If I am not mistaken, this man represents Athens, Georgia which is home of the University of Georgia, which is a fine university:
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tore into scientists as tools of the devil in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet last month.
“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
According to Broun, the scientific plot was primarily concerned with hiding the true age of the Earth. Broun serves on the House Science Committee, which came under scrutiny recently after another one of its Republican members, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses against pregnancy.
“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”
Broun — a physician, with an M.D. and a B.S. in chemistry — is generally considered to be among the most conservative members of Congress, if not the most. He drew national attention in 2010 for saying he did not know if President Obama was an American citizen.
What I find the most odd about his comments is the idea that science is conducted and disseminated for the purpose of undermining people’s belief that they need a savior. No one is perfect and everyone has things that they’d like to be forgiven for having done. That’s all the basis required to attract people to the idea of a savior. You profess your belief in Jesus Christ and ask for forgiveness, and you get a giant do-over. I don’t think you even need to add in the promise of heaven or the threat of hell to make that work. But, if you do, you have Pascal’s Wager working for you. If you place no value on being right, Pascal’s Wager is a no-brainer. Embryology has nothing to say on the matter.
I guess another way of looking at this is that anything that undermines belief in the literal truth of something in the Bible undermines everything else in the Bible. But even if you take that view, people aren’t studying geology or biology or embryology in order to undermine anyone’s faith. They are doing it because they are curious or because they get a paycheck or because they want to help people, or some combination of those things.
Scientists are not plotting against Paul Broun and his childlike faith.
Of course, Jesus never said you get a do-over…
“Forgive, and you will be forgiven…judge not, and you’ll not be judged…condemn not, and you will not be condemned”…
Or how about this one…”not everyone who says lord, lord, will enter the Kingdom of Heavan, but only those who do the will of my Father”…
Jesus would NOT be happy with modern-day “Christianity”…
Jesus would NOT be happy with modern-day “Christianity”…
And that constitutes a big chunk of the Repub base…
at least, he wouldn’t if he existed as the one true son of god.
Which I don’t think he does.
Jesus never claimed to be the “one true son of God”…
In fact, he says in Matthew that with a pure heart, we shall all become sons of God.
Clearly the most widely misunderstood human being in history!
yah, yah, yah. Go to any Baptist, Prebetyrain, Methodist, or Catholic church and proclaim that Jesus is NOT the one true son of GOD and see how fast your ass is thrown out on the curb.
Sophistry is for assholes. Which fits you to a tee.
Jesus Christ was the most powerful human being because of the depth of his love…
Oceanic!
No judgement, no condemnation…only love and forgivenesses…
He discovered something that delivered to him the “Kingdom of Heavan”….I can only hope to discover what he did…
Pure Love!
Pure love? how so?
he was crucified. Most people crucified lived for 4 or 5 days. That was the terror of crucifixion. Jesus lasted what? 6 hours? and then got to live again? And you think this is evidence of great love?
ChickenHawk. Send others to die while you live. Jesus, Bush and Romeny. Birds of a feather.
Come on, Nick, admit it.
Or as the Mahalia Jackson song put it, “Everybody talkin’ ’bout heaven ain’t going there”.
shrugs Broun is representative of his district. This stuff has been taken as a given by white Southern evangelicals for years. It’s a perfect little tautology: anything one doesn’t wish to believe (or your pastor doesn’t wish you to believe) is a tool of Satan, and any empirical evidence that supports it has been planted there by Satan to tempt you away from the path.
I know several perfectly intelligent people in Broun’s district – one’s a domestic violence lawyer, and most are far more socially tolerant than average for the area – who believe this stuff. So does most everyone else at their churches. They home-school their kids so their kids can be taught this stuff. It’s reinforced constantly in every area of life. It’s a self-enclosed little alternate universe, and it is terrifying to watch in action.
My parents are those people, as is their church. They have some concert thing in the city today to convert a few heathens.
As a lifetime resident of the state, it truly is terrifying to see how narrow the worldview of so many of our citizens has become. This continuing overemphasis on religiosity is fed by not only homeschooling, but by private schooling in private institutions that are mostly religiously affiliated. As a result we’re now seeing the 3rd generation coming out of these “gated” environments, which arose in the early 70’s as a place for whites to escape from integrated public schools. That’s still true. The inability of these graduates, now mothers and fathers, and even grandparents, to tolerate anything which challenges their world view is almost non-existent.
This is why I remain an advocate of public schools even with all their monetary and discipline issues. However, public schooling won’t long survive when we’ve got conservatives running things and transferring funding to private, religious charter schools. So, it’s important for us liberals to save our public schools. Therein lies the hope and competitive future for the country and specifically for this region and its citizens.
