The majority of Americans and 68% of Republicans do not accept evolution and would like creationism given equal time in public schools.
The recent six hour documentary God’s Warriors on CNN with Christiane Amanpour did not tell us much more than we already knew, that Religious Fundamentalism with its glorification of ignorance, intolerance, bigotry, hate and violence is the cause of the endless wars in the Middle East.
A new thing I found in the series was a new term for what is behind fundamentalism, The People of The Book: The Talmud, the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran. Once one can say a book – or an Italian who wears a clam on his head for that matter – contains the literal and infallible truth of God, all Hell can – and often does – break loose. Whether it be owning people, torturing them, murder, war, terrorism or ethnic cleansing, you can find it somewhere in The Books.
Christine Amanpour’s interviews with fundamentalists from the Book Religions brought home the sad fact that this form of ignorance and intolerance is pervasive, growing and insoluble. The series brought it home so we in America could better understand it far away.
An interview with a religious scholar made it clear how most American Christians differ little than their Islamic counterparts by so easily discarding science, logic, reason and common sense when it comes to evolution. The People of the Book must stand by their book in which the first few paragraphs of the very first page of all those books repudiates evolution, leaveing Fundamentalists’ but one choice. They must accept that first page literally for to reject it would not only put all the following pages into question, but they would also have to admit that everything they have been taught and everything they have stood for all their lives is a pile of crap. Any change is hard enough for people. It’s near impossible for those a few branches short of a tree.