Evolution Memo Prompts Call For Apology (Georgia Republican Legislator)

I'm pretty sure this guy is a Republican. Correct me if I'm wrong.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EVOLUTION_JEWS?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

Feb 18, 6:09 AM EST
Evolution Memo Prompts Call for Apology

By GREG BLUESTEIN
Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA (AP) -- A Jewish organization is demanding an apology from a Georgia legislator for a memo that says the teaching of evolution should be banned because it is a myth propagated by an ancient Jewish sect.

State Rep. Ben Bridges denies writing the memo, which attributes the Big Bang theory to Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Bridges has long opposed the teaching of evolution in Georgia classrooms and has introduced legislation requiring only that "scientific fact" be taught.

- snip -

The memo asks readers to challenge the "evolution monopoly in the schools" by logging onto Hall's anti-evolution Web site, http://www.fixedearth.com .

"Indisputable evidence - long hidden but now available to everyone - demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion," says the memo, which has Bridges' name on it. "This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic 'holy book' Kabbala dating back at least two millennia."

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Without Judaism, there would be no Christianity.

Of course the biblebelt-niks don't hear what they don't want to hear.

Carpenter over at Nazareth.
Although I understand he was better at preaching than roofing.

Rather than taking on the truly simple task of thinking for themselves, many Americans, particularly from the "Bible Belt", choose to vote for characters like this. They have very low self-esteem without even knowing it. They believe that everything that happens is "God's will", and that Man, nor any process other than "God's will", has any control over the "World".

And they get the government and schools that they deserve.

Frankly, I feel sorry for thinking people who have to live in places like that.

I am an Atlantan and appreciate your sympathy. This morning I read the letters to the editor in our local paper and was again struck by either the deliberate ignorance or the sheer insanity of so many people in this area. Most of them seem to be suburban and republican which perhaps explains it all.

I do not know who to thank for the heart but I appreciate the gift. DU is a remarkably civilized place in this often vicious world. :pals:

I am a suburban dweller way out in Covington and I am not batshit crazy like these fools that keep embarrassing us on a daily basis. I don't know which is the bigger idiot, this nut or State Sen. Eric Johnson, who got his ass handed to him by a CNN reporter this weekend about the Genarlow Wilson case. See Amy Morton's great posting about it on her blog, Georgia Women Vote: http://georgiawomenvote.blogspot.com/

I really don't understand how this state got so stupid so fast. :shrug:

they would argue that they don't have low self esteem, but they confuse that with pride, which they have in abundance... and pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall.

When you're talking about state legislature and Congress-critters, it is those from the most backwater, backwards areas of the state who vote these idiots into office because they reflect their own level of ignorance.

But, I get where you're coming from.

of course.

The memo also says that the earth does not rotate around the sun and the Copernicus was wrong.

Sorta scary that he couldn't predict the kind of reaction that this has caused - that he is so insulated in his five centuries old thinking that he thought he would be hailed, at least by anti-evolution education folks, as some kind of 'expert' or even hero for giving them "weighty" talking points to use to push their agenda. Can you imagine? It sorta reminds me of the thinking on a freeper thread that I read long ago - where a poster was trying with all sincerity to convince other freepers that dinosaurs were present on Noahs Ark. Dude seriously didn't get that even most freepers had more rationality than that.

he's a retired Ga. State Patrol Captain.

Snippet from a traffic stop, many years ago. "Ain't you one of them New York Jews?"

Jeezuss I love Georgia but these people make me so embarrassed to live here sometimes!

Like, wtf?

I looked at it and thought it was an atheist's idea of a joke.

But given the fact that it looks like shit and the guy sounds an actual anti-semitic/anti-science nut to the max...I think it's a legit site.

Rather than admit that it was over-reaching for the sake of big oil, the last ditch spin will be that Israel "tricked" us into invading Iraq and threatening Iran, and since anti-semitism has only been frowned upon here for a few decades, it won't be hard to fan it again.

Personally I see it as a fact propagated by Darwin and his progeny, to the great benefit of humanity.

"A scientific fact is information that can be independently verified by any trained person - for example, the fact that an iron deficiency leads to anemia."

A scientific "theory is an explanatory statement, or set of statements, derived from facts, laws and confirmed hypotheses. ... The purpose of a theory is not only to concisely summarize what we already know but, moreover, to suggest directions for further study and to help predict what the findings should be if the theory is correct." Saladin, "Anatomy and Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function," pg. 9.

And so, this non-evolution teaching man would have us bury our heads in the sand, ignore our brightest minds, leave our children in the abyss and return all of mankind to the Dark Ages. Nice. I'm glad I don't live in Georgia.

...that Rep. Bridges thinks the entirety of modern biology and cosmology is Kabbalah in disguise, or that he thinks they should be banned on that premise.

In the end, it doesn't matter. Rep. Bridges has marked himself as one of an all-too-common breed of kooky luddite racists who seem to have risen fairly high in the infrastructure of government lately.

The book of Genesis is an ancient Jewish belief, not evolution. And I'm pretty sure Charles Darwin didn't know much about the Kabbalah, which mentions nothing about evolution and includes some ideas that are kind of metaphorically similar to the idea of the Big Bang.