Christine O’Donnell vs. Science

The world is laughing at Delaware. Thanks, Delaware Republicans! Christine O’Donnell once “debated” a biology professor about evolution.

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL, Concerned Women for America: Well, as the senator from Tennessee mentioned, evolution is a theory and it’s exactly that. There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put — that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it’s merely a theory. But creation —

Whoops. Technically, evolution is a theory in the scientific-nomenclature sense, but it’s so widely accepted by every legitimate scientist in the world that it is considered fact. Not enough evidence? Tests with inconsistent results? It sounds like she’s talking about rumors that Lady Gaga has a penis, not a basic foundation of biology. What’s with all the dubiousness?

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL: Now, he said that it’s based on fact. I just want to point out a couple things. First of all, they use carbon dating, as an example, to prove that something was millions of years old. Well, we have the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens and the carbon dating test that they used then would have to then prove that these were hundreds of millions of years younger, when what happened was they had the exact same results on the fossils and canyons that they did the tests on that were supposedly 100 millions of years old. And it’s the kind of inconsistent tests like this that they’re basing their ‘facts’ on.

We Googled this and apparently it refers to some tests run by a guy at the Institute for Creation Research. Definitely the kind of stuff on which you want to pin your refutation of evolution. Well, at least O’Donnell didn’t claim that there is just as much or more evidence for creationism as there is for evolution, right?

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL: Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.

I hate it when people misuse the word theory. It doesn’t mean “wild ass guess.” It means that the concept has been tested, re-tested, can make predictions and can stand the test of time. The theory of evolution only underpins the whole of modern biology. Also, fossils aren’t “carbon dated.” The sample has to contain carbon for that. Rocks are generally tested for age by potassium-argon dating.