherwise? Most directly, it screws up science funding and educational curricula pretty badly. Science funding would be pushed away from geology, astronomy, and certain parts of biology---we'll be less able to understand where oil/ores are, how volcanoes and earthquakes work, frameworks for understanding examples of metabolic pathways in various organisms and all the drug discovery, etc. they can be used for, how ecosystems develop and adapt, whatever future high-energy physics we need astronomical observations instead of particle accelerator data to develop/the technologies that come from this, etc.---I am sure an actual expert in these areas could give a million more examples. For educational curriculum, teaching people wrong beliefs this foundational to understanding the world can horribly warp their ability to think logically and correctly. It's actively lowering the sanity waterline.
Beyond that, young-earth creationism is just the most obvious symptom of a bigger problem Mike Johnson has in how he forms beliefs about the world---massively overweighting evidence from one particular 2000-year-old book. That 2000-year-old book has all kinds of horrific and/or impractical policy prescriptions that could do untold harm if people took them without question. Just in the realm of biology again, stopping funding of stem-cell research the last time fundamentalist Christians had power in the 2000's was devastating in how many medical technologies were delayed---we might have had a cure for diabetes by now. How much other important medical research might some sort of fundamentalist "bible-based" ethics stop? In hopes of being more agreeable to everyone, I'm not even talking about more culture-war things, which as the comments below mention, can feel much more impactful.
Most broadly, it's just scary to have someone in power delusional enough to make a mistake like believing young-earth creationism after being given a modern education. What other insane things might they do? It's worse than if someone who constantly talks about how they were abducted by aliens were elected speaker---that's at least a harder belief to refute than creationism.
Okay, I'm gonna put my foot down here. What us religious zealot bigots opposed was embryonic stem cell research. Adult stem cells and other means of deriving stem cells, such as from umbilical cords? No problem.
One Ozy Brennan formerly of this parish, noted religious zealot conservative bigot, actually mentioned this in passing in a round-up links post:
The article in question, from that nest of Bible-thumpers, MIT:
This is what makes me so fucking irritated with the entire topic, if you will pardon the swearing. Embryonic stem cell research was never about "a cure for diabetes" or the rest of the feel-good soundbites fed to the media, all those were for the purpose of convincing the public and hence the politicians holding the purse strings for funding that this was what should and must be funded now. Think Christopher Reeve, God rest the man, having the hope of walking again being held out to him and thus becoming a public face of advocacy for it.
What embryonic stem cell research was about was the fascinating topic of deep diving into human development; how the fertilised cells turn into differentiated organs, which go to make up the complex system that is a human being. Sure, there might be insight along the way into "ah, that's how this problem results, when this sequence is screwed-up" about illness and disorders, but it was never going to produce "a cure for X in five to ten years". And the scientists knew that, but also knew about playing the funding game where you promise "if you fund this, then the miracles will happen on schedule".
Us religious bigot zealots popped up to go "so hey, maybe don't create and then destroy human embryos for this research?" which scientists didn't like, because they don't like being told what to do. So the battle was on in the media and public perception, and the distinction between objection to embryonic stem cells and stem cell research in general was elided and then blotted out: the flat story was "the Bible-bashers want to kill all research which means no cures for your disease which we totally promise we can do in five years if you let us".
Then here we are, twenty-five years later, and the story is now "Oh, well, we don't really need embryonic stem cells for the research and actually they're more trouble than they're worth*, and it is going to take this long or longer to get to any cures at all". Just like all the other great projects - remember sequencing the human genome, and how this was going to mean individually tailored to your personal genetics medical treatments? Yeah, biology is complicated, turns out.
But meanwhile people like OP still have the story in their head that "we'd have the cure for diabetes by now if it weren't for those meddling religious types!" in the same way as that infamous graph about "we'd have colonies at Alpha Centauri by now were it not for the Christian Dark Ages".
*If I'm remembering correctly, they had a lot of trouble with embryonic cells encouraged to develop into specific tissues turning cancerous, as it were, and instead creating tumours; they were too totipotent. Adult stem cells were less trouble because they were 'pre-programmed', so to speak, and were much more useful in developing therapies.
EDIT: Coincidentally, from a comment on the new post up over at Astral Codex Ten:
So there's someone who was working with embryonic cells, and still it turns out that Biology Hard.
