Do you remember those bumper stickers that said,“ The moral majority is neither.” The evangelicals have tried to take over the vocabulary of morality and ethics, as the Republicans successfully took over the vocabulary of politics.

Liberal used to mean open minded, educated, able to see another’s point of view. Now it’s just a political epithet since Newt Gingrich. Accuracy in speech went the way of civility and cooperation. Gay used to mean carefree and happy. Now look what’s happened to it.

The word ‘believe’ is now used as a weapon by all kinds of brainless people. When I am asked if I believe in astrology I say, “Astrology isn’t something you believe in. It’s something you know about.”

And recently one of the ‘believe’ fanatics, an obviously ignorant and stupid person, waved his translation of the Christian scriptures at me and said, “Do you believe in evolution?” as though it was a matter of belief. My answer was, “I don’t believe in evolution. I believe evolution. And I can’t discuss it with someone like you. Take your lousy translation away and have a good day.”

Some things you know. You don’t believe them. To believe in something implies doubt. Some people believe in UFO’s, others in fairies, others that a human virgin gave birth to a boy. Those are usually matters of faith, certainly not conclusions from tried and tested data. Most scientists believe evolution because of all the data available that has been examined and tested. It isn’t a matter of faith in a dogma.

The religionists are always trying to show that their ignorance and folly are supported by science. They desperately need the obvious validity that all can see in the modern technology that emanated from science and carefully examined data, not from an unshakable belief system that allowed no facts to enter that didn’t agree with the belief.

Your cell phone doesn’t work because of a scientific dogma. It works for anybody of any religion. It works because of investigations into the facts of magnetism and electricity and the chemistry of silicon. Religion had nothing to do with it or the phones would only work for Southern Baptists or some other divisive group. Maybe that’s down the pike. Cell phones for lovers of Jesus! Guaranteed not to work for heretics. Can you imagine the ads?

Scientific theories are the best explanation currently available concerning the apparent laws by which the universe seem to work. New knowledge will bring about a change in a scientific theory to enable it to continue to apply to the universe. New knowledge will not be ignored if it conflicts with a theory. Facts are primary. Science is directed to find out the truth about things. Eventually it always seems to get there. Theories change according to facts and according to careful examination of those facts by dozens of intelligent people to whom facts are the basis of their work. It is the ability to change and not accept certainty that is the strength of science.

Nothing however will change the theory of the religionist about creation because it isn’t a theory. It’s an unsupported assertion with no data to back it up. It isn’t science in any sense of the word. By spinning the common vocabulary the evangelicals are trying to make America into a theocracy where their rules are paramount. Their spin can deceive ignorant people, particularly the growing percentage of non-readers with poverty stricken vocabularies and a tendency to believe anyone speaking in an authoritative manner, particularly if they are rich.

The spinners say that evolution is only a theory, just like their latest piece of garbage known as Intelligent Design. By this they are implying that a scientific theory is merely an opinion. It isn’t. I have had people bray to me that “I have a right to my opinion.” And I agreed completely with the donkeys. But their ignorant opinion does not deserve the same respect as an informed opinion. Not all opinions have the same value.

I have read books by people who twist and spin the first chapter of Genesis to show that science is agreeing with their absurd views on how the universe began. But someone who can claim that his view of a six day stint by a supernatural being that created the whole thing is in total agreement with the Big Bang theory of an incident about 10 billion years ago that began millions of now known chemical and physical reactions, obviously has no powers of judgment that would allow an informed conversation about differences to take place.

The ignoramus has a right to his or her opinion but not the right to have it valued. Nor the right to impose it on me or thee as something that MUST be believed on pain of censure.

I was evacuated during WWII and a few years of my ‘away from home stint’ years were spent with fundamentalist foster parents. They were very pleased that I knew hundreds of verses of the King James Bible by heart. They were not pleased that I was on a full academic scholarship in a school well known for producing scientists.

As a young person I was expected to listen to my elders with respect. The man of the house gave me his opinion about evolution in one brilliant sentence. “ If evolution is right why aren’t the gorillas in the zoo turning into men?” This was his unanswerable retort to any mention of evolution as a scientific theory concerning the origin of species. And he sincerely believed that it was a total refutation of evolution. He was a lay preacher. Really hot stuff about sin and guilt and blood stained Lambs.

