Just when you thought we'd entered the age of literacy ...

[unixronin]

Wait, literacy was a long time ago, wasn't it?  So was the Age of Reason.  And science.

Apparently, none of these things has percolated through to Bob Jones University yet.

Relevant page scan reproduced here for the full horrific effect:

(click for full size)

"Creation Science" is one thing.  But Bob Jones University is outright flat lying here.  "Electricity is a mystery."  That might have been true in 1710, ninety years before Alessandro Volta invented the first battery.  By 1810, electricity was being widely studied all over the civilized world.  But in 2010?  Look, let me be straight with you here, I don't even believe that Bob Jones has been alive for two hundred years in order to have spent them all under a rock.  "Some scientists think the sun may be the source of most electricity.  Others think that the movement of the earth produces some of it."  There is no lie so convincing and dastardly as that which knowingly contains a grain of truth placed there to mislead.

I'm not sure which is worse — the idea that there are people ignorant enough and gullible enough to swallow a piece of a-wizard-did-it crap like this, or the idea that there are people in positions of (at least within certain communities) trust who are mendacious enough to take advantage of the poor bastards by feeding them this kind of bullshit and presenting it as fact.  I can only conclude that Bob Jones "University" is actively, knowingly, and intentionally in the business of turning out people utterly unprepared to deal with the realities of the modern technological civilization on this planet.

(Speculation upon possible agendas behind such a venture is left as an exercise to the reader.)

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I think it would be a very bad idea to criminalize an opinion -- even a stupid opinion.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Criminalize their opinions? No.

Throw them in jail for using their fairy-story version of reality to defraud millions of people? Absolutely.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on that. Thoughtcrime is not an idea we want embedded in our legal system (although "hate crimes" is all too far a step in that very direction, isn't it?). But fraud, now, fraud is a crime on the books everywhere. Yes, they really ought to be brought up on charges of fraud. Millions of counts thereof.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Thoughtcrime is not an idea we want embedded in our legal system (although "hate crimes" is all too far a step in that very direction, isn't it?).

It is indeed, particularly when it is based in the accusation that someone else thinks a crime was motivated by hate, a very difficult allegation to disprove.

"Hate speech" is even worse. You can silence the entire world by labelling everything you don't want to hear as "hate speech". LET the hate-filled morons out themselves. Think of it as a public service they perform. (And as a bonus, it'll go a long way towards helping identify the people who really are committing crimes motivated by hatred.)

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

I agree. Which is why laws against "hate speech" and "hate crimes" get passed -- those passing them don't want the ones who are trying to tear the world down identified by the masses before the world gets torn down. (Alfred the Butler put it beautifully in Dark Knight (http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-dark-knight/27016/main?flv=1): "Some men just want to watch the world burn." They're out there, the recreational haters as well as the dedicated terrorists and fanatics. And laws against "hate" this and "hate" that protect the bastards as well as getting some poor luckless so-and-so tossed into the slammer because some hysteric or opportunist decided to accuse him of "hating." A real circus for the masses - to distract them from the horror coming up behind them.)