Wow. As far as brain-dead stupid goes, this one just takes the cake. It would seem that at least one conservative, Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia, is convinced that the theory of relativity is actually a liberal plot to get people to stop reading the Bible.
In the entry, "Counterexamples to Relativity," the authors (including Schlafly) write:
“The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.”
Schafly follows that up in the reference section with this nugget — “Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold.”
With all due respect to my thinking, intelligent conservative friends, this guy straight up takes the cake in wing-nut crazy. Look, if you have a disagreement with Einstein’s theory — cool, but don’t try and blanket it as some liberal plot to get people to stop reading the Bible.
There, I said it.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Realist
And just WHO inspired you to diss the Revealed Truth as God dictated it to Mr. Schlafly. Could it be . . .
. . . SATAN?!?!?!?
2 - Victor Lana
If the Bible truly outsells all those "liberal" volumes on the Times bestseller list, what's this guy all worked up about anyway?
3 - Benjamin
Oh yes, Satan and I are good friends. He was my lawyer during the divorce, rat scallion screwed me the whole way.
4 - Benjamin
To Victor - never let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.
5 - Jordan Richardson
It's hard to read Conservapedia as anything other than complete satire. It's a hoot!
6 - Cannonshop
Religious nuttery is religious nuttery, it has no 'wing' (right, left, middle centre, rear...) Schlafly's about mentally on par with Fred Phelps and those nice gentlemen who urge parents to raise suicide bombers for God.
7 - jeannie danna
Benjamin,
This needed to be said...there, I said it!
: )
8 - Benjamin
@Canonshop - I would agree with about religious nuts not being the exclusive domain of a certain wing. This fella identifies himself as a conservative and it does seem to me the extremes of Christianity flow more from the far-right.
9 - Cannonshop
#8 What, there are no Liberation Theologians out there anymore? Fact is, guys like Schlafly Claim to be of the political right-but they've really got nothing more than a minor cosmetic resemblance to the right, just as guys like Fred Phelps are no more of the Political Left than Rush Limbaugh (in spite of being a Democrat).
The so-called "Culture War" is a bilateral obfuscation-both the extreme left and extreme right use and benefit from it as a means to smear and vilify their opponents-but it's all a hoax used by both sides to lower the debate to a level where they can manipulate the ignorant.
And there are so Many ignorant people now, I'd say there are actually more people whom are more ignorant of basic scientific principles NOW, than there were at the time of the Scopes trial, and it has no political definition-they're ALL ignorant, right AND left, our safer society has, imho, produced a kind of reverse-darwinism, we encourage the stupid, lazy, and ignorant to breed, while railing at the motivated, intelligent and curious/educated to limit their reproduction.
Which gives guys like Schlafly and Phelps followers and credibility-by-numbers (bandwagon effect) when they should, by all rights, be laughingstocks.
10 - Irene Athena
#9 para 3 "we encourage the stupid, lazy and ignorant to breed" sounds like a promotion of social Darwinism. Was it? Or was it merely a repudiation of its equally extreme antithesis?
11 - Irene Athena
Cannonshop, seriously, help me understand this. I know enough about your persona on the threads to know you are NOT likely to be, as a libertarian, a promoter of Social Darwinism...
12 - Cannonshop
#10 I'm not saying, I think, what you think I'm saying...
Screw it, I probably am. Look, there's room for reasonable safety nets, but...the more society takes on risks from the individual, the poorer the quality the next generation of individuals will be. Part of that, is that as you reduce risk beyond a certain point, you encourage intellectual laziness, just as you encourage failure when you lower standards.
Our society (here in the U.S. especially) has been doing both longer than I have been alive. A basic High-School education in 1962 provided superior education in Math and what you might call the 'basic structure' of Science, than a two year degree did ten years ago, and it has not improved.
We have the Ignorant teaching the Ignorant in our public schools (bottom 20% of college graduates go into education, folks...), we have more college students than we did even in the sixties-and turn out fewer qualified engineers and scientists, not to mention doctors.
quality of product indicates quality of production, lack of qualified applicants goes all the way down to root sources-and in this case, the root sources end up being the result of the society in which they are raised-and what is that society?
Well...what are the avenues popularly associated with upward mobility in our poorer communities? Crime, Sports, and Entertainment. Contrast that with the generation that produced Dr. King or even Malcolm X- Dr. King came from a background that emphasized hard work, education, and the gathering of knowledge under conditions that would and were and largely ARE horrible conditions. Malcolm X became prominent after becoming largely self-educated.
Today's society doesn't encourage that in the least-instead of fighting to rise on their own merits, the culture today is one of blame-games, entitlement, and worship of the most ignorant among us (rock stars, rappers, actors, and junkie-jocks), mixed with a clinging grasping to religion to deny that it's the fault of the person who's failed.
And we have a system that ENCOURAGES this-from "Social Promotion" in schools, to a social-welfare net that encourages dependence, to a society that tells people it isn't their fault, the culture degrades as would animals in a confinement breeding with their relatives.
The Mind evolves to fit the environment, raise kids on Ritalin and pity, and you will have pitiful adults who need their prozac to get through the day.
13 - Irene Athena
...and I think YOU know enough about me, to know that as a libertarian, I am not a promoter of its equally extreme antithesis, (That'd be the status quo.)
