Who are some major conservatives that believe in evolution?
What the hell? Do you think that rejection of evolution is one of the tenets of conservatism? As far as I know, ALL serious conservatives believe in evolution except for the kook fringe religious fundamentalists. I know this conservative believes in evolution, although I probably don’t count as “major.”
No I don’t think that way. I’m conservative myself and a theistic evolutionist.
That may be true although some conservative politicians especially those running for office have attempted to skirt the issue in order to win fundie votes.
Well, you may have a point, if you look to politicians courting votes. But most of my friends are conservatives, and NONE of them disbelieve in evolution.
You really need to specify country.
Anyway, John McCain said he did, and he just lost the US Presidential race. Pretty big conservative.
And this is why anecdotal evidence is worthless.
Human Events considers The Origin of Species to be one of the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th century.
I’ve been meaning to read The Volokh Conspiracy more, as it is written by a reality-based conservative blogger. He accepts natural selection, but doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem with politicians who do not. Larry Arnhart wrote Darwinian Conservatism, whose argument has the familiar but peculiar structure that Darwin’s thinking is ok because, well actually it’s quite [del]Marxist[/del] [del]“Progressive”[/del] conservative.
A lot do. To look at famous conservative commentators, George Will does, William F. Buckley seemed to believe in theistic evolution.
There was an article back in 2005, in the New Republic, where Ben Adler asked a number of conservative thinkers what they thought about evolution and the teaching of intelligent design in school. The actual article isn’t on the New Republic website anymore (or at least I can’t figure out how to get to it), but I found a copy on William Dembski’s blog. Dembski is a big advocate of intelligent design, and I don’t advocate the rest of the things the blog says, but the article seems to have been copied verbatim.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/conservatives-on-evolution-and-id/
Cross post: I riffed off some other blog posts on the 2005 TNR article that Captain Amazing mentioned.
Conservatives on evolution
I would characterize the answers as follows.
Grover Norquist: An evasive no.
Pat Buchanan: No
Charles Krauthammer: Yes, of course
David Frum: Yes
Another cite for same article:
William Kristol, The Weekly Standard: “I don’t discuss personal opinions.”
Stephen Moore: “I believe in parts of it but I think there are holes in the evolutionary theory.”
Jonah Goldberg: Sure
William Buckley: Yes
John Tierney, reporter for NYT, science I believe: Yes, loth to say much on intelligent design.
James Taranto: yes
Norman Podhoretz: “It’s impossible to answer that question with a simple yes or no.”
Richard Brookhiser: Yes
Tucker Carlson: “It’s plausible to me that God designed evolution; I don’t know why that’s outside the realm. It’s not in my view.”
Ramesh Ponnuru: Yes
David Brooks: Yes, but doesn’t want to comment on intelligent design.
Oh and Sam Brownback, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Rep. Tom Tancredo all raised their hand during a Republican Presidential debate indicating that they did not believe in evolution. http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/the-first-republican-presidential-debate-three/
Probably has a lot to do with how they were raised.
I grew up going to rather strict baptist private schools, and the only time I’d ever even heard of evolution was to let everyone know that it was a bunch of lies. So, when I later went to public school where evolution was somewhat briefly mentioned in freshman bio, I had to stop myself from throwing a righteous fit. I wrote “theory!” at the top of every page of notes/assignments/tests having to do with evolution. I’d been indoctrinated not to disagree with it, but to actively despise it. I shut it out of my head.
I didn’t really find out what evolution really was until after high school and I rented a BBC miniseries about the history of it.
The version of it I’d been fed was that, SUPPOSEDLY, everything is just spontaneously mutating. Dinosaurs mutated into chickens mutated into elephants mutated into monkeys mutated into people. Nothing about natural selection, more like everything was following some spontaneous path of change. Yeah, right. I think a lot of anti-evolution Christians think this is what evolution is supposed to be.
When I found out what it really was, it was probably the biggest “Oooohhhhhhhh!” moment of my life.
Although, this happened while I was in the midst of converting to atheism. Whether one was a component or cause of another I can’t really say. I don’t think learning evolution makes you not be a Christian anymore, but for me it was a process of finding out that most of the stuff I’d been fed all my life was inaccurate, and trying to handle all of it.
I think a lot of Christian dogma actively preaches against and vilifies evolution, so for a conservative/christian to believe in evolution he’d have to come to that decision on its own.
That said, the Catholic Church has made its peace with science for a while.
Well, the Catholic Church had been wrong enough times that they took the hint.
Modern Christianity hasn’t yet been as famously wrong in a denial of science.
Objectivists. Pro-evolution and pro-atheism (though they don’t like to be called conservatives).
Yes, once was apparently enough.
Thats absolutely not true,only 39% of Americans accept evolution, and those who do tend to be educated non-church goers, which is a Democratic/liberal demographic. I would guestimate that a significant portion of conservatives are evolution deniers.
A little more searching produces this:
60%! So, yes, its not just the kooks, but the mainstream conservative movement in all its parts. Denying evolution is a mainstream conservative view. Hell, all the cons running for president in 2008 confessed to this position, perhaps with the exception of one.
They are more libertarian then conservative (although they don’t like being called Libertarians either).
No! Three of the ten Republican candidates in 2007 said they were creationist. Also according to this a plurality of Americans believe in evolution: [http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent design.aspx](http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent design.aspx):
Got a homework assignment, do you? 
In general, we aren’t supposed to help you with homework. 
It ain’t a homework assignment. I mean seriously who would ask for homework “Please find out the names of prominent conservatives who believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution.”