Memo to Creationists: YOU ARE DUMB.
Welcome to Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet Week here at You Are Dumb. At least four full days of rich, fecund mocking of creationists, who are, as you may have heard, the stupidest fucking people on the entire planet Earth. Today brings the broadside manifesto, and during the week we'll be looking at specific instances of stupid creationists doing what they do best: being stupid.
As we sink headfirst into the New Dark Ages, is it too much of me to ask that we of Blue America at least pick one thing to fight wholeheartedly? One line to draw and say to the Red that while you may be trying to regress everything else, we're gonna keep this one fucking chunk of progress? That chunk is evolution, and it is being grabbed at by the Idiot Hordes. Hold on tight.
It won't be easy. The resurgence of creationism is something more people should have been paying attention to. Because it's symptomatic of everything that's been going wrong. The reduction of facts to mere "subjects for debate". The rise of the religious right. The abandonment of science. And the triumph of sheer, rampant stupidity. Let's start by defining some terms we'll use all this week.
Creationism, as defined around these parts, is the completely wrong and retarded belief that the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible created the heavens and the earth about 6,000 years ago, literally planted Adam and Eve as the first fully-formed humans on that earth at around the same time, all of us are descended from two navel-free naked white people, and that everything else is the braying of liberal pagan witches under the thrall of Satan.
"Intelligent Design", as defined around these parts, is the completely wrong and retarded belief that the universe and biological systems on the Earth are so incredibly complex that they couldn't have arisen through chance, and thus, the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible must have created the heavens and the earth about 6,000 years ago, literally planted Adam and Eve as the first fully-formed humans on that earth at around the same time, all of us are descended from two navel-free naked white people,and that everything else is the braying of liberal pagan witches under the thrall of Satan.
Do not fall into the trap of people who stop speaking at "chance". Because if you watch their lips very carefully, they're mouthing the rest of it. They can proclaim otherwise until they're red-state in the face, but the truth is, every single person trying to push Intelligent Design on this nation's children believes in the six thousand year universe. They just hide it so as not to be laughed out of school board meetings (or elections) like the crazy people they are.
Here's where I let all you thinking godfolk in my audience off the hook, because I'm feeling nice. Enjoy this paragraph, because it's your only succor in this space for the next three and a half to four and a half days. You're free to believe all you want that science is just exploring God's great creation, and that your god created the universe and the systems and the whatnot billions of years ago. That's fine. Because that stays out of the way. Don't call it "Intelligent Design", though. That phrase got co-opted by the crazy people, and if you use it, you'll just sound like a crazy person when you're talking over wine and fondue or whatever it is you people do when you discuss Life's Great Mysteries.
But the 6,000 year universe people are WRONG, the anti-evolution people are WRONG, and we need to be standing up for that. Evolution is an observed, proven fact. What remains a "theory" is just the strict-Darwinian, one-celled organism all the way up to that record-setting Jeopardy guy progression over the millenia. And let's stop focusing on Darwin. He was a biggie, yes, but for fuck's sake, he was working in the 1800's. Back when light bulbs were a novelty. He didn't have all the answers, and the Six Thousand Year Universe People seize on that, with their tiny, tiny minds, to try to convince people that because Darwin wasn't 100% spot on, we've learned NOTHING in the intervening 150+ years, and obviously the Bible is just as good.
But it's not just as good. Try using it to fix your fuel injector sometime and see how far the Bible gets you. The rational people in this country, even the religious, Republican rational people*, need to stand up and realize that the idea that creationism should be taught in science class is roughly on par with the idea that history classes should teach that George Washington was a giant, fire-breathing turtle and friend to all children. And that "respecting their views" is in fact allowing our liberal, egalitarian sensibilities to give complete bullshit a veneer or legitimacy in a world where only the veneer of legitimacy matters anymore.
That is our line in the sand. That facts are more valid than beliefs, and if beliefs contradict facts, then it is the beliefs that need to change, because the facts won't, no matter how strong the belief. Every time a textbook presents "alternative viewpoints" to facts, every time a teacher, by will or by force, is compelled to use the phrase "intelligent design" in a biology class, every time a student leaves class thinking we don't REALLY know what's going on, that it's still up in the air, when it patently and demonstrably IS NOT, every time these things happen, we take one step backwards, towards Dayton, Tennessee, 1925, and one of the lowest, saddest points in American history. This shit needs to be stopped.
* All five of you.