Anti-intellectual propaganda for Jesus: Texas megachurch Pastor Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s leading supporters, claims that teaching children evolution causes mass shootings.

Appearing on Fox News earlier this week, Jeffress argued that teaching children they are “nothing but an evolutionary accident” instead of teaching children to fear God, is the source of mass shootings.

Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, and Trump’s “spiritual mentor,” told Fox News:

I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t do anything. I think we all understand that the Second Amendment has limits to it, just like the First Amendment with free speech does. We don’t believe everybody has a right to have a nuclear weapon. We don’t believe that four-year-olds ought to have guns. I’m not arguing against legislation, but I’m saying that one thing we can do is to quit this devaluation of human life in our society that is seen by the glorification of violence in our culture, by the mass slaughter of a whole class of citizens — the unborn. By teaching our children that they’re nothing but an evolutionary accident instead of teaching our children that they are created by God, they are of value to God, and they are accountable to God for their actions. All of this is important if we’re gonna solve this problem.

It should go without saying that trying to claim that teaching children basic science like the theory of evolution causes mass shootings is a pernicious anti-intellectual tactic designed to keep children ignorant in order to preserve and profit from religious superstition.

Indeed, the attempt to blame anything but guns for mass shootings is a typical tactic of ignorant and mean-spirited conservative Christians. For example:

However, conservative Christians never blame the perverse pleasure many Christians take in owning guns, nor the current White-Supremacist-In-Chief, for mass shootings.

As for Pastor Jeffress, previously the conservative Christian extremist tried to link President Obama to the anti-Christ, and made the wildly irresponsible claim that “God has given Trump the authority” to take out North Korean leader Kim Jon-Un.

Bottom line: Texas megachurch Pastor Robert Jeffress argues that teaching children evolution instead of teaching children to fear God is the source of mass shootings.