14 - Irene Athena
OK we've crossed each other. Let me read what you had to say in #12 while I was posting #13
15 - Cannonshop
I'm not quite a Libertarian in the capitalized "L" sense. I'm more inclined to believe that Government is a poor servant, terrible master, and dangerous necessity that must be watched and constrained, but I'm realistic enough to know that today, it is unlikely to be so, and tomorrow even less.
but I believe in the concept of "assumed risk", and see the desire to hide/share/eliminate/conceal that risk as at the root of the loss of freedoms in our society, and as those freedoms disappear, they are noticed less and less by each generation, as each generation likewise becomes and evolves socially toward a more ignorant, superstitious, and dare I say cowardly direction.
16 - John Wilson
This stupid nonsense Did Not Need To Be Said, and my silly comment Did Not Need To Be Said, either.
17 - Irene Athena
Well Cannonshop, you had a lot to get off your chest.
Two factors that have contributed to the difficulties in science education are:
1)the fact that the science class room has been made a political battle field by both the LEFT and the RIGHT
2) the overwhelming job of responding to the explosion...really!...of information, new topical material to cover. There were old technologies that teachers needed to be convinced to discard. Why OH WHY was class time wasted in giving slide rule demonstrations a full decade after men had landed on the moon? Better to have spent the time collecting empty beer cans along the side of the highway to trade in for a nickel a-piece toward the price of a new calculator.
...let's see...rock stars...the rise of Malcolm X, yes that was admirable...."a clinging grasping to religion to deny that it's the fault of the person who's failed"...what's this? even for people with Irish Roman Catholic or Jewish mothers? ah, let it go, putting down people for what they believe about God is ignorant and vulgar...
...."Social Promotion in schools"...a lot on education here...have you ever considered getting on a school board, Cannonshop?....
....Lastly: "raise kids on Ritalin and pity, and you will have pitiful adults who need their prozac..." Tilt. Tilt. TILT
So. OK. I understand that quite often, a prescription for meds is written out when a presciption for more LOVE for the kid, or parental attention, including, yes, discipline should have been written out instead.
HOWEVER....*deep breath*...
Perspectives on the physical nature of the Universe as reflected in the Theory of Special Relativity HAVE MATURED AND DEVELOPED APACE WITH perspectives on the human brain as organ, susceptible to organic disorders just as the heart, or lungs are, as relflected in the development of the field of psychopharmacology.
Food for thought.
18 - jeannie danna
: )John Wilson...a lot needs to be said, and I'm glad your here saying it.
19 - John Wilson
12-cannon : "......the more society takes on risks from the individual, the poorer the quality the next generation of individuals will be."
This sounds like an argument against allowing people to accumulate so much money and property that they and their families are insulated from struggle.
So, I take it, you are in favor of confiscatory inheritance taxes?
I take it you are against Golden Parachutes?
I take it you are against all manner of Savings Accounts and other risk reducing mechanisms?
20 - Adam Ash
Cannonshop:
To find any equivalence between the far right (religious nut jobs) and the far left (Chomsky) proves that you are a nut job yourself. Maybe a centrist nut job, but definitely out there in kooksville.
Adam Ash
21 - Cannonshop
No, John (#19) I am not in favour of policies such as you promote. I am against compelling others to provide those things-in other words, I'm against using the power of government to compel one person to cover another person's risks against the first person's will.
Capische? get it? When an INDIVIDUAL sets up a retirement account, or purchases insurance, etc. etc. that is far, far different from using the power of the gun to take those things and give them to someone else who did not have the foresight to set them up.
I'm also against using confiscatory government power to cover the wasteful practices of Corporations (TARP, Obama's Stimulus, the Fannie and Freddy Bailouts, "Too big to fail" etc.)
You know, John, all those things you think are wonderful, like corporate welfare scams, taxpayer funded slush funds like ACORN, etc.
#20 Everyone is entitled to their opinion, Adam, at least until one party or the other manages to make having that opinion illegal.
22 - Irene Athena
No, Adam Ash, Cannonshop respects Noel Chomsky too much to classify him with the Religious Nutters.
That category (which knows no left, right, front or center, see comment #6,#8) contains Fred Phelps 'n' Family, various Liberation Theology priests, and Phyllis and Andy Schlafaly. Since I've been banished here, too, I guess, I'll position myself strategically between the priests and the uber-albeit-pseudo-Conservative Schlafaly's. This is where I will be of greatest utility in promoting unity in the Relgious Nutter Party. A big tent we are!
23 - Irene Athena
You tell 'em Cannonshop! Can you become a Rastafarian or something so we can have someone with your common sense approach to economics on our team?
24 - Irene Athena
NOAM(#22). dang.
25 - jeannie danna
Cannonshop,
It is this, outright hypocrisy that I must address.
I'm against using the power of government to compel one person to cover another person's risks against the first person's will.
The corporations, Wall Street, and the Banks can receive cover from the Government in-order to lesson their risks, but not the individual? When were we given any power of will over these decisions?
All the regulations and rules were chucked by, Regan and all who followed him,
leaving these groups free to basically gamble with our economy, and when it all came tumbling down,were they held accountable? NO!
And don't try to accuse me of partying our country away...your friends are doing that right now.