Disbelief in evolution is the best indicator of stupidity. It doesn’t matter if you were born stupid or every adult in your community is a moron who gave you bad information which made you stupid. Anyway, Republicans are getting more stupid at a fairly rapid pace, while Democrats are getting less stupid at a slower pace.
What’s probably happening is that anyone with half a brain is leaving their evangelical hamlet and moving somewhere where people eat quiche and drive Volvos.
Republicans growing more skeptical about evolution
Geniuses. Let’s let these folks think our way out of 21st century problems.
Darwin’s Origin of Species was published halfway through the 19th.
Happy New Year !!
Cross yer fingers, there are so many of them …
It’s not about smart versus stupid. It’s not about truth versus lies.
It’s about storytelling. It’s about mythmaking.
Everything is theater. Everything is performance. Politics is applied literary criticism. The rational parenthesis has closed.
What killed feudalism? Stories; what we now call “fairy tales”. The “ogre” was the landowner. Once the landowner got on the wrong side of the stories, he was doomed.
Today, we are the ogre. This is how we lose.
Only the elites know that they are lying.
The rest of the morons believe it, and they vote.
Large families, home schooling … look out.
Beards because the bible sez so.
guns
Because Jesus had one, you know. That’s why Pontius Pilate had him executed, so he couldn’t overthrow the Romans with his militia and their deer rifles.
Beards need no justification beyond themselves.
It’s not about beards, it’s about from where you take your instructions.
If they are such fervent “originalists” as they claim to be, and have a distaste for the evils of evolution, then I have a proposal for them. Let’s have the flu vaccine suppliers cook up a batch of that first flu vaccine recipe which was done in the 1940’s, and have their doctor stick that into their arm prior to the next flu season.
Why, if evolution is such a sham then I’m sure they won’t have any problem with this. Hey, if that shot got grandpa through the Big War without getting the flu, then it should be good enough for them. Evolution, Shmevolution! After all, god only made one flu virus, right??? And obviously, it went on the ark with Noah, too.
True Christian fanatics don’t get vaccinations, they just pray. I pray too. I pray all those zealots die in the next epidemic.
Ah yes, the purity of the human race.
Just to torture a good friend who literally starts to shake if I bring up evolution sometimes I’ll ask about his Thoroughbred breeding program on the farm. Don’tchaknow it’s line breeding when it works and incest when it doesn’t! And then we talk about adaption and he always screams incoherently about apes.
Just like an ape!
“Mah grandpappy didn’t come from no monkey!!!”, screamed the winger.
Words of my Grandfather:
Some of my ancestors might’ve swung from the trees by their necks, but none of ’em ever swung by their tails.
Love it!
People believe in all kinds of strangeness in this country. From astrology and superstitions to pretending to our kids that Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny actually exist.
I don’t think it really has much bearing on current politics. Evangelicals are becoming less influential and Republicans will still win at least 45% of the vote.
I’ve been pointing out this trend for the past couple of years, so it’s good to see it verified. I know of several wingnuts who are generally smart except for their politics and who have stopped believing in evolution over the past few years. We’re talking about people who didn’t think to question evolution as a basic truth maybe 10 years ago.
More than anything this reveals the nature of the wingnut movement and the people who infest it. The simple reason they stopped believing is that their trusted sources of The Truth ™ told them to. The reason The Truth ™ sources told them so is that a significant majority of wingnuts had been fed a steady diet of anti-evolution propoganda since birth, so therefore this had to be a required belief.
There is no logic. There are no facts. There is no objectivity. It’s whatever the wingnut media tells them The Truth ™ is.
Ralph Reed got this and effectively expressed it in that infamous memo to right wing business leaders in the 1990s. He had a huge flock of Xtian followers who would believe anything he told them – and for a big enough fee, he’d tell them what the business leaders wanted. Global warming a lie? Check. Pre-emptive War consistent with Jesus’ teachings? Check.
But as the movement spread it went both ways. In order to avoid internal feuding the non-Xtians had to be force fed the shit that the Xtians already believed.
Look, the GOP is crazy, stupid, and thinks like a borg. They also have the vast majority of the money and will destroy the earth the first chance they get. The threat is massive. Unfortunately, most Democrats still think these are a few isolated rubes.
Even a significant minority, if it’s organized (by someone) and unified (even if only in their greater derpitude), can rule the majority, IF the majority is only watching their TV, struggling with life, going skiing, writing on a blog, acting ONLY locally, living life, meditating peacefully, etc., AND NOT BEING ORGANIZED.
The rule for the right is ‘Follow the Leader, unthinking’.
The rule for everybody else is ‘Follow the Truth, uniting’.
A lot of it is double-think/cognitive dissonance.
I personally know an intelligent Southern Baptist RN who disbelieves Evolution because it contradicts the bible.
Or, to tease out how they said it to me…they know better, but their flavor of invisible Sky God would be upset if they didn’t at least keep in mind that God doesn’t like the theory of Evolution because Hell, or whatever reason they have for thinking that the wrath of an invisible Sky God is a good reason for suspending belief in Evolution is worthwhile.
In other words, while denial of Evolution is a symptom, rather than an actual pathy, and I’ve found that the only way to effectively communicate with these type of people, you have to ignore symptom issues…symptom issues being abortion, guns, gay marriage, etc.
You have to weave together a coherent narrative about economics and how the Republicans only pretend to give a shit about the symptom issues so they can keep giving themselves and their masters more of the country’s wealth.
So, I’ll agree all week long about the denial of Evolution being inherently stupid, but I’ll also guarantee that it isn’t an issue you can ever win on with these people. Just ignore it and move on, or bring it up simply to tell people that Republicans think Jesus was a free-market capitalist, and then quote the multitude of quotes and lessons Jesus taught about how money is a corruption, that treasure on Earth is pointless, and that the only time ol’ Jesus got up in people’s business, it was against fucking bankers.
What, no Saabs.
I thought it was all about the prius and the latte these days. Volvos and quiche are so, like, 1980s.
Didn’t they quit making those? I had a colleague once who drove nothing else. He was a brilliant engineer, a vegetarian, and a radical Socialist. I wonder which factor made him favor the Saab.
He always called my Buicks, barges. When I bought a (used) Roadmaster he called it “The Bargemaster”. I loved the car, but you know, turning a corner was a bit like letting the helm down.
I take some encouragement from the fact that the data for independents aligns closely with Dems instead of Repubs.
The post at Pew contains more interesting breakdowns by denomination, age, etc:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/
When I have time later today, I also want to look at this to see if there is a regional poll tab.
Hm. So is evolution denialism inherently stupider than global warming denialism or, for that matter, positive affirmation that, say, tax cuts increase government revenues? Wingnut zombie lies are to be found everywhere these days it would seem.
So the only purpose of this post was to vent your urge to be abusive?