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This is so sad. Religion at its worst, right here in the United States. "Our HOLY BOOK has been contradicted by THE NATURAL WORLD. Therefore ... We declare JIHAD on our UNDERSTANDING of the NATURAL WORLD!!"
Richard Feynman made a speech some 40 or 50 years ago about this sort of thing. He observed that his fellow scientists were downplaying the solidity of their observations and experiments, because they were being pressured by religious leaders. The zealots complained that scientists were making "offensive" and "morally disruptive" discoveries, and the scientists, being nice people in general, didn't want to upset anyone with their work. Feynman said that he wasn't interested in being polite. He was interested in presenting the data as it was, and pulling no punches when people challenged it on non-scientific grounds. "Why are we tolerating these kinds of attacks?" he asked.
That's the stance I take, too. So here's what I really think. This organization? With a 15-million-dollar annual budget dedicated exclusively to spreading disinformation and rotting away the foundations of science? It's crap. Everyone involved in it is a malevolent jerk. Anyone who donates to it is a stupid cow who's been swindled, and hoodwinked, and had their brain raped by religious dogma, in the most intimate and desecrating of ways.
Scientific evidence isn't like a writ of holy commandments. It can't be wished away or shouted down. It doesn't vanish when you maim or imprison the people who teach it, or deface the textbooks that present it. Science doesn't work that way. Science is about refining theories that predict the outcome of an event before we witness it, or an observation before we make it. If the observation or the outcome doesn't match the theory, we modify the theory, or in extreme cases, throw it in the garbage. The Biblical creation myth belongs in the garbage. It was the best that a bunch of nomads in rude huts could manage thousands of years ago and it hasn't aged well. Anyone living today who thinks it has even a smidgen of truth is either haplessly ignorant, or willfully so.
Evolution, on the other hand, is such a vindicated and well documented theory that it has become an indispensable part of almost every branch of science. Its predictions have been proven right over and over again, from the presence of countless intermediate fossils to the genetic imprint of a common ancestor, carried in the DNA of every living creature on Earth. Since its formulation, no scientist has ever uncovered evidence that contadicts it. The closest anyone came was the Piltdown man discovery, and that turned out to be fabricated. We've seen new species created in the wild, as well as in lab settings. We've seen it work on the small scale and on the Earth-encompassing scale.
And frankly, I am just plain fed up with people who can believe in "God", without ever demanding that he show up and make some water into wine, but smugly declare that evolution is fantastical because they've never seen a lizard spontaneously erupt in feathers and start going 'Bock bock'. They're buffoons who simply can't handle the thought of not being Super-Duper Special in the eyes of Their Lord, and according to their own narrow idea of Special at that, but at the same time they clutch their microwave ovens, television sets, factory-built clothes, credit cards, and supermarket goods that science, and science alone, has delivered to them. In short, they're hypocrites, and I hope they wake the hell up before they trash the house that science built, like the ignorant little children they are.
Richard Feynman made a speech some 40 or 50 years ago about this sort of thing. He observed that his fellow scientists were downplaying the solidity of their observations and experiments, because they were being pressured by religious leaders. The zealots complained that scientists were making "offensive" and "morally disruptive" discoveries, and the scientists, being nice people in general, didn't want to upset anyone with their work. Feynman said that he wasn't interested in being polite. He was interested in presenting the data as it was, and pulling no punches when people challenged it on non-scientific grounds. "Why are we tolerating these kinds of attacks?" he asked.
That's the stance I take, too. So here's what I really think. This organization? With a 15-million-dollar annual budget dedicated exclusively to spreading disinformation and rotting away the foundations of science? It's crap. Everyone involved in it is a malevolent jerk. Anyone who donates to it is a stupid cow who's been swindled, and hoodwinked, and had their brain raped by religious dogma, in the most intimate and desecrating of ways.
Scientific evidence isn't like a writ of holy commandments. It can't be wished away or shouted down. It doesn't vanish when you maim or imprison the people who teach it, or deface the textbooks that present it. Science doesn't work that way. Science is about refining theories that predict the outcome of an event before we witness it, or an observation before we make it. If the observation or the outcome doesn't match the theory, we modify the theory, or in extreme cases, throw it in the garbage. The Biblical creation myth belongs in the garbage. It was the best that a bunch of nomads in rude huts could manage thousands of years ago and it hasn't aged well. Anyone living today who thinks it has even a smidgen of truth is either haplessly ignorant, or willfully so.
Evolution, on the other hand, is such a vindicated and well documented theory that it has become an indispensable part of almost every branch of science. Its predictions have been proven right over and over again, from the presence of countless intermediate fossils to the genetic imprint of a common ancestor, carried in the DNA of every living creature on Earth. Since its formulation, no scientist has ever uncovered evidence that contadicts it. The closest anyone came was the Piltdown man discovery, and that turned out to be fabricated. We've seen new species created in the wild, as well as in lab settings. We've seen it work on the small scale and on the Earth-encompassing scale.
And frankly, I am just plain fed up with people who can believe in "God", without ever demanding that he show up and make some water into wine, but smugly declare that evolution is fantastical because they've never seen a lizard spontaneously erupt in feathers and start going 'Bock bock'. They're buffoons who simply can't handle the thought of not being Super-Duper Special in the eyes of Their Lord, and according to their own narrow idea of Special at that, but at the same time they clutch their microwave ovens, television sets, factory-built clothes, credit cards, and supermarket goods that science, and science alone, has delivered to them. In short, they're hypocrites, and I hope they wake the hell up before they trash the house that science built, like the ignorant little children they are.
