Friday, July 08, 2011

Gaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr!

Here is me being a bit angry.

I just listened to a podcast in which a supposed "very smart" man spouted on for 45 minutes about elections and how people get elected. His basic thesis was that he had figured out how to elect people and no one else could understand it, and that way is to not be conservative in any real fashion, just be a RINO and you'll do fine. That was stupid and asinine and hard to listen to, but what really got my dander up was how he finished his screed. Basically he said that while he is a conservative, he is embarrassed by conservatives because they are anti-intellectual and rubes. His example: he has been in rooms where he, as a Darwinist, was in the minority and felt "uncomfortable" being there. Presumably the discomfort was came from the fact that he was smart, knew the truth but the idiots around him would lynch him and all his associates if they knew he ascribed to evolution.

Now put aside the fact the worst he would have got was looks and shrugs from most of those there, and perhaps an explanation of creationism from the most zealous. The thing that has got me riled up, is that this man sat there for ¾ of an hour and spouted, uncritically, the conventional wisdom of “the smart class” verbatim. He gave me 45 minutes of proof of his arrogance and offered up as reason for his arrogance that he thinks the same way as all the good folk.

What he is, in reality, is a smart man that has yet to show me he can think at all. I will put my arguments against anything science tells us up against his reasons for believing Darwin any time. Those reasons I suspect will boil down to this: at some time in the past someone he respected as smart made fun of creationists and so he decided evolution was the way to go. That is not smart, intellectual or even respectable, it is a sad man that is shaped by the fear of someone laughing at him. For this twit to make fun me and others like me for being dumb and anti-intellectual is beyond idiotic.

So for him and all those out there, particularly any students in college that might read this, I give you a definition of smart: Despite what everyone will say, smart is not having a set of predetermined, acceptable beliefs that others approve of, that is programming. Smart is having beliefs that you hold deeply, based on your own research and work, and that will transcend the varying fashions of the echo chambers that decide the acceptable beliefs.