Is not science and the scientists who practice it God’s best friends? Science celebrates the gifts of curiosity, tenacity, intellect, wonder and all that make mankind who he is.
Science tasks us with not just using tools, but finding tools to understand and relentlessly make our lives better.
Beyond creation, the next best gift was the will to grasp adaptation.
Irresponsible for a Congressperson to be so entrenched in their own, and perhaps their constituents’, rigidly small world that they conjure up the devil to ward off even discussion.
Pascal’s Wager only works in a binary world, which is, I think one of the reasons that a lot of fundamentalists hate complexity. If your choices are believe in god and go to heaven if you’re right, or don’t, and go to hell if you’re wrong, then it’s an easy bet. When there are six and sixty flavors of fundamentalist Christianity alone and many of them tell you that if you believe in the wrong version of god you’re going to hell, then it starts to be a less useful tool. When you add in a bunch of other non-Christian religions and all the other flavors of Christianity, it starts to look downright silly as a decision making tool. Sorry, Pascal’s Wager is one of my personal pet peeves because of the way it ignores the complexity of actual human belief in favor of setting up a false dichotomy.
Pascal’s Wager – magnificent movie with Cate Blanchett and Ralph Fiennes and Tom Wilkinson [and book, though I only saw the movie, did not read the book]
Oscar and Lucinda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_and_Lucinda_(film)
Honest question: how do you get a degree in chemistry, let alone pass through medical school, with an attitude toward science like that?
Bobby Jindal was a Rhodes Scholar…
It always makes me wonder how people who have very impressive scientific credentials can become incredibly conservative when it comes to social matters.
I wouldn’t want him as my doctor – in case he decided some bug I had was an infestation of the Devil which needed to be exorcised rather than treated.
It’s the scientific selectivity that gets me. They have no problem driving a car designed by the same scientific principles which determine the Eartha’s age.
The bible was the best available science when it was written between 3000 and 2000 years ago. Jesus himself said his followers would perform greater miracles than he ever did. His true followers are those who use their God given talents to inquire into the nature of the universe and the Satanists are those the deny the possibility of ever greater understanding of that Universe and use their limited understanding to enslave others.
I believe in religious tolerance, but only insofar as the religious do not seek to impose their ignorance on others.
This has always been my beef as well. Why do these fundies think they can eagerly gobble up the fruits of science, the modern medicine, the electric power, the telecommunications, etc, while rejecting the thought process that led to them? Do they think technology was created whole by god and we just stumbled upon it in the woods? And do they expect the new technologies to keep appearing if they prevent kids from learning anything about science? If they’re so dedicated to living as the Bible describes they should do just that — go back to herding and subsistence farming and ride around on donkeys. What they do now is rank hypocrisy.
the hypocrisy is much worse than that. I know subsistence farmers who are fine with science – subsistence farming and science coexist fine
” I believe in religious tolerance, but only insofar as the religious do not seek to impose their ignorance on others.”
So Christianity and Islam are eliminated in the first round, with many more contenders waiting in the wings.
” The bible was the best available science when it was written between 3000 and 2000 years ago.”
Isn’t that highly debatable? Maybe it was the best science in that corner of the world, but Greece, China/East Asia, Egypt, South Asia, and others developed arguably more sophisticated views of the physical universe.
Since when was the Bible (or the Torah) considered science? It has always been considered social critiscism, governing authority and the compendium of societal rules. But Science?
There was a time when mythology was pretty much the same as science. As it was co-opted and debased by organized religion, the successors fought very hard to hold fast to their “scientific authority”. Ask Mr Copernicus and Mr Galileo, among many others.
If you understand Science in its broadest sense – as an attempt to understand the real world – then the Bible can be considered within that opus. Of course empirical and positivistic scientific methods came later and produced much greater results.
Biblical fundamentalists have this weird idea that God’s revelations ceased around 100 AD. The reality is that Science has been coming to an ever greater understanding of the Universe and its laws ever since.
Science has it’s limitations, but it is the best tool-set we have. Those who reject science essentially reject the real world that God has created. They have superimposed their own limited intelligence on one of God’s greatest gifts – and that is our ability to better understand the world through science.
Many Democrats are as religious as any Republican. They are just a bit more intelligent about their faith. I wish they would stop being so defensive and apologetic about their faith.
The fundamentalists and Republican opportunists who ride on their ignorance are an abomination from within the context of Christianity itself.
Amazing ~ I guess Thomas Dolby was right, maybe even prescient.
The fact that both Broun and Aikin sit on the Committee for Science, Space, and Technology makes my brain hurt.
