The percentage of American adults who believe in creationism has fallen to a new low of just 37% (a figure which would be astonishingly high for most of the developed world where creationists languish in the lower few percentiles) while those who believe God played no part in the evolution of humans from less advanced life forms has risen to a new high of 24%.
The equivalent figures for 1999 were 47% and 9% respectively, and the signs are that these changes are accelerating.
Although correlation is not proof of causation, it is evidence of correlation and there is a strong correlation between access to the Internet (and so exposure of creationism to critical analysis, and exposure of the hypocrisy and inherent intellectual dishonesty of most creationists). This exposure has revealed that many creationists are using it as an excuse to pose as the superior of other people.
The arrogant assumption that the Universe was created with them in mind and that they have a special relationship with the creator of everything, so this provides an excuse to pose as more expert than the experts, without the bother of learning.
When Rishi Sunak lied for his party he showed us two things:
He knows the Tory Party depends on fools who'll believe falsehoods.
He is in politics, not for the he can do for us with power but for what power can do for him.
Qualities of the spiv and conman, which, of course, endeared him to the Tory MPs, who chose him when Liz Truss crashed and burned both the economy and her career.
The lie of course, repeated by Penny Mordaunt last night, even though it had been refuted by the very Treasury civil servant they were pretending had calculated the figure, was that Labour's plans will cost the average household £2,000. (Note: not £2,000 a year, as was implied, but £2,000 over 4 years!).
But, as, Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler, revealed, the figure was based on costings supplied not by the Labour Party, or independent experts, but on notional figures dreamed up by Tory Party paid advisors who started with the £2,000 and calculated backwards, so the Treasury civil service came up with the required figure. He had warned that ministers should not present the figure as provided by the Treasury based on their estimated costings.
How Sunak's Tories tried this blatant lie as the opening salvo in his forlorn reelection campaign, is explained by Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City, University of London in an article in The Conversation. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:
With fundamentalist religions operating as cults, especially, but not exclusively, in the USA and parts of Africa, they represent a danger to democratic society by handing control over to the cult leaders. Cults are invariably highly autocratic and usually male-dominated, with female members often having an inferior, subordinate and submissive role.
A single leader, such as a charismatic head of a megachurch or shadowy leaders of cults such as QAnon, can manipulate and control their followers to behave in wildly antisocial ways and advocate extreme fringe policies, such as we are seeing in the USA today with white supremacism and Christian Nationalism emerging from under the rocks to influence mainstream politicians, the judiciary and the Republican Party.
Cults are parasitic on democratic society where it is difficult to strike a balance between freedom of religion and measures to protect the young and vulnerable from the predation of extremist cults. Ironically, they thrive in liberal democracies which, if they ever had the power they crave, they would immediately abolish. It is a basic law of religion that fundamentalists support freedom of religion until they acquire the power to abolish it.
In a report published recently by the US Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) a team of psychologists analysed the reasons why so many people are falling for disinformation. The problem us due to the way we have evolved to deal with information and the fact that this has ill-prepared us to deal with the vast amount of information now being directed at us by modern technology.
In fact, some of the time-tested tools make us dangerously vulnerable to disinformation, especially disinformation designed to mislead and garner support for extremist groups for whom the truth would be toxic. We see this today in the form of disinformation about, for example, COVID-19, the measures to reduce its spread and the vaccines designed to protect us from it. We also see it in relation to politics, political movements and parties, international affairs, religious fundamentalism and anti-science propaganda, such as climate change and evolution, and especially conspiracy theories such as those promulgated by QAnon and former President, Donald Trump's supporters, intended to radicalise, undermine confidence in institutions, and garner support for extreme solutions to non-existent problems.
In other words, disinformation campaigns are designed to benefit those whom the report calls 'malign actors', for whom the truth would be dangerous and who know they need their target marks to believe falsehoods and mistrust the evidence.
In the abstract to their report, the psychologists, Heather Wolters, Kasey Stricklin, Neil Carey, and Megan K. McBride, say:
How can you tell when pseudo-historian and Talibangelical Christian extremist David Barton is lying again?
Well, I'll leave you to fill in the obvious punchline, but Barton epitomises the old adage that when you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith needs fools to believe falsehoods. As Mark Twain said, "Lying is trying to fool someone into believing something you know ain’t so!"
