Tuesday, March 17, 2009 6:01 PM
Tonight, we're going to party like it's 4004 BC
asteele
Just yesterday, I wrote: "Harper, an evangelical Christian, is extremely quiet about his profound faith. Having been stung badly in the loss in 2004 in part over impressions of Harper as a social conservative, the PM clearly avoids any characterization of his government in that manner."
Today, the screaming headline "Minister won't confirm believe in evolution" put that faith back in the window.
Religion is not necessarily a problem for the Harper government. In fact, politicians from Tony Blair to Paul Martin Jr. to Tommy Douglas possessed a powerful faith in a creator and enjoyed considerable success at the polls.
Even in secular Canada, religion is not a veto over public office. But certain streams of conservative religion do spark a backlash among subsets of voters.
An Ipsos Reid survey in 2006, after the evangelical Harper won an election in which he closed speeches "God bless, Canada," found that just 63 per cent of Canadians would not vote for a party leader who was evangelical. That is down from 80 per cent a decade before. When almost four in 10 voters won't even listen to the words you say because of your church, you know that's a problem.
Andrew Grenville at Ipsos attributes this not to Harper himself, but to the example of politicians in the United States like George Bush who stated they made policy decisions on issues from stem cell research to foreign policy based on religious beliefs.
Lori Beaman, a Canada Research Chair at Sick Kids, had a good point on the mix of science and religion: "Religion and science are not necessarily incompatible, nor does the holding of religious beliefs negate one's belief in the benefits and wonders of science."
The challenge for Gary Goodyear, the science minister who isn't sure about the science, is that his portfolio encounters issues like reproductive technology, queer studies, AIDS research, and medical ethics where his religion is bound to guide his thinking.
And his thinking guides the purse strings of the nation, determining the direction of scientific inquiry and the limits of research.
Mr. Goodyear's religion does not automatically preclude his active and enthusiastic championing of Canada's scientific community. But his thinking on this issue is worth a public discussion.
Because if I was a biologist working in Canada, I deserve to know that my minister doesn't believe in the foundation theory of my field.
