That only 2 Miss USA contestants correctly asserted that evolution should unequivocally be taught as science in public schools is deplorable. I don't know whether I'm angrier as an attorney who swore to uphold the Constitution and its separation of search and state (as well as its explicit promotion of arts and sciences), as a Bachelor or Arts in Biology, or as a Catholic. For what it's worth, I don't think the Miss USA contestants are so dumb as to not take evolution seriously. In fact most of them thought it ought to be taught.
The problem is that their answers were equivocal. Part of the blame for this lies in the way many of them are coached to answer controversial questions. They're taught to exercise diplomacy, to merit both sides of a particular question before substantiating one answer and refuting the other. What many of them, for whatever reason, are not taught- a thing which lawyers are trained to do immediately upon recognizing such a question- is that when a question is not controversial at all, to select the most logical argument and pound away. You don't equivocate at all.
Here's the thing about the evolution debate. It's not a debate. It's not controversial at all. Controversial means it can be argued either way. One thing I get so sick of, is when I'm watching a sporting event, and a big play- one that almost surely determines the outcome of the contest- occurs, and it occurs on a close call (a touchdown catch where the receiver has to drag his toes on the sideline, for example). Except, close as the play may have been, 10 objective people out of 10 can correctly call the play. What I get sick of, is when some moron will inevitably refer to this as a controversial call. I hate this. It's not controversial at all. Controversial is when you have 10 people and they're divided 6-4 or 5-5 on what the call should be.
Likewise, evolution vs. creation science is not a debate. So I have a problem calling it one. The former is most clearly scientific while the latter is most clearly religious. Science is developing natural explanations for otherwise inexplicable phenomena; religion is using spiritual or paranormal explanations for the same. The problem with intelligent design as science, thus, is that the explanation it proffers is inherently not natural. Likewise, no one would ever confuse evolution with a religion. This is the problem with "teaching both sides": creationism isn't the other side of Darwinism. (By the way, I have no problem whatsoever with teaching science's critiques of evolution, or teaching other scientific theories on speciation; let me reiterate that my problem is with teaching something that is not science, while passing it off as the same.) It's a false debate.
It's like having a debate over whether you believe in gravity (which, by the way, is also a "theory"- theories are things that have evidentiary support, lend to testing, and have yet to be disproven) or God Pushing Objects Down-ism. Perhaps God does push things down, but that isn't science. Therefore, if you're in a beauty pageant, and you even engage in the debate of a question where debate is not meritorious, you deserve to lose. You have to be able to recognize when to be diplomatic and equivocal and when to call out a loaded question.
