Mar 28 2007
Christofascist Idiot Watch Update! Late Mar. edition
Yeah, they’re still around.
This month, in keeping with the ‘when reality and facts don’t fit in with your worldview, just fabricate a new reality’ theme that seems to be so prevalent when talking about conservatives, in particular, religious ones, we’re going to look at another growing threat to logic and reason. No, it’s not megachurches, it’s creationist museums. And they’re sprouting up like a nasty herpes outbreak, all across the nation.
I’ve known about them for a while, but this recent article on Alternet by Chris Hedges puts all of the stupidity in one place in shocking clarity. A sample of the ridiculous things one can learn (and hopefully ‘unlearn’ afterwards by going to a school with a good science program):
…how Noah solved the problem of fitting dinosaurs into the three levels of the vessel–he loaded only baby dinosaurs. …Before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, museum visitors are told, all of the dinosaurs were peaceable plant-eaters. The evidence is found in Genesis 1:30, where God gives “green herb” to every creature to eat. There were no predators. T-Rex had such big teeth, the museum explains, so it could open coconuts. Only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise did the dinosaurs start to eat flesh.
Brain hurt yet? The interesting thing, Hedges writes, is these severely reality-challenged people have worked hard to create an alternate fundie-wingnut ’scientific’ infrastructure:
And yet, coming from the modern age, these Christo-fascists cannot discount science. They employ jargon, methods and data that appear to be science, to make an argument for creationism. They have created parallel research and scholarly institutions. They pump out articles in self-published journals to provide “evidence” that homosexuals can be cured, that global warming is a myth, that abortion can cause breast cancer, that something they call “post-abortion syndrome” leads to deep depression and suicide and that abstinence-only education is an effective form of birth control. This pseudo-science has seeped into the public debate. It is disseminated by nervous and timid media anxious to give both sides in every argument. Those who have contempt for facts and truth, for honest research and inquiry, are given the same platform by the press as those who deal in a world of reality, fact and rationality.
Scary stuff, something we’ve been hearing a lot of lately. And as easy as it is to dismiss them as crazy rantings of a lunatic fringe (which, in essence, is what it really is), the problem is that there are a lot of them. And yes, it’s also easy to look at how the political pendulum is finally swinging in the opposite direction and to take comfort that it’s a sign that their influence is diminishing. Perhaps it is. But the fact that we’re dealing with a bunch of zealots who are seemingly impervious to reason and logic is one thing. The fact that many of them won’t rest until we’re all living/believing the same way they do is what you do need to worry about.
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