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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
It's on the internet. The fundamental enabling technology for the internet is the semiconductor. The semiconductor is a child of quantum mechanics - there is no classical behavior that would predict it. Even though quantum mechanics are present in all chemistry and even vacuum tubes, those both have classical behavior that can be seen with the naked eye, and appreciated without quantum mechanics.
Semiconductors can't. They're "Devil Science", just like those others.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
is there even a House Committee on Science, Space and Technology?
So there can be an oversight committee, of course.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
We certainly need a saviour from people like him
Shouldn't people stop having imaginary friends when they grow up? Especially imaginary friends with ulterior motives.
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?
I know it's scary to think that this fellow will be making technology decisions for the rest of us, but just voting against him doesn't solve the problem.
It takes generations of well educated people to slough off these ridiculous old world superstitions. He probably has very nice salt-of-the-earth parents who worked hard all their lives and mis-attributed their success and happiness as gifts from a deity. A paycheck for living "good lives."
But in every generation kids question everything their parents stand for, adopting some, discarding others. If we keep educating them, if they see enough of the wide world to know that the only justice is what we make, that their are billions of people living good lives who believe completely different things, then they'll see through these lies, and pass along a different subset of their beliefs to their kids.
It's too late to fix this guy. if you want to vote out his successors, vote against ignorance; vote some of your hard earned money toward education. My parents did, and that's why this guy is now in the minority.
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.
... 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.
Must be God's will. Nobody else could be that crazy.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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
http://xkcd.com/154/
... 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
--
BMO
People like this guy are worse than terrorist. A terrorist attack makes at most tens of thousands of people suffer. These Christian fundamentalists in high places can make sure that 100s of thousands of children don't get enough chances in life because they don't get the education they need.
-- Cheers!
Science says that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is impossible. (Some stupid argument about the weight of pasta.) Therefore science is wrong. QED.
So, the man is an idiot. What are the people who elected him?
As for myself, I always figured it was likely a situation much like Iceland / Greenland. Give the more likable of the afterlives an ugly name, and most of the the assholes will do whatever they can to be sent to that other place. So, um...yeah, see ya in hell! *Wink wink.*
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
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.
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".
Since science is evil, maybe a bit of history could be of some use. Have you ever heard of the Ottoman empire?
Once upon a time, Al Quaeda grand-grand-grand parents used to rule the world. They had a majestic empire which dominated a large portion of the world. They were advanced in technology, science, military, economic power. Their armies would trump occidental armies, western kingdom would envy and learn from their science achievements, mathematics, philosophy, ...
Then, they started acting irrational(1).
Then the empire crumbled, it was called "the sick man of Europe", was torn appart, occupied, vassaled, ridiculed, and stripped from its resources. All by the once secondary powers of the western world, who had patiently learned from it, and superseded its achievements when it stalled. Its people became miserable, and it is still today a challenged place to live, where, ironically, many have to resort to extreme bigotry as a form of comfort against the fool taste of being disdained by more powerful nations.
1: Some exerpts from Wikipedia, but many books will tell you the same story.
"Ottoman science and technology had been highly regarded in medieval times, as a result of Ottoman scholars' synthesis of classical learning with Islamic philosophy and mathematics, and knowledge of such Chinese advances in technology as gunpowder and the magnetic compass. By this period, though, the influences had become regressive and conservative. In 1734, when an artillery school was established with French teachers in order to impart Western-style artillery methods, [b]the Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy.[67][/b] Not until 1754 was the artillery school reopened on a semi-secret basis.[67] Earlier, the guilds of writers had [b]denounced the printing press as "the Devil's Invention"[/b], and were responsible for a 53-year lag between its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in Europe in c. 1440 and its introduction to the Ottoman society [...] the printing press was used only by the non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire until the 18th century. "
Beware. This is not without consequences.
In fact I get preached to more by athiests than by any other groups
It's like a friend of mine once told me: "Atheists are very boring. All they talk about is God, God, God..."
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I think it would be a better idea if you had to pass some basic science (or whatever) test before you were able to chair a committee on science (or whatever).
But then I remember that congressmen are retarded people who got through life by pandering to the highest bidder
This clown is supposedly a Medical Doctor. So he had to at least be exposed to the some reasonably advanced concepts and memorize them. You've got to be pretty weird to go through all of that and denounce it as essentially heresy.
From his bio on his web site:
Representative Paul C. Broun, Jr. was elected in July of 2007 to serve the Tenth District of Georgia. Since his arrival in Congress, he has been appointed to the House Homeland Security Committee, the House Committee on Natural Resources, and currently serves as Chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee for the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Dr. Broun grew up in Athens, Georgia where he attended Athens High School and graduated from the University of Georgia in 1967 with a B.S. in Chemistry. In 1971, he received his Medical Doctor degree from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. An internship at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, Oregon and a residency at University Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama followed.
He's probably just pandering to the crowd, but what a friggin slimeball.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There is NO DIFFERENCE between the "two" parties.
Except, you know, when it comes to issues like health care, reproductive rights, or Social Security.
Anyone who says there's no difference between the two parties is either (1) totally uninformed, (2) obsessed with fringe issues and apathetic about everything that the rest of us care about, or (3) trying to convince you to stay out of the election so their vote will count more.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
The only way (realistically) to do that is to change the voting system - it was done here in New Zealand (from First Past the Post to Mixed Member Proportional) - and while it has introduced a bunch of other issues (like, more crackpots in parliament), it also utterly derailed the "us vs them" two-party dominance and allowed for a mixed set of political views (which I think America desperately needs). Seeing things like this though, I don't think MMP would mean more crackpots in the US government than are already there...
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
You are the one being confused. There is no government in communism and all questions are meant to be decided by grassroots democracy.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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.