You will probably never have heard of Edwin Poots. He is a member of the Board of Governers of Drumbo and Carr Primary School. He is also the Minister for Culture in the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly. He thinks the entire universe is about 6,000 years old.
Mr Poots appeared on one of the podcasts from the BBC I download, ‘Everyday Ethics‘, hosted by William Crawley. It’s a rehash of a BBC Northern Ireland show and I’ve learned to expect quite a fair bit of chatter about religious issues rather than ethical ones.
So on the most recent podcast, Edwin Poots decided to hold forth on evolution and cosmology:
Matthew Parris: Good heavens! You’re the culture minister and you don’t believe in evolution?
Edwin Poots: Yes, absolutely. And you’re telling me that all of this evolution took place over billions of years, and yet it’s only in the last few thousand years that Man could actually learn to write?
William Crawley: How old is the earth?
Edwin Poots: My view on the earth is that it’s a young earth. My view is 4000 BC.
Normally, the incoherent opinions of this Unionist farmer wouldn’t bother me too much. Except this man, Poots, helps run a school; he helps run the Government of Northern Ireland; and he gets to make decisions about our money.
Example: as Culture Minister, Poots seems to have a significant say in the estblishment of the new Giant’s Causeway Interpretative Centre. A colleague of Poots, asked her assessment of the age of the Giant’s Causeway, replied:
Geologists generally agree that the Giant’s Causeway is some 60 million years old. As you will be aware, however, there are alternative views in relation to the age of the Giant’s Causeway
Northern Ireland Assembly, Written Answers to Questions, Friday 23 November 2007
So what’s going on here?
Well, Edwin Poots (DUP) sits on Lisburn City Council. The Mayor of the city, Councillor James Tinsley (of the DUP), presented Ken Ham, who heads up the young-earth creationist outfit, AnswersInGenisis with an ‘attractive gift clock’. And Paul Givan (DUP) proposed that all secondary schools in the area should be contacted and encouraged to teach alternative theories to evolution as the origins of the earth, such as Creation and Intelligent Design.
It’s clear that the religious beliefs of senior Loyalist politicians isn’t a sham, to appeal to their base, but a genuinely held acceptance of the fundamentalist Baptist/Presbyterian religious culture of their roots. It’s just as clear to me that anyone espousing such views shouldn’t be doing it from a public platform I have a part in paying for, and above all should have no part in running a school.
