It probably wouldn’t shock anyone if you heard that some wingnut dufus said that in public. What’s becoming even more disturbingly acceptable is this particular dufus sits on the House Science Committee. Ethan Seigal does the honors:

Starts with a Bang— Earlier today, a video (from last month) was released where one of the members of the US House of Representative — a member who sits on the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology – proudly proclaimed the following:

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, the big bang theory; all of that is lies straight from the pit of hell.” -Paul Broun

Well, if the Big Bang is a lie from the pit of hell, then the Universe itself is lying to us, and I’m a liar repeating those lies that it tells us about itself. Here’s why.

Oh my fucking God Mr. Broun, you poor, mislead, self-flagellating hunk of wasted heterogeneous eukaryotes. I can’t even despise you, all I can muster is a dismal species of pity. To think that this cosmos labored mightily for billions of years from Big Bang to hypernova just to cook up the iron atoms in the blood that is feeding your feeble brain makes me thankful there is no God. Because if there were a super intelligent entity that created the universe from quasar to butterfly over untold eons, each intricate and exquisite nested process unfolding across scales as small as a quark and larger than a galactic super cluster, creatures like yourself would be more than enough reason for s/he to hit the reset button on the entire human race.

You know, our ancestors had a damn good excuse for their ignorance: they were trapped in antiquity, they had to crawl out of an intellectual black-hole by their wits and successive generations of dedicated and fearless people. Many of whom paid with their lives after the obligatory torture for daring to ask Why. It’s understandable that a lot of people living today haven’t caught up to the profound discoveries and elegant explanations of the greatest story ever told, the story of us and our universe. People today spend half their lives just getting up to speed on what’s known before they devote the rest of their years to furthering our knowledge in a single narrow field.

And we have inherited all of it, what a gift they have given us! With the click of a mouse we can explore the inner workings of a cell on the molecular level, or watch sizzling jets of particles blast from the poles of a supermassive black-hole. We stand high on their shoulders and are shown the wonders of time and space and life that would have left our forefathers trembling in awe.

But you’re doing this on purpose, Mr. Broun, you and your kind have no excuse, you are fanning the bonfire of 21st century right-wing ignorance — which needs fanning at this particular place and time like napalm needs a blowtorch. Handing over the riches of the cosmos for nothing more than a handful of silver via online donations from your victims and a brief moment in the dim light of stupidity on youTube. What a miserable, wretched trade you have made.