Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In August, Todd Akin—Republican candidate for the US Senate from Missouri—got into hot water with his party and became the “laughing stock of the planet” for remarks that he made about how women who are “legitimately raped” rarely get pregnant. Akin said the following during an interview on KTVI-TV:
First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. . . But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
Writing for Wired, Brandon Kleim said of Akin:
Aside from the sheer biological ludicrousness of Todd Akin’s ideas on female physiology, one unsettling subplot to the debacle is his presence on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
That’s right: A man who, to put it gently, ignores what science tells us about how babies are made, helps shape the future of science in America. It would be shocking, but for the fact that many of the committee’s GOP members have spent the last several years displaying comparable contempt for climate science.
Kleim also wrote about other Republicans on the committee who seem to show a contempt for science and scientists:
The committee’s chair, Ralph Hall (R-Texas), lumps “global freezing” together with global warming, which he doesn’t believe humans can significantly impact because “I don’t think we can control what God controls.” Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) thinks cutting down trees reduces levels of greenhouse gases they absorb. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) still trots out the debunked notion that a scientific consensus existed in the 1970s on “global cooling,” which he portrays as a scare concocted by scientists “in order to generate funds for their pet projects.”
‘We ought to have some believable science.’
Dan Benishek (R-Michigan) strikes that climate-scientists-as-charlatans note, dismissing contemporary research as “all baloney. I think it’s just some scheme.” Paul Broun (R-Georgia) says that “Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community.”
For the rest of this post, I’ll focus on Rep. Paul Broun, the chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Broun doesn’t just think that the “scientific community” has perpetrated a hoax about climate change—he also thinks scientists have made up lies about evolution, the age of planet Earth, the Big Bang Theory, and embryology…and that those lies come “straight from the pit of Hell.”
During a speech that Broun gave at the 2012 Sportsman’s Banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia on September 27th, he said this:
God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. 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. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. 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. 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.
In his speech, Broun claimed that as a legislator he takes direction from the Bible:
And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.
He continued:
Our Constitution was written by men that believed that! And in fact, the Constitution’s written on Biblical principles — in fact, the three branches of government come right from Isaiah, Isaiah 33:22, go look it up!
From Wonkette:
In an inexorable speech that is available in full on YouTube (but which we will mercifully summarize), Broun attributes his 2007 election to the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ, shows slides of a Kodiak bear and a lion that he heroically shot, and tells a story about heroically shooting another lion in the face, explaining that “God directed that bullet, because if I’d missed, that lion would have been in the back of the truck with me and I’d have been clawed to death.” He even tells a story about his heroic deployment to Afghanistan for 31 days earlier this year as a member of the Naval Reserve, where he saw an Afghan soldier who’d been seriously injured by an IED but survived somehow. And what those awful injuries reminded him of, said Broun, was that the Bible tells us that human beings are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Broun knows this “as a physician,” and this line from Psalm 139:14 somehow proves that evolution is fake.
But did he learn that in college, or in med school? No. He was taught that
we all came from a ‘Big Bang,’ and we were trained in all this stuff about evolution…what I was taught in college and medical school and even high school that we went ‘from Goo to Zoo to You.’ And I believed that.
Phil Plait of Discover Magazine’s Bad Astronomy blog wrote in his post The US Congress Anti-Science Committee that Broun sits on the committee with other anti-science legislators—including Akin—whom “the Republican majority placed on that committee. Men who think global warming is a fantasy. Men who think women have magic vaginas. Men who think the Earth is thousands, not billions, of years old.”
Kind of scary, don’t you think, that we have legislators like Broun who have little respect for science serving on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology?
NOTE: One might think that a man who is so anti-science may not be an educated person—but that is far from the truth. Braun graduated from the University of Georgia in 1967 with a B.S. in Chemistry—and in, 1971, he received his Medical Doctor degree from the Medical College of Georgia.
SOURCES
Paul Broun: Evolution, Big Bang ‘Lies Straight From The Pit Of Hell’ (Huffington Post)
The US Congress Anti-Science Committee (Discover Magazine)
Republican Senate Nominee: Victims Of ‘Legitimate Rape’ Don’t Get Pregnant (TPM 2012)
Todd Akin and the Anti-Science House Science Committee (Wired)
Video shows ‘scientist’ in Congress saying evolution is from ‘pit of Hell’ (NBC News)
Hero Rep. Paul Broun Takes Bible-Based Stand Against Hell-Spawned Lies of ‘Science’ (Wonkette)
Wingnut Watch: Paul Broun Says Progressives Trying to ‘Destroy America’ (Rolling Stone)
Members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Zara,
He did, but he told him to only think of religious “facts”!
Elaine,
One of my earliest memories is my mother making my brother do his leg exercises because he had a mild case of polio. He recovered with no problems, but my cousin had a bad case and she is still in braces. Salk was a superhero in his day.
ah, nick, vaccinations don’t prevent disease, they are a fraud. for one thing, the impurities in the vaccine are a problem, especially the mercury which is a deliberate impurity. a fairly recent outbreak of measles in the midwest hit mostly vaccinated kids. documentation has recently become available that shows that the big pharma has known for decades about the dangers of the mmr vaccine. hitting infants with up to 30 different shots w/in their first years totally screws up their natural immune system. if i had kids i’d have them on a healthy diet that would give them strong immune systems and refuse all vaccinations that would tend to destroy their natural immune system.
