Do you have to believe in evolution to run for office?

Conservative MP for Nanaimo-Alberni — James Lunney — does not believe in evolution. In fact, he says any scientist who does “has already abandoned the foundation of science.”

Evolution is a theory, he says. Just like . . . I don't know . . . gravity. We can prove objectively through experimentation that they work, but we only observe their effects, not their inner workings or origins.

So until we solve Einstein's quest and complete the Grand Unification Theory of Everything, well, everything's still fundamentally unproven.

So just don't call evolution fact, Lunney says. And the same goes for what we know about climate change and the link between vaccines and autism, he says.

So how do you argue with a guy with his BSc and Doctor of Chiropractic about what really constitutes the fundamentals of science? Answer: you don't.

At least I won't. I belonged for years to a church whose pastor taught that the world was created in six 24-hour days, complete with the fossil record and the carbon-dating record already installed. We had a member who said you could count the days since creation in scripture, and find the date when the sun stood still for one day so the children of Israel could win an important battle.

You don't argue with them, either. In this world, there are no such arguments that can be less relevant.

My question is: does holding these beliefs disqualify anyone from holding public office in a secular society whose understanding of the “fundamentals of science” is so fundamentally different from what I've just described?

Not in parts of Alberta, nor in B.C.s Bible Belt. But I do suggest getting elected publicly proclaiming these beliefs on Twitter should disqualify a representative from ever holding decision-making power in education, health care or the environment.

All the party leaders know this. So why even bother to drag these questions back into the public sphere? Because they have.

In Ontario, the Liberal government is moving forward a new public education curriculum, which includes a new take on sex ed. The Conservative opposition, obviously, must oppose this. Things get uncharitable.

The Liberal education minister Liz Sandals gets prodded to respond to something, and uses a well-worn arguing technique — that of taking the other person's viewpoint to some illogical extreme.

If parental or local board opting out of the new sex ed program was to be allowed, she said, well, maybe some future PC government might opt out of teaching evolution.

“Not a bad idea,” retorted her heckler, Tory MPP Rick Nicholls, thereby ensuring that almost nothing to be said thereafter could ever be constructive.

His remarks were quickly disowned by interim party leader Jim Wilson, who added this kind of stuff “obviously didn't help our position.”

Nicholls found himself retreating from a media lake of fire, taking the usual refuge in saying his views on the reality evolution are purely a personal stance, not party policy. Stories don't record whether anyone asked if he thinks he'd been elected to take stands on public policy based on personal views, the views of his electorate, or party policy.

But clearly, Nicholls needed a friend — and apparently wasn't finding too many among his Ontario colleagues in the middle of a tense debate on sex ed curriculum.

So, from way out in B.C. (or maybe even Ottawa), Lunney steps up in his Twitter account. And the Twitter posts reveal someone who's been near this lake before, and did not flinch.

You can research the back-and-forth of it yourself. Again, I assert the argument is not relevant in any way to who we are and how we should live and treat other people.

What's relevant is our belief as Canadians regarding how our elected representatives should represent us.

We can have elected reps of every stripe — a Catholic prime minister ready to risk excommunication for legalizing same-sex marriage; a Muslim mayor in a cowboy hat, serving food at the Calgary Stampede I'm not sure a lot of Muslims would want to touch; a devoutly conservative protestant prime minister who will not allow same-sex marriage or abortion law back into the public debate.

This is behaviour that makes me proud to be Canadian. We have seen leaders who act like their neighbours' beliefs or sensitivities outrank their own.

Holding “lake of fire” views in any direction does not disqualify you to run for office. But Canada does hew to the centre. The centre has shifted in our history, but it has always held.

By the way, Lunney says he's not running again in this fall's election. That might explain the Twitter campaign that will distract us all from Ontario MPP Rick Nicholls's little problem.