The one about stupid people

I shouldn't, for my blood pressure's sake, but I do anyway.  I read and listen to stories about how the christ cultists around America are doing everything in their power to corrupt the educational system of our country.  Lately it's a bill in the Tennessee legislature that is about as blatant an attempt to make religious mythology a valid alternative to the life sciences as anything we've seen in the last 80 years.

I listened to a scientist from Vanderbilt University give a statement before the Tennessee lawmakers, a good statement, a solid statement, making the clearly reasonable point that the bill is religious in nature because there is no scientific controversy about evolution.  It is purely a religious controversy, hence any discussion of evolution as controversial is religious in nature and thereby beyond the purview of the government.  The logic is unassailable, and yet the religious lawmakers stumbled over themselves to declare the scientist's words mere "opinion" on a par with anyone else's opinion.  Let's call that what it is, stupid and arrogant.

It's frustrating to listen to stupid people.  It really is.  People who believe that religious dogma and doctrine are true are stupid people.  Can you think of a different word for those who take unfounded assertions and believe them as fact?  They don't "hope" there's a god.  They assert it as true in the face of no evidence.  They don't "wonder" if there was a universal flood 5 thousand years ago; they proclaim it as fact when there is no proof.  Stupid is the only fitting term for this behavior.  It is like knowing through observation and logic that the square of 9 is 81 and yet having to deal with somebody in authority who says it is not 81, it is something else,  and that this opinion must be allowed in math class.  That is not doing the young people of the state or the country a service.  It is not doing anyone a service except the business of church.

Evolution is a fact.  Natural selection is the only theory that anyone has put forward that has survived the countless tests and charges against it.  Religious mythology may, I mean a big MAY, have meaning to some people on an artistic level, but it is not fact.  Genesis is not true.  It paints pictures that may inspire something in the minds of its readers, but it is not history. It is not science.  It is not truth in any reasonable meaning of the word.

As the American public grows stupider and stupider (by choice), and as they continue to elect their stupid comrades to high office, it will not end well.  America will lose its scientific edge.  It will lose its leadership base to nations that do not put stupid people in charge.  America will lose. Period.