Now this man was otherwise a very pleasant person, a dutiful husband and father and extremely competent at his work, which entailed bringing out a well known local daily paper. His opinion about evolution and science in general was worthless, but doubtless impacted what was in the paper, since he was the manager. And he knew how EVERYBODY else OUGHT to behave, and what they SHOULD believe. So he was a danger to anyone with curiosity and a desire to understand the world. And such evangelicals are a danger to anyone who wants the frontier of knowledge to be expanded.

When these people lever their way into being in charge then progress in science stops. And they are tirelessly working at getting into local government and education committees right now. Remember the nonsense spread about Harry Potter by evangelicals who hadn’t read the book. Witness the turmoil about the concept of Intelligent Design. Just looking at the people who promulgate it is an answer right there. Unintelligent Design is more likely.

Politicians, comedians, generals and just about anybody and anything can be reamed in the media and taken to task, but apparently nobody must say anything about the religion a person has been processed by that turns them into fanatical ignoramuses needing to convert everyone they meet. That taboo is very dangerous. It must be broken or science in this country will falter. The fundamentalists in any religion are a danger to their country and ought at least once in a while be treated with the public contempt their ignorance and fanaticism deserve.

One of the greatest disappointments of my teaching career was in tutoring a young student who was not allowed to be in the classroom where certain matters were being taught. As the lad was very bright I was asked to teach him special mathematics. He was one of the two pupils I have encountered who were gifted beyond my own particular quite high natural talent in mathematics. I knew far more of course because of my age. But this lad soaked up everything as fast as I could give it to him. His raw ability in mathematics surpassed mine as the sun surpasses a headlight. Such an honor to encounter such a mind and be able to guide it.

The speech teacher came into the room we were using one day and was astonished to see elementary calculus and trigonometry on the board. I gave the boy a homework one day of a picture of the night sky where he was and the GMT of the newscast to give him the time, and the elevation of certain stars. He had to find out what kind of ship he was on.

I have never seen such a grin on a human face when I saw him next time. He had worked out his longitude and latitude from the data I had given him, and solved the riddle. He said, “ I was on a camel, the ship of the desert, right in the middle of the Sahara.” Did I mention that this lad who was dealing with matrices, determinants, elementary calculus and knew over a hundred places of pi by heart, did I mention that he was not yet ten years old.

So why was I disappointed in one of my two star pupils? His family belonged to a fundamentalist sect that totally disapproved of post high school education. He might have been a great asset to the scientific community of this country, maybe world famous. But there was no way he would be allowed to attend college. Last time I met him, years later he was a manager in a store with his major talent unexpressed. To me that was the equivalent of a criminal offense against humanity. Doubtless the very pleasant family had some scriptural authority for their action and were content.

Recently I heard someone on the radio mentioning the conflict between spirituality and science. I don’t see any such conflict. The conflict is between dogmatic religion and science. Quite a different matter. All the mystics talk the same language. Quantum physicists are beginning to sound like the mystics. All the theologians bicker like lawyers.

Chemists, physicists and mathematicians all over the world for example, use the same laws of science in their work. No matter where the scientist comes from he or she uses factual data as the foundation of the work. An appeal to facts and experiment is always respected. Nature is the court of final appeal. In that sense then scientists all agree. They have different opinions about different aspects of their subjects but they all agree about the foundations, which are the results of centuries of finding, discovering, examining, theorizing and proving. Science unites people.

Religion is divisive. Many people who are brought up in some dogma will assume that anyone else who doesn’t say the same words or ‘believe’ the same dogmas is definitely wrong, and probably inferior, and in for a bad time in some other world beyond the sky.

Millions of people have died because of the bigotry and prejudice of religionists, and yet they say that without their nonsensical beliefs there would be no ethics or morals. Like the Repblicans co-opting the language, such people assume that atheists must be unethical and immoral. To such blatent bigotry I have to mention that Christianity, for example doesn’t always seem to produce people with ethical or moral integrity.

