I was trying to explain to my wife how much of a fundamentalist he was, which led me to google his thoughts on evolution. I found the following:
After the initial shock wore off and my wife went into all the usual intelligent reactions to an answer like that (how can he defy the foundation of all known science and biology for a hundred years... all for an old book???), I began to read the comments for the reactions.
ALL POSITIVE. Oh yeah, the United States has an evangelical born-again majority. See these results (found on Adventures in Frickentardistan), just one of many Gallup Polls that have indicated that most of our country is not only extremely Christian, but likely not educated in the bible or even literate. That's okay, Muhammad wasn't literate, but it did not stop him from translating the pure word of Allah! You go, eventual spiritual leader of millions!!
I guess I have always been able to tolerate the fact that a large number of the human population is basically stupid. This is not hard to believe... everything in nature follows the bell curve, including human intelligence. Half of are dumber than the other half. Now consider that the dumb half have been tapped into by the engineers of the evangelical movements. That is almost a freebie. There is more susceptibility for easy to understand and touchy-feely ideas. They want to believe with their heart, and not understand and accept that they may have evolved from slightly simpler, yet impressive and beautiful creatures in their own right. It is hard for a very informed person to truly understand the scope and magnitude of the theory of evolution, let alone the uninformed, under educated, and easily confused.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to stop there. Plenty of the average intelligent people (which is most of us) and very intelligent are afraid to give up the beliefs of their parents. Afraid to give up heaven, immortality, magic, devils, demons, ghosts, a history resembling the Flintstones, or what have you.
I call this one "Huckabee's Ancestor Gets Home from Work". Then Fred begot Elmer, Elmer Begot Steve, Steve Begot Joe, who forgot to Beget at first, then finally got around to Begetting and Begot Spray. Spray begot Susan, who was drown for being female... Oh shit!
I used to enjoy that I did not seem to think like many people. I currently enjoy that the people who claim atheism, agnosticism, skeptics, free-thinkers, and even Brights are a select bunch. No one comes and recruits us, but we come here on our own. We are the wise men and women seeking the light of sanity and progressive thinking. We gave up seeking the baby king of the Jews who would some day bodily return from Heaven and save whoever had the sentience and exposure to specifically believe that he would do just that. I know Christians have made efforts to explain how my innocent and pure 23 month old daughter won't go to hell with me, just because she doesn't have the mental capacity to "believe" in what they tell her to believe in.
If Jesus would have showed up in 1989, I would have been packing my bags for a one way ticket to silver clouds, golden harps, and cherubs floating about. Maybe, I was still pretty skeptical, but it was probably the most I ever honestly did believe in a personal god. A few years before that, I also thought a man with a white beard gave me a shitload of expensive and unnecessary toys because I was a good kid. Not because I was fortunate enough to be adopted by hard working middle class parents who wanted to give me as much as they could afford.
I am much more impressed that my parents worked so hard to provide what they could, rather than a magical system of material karma rewarding me with plastic toys and mindless video games. I am also more impressed by the mysteries of the cosmos and the sub-atomic realm than by a confusing book of who begot whom, which is the victim of 2000 years of reinterpretation for personal and political gain, poor translation between languages, and numerous sects of varying interpretation.
Maybe, just maybe... Huckabee will take the Republican nomination and we will see an uprising and uniting of the secular and progressive. Or, we will dive 4 more years into de-evolution. I just built a house in Ohio, but I'll seriously consider moving to Canada, Australia, somewhere to get away from that.
