Brownback on Evolution

I posted on Brownback's op-ed yesterday over at dotCommonweal (I didn't cross-post because I thought it might not be sufficiently legal).  I'm glad to say that Rick and I are largely on the same page regarding the op-ed (thogh likely not regarding Brownback more generally).

In defense of Brownback, Michael says:

Does he believe that God used a macroevolutionary process to get us to where we are today? 

In short, Brownback doesn't fail to follow the evidence where it leads, he refuses at this point to enter that debate.  Or, at least that is my reading of it.

But surely this is the debate that people care about, right?  I hesitate to even use the word "debate" in this context, because for people who accept mainstream standards of scientific inquiry, there is no real debate about the reality of so-called macroevolution, as John Paul II ackwnowledged a decade ago.  Brownback sidesteps the main issue by creating a false dichotomy between an aggressively athiest, scientistic materialism and microevolution, as if those were the only options worth discussing.  That strikes me as either obtuse or disingenuous, but he parses his words carefully enough to make me favor the latter reading.  So I guess I am in complete agreement with Rick that Brownback was trying to have his cake (i.e., seem like a rational sort of fellow to the readers of the NY Times by seeming to approve of some form of evolution) and eat it too (not alienate his base in the evangelical, intelligent design community).  By quietly limiting his approval to microevolution (one of the central tenets of the intelligent design position) without actually mentioning intelligent design, and by dodging the most important question, he was hoping to sneak a fast one by people who are not plugged into to the code-words of the intelligent design discussion.