The question is, why does David Barton and his extremist Christian supporters need Americans to believe something they know ain’t so? The answer is because they don't want them believing things they know are so, of course.
It's difficult to know whether professional liar and pseudo-historian, David Barton, is just becoming more imaginative and creative in his lies, or whether he is becoming paranoid, believing himself to be the victim of conspiracies, but his lies are certainly becoming more and more elaborate. Perhaps he just ratchets them up a notch every time he gets away with them, hoping to fool more fundamentalists with them, or perhaps he really does believe people are out to persecute him.
For example, here he is telling the right-wing Christian organization, City Elders, two lies that have gotten more lurid over the years:
'They' [Wikipedia] literally spent a million... er... millions of dollars a year to discredit me and keep my name high on Google searches.
Congress placed me on a domestic terrorism watch under Obama.
The first has grown since he first tried it in 2011 when he said he had been told that the ACLU had spent a million dollars trying to discredit him. It has now metamorphosed into the bigger and better lie, that Wikipedia spends millions of dollars a year to discredit him. A brief glance at his Wikipedia entry probably explains his eagerness to try to discredit it.
The second has grown since 2012 when the Southern Poverty Law Center included him in a list of "30 New Activists Heading Up the Radical Right", which Barton claimed was a terrorist watch list. By 2016 this lie had become that the FBI had put him and his "WallBuilders" organization on a list of hate groups. Now he claims Congress under Obama included him in a domestic terrorist watch list.
Barton, who has no formal training as a historian (his degree is in Christian education from Oral Roberts University, where he appears to have been taught that Christian education requires lies to be taught to Christians as fact) but, because he tells the lies they require their supporters to believe, he is adored by the Republican Party and plays a leading part in developing policies and campaign platforms. One of his best-selling books, with the deliciously ironic title The Jefferson Lies[sic] was pulled and pulped by the Christian publishers, Thomas Nelson, because it was full of inaccuracies, misleading quotes and unsubstantiated claims, and had been slated by real historians.
Showing his customary disregard for the truth, Glenn Beck, who wrote the forward to Barton's book, published it under his Mercury Ink imprint and then with their traditional penchant for publishing lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories, the extreme right-wing 'fringe' publisher, WND Books published a 'revised edition' of Jefferson Lies in 2016.
Barton's aim is to fool people into believing America was founded as a fundamentalist Christian nation as a prelude to the creation of a self-appointing Taliban-style evangelical theocracy in the USA, despite the expressed intent of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who explicitly intended to build a 'wall of separation' between church and state, in order to prevent exactly what Barton and his extreme right-wing allies would like to establish.
Every time he opens his mouth, Barton discredits himself and unwittingly proves the old adage:
When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith is a lie that requires fools to believe falsehoods
A. Watch his mouth. If his lips are moving, he's lying.
Here, for example, the pseudo-historian and professional liar for Jesus, is lying to a Talibangelical church group, eager for a fundamentalist Christian theocracy to be running the USA, safe in the knowledge that, so long as they hear things they want to be true, none of them is ever going to risk fact-checking his claims, and most of them will be ignorant of most of the real American history. A blank sheet on which liars such as Barton are free to draw whatever designs they want, and be paid handsomely for it.
Barton's subtext, as always, is that the American 'Founding Fathers' were intentionally creating a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, but somehow the liberals stole it, so this is the form of government that should be imposed on Americans today to create the nation the Founding Fathers intended. In his lecture, he makes specific claims about the contents of a letter from John Adams to a man named Hezekiah Niles in 1818. Niles had asked Adams which people were most responsible for the founding idea and principles of the nation that Adams had helped to create.
True to form, Barton casts aside any constraints on bearing false witness, considering it more important to fool his credulous audience than to tell the truth, so he makes claims, including naming specific individuals as 'right up front', which are not born out by the facts. He claims Adams stated that it was preachers like Samuel Cooper, Jonathan Mayhew, George Whitefield, and Charles Chauncy who must be placed at the top of any such list.
In fact, what Adams actually wrote, on Feb 13, 1818, was:
There might be, and there were, others who thought less about religion and conscience, but had certain habitual sentiments of allegiance and loyalty derived from their education; but believing allegiance and protection to be reciprocal, when protection was withdrawn, they thought allegiance was dissolved.
