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US House Science Committee Member: Evolution Is a Lie From Hell
First time accepted submitter badford writes "Representative Paul Broun (Georgia Republican) said that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are 'lies straight from the pit of hell' meant to convince people that they do not need a savior. It would not be quite as shocking if Broun did not sit on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. What impact could this have on policy? What impact could this have on STEM education not just in Georgia but all over the U.S.?"
It's an election year. Don't believe anything they say. Republicans this year especially have been saying the craziest crap because they know crazy people are more likely to vote than sane ones, who long ago gave up and decided the world was run by crazy people. Oh, did you just see what I did there? :( This guy has a long list of failures politically and personally (4 marriages)... I suspect he'd wear a pink tutu and sing songs from Little Mermaid if he thought he'd get more votes.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'm not anti-religious, I'm anti-idiot. I'm fine with people believing in God, but not people who think that said belief means science is wrong.
The issue is this man is on a committee that helps oversee and draft science related bills in the House. Why are people like him and Akin get on these committees?
Both... To get elected in America, you either need lots of $$$ or the backing of one of the two major political parties, hence $$$. The primary system in most states ensures that only candidates who can successfully pander to about 0.5% of the population (die hard party loyalists) ever make it on to the ballot for the general election. So it is often the case that you either need to be exceedingly ignorant, or a very good liar in order to get nominated.
The voters suffer because we very often don't even get to vote for the most suitable candidates for office. That is also the reason that compromise in Washington D.C. is almost impossible. Failure to tow the party line means a primary challenge, and possibly not being able to get a nomination for the next election.
This makes me angry and depressed at the same time.
You can't really reach a consensus on many issues when such differences exist. Democracy makes the Majority "right" so it is important not to let their views go unchallenged.
Because they might be a U.S. Congressman who has a direct impact on science and technology funding, tax law, and application in this country?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
It's entirely possible to have a well developed sense of the divine (without knowing exactly what it is and understanding that it may be entirely neurological) and be entirely free of Christianity, Islam, or any other fan club affiliation that requires an unproven belief in invisible friends, holy war, talking snakes, ritual blood drinking and/or body eating or additional taxation in the form of tithing.
Cheers!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
... is that it's true whether you believe in it, or not.
I wonder what he would think of the Pope saying that there is no conflict between the theory of evolution and church doctrine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#Pope_John_Paul_II
Considering Broun is Southern Baptist, I bet he'd call it papist devilry and add Catholicism to the list.
People do not live in a vacuum. People who believe in imaginary friends and believe those imaginary friends have sent facts and instructions for how to live, usually want to make everyone else believe those facts and live according to those instructions.
evolution, or lack thereof
foreign policy with countries dominated by other religions
the legal status of a fertilized embryo - stem cell research and abortion
contraception, sex education
porn
many other social policies
... have declared war on the rest of us. They have declared war on modern society.
And no, there isn't any reasoning with these people, the Dominionists. They are stone cold nuts and they even use the vocabulary of war in their screeds. Any attempt to reason with them is assuming that they are capable of rational thought. They are not. Deep down, they actually and truly believe that science is *the* enemy. It is a position that is beyond the reach of any rational thought, so ridicule is the only tool left. If given half a chance, they would drag us back to pre-inudustrial society with just the Bible as the sole text.
He needs to be held up to ridicule from sea to shining sea.
Give him a piece of your mind https://www.facebook.com/brounforcongress
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BMO
Until their neighbors declared that, due to their majority on the local School Board, evolution, history, a large chunk of geology, and set theory will no longer be taught. And all children will have a compulsory christian values class. And if you have a problem with it you are free to set up a completely separate school system on your own. And a separate medical system. Heck, unless you are willing to do things all their way you are 'free' to personally replicate all of western society yourself.
For given values of 'free' a 'free society' ceases to be a society at all.
I was going to offer a completely different comment until I saw your comment.
They are not worse than terrorists. They *ARE* terrorists. The whole point of religion is to prey on fear. The wrath of god and the requirement of death and suffering for sins is written throughout. It is entirely about punishment for thinking wrong, acting wrong, dressing wrong and even eating wrong... and don't even look the wrong way lest ye be turned to salt.
The wrath of the loving god is all around us and we must repent or forever live in the jewish trash dump which has somehow become the "hell" we know and love today.
If ever there was a group of people who prey on others through terror...
> If you advocate the involvement of government in education, you can have very little to say in opposition to elected officials' pedagogical opinions being leashed on the classroom.
What a false dichotomy (Tea Party much?). Try the the 3rd option: Yes, you actually can have completely valid criticism.
Look at the educational successes of other countries as well as America's and rethink your 'big government is the problem' American exceptionalism talking point.
