c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) President George W. Bush created a stir this month when he let drop to a group of Texas reporters that local schools should be able to teach creationism _ er, the other “side” of evolution.

“Both sides ought to be properly taught,” said Bush, according to an unofficial transcript of the Aug. 1 interview posted by washingtonpost.com. “… You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.”

Now, on one level, Bush’s view that creationism is science should surprise no one.

He said virtually the same thing while campaigning for president six years ago.

“I’d make it a goal to make sure that local folks got to make the decision as to whether or not they said creationism has been a part of our history and whether or not people ought to be exposed to different theories as to how the world was formed,” Bush said in October 1999, as quoted by the Associated Press.

Given court rulings that religious concepts ought not be forced down the throats of public-school kids, the preferred term of art these days is “intelligent design,” not creationism. Apparently the courts have not yet figured out that’s also code for God’s design. (What other higher intelligence, according to ID proponents, could be responsible for such miraculous, complex designs as human beings?)

Some states, however, don’t even need to use code words anymore, since they now couch the authorization to teach creationism within the idea that local school curricula may critically challenge the theory of evolution.

Understandably, the idea that God had a hand in creating us is a very broad one. It is a bedrock of most major religions as well as of Judeo-Christian thought.

Yet there is nothing about evolution that disproves the existence of God. It attacks no one’s core faith to teach fact-based science that still leaves open a path to the ultimate creator. Science, in some senses, even validates a higher being who entrusted us with the ability to remake our world, as well as our understanding of it.

By contrast, it is impossible to test intelligent design unless God comes down and shows us how he did it, so it’s not a science that can be tested or taught. It’s an article of faith. It belongs in church or religion class, not in the biological sciences. Most people intrinsically recognize that.

What’s scary is that the president of the United States does not.

What’s scary is that the commander in chief in time of war could think so nonempirically, so fuzzily that he cannot discern the difference between his core faith about how man arose, that derives from his heart and his certainty in the primacy of God, and the world’s most time-tested and thoroughly investigated theory on the origin of the species.

What’s scary is that at the same time he was dragging up the creationism canard, the president was proving unable to rally popular backing for the Iraq war by fleshing out our reasons for remaining in Iraq, or being able to point to real goalposts and coherent strategies. He just trotted out the same old bromides.

Bush says we will stand down when the Iraqis stand up, failing to mention when that might be.

He told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention that we had to attack Iraq because the bad guys attacked us _ once again not bothering to note Iraq had no hand in Sept. 11. He talked about how it’s war over there so no one will attack here _ implying, wrongly, that such offensives can inoculate the homeland against terrorist outrage.

Perhaps Bush talks mush because it’s just too politically costly to admit his mistakes _ remember how he could not cite even one personal error in the 2004 presidential debates _ or to acknowledge how deeply disastrous the Iraq catastrophe will be should we have to pull out, leaving a wasteland of terrorist opportunists behind, looking to get their hands on Iraq’s oil wealth and nuclear know-how.

Yet what if he can’t see that clearly? What if he doesn’t realize that by attacking Iraq we handed that wasteland to our enemies on a silver platter?

What if Bush talks mush because his mind is mushy, eschewing facts for wishful thinking, faith and the flawed notion that leadership entails shows of strength _ “pre-emptive war” _ and forceful talk about “bring ’em on” rather than measured progress and pragmatism?

For all their faults, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon knew when to fold ’em. The scary thing is that creation-pushing George W. Bush may not.

MO/PH END SULLIVAN

(Elizabeth Sullivan is foreign affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)