Word of the Week #181:
You must have encountered some of these individuals in your lifetime, right?
People who believe the Earth is flat and static like a plate and the sky covers it like a dome…
People who think they were specifically designed by a supernatural entity to be better than everyone else…
People who argue that the world is not on fire and their actions should have had no consequence.
These people annoy me.
I mean, there is one thing to say you don’t believe in evolution. Maybe you are just too stupid to understand it… And that is okay!
You can be too stupid to understand a topic as complex as evolution and decide not to believe something you do not understand. You choose to believe something simpler and dumber, like the fact that you were built the same way we build Barbie dolls.
You can be too stupid to understand the Big Bang—who isn’t, right—and choose to believe the entire universe was created in six days.
It is okay. It is unfortunate, but it is okay.
However, it does get annoying, beyond a point.
It is one thing to deny a concept you cannot understand, but quite another to deny basic, empirical facts because they do not align with something you have already decided to be true? That is unacceptable.
If you do not have all the facts, or if you cannot understand facts, that is one thing. But to choose to ignore facts because you cannot tolerate an attack on your baseless beliefs? That is unacceptable.
The worst is when such people deny the fact visible to the lay man and question the accomplishments of the men and women smarter than them.
No, we are not trying to defraud you by saying the Earth is round and the sky isn’t solid and vaccinations are important and climate change is real. We are trying to save you, and everything around you, while you sit back and rely on stories and superstitions from the Dark Ages.
If you are stupid, okay. Just, keep it to yourself.
“The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
—Isaac Asimov
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