Since the enemy of the US now is highly religious with low scientific potential
Are we talking about Al Qaeda? Or Georgia Republicans? Because I know it ain't China.
Because Americans are deeply religious and he reflects genuine religious faith. Religion is the pursuit of primitive tribal society at all costs.
That's how Superstitionists think, and he's honest about his views.
"We must respect the other fellowâ(TM)s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
â" H L Mencken, Minority Report (1956),
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So, the man is an idiot. What are the people who elected him?
Despite loudmouth morons like this, there are plenty of religious people capable of managing their daily lives and even participating usefully in science. We happen to notice the deranged assholes like this one, and we hang our heads in shame that large chunks of the American populace agree with them. But not every religious American is an asshole, and you wouldn't fix the world by getting rid of an awful lot of nice, useful people.
I sure wouldn't mind it if this person evaporated. This kind of pernicious stupidity makes the world a worse place. But I'm not going to let it make me stupid with the fallacy of hasty generalization. (Heck, for all I know this person is a useful human being when he's not being a useless loudmouth fuck, but I'm willing to generalize at least that far.)
The US got where it is despite every President, Supreme Court Justice, and Congressman (well, nearly all) being religious, in some degree or another. Being religious doesn't have to make you a useless piece of shit. Even if it does in this guy's case.
What's a "school system"? I thought a school was a teacher, teaching students something they want to learn. Anyone can hire a teacher to teach anything they want. This "school system" concept you're talking about seems to be a lot of extra nonsense that's only loosely related to teaching or learning. Why do we need to give up our freedom to have a "system" when teachers can teach and students can learn at least as well without it (and for a lot less money)?
Eeesh... It's genuinely frightening that you think that's a workable system...
Except:
1) The Big Bang theory is something that arises from the study of physics. Saying it's "evil" says that the fundamentals of theoretical physics are evil. Of course physics will be affected if some idiot with a bit of power starts mouthing off that people studying the origins of the universe are evil. Some of those people are quite devout Christians.. Think it doesn't affect them and their state of mind, which affects their work? Technology arises due to knowledge of physics; they're very tightly interlinked. Railing against one part of it has knock on effects everywhere.
2) Saying evolution (which has been observed) is not important? Hello? There's no problem with having a design base? Well, hey, no problem with doing theology as long as you don't have anything to do with God I guess.. It's a part of Biology, and explains much about how things have arisen, the interactions, and why things have become the way they have.
No, America isn't anti science. The guy that's the subject of this is, quite frankly, and idiot. He's a member of a scientific board. What should happen is everyone calmly sits down and says "Interesting postulation. Lets see your working, experimental evidence and ensure it's repeatable in objective controlled environments. If it can't be proved, or disproved, it has no place in this environment, and you don't have the beginnings of an understanding of science, so please give up your post on this board, as you have no right to be here".
But how would this education work? At some point you're going to tend towards a school again, ie put several students in with one teacher (to make it economically viable) and rotate the (many) students around a smaller number of specialised teachers. And somebody will have to run this, put it in a building with all the admin that is required of running a public building with hundreds of people in it. And then when your students emerge, they will want to have been through a balanced syllabus, which will have to be assessed somehow in a way that is recognised nationwide, so that will have to be standardised somehow, all of which sounds very much like something that a government should be doing.
Not to say that's a perfect system, but handwavingly pronouncing that the current way is bad (with no specifics other than vague fear-driven generalisations), and that anyone could do it better themselves doesn't convince me.
Yeah, just look how well it worked for North Korea!
No, we can improve the system. But your anarchist system where only the richest get education and the opportunities it opens failed for centuries, millennia, to serve anyone but the rich. And it didn't serve them that well either, compared to how well they're served now.
Your arguments are all simply that since our public education system has problems, we should delete it entirely - in favor of a intolerable disaster proven worse for centuries. It's obvious why you hate school: yours failed to teach you to think.
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make install -not war
In plaing (sic) English that would translate to "Stop voting for idiots.".
But that's all that is on the ballot!
The speed of time is one second per second.
I agree with you 100% that there are plenty of faithful yet thoughtful and responsible people.
But at the same time: among people who are morons, there are few worse than fundamentalist fucking morons.
Despite loudmouth morons like this, there are plenty of religious people capable of managing their daily lives and even participating usefully in science.
And each and every one of them who doesn't stand up and put these extremist assholes in their place is guilty of collaboration.
What? America judges muslims the same way.
I would have a lot more respect for religion and religious people if you would stop allowing these fuckers to abuse your religion. As long as you do, I must assume that you don't think him all that bad. Not bad enough to get your asses up, at least.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I wish that more people would realize that the Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the exact same God/Allah/Yahweh (The God of Abraham) they just differ in the implementation. It seems that the Christians in the US are ignorant of this fact and treat Allah as something other than God.
