{"id":5278,"date":"2011-01-30T17:35:28","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T17:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5278"},"modified":"2011-01-30T17:35:28","modified_gmt":"2011-01-30T17:35:28","slug":"monkey-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/monkey-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Monkey Business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/planetoftheapes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/planetoftheapes-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"planetoftheapes\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-5298\" \/><\/a>The self-righteousness oozing out of Bill Maher on the clip from his show linked to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2011_01\/027759.php\">here<\/a> by the <em>Washington Monthly\u2019s <\/em>Steve Benen was neither a new phenomenon nor pleasant to watch. On the other hand, the comments from Republican congressman Jack Kingston were low comedy:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I believe I came from God, not from a monkey\u2026.If it happened over millions and millions of years, there should be lots of fossil evidence.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good lord (so to speak).<\/p>\n<p>Possibly more revealing than Kingston\u2019s difficulties with science are the difficulties that he has in expressing them, particularly his insistence that he believes in \u201cadaptation\u201d. There was also his (faulty) assumption that the <em>National Review<\/em> writer on the panel would bail him out. <\/p>\n<p>The former might suggest (yes, I\u2019m being an optimist) that the congressman does sort-of-believe in evolution after all, the latter that he believes anti-evolutionism has now become part of the standard right-wing package. That could explain why he might defend creationism in terms traditionalist enough (the monkey business) to satisfy any litmus test, while preserving enough intellectual honesty to seem a little hesitant about doing so. <\/p>\n<p>Then again maybe he just doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about. That wouldn\u2019t be a first for the political class \u2013 and it won\u2019t be the last. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The self-righteousness oozing out of Bill Maher on the clip from his show linked to here by the Washington Monthly\u2019s Steve Benen was neither a new phenomenon nor pleasant to watch. On the other hand, the comments from Republican congressman &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/monkey-business\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[702,551,121,363,703],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5278"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5300,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions\/5300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}