Mitt Romney’s Nephew — Creationist

As most of you recall, Mitt Romney was the Republican Party’s candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 election, and he was defeated by Barack Obama.

Romney’s nephew, Doug Robinson, is running for the nomination to be the Republican candidate for Governor of Colorado. There’s an article about him in the Post Independent of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Their headline is Race to June state primaries continues through Glenwood Springs. They have a comments section, with no comments so far. Here are some excerpts from the news article, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:

Mitt Romney’s nephew, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Robinson, made a campaign stop in Glenwood Springs Wednesday afternoon at The Pullman [a restaurant]. He was the third candidate in the crowded field of both Republicans and Democrats to pass through Glenwood Springs in less than a week.

They list the other candidates who had visited their town and then say:

With the June 26 primaries rapidly approaching, Robinson, who made the ballot after a district judge ruled in his favor, will face off against fellow Republican candidates Lopez, the former mayor of Parker; former state Rep. Victor Mitchell; and current state Treasurer Walker Stapleton, who was the top choice among Republicans at the state party assembly this spring.

Robinson shared his views on a number of relevant issues.

They go through his views on a whole list of issues, such as minimum wage (it shouldn’t be raised), marijuana (he’s concerned), selling public lands (he’s generally against it), higher education (student loans shouldn’t be forgiven), sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants (he’s opposed), and the Second Amendment (he won’t support a ban on assault weapons). Then they get to what concerns us:

Evolution, creationism, intelligent design: When asked if, as governor, would he support the teachings of creationism or intelligent design in Colorado’s public schools the candidate replied, “I think there’s a place for teaching evolution, teaching creationism, teaching intelligent design. Our kids should know what’s out there, they should be exposed to all of that.” Robinson continued, “Let’s present all the facts to our kids. Let them decide how they feel about it.”

The man is an idiot! Oh, one more issue:

Climate change: Robinson said he believes in climate change.

Whatever he means by that. This is the article’s last paragraph:

Ballots for the June 26 primaries will be sent out June 4. Voters not associated with either the Democratic or Republican Party will receive two ballots; however only one may be completed for the votes to count. Registered Democrats and Republicans will receive their respective party’s ballot.

We don’t know anything about the other candidates, and we won’t be following this race too closely, but because of the Romney connection, we thought Robinson’s views were interesting.

Copyright © 2018. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Creationist Wisdom #851: The Theocrat

Today’s letter-to-the-editor (it’s actually a column) appears in the Kuna Melba-News of Kuna, Idaho. It’s titled How did we get here? The newspaper has a comments section, but there aren’t any comments yet.

Unless the letter-writer is a politician, preacher, or other public figure, we won’t embarrass or promote him by using his full name — but today we’ve got a preacher. It’s Scott J. Piper, pastor of the.Kuna Baptist Church We’ll give you a few excerpts from the rev’s column, enhanced with our Curmudgeonly commentary, and some bold font for emphasis. Here we go!

In his autobiography, Charles Darwin is quoted as saying, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” So, like Darwin, many have rejected God, the creation, the Bible because they don’t like where it leaves them — accountable to God for their sinful choices.

Yes, Darwin wrote that. We discussed it in Creationist Wisdom #259: Stupefying. Then the rev reassures his flock:

But rest assured, whether you accept God or His creative work to be true or not someday we all will answer to Him.

[…]

The Bible is very clear, “… God is love.” 1 John 4:8. But like us, “Love” isn’t the only characteristic of God. He is Holy, righteous and a God who hates; He hates sin and sin can be defined as crossing any boundary line set by God in His Word.

That means God hates you, dear reader. Skipping a bit, the rev tells us:

It is my assertion that, in the relatively recent past, there have been a number of decisions which have accelerated both God’s wrath and humanities [sic] demented mindset. These decisions have led to more and more violence and the ever devaluing of human life.

When we decided to ignored the God of creation and buy into the lie of Evolution, we not only failed to recognize God as God, we also failed to recognize our place and purpose for existing. When we believe that man evolved out of premortal [Hee hee!] goo — mankind, at the core is not different, not special, and not accountable to God.

After denouncing the blasphemy of “premortal goo,” the rev continues:

This nation was founded on Biblical principles. If you question that, I direct you to the front of the Supreme Court building of the United States of America. There you will find the Ten Commandments which were used as a major guiding principle for our nation’s laws.

[*Groan*] That’s absolute nonsense — see Is America a “Christian Nation”? Let’s read on:

But recently there have been those demanding the removal of these, or the of the motto, “In God We Trust” or anything that smacks of “religion.” Those who do this do so based on “separation of church and State,” but what they fail to tell you is that they are redefining the intent of the founding fathers to mean that the church should not have influence on the state, when that was never their intent; the exact opposite was the clear intent of our forefathers.

What? The rev explains:

What they [the Founders, presumably] were saying was that the state should not have influence on the church’s teaching.

Oh. The state can’t mess with the church, but the church — the rev’s own church, of course — should have control over the government. Yeah, that’s what the Founders wanted.