[…]
Those principles and feelings ought to be traced back for 200 years and sought in the history of the country from the first plantations in America. Nor should the principles and feelings of the English and Scots toward the colonies through that whole period ever be forgotten. The perpetual discordance between British principles and feelings and those of America, the next year after the suppression of the French power in America, came to a crisis and produced an explosion.
It was not until after the annihilation of the French dominion in America that any British ministry had dared to gratify their own wishes, and the desire of the nation, by projecting a formal plan for raising a national revenue from America by parliamentary taxation. The first great manifestation of this design was by the order to carry into strict execution those acts of Parliament which were well-known by the appellation of the Acts of Trade, which had lain a dead letter, unexecuted for half a century–and some of them, I believe, for nearly a whole one.
This produced, in 1760 and 1761, an awakening and a revival of American principles and feelings, with an enthusiasm which went on increasing till in 1775 it burst out in open violence, hostility, and fury. The characters the most conspicuous, the most ardent and influential in this revival, from 1760 to 1766, were first and foremost, before all and above all, James Otis; next to him was Oxenbridge Thatcher; next to him Samuel Adams; next to him John Hancock; then Dr. Mayhew; then Dr. Cooper and his brother.
John Adams, Letter to Hezekiah Niles on the American Revolution, Feb 13, 1818. [My emphasis]
The treaty of Tripoli, Nov 4, 1796.
Presented to Congress by John Adams on May 26, 1797.
Ratified without dissent on June 7, 1797.
Not only were those Barton claimed, not 'right up front' but the ones he mentioned who were in the list, were some way down it, a Whitefield and Chauncy are never mentioned anywhere in Adams' long letter. Barton made those up to make his claim sound more believable. Nor is there any suggestion that the ideas and principles of those who inspired the revolution, were those of fundamentalist Christians.
Astonishingly too, for someone who hopes to have some credibility as a genuine historian, Barton appears to either be unaware of, or to have forgotten entirely, the single most embarrassing document for those who try to claim, as he does, that the USA was founded as a Christian nation, the Treaty of Tripoli, and particularly Article 11 of that treaty:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Islamic] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Article 11, Treaty of Tripoli, Nov 4, 1796.
Presented to Congress by John Adams, May 26, 1797.
Ratified without dissent or debate, June 7, 1797
It is perfectly clear then that John Adams did not express the views Barton tried to fool his audience into believing he had, as anyone with the slightest interest in the truth could have found out in a few minutes searching through readily available documentation, including the letter to Hezekia Niles that Barton cited.
But then, David Barton could have been the inspiration for:
When you show you need to lie for your faith, you show you know your faith is a lie that needs fools to believe falsehoods.
David Barton,
Pseudo-historian and professional liar for Jesus and the gun lobby
The pseudo-historian, David Barton, who earns his living lying for Jesus is also lying for the gun industry in the USA. Apparently, he feels his piety entitles him to an exemption from the commandments which forbids bearing false witness and he knows the extreme right-wing causes he take money for promoting can't be promoted with truth and honesty.
Long-time readers of this blog may recall how David Barton went on American TV to try to fool Americans into believing the US Constitution was taken 'verbatim' straight from the Bible and so America should be a Christian theocracy, by lying about what was in the Bible - a tactic that depends on the fools he dupes taking his word for it and not fact-checking his claims.
Religious right-pseudo historian David Barton insists that gun control will not lessen the death rate in the U.S. because England does not "allow guns and they've got a knife death rate higher than we have in some of our major cities." pic.twitter.com/BOEdBrV7Op
He has repeated that tactic, this time to defend and promote the gun lobby (which traditionally provides vast financial support for right-wing politicians and buys political influence at Washington). On 17 Dec, he tried to fool viewers of Victory News, that banning guns would not reduce the death rate because England [sic] does not "allow guns and they've got a knife death rate higher than we have in some of our major cities."
Not only does he appear to be unaware that the UK is not just England (a common enough mistake American's make, but a curious degree of ignorance for someone who poses as a historian!), and guns are banned throughout the UK; he is also lying about the knife death rate in the UK. According to a freely available House of Commons Library research briefing, in the year ending March 2021, there were just 224 homicides involving sharp instruments (including broken bottles) in England and Wales. The worst area was the area covered by West Midlands Police, which includes the major industrial cities of Birmingham, Coventry, West Bromwich, and Wolverhampton where the knife crimes in total, not just deaths, stood at 156 for the same year.
