Dangerously Dumb People in the World

Because of my very busy weekend schedule this semester, this blog series has been interrupted for quite a while. And today's, strangely, will be a suggestion to read another op-ed piece about the shenanigans at the UN this week.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/09/24/iftikhar.ahmadinejad.gaddafi/index.html

Before I had even heard of this article, both targets of the commentary were on my list. Thus, I might as well reference an article that exposes the "dangerously dumb" at length.

The other winner this week is Kirk Cameron, from Growing Pains to Super Genius:

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20307814,00.html

An excerpt from the article:

"You can see where [Hitler] clearly takes Darwin's ideas to some of their logical conclusions and compares certain races of people to lower evolutionary life forms," Cameron says. "If you take Darwin's theory and extend it to its logical end, it can be used to justify all number of very horrendous things."

My reaction? Yawn. A repeated, tired argument with absolutely no grasp of reality.

"This has been refuted many, many times. The anti-evolutionist fearmongers have to link Darwin to every perceived evil from mankind," says Kevin Padian, professor of paleontology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Berkeley. "The two kinds people who believe that religion and evolution can not coexist are extreme atheists and extreme religious fundamentalists. Everyone else doesn't really have a problem. [A majority] of Americans believe that a belief in god is compatible with evolution."

But here is my favorite passage from the article:

"Atheism has been on the rise for years now, and the Bible of the atheists is The Origin of Species," Cameron tells PEOPLE. "We have a situation in our country where young people are entering college with a belief in God and exiting with that faith being stripped and shredded. What we want to do is have student [sic] make an informed, educated decision before they chuck their faith."

So, my question to Kirk is this. If people are going to college, perhaps for the purposes of making informed, educated decisions about matters that may affect them throughout their lives, how can he claim that they are NOT making informed, educated decisions? Does he not see the inherent contradiction in his quote here?

Kirk Cameron, growing pain, this week's "Dangerously Dumb Person in the World".