Look at the people who are in jail. They consist of people from every religious group. Some of them were framed we know and possibly by Christian policemen and lawyers eager to pad their resumés. But Hitler, Mussolini and General Franco were all Catholics. It was the Christians who conquered Jerusalem during the Crusades and killed 10,000 people, their horses wading through blood.

I am often told that the Ten Commandments are the basis of moral behavior. That is total nonsense. Look at them. Did you have to be ordered not to steal or kill? These are the sort of rules that a bunch of primitives with no idea of social behavior needed to hear. They didn’t know how to behave like people. If indeed they had been slaves for generations there may have been an excuse. But the teachings of Jesus have only two commandments on which he said hang all the Law and the Prophets. And the evangelicals ignore these two: Love God, and Love your neighbor as yourself. Instead they cherry pick the fanatical, paranoiac orders of the god of the Old Testament, and do not quote the ones that no longer apply in the modern world, though they have the same authority.

Science in Muslim countries is not in such a good shape either since dogmas still hold a supreme place over scientific facts. That’s a much greater subject and I’m just dealing with stuff we experience here, but it is so.

But you might remember that recently a thirteen year old girl was raped by three men in Somalia. She was found guilty of adultery of course, buried up to her chin in the ground and stoned to death by the village. Patriarchal religion in action. The men were not stoned.

We know that here in the U.S.A. the Christian god is apparently a fanatical voyeur. The most important matters to him, according to his followers, are who is sleeping with whom and how to stop people who want to prevent the birth of more worshipers for him. Can you look at anyone who considers that gay marriage and abortions are the most important matters to deal with nowadays, in the shape the world is in, and still think they can have any intelligent or useful judgment about US, we the people, who think that feeding the hungry, healing the sick and being kind to one another are among the most important things, the very things their ignored Lord was always talking about.

This fundamentalist attack on science and truth is a mainly Protestant American phenomenon. It is not happening in other countries, where for example, Jesuit priests with three doctorates have no difficulty seeing evolution as a tool used by their God to bring about the current situation. It’s mainly loud mouthed and ignorant American evangelicals who are the problem. And some of them are very rich, which in this country means power. Witness the latest Creation museum where there are panoramas of men and women living in the times of dinosaurs

You are likely to have seen the movie Jurassic Park, and maybe you have seen the skull and teeth of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is a biological fact, taken for granted by everyone except evangelicals apparently, that the teeth of a creature indicate the kind of food that it uses.

Children taken on ‘Christian’ tours of science museums are told that Tyrannosaurus Rex was a vegetarian. Now how could anyone spin that one, given the evidence of those dagger like teeth? The ‘reason’ is that death didn’t come into the world until Adam and Eve sinned. It stands to ‘reason’ that Rex couldn’t hang around waiting for them to sin so that he could eat other animals. He would have starved to death. ‘Therefore’ he was vegetarian.

People like this could reason any action of anybody into being a sin or a heresy. They did during the Inquisition’s trials of witches. Nobody escaped. Facts were irrelevant. There were no people around when Rex was rampant. Didn’t matter to the guide’s ‘reasoning.’ Your behavior could not possibly escape censure from people who can ‘reason’ like that, and be dead sure they are right too. And their punishments of the sinners would be so just, and Old Testament. Like the thirteen year old adulteress in Somalia, murdered because she was raped.

If you want your children to be taught this kind of sludge and become the laughing stock of the educated world, do nothing. Let these people censor your local library books and throw literature out of schools. If you want people like this to make the laws by which you live on pain of punishment, do nothing. It might behoove you to wake up. These people are tirelessly infiltrating every governing body of every community under the shield of the taboo against speaking out against any aspect of any religion. Break that taboo until it becomes OK and nobody even notices you are doing anything extraordinary.

So don’t back off when some fool waves a Bible at you. Your happiness in life and maybe your chances of employment may eventually depend on not letting them run rough shod over your rights as a compassionate human being, which in all probability, they are not. To help you in this endeavor I may drop a few postings about the nonsense and pornography in the book they throw at you, without having read more than a few prescribed passages themselves. Watch this space for politically incorrect and fully referenced Bible study.