Year 2, Month 9, Day 26: Stupid Is As Stupid Does

The Sept. 22 edition of the Cypress Times (TX) notes the idiotic readiness of conservative voters to reject climate change and evolution in one fell swoop:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—While nearly 7-in-10 (69%) Americans believe there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades, and nearly 6-in-10 (57%) Americans believe humans and other living things evolved over time, a new survey finds that approximately half of Americans who identify with the Tea Party reject both (50% reject global warming and 51% reject evolution).

The new PRRI/RNS Religion News Survey was conducted by Public Religion Research Institute, in partnership with the Religion News Service, amid back and forth among Republican presidential candidates on religion and science, especially the issues of climate change and evolution.

I guess I just felt like lecturing them a bit on how dumb they’re being. Note the Old-Testament metaphor in my final sentence. Sent Sept. 22:

That many Republican primary voters enthusiastically repudiate evolutionary theory and global climate change is a sad indicator of the state of education in America. These same voters are perfectly ready to endorse scientific results when they’re ideologically neutral — just ask any “tea-party” member to give up antibiotics, chest x-rays, air travel, telephones or the internal combustion engine and see how far you’ll get. It’s also acceptable when science is used to support conservative policy objectives, as in the application of the latest and most advanced war-making technology — all developed by researchers applying the scientific method.

This method — the testing of falsifiable hypotheses — has created an understanding of the world overwhelmingly more accurate than any other in human history. To reject scientific results when they’re ideologically inconvenient — as in the case of climate denialists — is to bow before the golden calf of willful ignorance.

Warren Senders