Update on Canada's Science Minister

LGF links a post on the Canadian Minster of Science called "Canadian Science Minister Update: Kinda." It is written by Phil Plaitt on the Discover blog. He writes:

Well, when asked the same question again, today he "clarified" his position:

“Of course I do,” he told guest host Jane Taber during an appearance on the CTV program Power Play. “But it is an irrelevant question.”

I’m calling shenanigans on him. Why? Because 1) he should have answered it in the first place — if, by his reasoning, the question was irrelevant yesterday, it still is today, and 2) it is an extremely relevant question, given that he was couching his answers yesterday in religious terms.

As I pointed out in my post yesterday, religion is irrelevant only if it doesn’t affect the job. But as we have seen over the past 8 years in the US, religion does indeed have a tendency to affect people’s decisions, especially, critically, if they are a creationist. Then it colors everything they do, including trying to overthrow the Constitution.

This is, perhaps, too harsh because there are many people who are religious for whom this kind of post would not pose a problem. Having said that, his point about the "flat earth"ness of many Christians in this country is well taken. The science community in this country is running a bit scared because of the huge PR machine that people like Ken Ham have going at megaphone levels. The fact that Goodyear is sort of speaking out of both sides of his mouth doesn't help things.