There are days I despair for the human race. This is certainly one of them. Last month, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Moron) gave a speech denouncing science as Satan’s work to undermine Christianity. Seriously.

Via TPM:

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

According to Broun, the scientific plot was primarily concerned with hiding the true age of the Earth. Broun serves on the House Science Committee, which came under scrutiny recently after another one of its Republican members, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses against pregnancy.

“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”

This man sits on the House Science Committee. That’s like letting a 5-year-old write the budget. Or Paul Ryan. Such profound, and deliberate, ignorance of basic education should disqualify Broun from having anything to do with policy making, much less science policy. This isn’t controversial stuff like “When does a fertilized egg become a person?” There’s a debate to be had there. This isn’t a question about something fundamentally unanswerable like what happens after we die. This is hard, proven and not that difficult to understand facts that Broun is childishly rejecting because he (mistakenly) thinks that it means he can’t worship Jesus.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/05/republican-science-is-all-lies/