Slate’s Daniel Eng­ber is upset.  Peo­ple are mak­ing fun of Mar­co Rubio’s “I’m not a sci­en­tist, man” response to a ques­tion about the age of the earth, and he wants to insist that “Will­ful igno­rance of sci­ence is a bipar­ti­san val­ue.”  As evi­dence for this claim, he con­trasts Rubio:

Q: How old do you think the Earth is?
A: I’m not a sci­en­tist, man. I can tell you what record­ed his­to­ry says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dis­pute amongst the­olo­gians and I think it has noth­ing to do with the gross domes­tic prod­uct or eco­nom­ic growth of the Unit­ed States. I think the age of the uni­verse has zero to do with how our econ­o­my is going to grow. I’m not a sci­en­tist. I don’t think I’m qual­i­fied to answer a ques­tion like that. At the end of the day, I think there are mul­ti­ple the­o­ries out there on how the uni­verse was cre­at­ed and I think this is a coun­try where peo­ple should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to teach them all. I think par­ents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what sci­ence says. Whether the Earth was cre­at­ed in 7 days, or 7 actu­al eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.

with 2008’s can­di­date Oba­ma, from a speech at Pen­nyl­va­ni­a’s Mes­si­ah Col­lege in 2008:

Q: Sen­a­tor, if one of your daugh­ters asked you—and maybe they already have—“Daddy, did god real­ly cre­ate the world in 6 days?,” what would you say?
A: What I’ve said to them is that I believe that God cre­at­ed the uni­verse and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we under­stand it … it may not be 24-hour days, and that’s what I believe. I know there’s always a debate between those who read the Bible lit­er­al­ly and those who don’t, and I think it’s a legit­i­mate debate with­in the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty of which I’m a part. My belief is that the sto­ry that the Bible tells about God cre­at­ing this mag­nif­i­cent Earth on which we live—that is essen­tial­ly true, that is fun­da­men­tal­ly true. Now, whether it hap­pened exact­ly as we might under­stand it read­ing the text of the Bible: That, I don’t pre­sume to know.

Eng­ber thinks these two state­ments are “exact­ly in agree­ment.” He thinks: “Both sen­a­tors refuse to give an hon­est answer to the ques­tion, “They both go so far as to dis­qual­i­fy them­selves from even pro­nounc­ing an opin­ion,” and “they both pro­fess con­fu­sion over whether the Bible should be tak­en literally.”

He’s wrong.

The most impor­tant dif­fer­ence is the ques­tion being asked.  Rubio was asked about the age of the earth and waf­fled; Oba­ma was asked about his reli­gious beliefs and was forth­right.  Rubio jumped from a geol­o­gy ques­tion to the diver­gent views of the­olo­gians, an odd choice. Oba­ma answered a the­o­log­i­cal ques­tion by cit­ing the­ol­o­gy and declin­ing to wade into a the­o­log­i­cal dis­pute, a wise choice.

Rubio chose to make an empir­i­cal ques­tion (in a sec­u­lar forum) into a reli­gious ques­tion; Oba­ma treat­ed a reli­gious ques­tion (at a reli­gious forum) as a reli­gious ques­tion.  To ignore that essen­tial dif­fer­ence in pur­suit of a “both sides do it” nar­ra­tive is just silly. 

Drag­ging Fran­cis Collins into the mat­ter is dou­bly sil­ly.  Eng­ber holds up NIH direc­tor Collins to bol­ster his claim that sci­ence lit­er­a­cy does­n’t mat­ter for pol­i­cy­mak­ing. Yet there’s no actu­al argu­ment offered to tie Fran­cis Collins’s belief mir­a­cles occur – that nat­ur­al law can be sus­pend­ed by a super­nat­ur­al deity – to the claim about sci­ence lit­er­a­cy. Sure­ly Eng­ber isn’t claim­ing that Collins isn’t sci­ence lit­er­ate, or that sci­ence lit­er­a­cy is irrel­e­vant to the NIH direc­tor’s work. 

If you asked Fran­cis Collins how old the earth is, he’d say it’s 4.54 bil­lion years old, because he’s a sci­en­tist and he can remem­ber num­bers like that out to 2 dec­i­mal points.  If you asked Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, he might round it off to four and a half bil­lion years old.  But nei­ther of them would fum­ble the way Rubio did.

How do we know how Oba­ma would han­dle the ques­tion?  Here’s can­di­date Oba­ma’s con­ver­sa­tion with a Penn­syl­va­nia news­pa­per only 2 weeks before the forum Eng­ber cites:

What’s your atti­tude regard­ing the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion in pub­lic schools?

A: “I’m a Chris­t­ian, and I believe in par­ents being able to pro­vide chil­dren with reli­gious instruc­tion with­out inter­fer­ence from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach world­ly knowl­edge and sci­ence. I believe in evo­lu­tion, and I believe there’s a dif­fer­ence between sci­ence and faith. That doesn’t make faith any less impor­tant than sci­ence. It just means they’re two dif­fer­ent things. And I think it’s a mis­take to try to cloud the teach­ing of sci­ence with the­o­ries that frankly don’t hold up to sci­en­tif­ic inquiry.”

Con­trast that with Rubio.  Rubio endors­es the cre­ation­ist strat­e­gy of let­ting the­ol­o­gy over­ride sci­ence, of pre­sent­ing the­o­log­i­cal views along­side sci­ence in pub­lic school sci­ence class­es. Rubio hedges on the sci­ence, refus­ing to take a firm stance on what sci­ence is, let alone what he knows about it.  Oba­ma takes a firm stance in sup­port of sci­ence, dis­tin­guish­ing sci­ence from reli­gion and treat­ing both top­ics respect­ful­ly.  He makes clear that sci­ence – and only sci­ence – belongs in pub­lic school sci­ence class­es, and dis­miss­es the pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic claims of those who attack evo­lu­tion.  There’s sim­ply no com­par­i­son.