Why Marco Rubio waffled on the age of rocks (in numbers)

If you have a pulse and follow "science news" you are aware that Marco Rubiogave a very equivocal answer to a very simple question about the age of the earth. As many have noted this is basically a way to call out Republican politicians for the fact that they have to satisfy the cultural signals of a segment of the American population which has a deep hostility to science which undercuts their naive reading of the Bible. To Mitt Romney's credit he did not evade on this question, but gave a mainstream answer among the well educated. This sort of political pandering isn't too surprising. Remember Hillary Clinton dismissing 'elite economists' when it came to her silly gas tax suspension idea? It's a democracy, and that means you can get very far appealing to the populist sentiment. More concretely, I want to address something Rod Dreher asserted at The American ...