Since the election earlier in the month we've heard increased chatter from Republicans about the future role Florida Senator Marco Rubio can play for the party: putting a Hispanic face on the GOP's otherwise batshit crazy and unpopular policies. These folks still don't get that it's not the GOP's messaging or the skin color of its candidates that is the problem. And an equality huge problem for the GOP continues to be the party's slavish pandering to and ass kissing of the Christofascists. The majority of Americans do not want their lives run by those who still cling to Neolithic creation myths and want to police other peoples bedrooms and bodies. A piece in Forbes looks at Rubio's recent failure to reject the Christofascists - Rubio did everything but drop his pants and bend over for them - and embarking on the same road that led Mitt Romney to kill whatever chances he might have had of winning the White House. If one wants to be leader of the world's sole super power, science and objective reality cannot be flushed down the toilet in order to please religious extremists. Here are column highlights:
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who many political observers think has a strong shot to be a 2016 Presidential candidate, just finished a lengthy interview with GQ that you can read here. One thing that struck my interest here, as someone who often reports on science, was Rubio’s answer when he was asked the question, “How old do you think the Earth is.”
In response, Rubio told GQ that, “I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all.
[L]arge parts of the economy absolutely depend on scientists being right about either the age of the Universe or the laws of the Universe that allow scientists to determine its age. For example, astronomers recently discovered a galaxy that is over 13 billion light years away from Earth.
Marco Rubio’s Republican colleague Representative Paul Broun, who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology, recently stated that it was his belief that the Universe is only 9,000 years old. Well, if Broun is right and physicists are wrong, then we have a real problem.
That means that the fundamental physics underlying the Internet, DVDs, laser surgery, and many many more critical parts of the economy are based on bad science. The consequences of that could be drastic, given our dependence on optics for our economic growth.
Here’s an even more disturbing thought – scientists currently believe that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old because radioactive substances decay at generally stable rates. . . . . However, if the Earth is only 9,000 years old, then radioactive decay rates are unstable and subject to rapid acceleration under completely unknown circumstances. This poses an enormous danger to the country’s nuclear power plants, which could undergo an unanticipated meltdown at any time due to currently unpredictable circumstances. Likewise, accelerated decay could lead to the detonation of our nuclear weapons, and cause injuries and death to people undergoing radioactive treatments in hospitals. Any of these circumstances would obviously have a large economic impact.
If the Earth is really 9,000 years old, as Paul Broun believes and Rubio is willing to remain ignorant about, it becomes imperative to shut down our nuclear plants and dismantle our nuclear stockpiles now until such time as scientists are able to ascertain what circumstances exist that could cause deadly acceleration of radioactive decay and determine how to prevent it from happening.
If the Earth is 9,000 years old, then virtually the entire construct of modern science is simply wrong. Not only that, most of the technology that we rely on most likely wouldn’t work – as they’re dependent on science that operates on the same physical laws that demonstrate the age of the universe.
Now, this doesn’t mean that our representatives to the Congress and to the Senate should be scientific experts. But if they hold ideas about the world around us that are fundamentally at odds with scientific evidence, then that will ultimately infringe on their ability to make reasoned judgments about a host of issues where the economy touches technology. And that could end up harming the economy as a whole.
Rubio and other political prostitutes in the GOP don't get to have it both ways. Either they embrace reality and science and kick the Christofascists to the curb or they will continue down the path to increasing irrelevance and be viewed with growing contempt and fear by those of us who don't fear knowledge and modernity. So far, Rubio has failed the test to even hold a seat in the Senate.
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