Zara,
God will catch him if he takes your challenge, don’t you know!
rafflaw….Why didn’t his IMAGINARY ghod give him the ability to think???
I have my suspicions…. But, I’d bet G.W. BUSHIT appointed him to the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology. Carl Sagan would die all over again, if he looked at the massive stupidity happening in current America.
nick,
More kids skip school shots in 8 states
By Mike Stobbe, Associated Press
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/story/health/story/2011-11-28/More-kids-skip-school-shots-in-8-states/51434170/1
Excerpt:
ATLANTA – More parents are opting out of school shots for their kids. In eight states now, more than 1 in 20 public school kindergartners aren’t getting all the vaccines required for attendance, an Associated Press analysis found.
That growing trend among parents seeking vaccine exemptions has health officials worried about outbreaks of diseases that once were all but stamped out.
The AP analysis found more than half of states have seen at least a slight rise in the rate of exemptions over the past five years. States with the highest exemption rates are in the West and Upper Midwest…
Exemption seekers are often middle-class, college-educated white people, but there are often a mix of views and philosophies. Exemption hot spots like Sedona, Ariz., and rural northeast Washington have concentrations of both alternative medicine-preferring as well as government-fearing libertarians.
*****
I think many young parents have never seen children who have become extremely ill, suffered the aftereffects of, or died from a serious communicable disease–because most of our children have been vaccinated over the years. I lived through the polio epidemic during the 1950s. Those were scary times for parents and children. I still vividly remember getting my first polio inoculation at City Hall in the city where I grew up. Jonas Salk was a big hero in those days. He refused to apply for a patent on his vaccine. When he was asked who owned the patent, he replied, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
Well Representative Broun (R-Ga) Why don’t you jump of a cliff and test out the theory of Gravity.
Abraham Lincoln could have solved the problem so easily by just letting the South go its merry way. Of course, we’d have another whole set of problems to deal with.
Another thought:
I don’t recall ever seeing the national Republican Party withhold or threaten to withhold campaign financial support for this guy as they did when Akins spoke what they all believe but aren’t permitted to say in public. One has to assume they send him plenty of money to continue to spew his garbage beliefs.
How do morons like this get elected? Do they promise their constituents to protect them from science and knowledge at all costs and then the similarly twisted sheep clamor to the polls to put yet another Republican lunatic (please pardon the redundancy) in office? It’s more than scary. These people are dangerous to the country.
Elaine, Good post. I am tired of politicians and regular people rejecting science. However, you should know this pathology is not limited to idealogues on the right. I have a friend who lives in the Bay area. She’s a pediatric intensive care doc @ Lucile Packard Stanford Hospital. Karen has a daughter who just became school age. She is shocked @ the number of supposedly intelligent, progressive people who don’t get their kids vaccinated. They have been sold junk science that has been proven fraudulent. However, they just dig their heels in and refuse to vacccinate their kids.
Excellent job Elaine. This excuse for a doctor is not only wrong, he is not alone in his crazy ideas. If Jesus was responsible for his election then how does he explain Obamas election?
Therein lies the whole problem with the country. How do you deal with someone who refuses to even consider scientific evidence? Then when you add on the insanity that your way is to only way and any other way is socialism, communism, sharia, whatever and anyone who disagrees with you must be all those things and must be destroyed
What you end up with is one party that is no longer grounded in reality and refuses to be even a small bit reasonable. The nation suffers because of morons like this & the idiots who elect them. I don’t mind that they are destroying themselves but they insist on taking us with them.
Socialist Obama Wants You To Eat Fruits & Vegetables!
Swarthmore mom,
Paul Broun–Worst Person in the World
Elaine M. 1, October 6, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Dredd,
Could it be, perhaps, that the “more educated neocons” want to keep their constitutents ignorant of science (climate change, evolution, reproduction) for political reasons?
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Yes, it could be, because that would be another indicator that they are psychopaths.
I think of him as a wing nut rather than a neocon. Right after Obama was elected he said that Obama was going to set up a marxist dictatorship.
Dredd,
Could it be, perhaps, that the “more educated neocons” want to keep their constitutents ignorant of science (climate change, evolution, reproduction) for political reasons?
“NOTE: One might think that a man who is so anti-science may not be an educated person—but that is far from the truth. Braun graduated from the University of Georgia in 1967 with a B.S. in Chemistry—and in, 1971, he received his Medical Doctor degree from the Medical College of Georgia.
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A study not far back revealed that the more educated neoCons are the less likely they are to believe scientific matters than conflict with their world view.
Gene,
I was having a difficult time trying to choose a topic to write about this weekend. Then I read an article on Huffington Post about Broun and that speech he gave. I knew I had to do a post about him and the House Science Committee.
And people wonder why American kids don’t fare as well as they should on standardized science tests????? Broun and those who think as he does about science should definitely share in the blame!
Elaine,
I’m really glad you choose to write about Broun and his merry gang of scientific illiterates. I was reading about him yesterday (specifically the Bad Astronomy blog). Quite honestly it made my head want to explode that the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight is filled with a bunch of zealous anti-science Luddites like these maroons.
It’s a national embarrassment and their appointments to this committee should be reviewed immediately.