



If the last post was about stupidity on a small scale, then this is about stupidity - sheer, howling, desperate stupidity - on a global scale. You may think it unadvisable to extrapolate the experience of one slightly dim woman pressing the wrong button on the lift onto the actions of millions of dim people all over the world, but essentially in all cases of stupidity what we are really talking about is irrationality.

This is the way things should work:

We, as a species, look at the world, look at the way things are, we theorise and test and through repeated experience and shared knowldege we come up with a certain set of rational conclusions. The grand traditions of science are, at their core, nothing more byzantine than common sense - fire is hot, so we shouldn’t attempt to sleep in it. Mountains are tall, so we generally should avoid jumping off them. And the earth is 4.6 billion years old not because we want it to be or someone tells you it is but because 4.6 billion years of measurable radioactive decay, fossil records and tectonic plate movement make that the unavoidable conclusion to anyone with enough time on their hands to sit down and understand it. I’m simplifying wildly for effect of course - science is, sometimes, rocket science. But it is never irrational, because examining the evidence and theorising explanations for the way things are is the most purely rational endeavour the human race is capable of. It is at the very core of our success as a species.

Stupid people, though, ah, they’re different. Subject to the same rules and laws and evidence as anyone else they will, for various bizarre reasons, leap to conclusions that stagger variously between wrong, dangerous, and dangerously insane. Go to a stupid person with reasonably incontrovertible evidence that, say, the maximum possible lifespan of a human being is around 125, or that water and wine are too chemically different to transmogrify without a great deal of specialised intervention, rather than hold their hands up and say something like “OK, maybe I’m wrong about the whole wine-water, thing, I have to say this does look fairly convincing”, they will point to the poeticised scribblings of persons unknown several thousand years ago, to a time before scientific enlightenment and critical thought, and declare null and void.

So yes, unless you’re one of said incredibly stupid people, you will have noticed that I’m rather unsubtly referring to the irrationality of the religious here, and specifically the fundamentalist religious. And there is a wider point, because however irritating you may find such people when they’re knocking on your door handing out “historical” leaflets of men riding dinosaurs into battle, and I do, it’s easy to forget, living in a largely secular country like the UK, how dangerous irrationality is when it lies in the hands of the powerful. Tony Blair, remember, is a Catholic, and whether or not you think his decision to go to war in Iraq was explicitly religiously motivated (and despite the rather neat point it would make in this blog post, I don’t actually think it was), it must make any rational person uneasy to think that a man capable of commanding such decisions, and many others of equal importance to our safety and security as a country, honestly thought that he was actually literally consuming the body of Jesus Christ whilst eating a small water biscuit during holy communion.

But our own home grown thickos have nothing on the farcical parade of utter morons currently vying for attention in the US. The next presidential candidate for the Republican party has a very good chance of either being Rick Santorum, a man who disagrees with the founding fathers on the separation of church and state and thinks homosexuality is no different from bestiality or paedophilia, or Mitt Romney, who as a Mormon has happily accepted that his entire belief system is based on a series of revelations written on some golden plates gifted by an angel which mysteriously, er, disappeared as soon as someone else wanted to have a look at them. But both Santorum and Romney crucially are, like Sarah Palin before them, fundamentalist Christians - they believe that the bible is literally true, and that the earth itself, in all its vastness and complexity, is no more than 7000 years old. These are not rational things to believe. These people, superficially wiley and successful though they may be as politicians, are essentially, incredibly stupid. There’s just no other word for it.

I have no doubt that religion, even batshit-mental pseudo-spiritualist quack “religions” like Mormonism or Scientology, provide comfort to some. I’m also sure you realise that the whole stupid/religious thing is a bit of deliberate needling and in fact there are plenty of very very clever religious people who believe what they believe for very well researched reasons. Not many! But some. And I would have no problem with any of it - not Joseph Smith and his Jesus-in-America shtick, not L Ron Hubbard and his worlds-most-successful non-tax-paying moneymaking-scheme, not with water turning into wine or people walking on water or coming back from the dead, not any of it - if I didn’t see people like Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney deliberately making innocent people’s lives a misery in the name of their particular version of God. In a rational world, and in fact in rational countries run by rational people, same-sex marriage would be an absolute, incontrovertible given. In a rational world, we’d all be pro-choice, pro-stem-cell research, and pro-equality because these are the most logical ethical positions to hold. But millions of peoples lives are being made a living hell because those in charge base their lawmaking not on what’s best for everyone but what they think God says. And isn’t it funny how God’s always on their side?

I sometimes fantasise of inventing a machine, a kind of twisted version of Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex, that would instantly and simply show to people their most irrational beliefs next to all the multitude of evidence that debunks it. In one glorious instant, belief in the supernatural, cryptozoology, homeopathy, mind-reading, fortune-telling, clairvoyance and faith healing would all disappear, leaving behind a mind free of superstition and ignorance. I’d strap Mitt Romney up to it and sit cheering through his next press-conference: “My fellow Americans, I can’t believe I ever believed all that crap about the talking hat and angels. What can I say? I was an idiot.” Churches would crumble, bigotry and intolerance would be things of the past. A new age of enlightenment. Hey, I can always dream.

Perhaps there are reasons to be positive. In all probability, the chances either Romney or Santorum have of winning this year’s US election are next to none; most people in the world, even if they do believe in a God or gods or follow the horoscopes or avoid the cracks in the pavements, just want to live peacefully and not force their personal beliefs on anyone else; and for every orange-faced TV evangelist preaching fire and brimstone there are still heroes willing to put their neck on the line and reassure lost souls that the way they were born is nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe, one day, rationality will win the day.

I will bookend this rant - and believe me, I have no greater aspiration for it than that - with something I found on the internet the other week that perfectly summed up the utterly frustrating experience of attempting to debate with a fundamentalist/stupid person and which motivated me to write much of the above. Many thanks, then, to the Urban Dictionary for its definition of Pigeon Chess:

Refers to having a pointless debate with somebody utterly ignorant of the subject matter, but standing on a dogmatic position that cannot be moved with any amount of education or logic, but who always proclaims victory.

Origin:

“Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.” – Scott D. Weitzenhoffer (From an Amazon.com book review)

Don’t be a pigeon. Don’t believe in stupid.