Ask the Little Bald Bastard

From the Fucktard Files,

  Meet Ken Ham, president of biblical literalist foundation Answers In Genesis. On Monday, Mr. Ham shared this insight with the world. Science class leads to hopelessness, which leads to rampant abortion, which leads directly to EVERBODY MURDERS EACH OTHER OMFG!!1!

  In his own words:

We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”

  I wonder how Mr. Ham would react to this piece by Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker. First published in March by The New Republic, the essay ties together conclusions from several studies which suggest that the modern world is far less violent that it was in the past. But Mr. Ham, shouldn't a society like we live in now, founded in part on the separation of church and state, and excluding religion from the science classroom, be a more violent, awful place to live?

  I'll be the first to admit that a correlation between greater respect for and belief in science and the increased civility of the world doesn't mean that one has caused the other. Still, it's at least noteworthy that the world has become an empirically less violent place as science has supplanted religion in our education.

  It also flies in the face of the typical fundy claim that nonbelievers are inherently amoral, because we don't have a supernatural being handing us our codes of conduct on a stone tablet. Surprise, Mr. Ham. Im in ur society, not believing in ur god, and yet millions of people just like me manage to get through every day without going on a murderous rampage. Apparently, the world has become a far less nasty place since our ideas have gotten more influential. The next time you're tempted to connect horrible violence to the teaching of evolution by drawing a line through abortion, try to keep that in mind.