Perhaps. But that still doesn’t make them “dumb”. I point again to William F. Buckley, who remained staunchly faithful to his Catholic and creationist beliefs right up to the very end.
It’s my opinion that people basically function on two levels, emotional and intellectual, and that the latter rarely has much influence on the former. This is why smart people sometimes do stupid things. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s why almost anybody who does stupid things does stupid things.
No “perhaps” about it. Facts exist outside the self. That’s what makes them facts. Denial, or simple noncomprehension, whichever is your problem, of the basic concept of factuality is the quintessence of dumbness.
Invoking Buckley merely shows you mistake vocabulary for intelligence. Insistence on a dogma in spite of fact does indeed make one “dumb”.
I can’t take this comment seriously enough to arse myself to refute it.
Well, what I actually said was that “creationists are dumb” was a simpler explanation for the mistaken belief that evolution explains abiogensis than a liberal conspiracy. If you’re going to insist on precision, at least be accurate in what we’re being precise about.
I’m willing to take your word for it that Buckley believed in creationism. Did he also confuse evolution and abiogenesis? If he did, he was dumb, at least when it comes to evolution. I’ll cheerfully stipulate that he was smart about some other topics.
Sure. I feel kinda bad for Da Vinci, Issac Newton and Ben Franklin, too. Possibly someone in the future will feel bad for us.
Well, bad for you. I figure I’ll be hailed as a shining light of civilization and progress.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but aren’t Catholics sort of required to accept what the Pope says? And since the Pope accepts evolution, isn’t it kind of dumb for a Catholic not to? I’m really curious about this, because I’ve met a lot of Catholics who don’t believe in evolution.
I just popped in to say I don’t want a bunch of knuckle dragging book burning bible thumping scopes monkey trial reject new earther flat earther climate denier teach the controversy not the facts tea bagging rightwing bible belt god of the gap intelligent design repub assholes deciding what is “permissible” science. Maybe they should all shut up and leave science to the professionals and the grown ups.
See, the problem we thinking people have is not with what you cretins believe. It’s the idea that you have the temerity, the audacity, the unmitigated gall to think you can make others believe it too and make it law. You think you can require us to teach your drivel and lies. Keep your dark ages ignorance to yourself.
I’m on everybody’s ignore lists! This is so cool.
Tax the rich to pay for off-shore oil exploration! Solar power at Guantanamo! Transsexuals for Jesus!
And I’m not wearing pants.
Smart people do stupid things. Uh huh. One of the smartest guys around, but on this subject he was wrong.
Cool. Smart people can be wrong too.
Can someone explain to me how the Snopes trial is any indictment of conservatism? William Jennings Bryan was part of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party - he was no conservative.
Snopes trial? I heard that was just an urban legend.
He was a populist, anti-elite religious fundamentalist. In 1900 that put you on the left. In 2000, that puts you on the right. The question is not what party individuals were aligned with at the time but where we would locate them if they were running today.
Or, realistically, we could all realize that conservative has many, many meanings, and the current alignment of fact-ignoring religious fundamentalists with the titularly “conservative” party is a matter of historical accident.
What does it matter if he was Ed Begley Jr riding naked on a pogo stick covered in honey and whistling Sweet Georgia Brown? Prosecutors don’t write laws. The Scopes trial didn’t arise because of WJB’s beliefs.
Is this more evidence of the conservative stupid making machine? Dumbass ex machina?
Unless poor David and Barbara have indeed been put on trial due to work of someone coincidentally named William Jennings Bryan. If so, nevermind.
The Pope has not decreed that evolution is a part of Catholic doctrine, he has merely made it clear that a belief in evolution is not inconsistent with Catholic faith. Catholics are not required to believe in evolution.
They’re just dumb if they don’t.
Depends on what you mean by conservatism. Bryan was part of the Christian movement that, at the time, took Christ’s commandments to love and take care of each other seriously as well as the Old Testament only, Christian in name only evangelical faction that we now call “social conservatives”. To Bryant and the tradition of which he was a part, following Christ’s teachings meant using government as a mechanism by which we can take care of each other on the broadest possible scale.
His embrace of the *entire *Bible, in context with the far more limited range of data available as to the age of the earth and of life, allowed him to remain a Genesis literalist far more defensibly than would be the case today. But it was intellectually indefensible even then. The Snopes trial is not an indictment of conservatism in the limited-government, minimal-regulation, as we understand it today, but in the sense of the proud embrace of ignorance in defiance of fact and of preachiness about that ignorance. A better indictment of conservatism in that sense is the fact that we are still forced to discuss creationism in the 21st century.
If we’re really going to continue this Motarded distraction, then WJB’s fundamentalist opposition to evolution appears to have been due more to his beliefs about the source of morality than it does some conflation of evolution and the origin of human life.
Which, let’s keep in mind, is the point of bringing up the Scopes (“c” not “n”) trial in the first place. The Butler Act (Butler Act - Wikipedia) expressly contrasted creationism with evolution, which was why I cited it in the first place. To be relevant, Mr. Moto would have to satisfactorily demonstrate that WJB was liberal and not conservative (despite his opposition to evolution, and his fundamentalist religious beliefs and his beliefs about morality that flowed from them) AND that he put forward evolution as directly contrary to creationism.
But then we would have an opponent of evolution sewing the seeds of confusion, so I don’t know how well that would fit into Starving Artist’s tightly constructed and well-supported hypothetical model of the conniving liberal 100 years mind-fuck regarding evolution.
ETA: Mr. Moto, can we assume that you support Starving’s assertions? You’d officially be the first conservative lining up behind him here.
Well, the Butler Act that Scopes (sorry for the typo) ran afoul of was written after a member of the Tennessee House heard Bryan’s lecture about evolution. Bryan was essentially showing up to defend his law, in a very real sense.
Remember the old joke about the word “assume”?
Your argument is that laws as written by legislators must be, or even may be presumed to be, faithful representations of the arguments put forward by non-legislators who inspired them? Really?
Here’s the text of a pamphlet purported to be written by WJB:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/bryanonevol.html
In scanning it, I can find no evidence of his mistaking evolution to be directly contradictory to creation. In fact, the only clear statement on that note is to expressly recognize that some believe in both evolution and creation.
So, I say your efforts vis a vis WJB are a FAIL, since they are not relevant to the misrepresentation of evolution being directly contradictory to creationism, regardless of whether or not it could be satisfactorily determined that WJB was liberal or conservative.
As for Bryan’s place in the progressive movement of the time, and not with the conservatives, I thought that was just an observation. This was the man with the “Cross of Gold” speech, after all.