Six Thousand Reasons Why

Trey Smith

Periodically, a reader here and there wonders why a good number of my posts focus on fundamentalist Christianity. Let people believe how they want to believe, some urge. Others defend the Christian faith by suggesting that the fundamentalists only represent a portion of the faithful.

If the fundamentalists simply kept their myopic views to themselves, I would be a happy camper; I would leave them alone. But conservative evangelicals simply seem unwilling to keep their views confined to their religious communities and their homes! They desperately want to recast the social, political and economic commons of this nation so that it is congruent with their worldview and that worldview can be quite loony!

Just take a look at some information Jonathan Turley posted on his blog yesterday.

A survey by the Southern Baptist Convention shows that 73% of Protestant pastors reject the concept of evolution — even when asked if they believe God used evolution to create humans. Forty-six percent maintained that the Earth is only roughly 6000 years old despite tests showing rocks that are millions of years old.

When asked if “God used evolution to create people,” 73% not only disagreed, but 64% “strongly disagreed.”

The poll of 1,000 American Protestant pastors also found that 74% believe the biblical Adam and Eve were literal people. Thus, roughly three-fourths of pastors believe that God literally began the human race with two actual people in the Garden of Eden.

6,000 years old? Adam and Eve were real people who conversed with talking serpents? Sounds like the ramblings of people spaced out on LSD!

If fundamentalists had their way, these crazy notions would be taught as incontrovertible fact in schools across the nation. Not only that, but children would be taught that Moses parted the Red Sea, a virgin maiden was impregnated by a spirit and a Jewish carpenter really walked on water.

If you think society is screwed up now, what kind of shape do you think we would be in if the fundamentalists ran the country?