aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Evolution’s a Jewish plot and the earth don’t turn
“Indisputable evidence - long hidden but now available to everyone - demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” reads the letter that went out under [Georgia State House Republican Rep. Ben] Bridges’ name. “This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”
It seems that the actual author or analyst, I guess you might say, was a fellow named Marshall Hall, the husband of Bridges campaign manager, Bonnie Hall. Then they sent it out over Bridges’ signature to state legislators in Texas, California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio. And they didn’t stop by letting the cat out of the bag on evolution. They also blew the whistle on all this hokum about the earth revolving around the Sun.
Barnes’ memo pointed fellow state legislators to the information at fixedearth.com which rails against the “a mystic, anti-Christ ‘holy book’ of the Pharisee Sect of Judaism” and claims that “the earth is not rotating … nor is it going around the sun.” They’ve even caught on to the “centuries-old conspiracy” on the part of Jewish physicists to destroy Christianity.
Our man Bridges won’t even offer a Tim Hardaway-like apology (read: forced + fake) like the one issued by Texas Republican Warren Chisum. Chisum is Texas House Appropriations Committee Chair and he used the state House operations system to distribute the memo throughout the Texas state legislature. (Here’s Chisum’s cover letter and the Bridges’ memo.)
Bridges is not returning calls; a good thing. He acknowledges “considering filing legislation this year to remove evolution from Georgia’s public schools” and denies having anything to do with the memo this way:
Bridges said the views in the memo belong to Hall, though Bridges said he doesn’t necessarily disagree with them.
“I agree with it more than I would the Big Bang Theory or the Darwin Theory,” said Bridges, who sponsored unsuccessful legislation in 2005 that would have required Georgia’s teachers to introduce scientific evidence challenging evolution. “I am convinced that rather than risk teaching a lie, why teach anything?”
Obviously, if he had his way, we wouldn’t!
RELATED: Scientific American’s 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense via David Pescovitz at Boing Boing.