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His belief in creationism would have gotten me hot and bothered in the 2000s. In the time since, I have watched his 'betters' - people with no attachment to millenia-old superstitions and fueled only by the love of science and compassion for others - quite possibly exceed him in the strangeness of their beliefs and the ruination in their consequences.
I'm an unrepetant atheist who has nonetheless softened towards religion, if only because the notion I once held that "less religion = more good ideas can flourish" has been badly beaten (pending status on survival) and because I have been shown being non-religious isn't an antidote to stupid thinking. And no Young Earth Creationist of status is going to give me any lip about my white privilege or grease the wheels for a child's gender transition.*
I reckon it's a two-way street, but I feel like there's this endemic failure for some people to model the minds of people who are totally unphased by this, especially those of the 'smarty pants' variety typically seen here. 'Man walked with dinosaurs' is ridiculous to me, and it has practically nothing to do with any given culture war item today. And even if I may personally scoff at his beliefs, I'm betting he may be a more reliable ally against things I also oppose, even if our reasoning may diverge at times.
*Some indicators the speaker may not be 100% reliable on that front. But as to the question why his creationism isn't a deal-breaker or remotely a topic of my concern, the above still stands.
More or less nails my feelings. I would give anything to go back to refighting battles over abortion and gay marriage. Current battles about the state secretly transitioning my child in public school, and then confiscating them for sterilization and mutilation are horrifying beyond all belief. It's the sort of existential evil you used to see from unabashedly malicious faction is sci-fi novels.
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Since you seem to know more about this than I do, how much control or influence does congress have over research grants? I mean unless congress decides to not fund geology or astronomy in any form, my impression is that grants are given by an independent committee of other scientists with minimal interference.
I am not sure what the exact breakdown is but I know a lot of grants for science funding run through the National Science Foundation which is funded by Congress and Congress has previously used its influence to bar funding for certain topics.
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I'm really not seeing it. It's really not any worse than various progressive ideas that are currently being pushed by academia, and which progressives are actually succesfutlly pushing through legislature.
Exactly. Someone who believes the Earth was created in 7 days, 6000 years ago is substantially less dangerous (and, indeed, I would argue is substantially less delusional) than someone who believes whitey's oppression of minorities is the source of disparate racial outcomes.
EDIT: Apparently the new speaker believes both, so, heh, touché.
As a former obnoxious internet atheist who, unlike many such former obnoxious internet atheists, doesn't particularly regret that phase of my life or think I was particularly wrong about it, I find myself agreeing with this. On the one hand, YEC is absurd and idiotic, and it truly boggles the mind that an intelligent adult with a modern education could even entertain the idea. And someone buying into the whole oppression narrative while being intelligent is understandable in a way someone buying into YEC isn't, because the former is the dominant hegemonic narrative that gets reinforced in almost every sphere of public life.
And this results in that giving political power to someone who believes in YEC certainly seems far less dangerous than someone who believes in that oppression narrative. YEC is almost fully marginalized now, basically only brought up to be the punchlines of jokes. The idea that someone's belief in YEC could have some truly meaningful and negative consequences for the policies they put in place seems rather absurd given that marginalization of YEC. On the other hand, again, that oppression narrative is the dominant one in our society - if not the dominant one, certainly one of the top contenders. It has the backing of many massive political, economic, social, and even religious institutions, ready to steamroll whatever stands in the way of the policy changes they want to implement. These policy changes tend to have direct, measurable, noticeable effects on people's everyday lives. Someone who buys into this narrative is clearly much more capable of doing harm with their power. Hence, more dangerous.
Of course, things can and will likely change. The pendulum and all that. I'm just reminded of an essay I read back in 2002 or 2003 when some neocon was outlining his opposition to Bush in some policy, saying that when you're driving on a narrow bridge and you see the steering wheel is turned all the way to the right, the correct thing to do isn't to put the steering wheel back to the center, it's to sharply turn it to the left.
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Less delusional how? The way I see it, it should be blindingly obvious that however small the influence of whitey's oppression on racial disparities is, it is larger than 6000 years compared to 4 billion. Not to mention the whole god thing.
Affirmative action means Whitey's oppression is not small, it's negative. Young Earth creationists at least have the valence of time correct!
I've seen the idea that affirmative action does keep minorities down by giving them positions but not the skills to grow. Some of those people, I assume, were even serious about it.
"Act white/the correct type of black and you can too get into Harvard" and all that.
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Strong evidence for "Republicans are deliberately throwing the election" theory, isn't it?
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