So you think the purpose of a school is to limit parents' influence on their children. I think the purpose of a school should be learning and the parents should be free to decide more-or-less everything because they're rightfully free citizens, not government subjects.
But the children are members of society and not slaves to their parents to be shaped to their will.
As a parent myself, I WANT society to step in and bitch-slap me hard if I start acting against her best interests. Then if I don't change my ways, I want society to step in and take her away from me.
The tricky part is to determine what is her "best interests". This is something society needs to get together and agree on as a whole.
Note that I don't advocate children becoming mindless drones following the rules of society and never thinking outside the box. That would be a terrible state of affairs. No, I rather advocate that children grow up to understand their society and are capable of living within it without being totally fucked when they are forced to interact with it. They can disagree with it if they so choose (perhaps even because the parent has influenced them in that direction), however they'd better be ready to handle society's reaction.
I guess the main point is that from my point of view, my daughter is an individual person and like any person, has to interact in different circles of life. One is that of her parents (my wife and me); and another is of the city of Hannover, Germany; yet another is the subcontinent of Europe; and yet another is the planet Earth. Each of these circles is a society of a kind and it behooves us all to understand the societies we are in and be capable of interacting with them in the best possible way. Children that do not pass through a formal school system, instead being taught purely at home by their parents or a hired teacher, are usually unable to deal with several of the larger circles that exist and often have large gaps in their knowledge due both to a lack of interaction with others that have opposing viewpoints and a lack of simply being told certain things that the kids who do go to school get taught.
I'm against schools indoctrinating viewpoints; but I'm very much for them explaining viewpoints. I feel very lucky to have attended school in New Zealand, where the system, while not perfect, is a far sight better at this than many other countries I've seen.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
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No, you are wrong. They all pretended to be religious because they are smart and knew that was the only way to power.
I live in Georgia. When people ask me about religion, I explain that I am a man of deep faith. That is true, but I do not believe there is some all-knowing, imaginary entity guiding everything, everywhere. That's for physics.
My faith is a little more grounded. When I'm driving a vehicle on the roads and highways, I have tremendous faith in other humans that they won't cross into my lane or cross over that double yellow line and kill me, my wife, my kids. THAT is faith. Sometimes other humans fail me. About 2 months ago, a woman tried to cross 5 lanes of traffic to make a left onto a freeway entrance. The fact that my vehicle was in the way didn't matter to her. I avoided being hit, but spun out 3.5 times. During the spin and stopping, I didn't hit anything else. No other cars, not that crazy bitch and not the side of the road. It was really amazing. It was a beautiful, sunning day around 3pm. Thanks to physics and the people who designed both the vehicle and tires, I was saved from harm. The woman stopped after I pulled over to the side of the road. My car was facing oncoming traffic at this point. We both got out. She started appologizing for her actions. I grabbed her and gave her a huge bear-hug. She was an Asian womain ... perhaps 40 yrs old. I'm a big white man a little older. She wanted to exchange information, since there might be damage, but nothing was harmed. I gave her another bear hug, and left. There were 50 witnesses - all sitting in two left turn lanes who saw the entire thing. It never crossed my mind to hit her even though she just tried to kill me. No pains ever happened, thanks to physics and good engineering.
My wife and I agree. We teach our kids the same things. "God" or "god" are for weak people with weak minds, but we don't want to upset them, so we play along. All your friends are weak. Their parents are weak. Almost everyone else is weak minded because they believe in imaginary forces that do not exist. Look at Xmas, Halloween, Easter ... the entire world claims to believe. 10% are like us and just play along.
Why do we play along?
* Jobs; If daddy told his boss that he didn't believe, he would be passed over for raises and promotions.
* Family; parts of our family are weak, like grandma and most of your aunts and uncles.
* Avoid Harrassment from religious groups for our lack of beliefs.
Basically, religious people are bigots and perform extreme discrimination, so we must act like there is some god.
It is the most important secret our kids have. Never tell anyone. It isn't safe. Mommy and Daddy have a few friends that believe like we do, but most do not.
All religions are stupid wastes of effort. The only good reason to have a religion is for the tax free aspects. Look throughout history and there are thousands of examples of religions doing terrible things to people and the world. Terrible things.
He's the kind of person that gives Christianity a bad name. I am a Christian. I support Intelligent Design. But I don't deny Common Descent and I certainly don't deny the Big Bang. The Big Bang is conclusive evidence FOR a creator! You can't claim that the universe is all that exists when it's plain as day that it had a beginning. This guy is just an anti-scientist, he's not worthy of the Christian faith or of the Republican party.