Frosty's Bibllical Literalism Laid Waste

A number of bloggers have already posted really cognizant discussions on the absolutely clueless drivel to which Frosty and his school board buddies wish to subject children. Ed, John and of course, PZ have some comments. And Matt has a very interesting post on why Gore's film may not be the best tool for a science class - he may be right. However, none of them hold a candle to the brutally frank essay by John Rickards entitled Bible Replaces Brain. John Rickards is in Britain, which has been experiencing its own creationist investation; but after reading about Frosty, John went off:

That was, of course, until I read this joyous little story, serving once more to prove that old Monty Python adage that there’s bugger all intelligent life down here on Earth.

“The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is,” Hardison told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD [of An Inconvenient Truth].”

Wow. On behalf of humanity, I’d like to thank you for playing. And this woman has spawned seven kids. Which means that while, in any just universe, she should be chemically castrated for the good of the gene pool, it’s too late and those poor, poor little buggers are already doomed. It’s right up there with the famous quote by Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt: “We don’t have to protect the environment. The Second Coming is at hand.”

It gets even better when he blows a hole the size of Kansas in this idea that we should have "fair and balanced" treatment on both sides of an issue:

Some things don’t have fair and balanced opinions on both sides - they just have the right one and the wrong one. I’d like to present you an opinion to balance your view that cars run on petrol fed into an internal combustion engine by teaching kids that in fact they’re powered by little gremlins working treadmills under the bonnet, and that if you can’t see them it’s because your mind only sees the illusion they want you to see.

Somehow I doubt you’d want that taught in schools. But if I’d said it a couple of thousand years ago…

Of course the underlying reason for such inane ideas is the concept of biblical literalism:

Biblical literalism - the belief that the book is true in its entirety and should be held as such - is inherently stupid. I say “inherently” because even without thinking about anything else, the Bible is full of contradictions and varying duplicates of the same story, which by their nature can’t all be true...

...I don’t recall seeing a serious push to have geocentricism taught in schools, nor the theory that the stars are crystal spheres, nor that disease is caused by either demonic possession or the wrath of God. Nor is anyone lobbying Washington or Parliament to have slavery or polygamy allowed for the faithful, or to have adultery (including the thought of adultery) punishable by death. Nor do they seem to be mounting much opposition to, say, the war in Iraq, or indeed to wars in general, nor, in many cases, the death penalty. Despite all that “love thy neighbour”, “turn the other cheek” and “don’t kill” stuff that peppers the Bible, and in particular the New Testament...

...Why not? Because these people are so used - and, as children, so heavily indoctrinated - to having the chosen mouthpieces at the top of their churches tell them what to think, what today’s Threat To The Faith is, what “evidence” there is of this or that, that they are wholly incapable of doing anything but parroting this shit back....I’m not suggesting that creationists and other Biblical literalists are hypocrites. No. I’m suggesting that they’re idiots.

Dangerously psychotic fanatics of subhuman intelligence who were turned into such by organisations which prey on adults whose only crime is to be confused, scared and uncertain, and on children with the great misfortune to be born to members or in member-riddled areas and who are deliberately, cynically and criminally brainwashed when they are too young and too undeveloped to defend themselves from people abusing positions of authority they do not deserve.

Saying that you should be allowed to treat someone as a second-class citizen and abuse them freely because the Bible says so, saying that the world is going to end in fire and then the faithful go to heaven and that this should be portrayed as a sensible alternative to learning about the evidence and reasoning behind global warming because it’s in the Bible, saying that there’s no real evidence for evolution and that creationism is an equally solid theory because, after all, it’s in the Bible, is no more than a kind of shorthand. A shorthand for saying, “Hello, I’m either terminally brainwashed and in desperate need of deprogramming or I’m so horribly mentally deficient that there are tapeworms in my own intestines capable of more cogent thought than me. In any case, I shouldn’t be allowed to tie my own shoes without supervision, let alone decide how society should function or what children should be taught, and certainly not to actually produce any progeny of my own.”

If Frosty is going to aire his personal views in public then he deserves no less a response.