The Domesticated Primate

Saw this one over on Pharyngula. Had a good chuckle.

From my constant attacks on fundies, you'd think I'm some sort of God-hating angry athiest. I'm really not. I'm not sure what I'd call myself these days - probably the closest term I can think of is "deist". But I do get fired up when our selection process for politicians seems to be about choosing people with good hair, good talking points about non-issue wedge topics like gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning, and oh, yeah, making sure they have the same metaphysical, non-verifiable belief system as a good portion of the population, because, you know, that's important stuff. A Christian never did anything immoral or anything. :eyeroll:

Why do I keep carping on about this? I guess it's because when you see people like the Republican Ted Stevens talking about the InterTubes, right now you just get embarrassed for him. And you laugh. Because it IS funny. Riotously so.

How is it that these are the people that are making decisions about things they haven't a clue about, and aren't getting educated about? Why not try to select people that are knowledgeable or at least, more importantly are inquisitive about the world, the world that we live in and can talk rationally about? Because the issues the Internet raised/raises is/are tres simple compared to the sort of ethical and scientific questions we will have to wrestle with in the coming years, and people who think the Bible is a good source of science or even morals are not going to be able to cope - that is, make sound judgements. They will do things like equate blastocysts to fully grown human beings. They will do things like compare internet connections to tubes. And it won't only be funny, it will have consequences.

If these people cannot wrap their minds around net neutrality, I tremble to think of how they'll deal with the issues that are coming fast and furious from science - especially in biology. Hell, many of them still don't accept evolution (notice I don't say "believe" as that implies superstition). For instance, synthetic creation of new life is one. Electing people that are using the Bible to lead is just like electing cavemen to lead us - they are throwbacks and just won't have the coping skills to lead.