The rest of the column is a long rant against abortion, which is not one of this blog’s issues, so this is where we’ll leave the rev. But wait — at the end, the newspaper says: “This is the second part of a four-part Matters of Faith column series submitted by Pastor Scott J. Piper of Kuna Baptist Church.” We won’t go hunting for Part One, but that might be a good project for you, dear reader.

Copyright © 2018. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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A Creationist Heads the EPA

Here’s a bit of disturbing news reported in The Scientist. We’ve seen this before, but it always showed up in political blogs. This is the first time it’s been reported in a science publication. Their article is titled EPA’s Scott Pruitt Doesn’t Buy Evolution. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis:

The administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, said that evolution, at least as it concerns the origins of humans, is a philosophical and not scientific matter, according to audio from a 2005 radio show unearthed by Politico [link omitted]. “There aren’t sufficient scientific facts to establish the theory of evolution,” Pruitt said.

Groan — he sounds like the typical letter-writer in our Creationist Wisdom series. Here’s Wikipedia’s write-up on the guy. They say:

Edward Scott Pruitt (born May 9, 1968) is an American lawyer and Republican politician from the state of Oklahoma who is currently the fourteenth Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Nominated for the position by President Donald Trump, Pruitt was confirmed by the United States Senate to lead the EPA on February 17, 2017.

[…]

Pruitt is Southern Baptist. According to the Oklahoma Office of Attorney General, the Pruitts are members of the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, where Pruitt serves as deacon. Pruitt was also a trustee at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Okay, back to The Scientist. They tell us:

It’s not clear how Pruitt’s disregard for a basic tenet of modern biology affects his work at the agency. But Republican lawmakers tell Politico that Pruitt’s faith — he is an evangelical Christian — should indeed guide his decisions. “He’s a believer. He is a Jesus guy. He believes in the principles,” Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) tells Politico. “I think it does [have an impact], and I think it has to. Anyone who denies that that has an impact isn’t being totally honest.”

One more excerpt:

According to Politico, the EPA’s press office took offense at a reporter asking if there could be a conflict between Pruitt’s anti-science beliefs and his job in running an agency that should be making evidence-based decisions. “If you’re insinuating that a Christian should not serve in capacity as EPA administrator,” the spokesperson said, “that is offensive and a question that does not warrant any further attention.”

So there you are. It looks like we’ve got a hard-core creationist as head of the EPA. We doubt that his belief that he ain’t no kin to no monkey will have any specific effect on anything that agency does, but the overall quality of his thinking is certainly in doubt. Make of it what you will.

Copyright © 2018. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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The Curmudgeon’s Proposed Gun Law

There’s no creationism news out there at the moment, so we’ll go off topic and discuss gun control. One hears all kinds of proposals being advocated to deal with gun violence — some rather outrageous by our standards. Your Curmudgeon is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, but we’re willing to see some changes made.

We’ve previously mentioned that the number of legal gun owners in the US is about 30% of the population. That’s at least 100 million people who legally own guns in the US. There are maybe 12,000 gun killings each year. Some are multiple victims of the same killer, so there are no more than 10,000 actual killers who use guns — and some of those aren’t legal gun owners. All murder is bad, of course; but we need to think about those numbers.

If as many as 1% of gun owners were killers, there would be a million of them. If the killers were a tenth of a percent, there would be 100,000 of them. But it’s only 10,000, which is one one-hundredth of a percent of all gun owners. Think about that.

Statistically, gun ownership seems to be an excellent predictor of lawful behavior — and, we must add, a look at history shows that prohibition of private gun ownership is an excellent predictor of tyranny. So the problem isn’t gun ownership, per se. Rather, the problem is that a tiny fraction of gun owners are crazy. So what’s to be done?

To begin with, we propose that no one should be allowed to own a gun unless he can meet certain requirements for enlisting in the US military. If the military doesn’t accept people who can’t meet those requirements, then why should they be allowed to own guns? Specifically, we think a gun owner must:

1. Be a U.S. citizen or Green Card holder who is fluent in English.

2. Have a high school diploma (or equivalent).

3. Have no criminal record (including juvenile offenses) and not be the subject of a restraining order. The military services have a provision for obtaining a waiver of those restrictions in some cases, but that’s not easy to do.

And we’d go even further. If someone has escaped conviction because of an insanity plea, we wouldn’t let him have a gun. Hey — it’s fair. He did the deed and admits that he’s crazy. No guns for him.

There should be a nationwide database where all of that information would be stored. Every county or municipality that grants gun licenses should have to consult that database and they should only allow gun ownership to those who aren’t in it — and who also meet our other requirements. Additionally, we’re not opposed to raising the minimum age to 21, which some are currently suggesting.

What about people with mental health problems? Obviously, anyone who has been adjudicated incompetent should be disqualified from being a gun owner — and that information should also be in the national database. Otherwise, mental health is a difficult issue to deal with. For example, some think “Darwinists” are mentally ill, while others have the opposite opinion. We may not need to incorporate additional mental health requirements in our gun laws. In general, anyone with a serious mental problem would probably be disqualified by one or more of the requirements we’ve already listed.

So there you are. Our proposal won’t solve all problems. Nothing will. However, we think it’s a realistic reform that could actually become law. We welcome your suggestions.

Copyright © 2018. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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