By contrast, according to a 2021 CNN analysis of 40 US Cities:
The rise in violent crime is an epidemic that is happening "all across the country," said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, and a result of three major factors: the impact of Covid-19 on communities and first responders, the fallout of the social unrest after the murder of George Floyd, and the surge in gun sales since the start of the pandemic.
At least nine major cities have broken their previous annual homicide records with about three weeks left to go in 2021. There have been 513 homicides this year in Philadelphia, higher than the previous total of 503 in 1990. There have been 230 homicides in Indianapolis, breaking the previous record of 215 set just last year.
These increases are not isolated to any particular region of the country. Other cities with record homicide totals include Louisville, Kentucky; Columbus, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Rochester, New York; and Portland, Oregon. Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Nashville are also on pace to reach record homicide numbers by the end of the year.
Los Angeles recorded 352 homicides so far this year, and Chicago has seen 756, with year-to-date increases of 12% and 4% respectively. In Houston, homicides are up 18% from 2020.
In other words, the knife-related deaths in England and Wales (awful though they are), far from being what David Barton lied about, are at levels of which those trying to reduce US gun deaths in the USA can only dream. By contrast, the number of gun deaths in UK is minuscule compared to those in the USA with total anula gun deaths in the entire UK being well below those in an average US city in a month.
Barton's chosen platform from which to lie to America is a right-wing evangelical Christian channel which laughably describes itself on its website as:
VICTORY News is here to bring you daily news you can trust—always delivered in a spirit of faith. Stay informed and encouraged with faith, facts and freedom!
As 'Christians' they would know the power of truth to 'set you free' and so they also know that lies achieve just the opposite. The last thing they want their dupes knowing is the truth when, as a recent Pew Research survey showed, affiliation to the protestant churches in the USA, including the white evangelical churches, is collapsing at an accelearating rate and unaffiliated ('None') numbers are doubling every ten years. They know the only way to keep the faithful inline and paying their tythes is to keep them fooled and enslaved by believing the lies they pump out.
And David Barton knows that too. He also knows how it would hit the profits of the gun industry and so the size of their donations to right wing political causes such as the Repugnican Party if gun sales were curtailed and controlled - which is why he went on a right-wing Christian TV 'news' channel to lie to Americans and probably why the right-wing Christian TV 'news' channel invited him on to lie to Americans.
When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith is a lie that needs people to believe falsehoods
Trump's big lie team made a major tactical blunder when they falsely claimed that Dominion, who supplied voting machines, conspired to steal the election for Biden. What they failed to take into account was that Dominion would sue. The result of this is that it gives the Dominion legal team the right to discover the evidence on which the claim was based.
It turns out that not only was there no such evidence, but, questioned under oath, Trump's lawyer and former New York mayor, Rudolph "Rudi" Giuliani admitted he couldn't even remember where he saw the allegation that he went public with, or even where he was at the time or exactly when he heard them (court papers exhibit J-1, transcription pp 34-36), and that the claim of a witness was almost certainly made up. He thought he might have seen it on Facebook! But he wasn't even sure of that and anyway he was too busy to check!
In other words, the entire claim was an invention.
Read any serious scientific paper and you will see evidence and discussions which support the hypothesis or theory under consideration. The authors may refer to opposing or alternative hypotheses but only to compare and contrast their results or arguments. Any evidence against any opposing hypothesis is completely irrelevant to that task, as are any deficiencies in that evidence.
The authors know that their hypothesis will only stand if they can show firm evidence supporting it, or if they don’t they will quickly learn from the peer review process which will give their paper short shrift. The humiliation of having a paper rejected on the grounds that ‘the author has presented no evidence supporting his/her conclusions nor his/her underlying hypothesis’ is not a good career move in an ambitious young scientist, who will never be an old scientist unless they learn better science.
Now compare that to a reading of any ‘creation science’ article – which is never subjected to the peer review process by submitting it to respected fellow scientist regarded as experts in the particular field. Almost invariably, the entire thrust of the article will be attacking established science, and in particular, established science which conflicts with the creationist view. There will rarely be a presentation of hard evidence supporting creationism or ‘intelligent design’ to give it it’s alternative name.
