Stupid is the New Smart*

A hundred years from now, scholars will refer to this as The Benightenment, a period in American History during which fundamentalist Christians led a headlong retreat from reason, empiricism and intellectual integrity. As The New York Times reports today in A New Test for Imax: The Bible vs. the Volcano:

The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject — or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth — fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

No editorial gloss I could put on this would be sufficient to express my outrage and sadness about the triumph of the small, fearful and stupid of this country over the values of The Enlightenment. We are (ostensibly) fighting fundamentalism abroad while embracing here at home.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said the museum decided not to offer the movie [Volcanoes] after showing it to a sample audience, a practice often followed by managers of Imax theaters. Ms. Murray said 137 people participated in the survey, and while some thought it was well done, “some people said it was blasphemous.”

Blasphemous. That’s now the standard for science in the United States. It’s the New American Century in one word: a courageous leap backward into ignorance and superstition.

I’d say the last thinking adult to leave the country should turn out the lights, but they’ve already been extinguished.

* I wish I could take credit for this title, but it’s shamelessly stolen from ‘s brilliant song of the same name. You can find some of his other songs available for free download at his Music Page.