McWherter: There’s a place for talking about evolution in our pub­lic schools. We can blend sci­ence and religion, and the two do not have to con­tra­dict each other.

Ram­sey: We do need to teach intel­li­gent design in schools. “I’m a Christian.”

Wamp: Man is not the cen­ter of the uni­verse: God is. If going to teach evo­lu­tion, it bet­ter be counter-acted by teach­ing of intel­li­gent design.

Haslam: I believe in an intel­li­gent designer. Also believe we can teach sci­ence in schools. “That doesn’t scare me at all.”

This video of Rand Paul, Kentucky’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate, has been making the rounds online. It was taken earlier this month at a conference for Christian homeschoolers, where Paul was asked when he became a Christian (which he answers) and how old he thinks the earth is, to which he responds:

I’m gonna pass on the age of the earth. I think I’m just gonna have to pass on that one.

Why not answer? Apparently, Paul doesn’t think the question is relevant, later saying:

I’m not running for minister. I’m more than willing to stand up and say I’m a Christian, but I don’t think I have to go into every detail of what my religious beliefs are. If I were going to be the minister of their church, they’d have a right to ask me that.

But what Paul believes about the age of the earth is hardly a “detail.” For one thing, we know that how people answer that question is a “strong predictor” of what they think and know about evolution. And as Barbara Morrill of the Daily Kos points out:

The voters of Kentucky might want to know if Paul thinks that dinosaurs walked the earth with humans.

Cook’s name had been out there for months … so there has been plenty of time for the self-described international religious freedom community to react. Reaction has been pretty uniform—respect for Cook’s work in building a New York City-based mega-ministry and in her interest in public service, but concern for the lack of any expertise in international religious freedom and human rights work, or foreign policy work in general.

Mark Silk, a professor of religion in public life at Trinity College, points out:

Her predecessors as Ambassador-at-Large were, in the Clinton Administration, Robert A. Seiple, who came to the job having served as president for 11 years of World Vision, Inc., the huge Christian relief and development agency. In the Bush administration, it was John V. Hanford, who had spent 14 years working on international religious issues for Sen. Richard Lugar and who also played a critical role in drafting the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, which established the Ambassador-at-Large position.

The most disappointing part: Byrne, a former member of the State Board of Education, has responded to the attack by denying he believes in evolution. As he writes on his Web site:

As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God. As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books. Those who attack me have distorted, twisted and misrepresented my comments and are spewing utter lies to the people of this state.

What is really interesting is that religion and religious perspectives didn’t motivate people to participate directly on the stem cell issue. People were more interested in the social and economic aspects of the stem cell issue.

These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation: that is that we look out for one another, that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper. In the wealthiest nation on earth right now, we are neglecting to live up to that call.

Steven Waldman, co-founder and editor in chief of Beliefnet, thinks the nomination is a “culture war statement”:

To me, Mr. Collins is not just a scientific leader, he’s a Christian role model. He shows that being a believer doesn’t mean checking your brain at the church door, that people of faith have just as much intellectual heft as seculars and, most important, how faith and science can happily co-exist.

Michael Gerson, a former speech writer for George W. Bush, also likes the choice of Collins, a theistic scientist who favors evolution (and embryonic stem cell research) and sees “modern science and Christianity are not competing answers to the same question; they are ways of thinking about two very different sets of questions, both of which should be taken seriously.” According to Gerson:

Collins’ appointment says something good about the maturity of modern evangelicalism, which is starting to abandon some of its least productive debates with modernity. Criticisms of evolution, rooted in 19th-century controversies, have done little more than set up religious young people for entirely unnecessary crises of faith as they encounter scientific knowledge. In the running conflict of modern biology and evangelicalism, Collins is a peacemaker.

Everyone seems to agree he’d make a good administrator (Collins led the public effort to sequence the human genome “ahead of schedule and under budget.”) Yet there are those who have misgivings about the pick—not as a result of Collins’ scientific qualifications per se or his personal religious beliefs but because of his very public faith commitments. As cognitive scientist Steven Pinker explains:

It’s not that I think that there should be a religious litmus test for public science administrators, or that being a devout Christian is a disqualification. But in Collins’s case, it is not a matter of private belief, but public advocacy. The director of NIH is not just a bureaucrat who tends the money pipeline between the treasury and molecular biologists (which is how many scientists see the position). He or she is also a public face of science, someone who commands one of the major bully pulpits for science in the country. The director testifies before Congress, sets priorities, selects speakers and panelists, and is in many regards a symbol for biomedical research in the U.S. and the world. In that regard, many of Collins’s advocacy statements are deeply disturbing.

Others, however, see a more positive spin on Collins’ public defense of religion and discussion of faith. Chris Wilson of Slate suggests:

If Collins’ faith mollifies even a few political conservatives who would otherwise continue to waste time and money fighting research efforts that violate their specific religious tenets, then the benefits of his faith should outweigh whatever qualms scientists might have.