It sends chills. Its the worst place for them.
Fine post, Booman. Thank-you.
One minor editorial suggestion: Change the last sentence to “Scientists are not plotting against Paul Broun and his childish faith.”
There are too many great scientists who have a child-like sense of awe, wonder and curiosity about this creation we live in.
Obviously it’s all a test of faith. The Creator set things up to include these red-herrings (ie physics) specifically as a trap for the smarty-pants big-ego crowd (ie scientists and other deep-thinkers), luring them into the damnable situation of foolishly believing that some things can in fact be figured out based on what works, and what does not. The faithful are in on the joke, and mostly try not to be seen laughing at the damned.
Why such an elaborate ruse?
It’s because the Creator only gave us these terrific brains in order to more fully appreciate his/her/its way cool creative Mojo, and then gather together once a week to sing songs about it, but then got pissed off when some folks didn’t give him/her/it credit.
“I’ll fix their miserable little butts.”
Some things are just stupid – the fact that we can see Andromeda eliminates the possibility of a young earth. Moreover, the usage of the word “yom” (day) is quite fluid in the Old Testament (e.g. “Yom Adoni”, Day of the Lord) such that when it comes to creation it clearly refers to an age or epoch, not 24 hours.
Well, but only if it’s really Andromeda and not some angel or godrocket that Satan has told us is a lie called a galaxy.
Great post from scienceblogs:
Why I am a liar straight from the pit of hell
I somehow imagined GA as not the deep, deep South, but Athens must be some kind of singular pesthole for the breeding of morons. Most towns like it manage to elect pretty smart, sane representatives. Not just Madison and Ann Arbor, but Chapel Hill and Austin and many more. So it ain’t just being in the South. So WTF is it with Athens (which really should be forced to change its name, apparently, as false advertising)?
Broun is the new posterboy for religion as a form of madness. Those who elected him, who knows their problem?
It’s a big act by which a rich specialist doctor can continue to defend his money-making plus pick up a little taxpayer money on the side. GA-10 is all of northeast Georgia and runs from Augusta all the way into the mountains and up to the North Carolina line. His district borders NC-11 (Heath Shuler) and SC-03 (Jeff Duncan). The mountain folks are like NC-11; the rest of the district is like SC-03.
Looney Tones
Tunes. I was in a hurry.
A while back I watched a PBS show called the Triumph of the West or something like that. I didn’t much care for it because of its assumptions about Western civilization’s superiority, but there was one bit that stuck with me:
The writer/narrator opined that Europe and the Muslim world were neck and neck in the struggle for social and scientific progress, but then came the great pivotal moment. The Ottoman Sultan was in power at the same time as Frederick the Great in Prussia. The story is that both faced challenges to their modernization and secularization ideas from the religious establishment. Frederick pushed the church into the background, while the Sultan bowed to the power of the mosques. The result was that Europe forged ahead in technology while the Muslim empire fell behind. Good lesson for our own country in our own time, seems to me.
So many people see religion as a force for good. It has always been a force for evil to me.
This is obviously why Romney wants to clpse PBS…
The true tragedy in orthodox Christianity is that edited out reincarnation…even in the edited version, Jesus suggests that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah.
That’s probably why I continue to post here, despite several resolutions to stay away…
Boo feels like a brother, and Cabin Girl feels like a sister…
Earth is hell…and we keep coming back!
large chunks of earth are indeed hell, but not because they were created so, but because of human folly.
religions lie, people are fooled, they want to belong to like-minded families, and would rather be wrong together and right apart.
for this belonging they will merrily jettison reason, and condemn it in others. they need no reason other than their fear of being shunned.
doesn’t have to be religion either, ideologies like nazism do the same thing, though nazis aren’t antiscience about the earth’s age, they are equally retarded about race issues.
belonging has a price, with any group. luckily not all groups need you to shut down critical thinking, or we wouldn’t be posting here!
sorry, i meant than apart, which is probably obvious, but just in case…
Oh I don’t know! Boo doesn’t like me criticizing his adherence to American Exceptionalism…!!!!
I am fucking pissed off at the Church!
Power hungry motherfuckers prostitute the message of the greatest man in history…
Can’t fucking stand it.
Fucking Assholes
Pious Assholes…
Jesus would be sick…like when he yelled at the Pharisees in the temple…he was fucking pissed…he challenged those self-righteous, power hungry motherfuckers…
Citation? No, he did not suggest John the Baptist was reincarnation of Elijah. According to the Bible, Elijah did not die hence could not be reincarnated. Check your sources. But give citation for Jesus suggesting John the Baptist is Elijah returned – how about Gospel of John?