The Sins of the White Confederate Baptist

For years I believed in tolerance of beliefs that are different from my own.  As a civilized and polite human being, I saw it as my duty to mankind to be able to say that I differ from the beliefs of others but that I would fight to the death for the rights of others to believe whatever they want to believe.  I saw this as one of the basic concepts that one should have to be an American citizen.  As I pass the upper reaches of middle age, I find that I no longer have this point of view.

I live in the Southeastern United States.  This part of the country is home to a large plurality I refer to as the White Confederate Baptist.  These people are suspicious and even hateful toward the federal government.  The truth is that they still see the government in Washington DC as the government of Lincoln.  They still see that government as the invaders that took away their independence over a century ago, as the government that forced them to give rights to Negroes before they were ready to.  These views are undeniably both unpatriotic and racist.

The white confederate Baptist worships guns almost as dearly as they worship god.  They misread the second amendment badly, seeing it as an open invitation to own carry and use any kind of weaponry anywhere.   This insane belief has caused America to become a heavily armed society.  Because guns are so widespread and available, our nation has become the scene of massacre after massacre in theaters, malls and schools.  But with the White Confederate Baptist’s steadfast and completely insane love of guns blocking any change to the country’s gun laws, there is nothing that can be done about it.

Perhaps the thing that I find the most foul about them is their tendency toward religious extremism.  Their Christian Evangelical beliefs tend to see science as a competing and evil philosophy, and all other religions as either misguided, or in the case of non-Christian religions, seriously evil as well.  They truly believe that all non-Christians are going to hell, and they tend to treat them accordingly.

They deny science, especially if it differs from their literal reading of the bible.  Many of them see the Earth as 6000 years old and believe that cavemen lived with dinosaurs.  They deny the evidence for evolution and therefore everything we know about DNA. 

The denial of biological science leads to idiotic beliefs like the anti-vaccination movement, and similar nonsense like holistic medicine and faith healing.  Already we have seen children die in the US from diseases like Measles (which until recently had been eradicated in the US for decades) because anti-vaccination morons refused to vaccinate their children.

Besides vaccination the religious based denial of biological science contributes to the anti-GMO movement, the ridiculous belief that genetically modified foods are somehow intrinsically dangerous.  The fact that nature randomly modifies DNA, and has been doing it since the beginning of time without any product testing, doesn’t matter to these people.  The fact that GMO products will increase crop yields and help feed our over populated world doesn’t matter to them either.  All that matters to them is their suspicion of science.

The worst part of white confederate Baptist science denial may be their total opposition to the fact of global warming.  Every credible scientist is now completely onboard with the idea that global warming is an absolute fact, and that it is undeniably man-made.  From a scientific standpoint there is no longer any question on the subject.  But the arrogant suspicion of science that these people suffer from threatens the future of all of us.  They are quickly dooming our children and grandchildren to a world of flooding and starvation because of their science denying stupidity.

The rest of us need to put the white confederate Baptist back in their place.  Their insanity cannot be allowed to control our lives and our government.  These people and their insane beliefs are a danger to all or us.  We need to stop them, or they will ruin our nation, our planet, and all of our individual lives.