#609: Cynthia Davis

Cynthia L. Davis is a former Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives who currently runs the Back to Basics Christian Bookstore in O'Fallon. You can probably feel the direction in which this entry is going, and true enough: her political career was characterized by anti-abortion activism and suchlike (her antics regarding sex education is appalling), to the extent that she finally left the Republican Party over “the loss of party principles,” and teamed up with the Constitution Party instead.

Of course, Davis is, despite her concern for the unborn, not particularly concerned with such issues as child welfare (see for instance this astonishing piece, which is one among many), and she received national attention in 2009 when she attacked programs providing subsidized meals for school-age children from lower-income families during the summer months, saying that such programs “could break apart more families” and that “hunger can be a positive motivator.” She drew some criticism on that one even from fellow wingnuts.

It was also noted that Davis has earlier been observed “stealing food at state dinners to take home to her children.”

Here’s Cynthia Davis on sex. The piece does not flaunt erudition.

Davis has, as expected, also made repeated efforts to have creationism incorporated in public school curricula – and Missouri seems fertile ground for such projects, with people like Sherry “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school” Melby and David Awbrey running around).

Diagnosis: Comple whacko. As ignorant, stupid, and blockheaded as elected representatives come; Bachmann class.

#590: Kevin Craig

Kevin Craig is a perennial candidate for the House of Representatives from Missouri representing the Libertarian Party (one wonders what kind of persons he would have to beat in the nomination process). More precisely, Craig describes himself as a “Christian Libertarian”, which does not mean Christian and libertarian but that he belongs, in his own eyes, to a particular brand of libertarianism. In fact, Craig seeks to establish what he calls a “Christian libertarian Theocracy”, so his brand sounds like a very, very special brand of libertarianism indeed. He is described here (this one ought to be seen, by the way).

One unusual feature of his “libertarianism” is the view that homosexuality should be criminalized. Craig believes that “Congress should: i) Hate homosexuality and homosexuals; ii) Follow God's Commandments with respect to them,” and his reasoning is that homosexuality is just like embezzlement: “Homosexuals attempt to embezzle sexual satisfaction from God's business. The entire creation is God's enterprise. God is the Boss. Homosexuals are disobedient employees. God hates them.” To emphasize that he is a radical libertarian, however, Craig does say that he doesn’t think child molestation should be illegal and punished by the government, because the government has no business concerning what goes on in people’s bedrooms.

Craig is also a global warming denialist because that seems to fit better with his political position, desperately claiming that “there is no consensus”. In fact, his website is a cesspool of New World Order  conspiracy theories, creationism (yes, Craig deploys all the silliest arguments), altmed peddling, and HIV denialism – according to Craig “The government-approved orthodox HIV-AIDS theory distracts attention from the destructive nature of the homosexual lifestyle. There are many scientists, professors, researchers, even Nobel Prize-winners, who are skeptics, and see the HIV–AIDS religion as effective political lobbying, not effective science.” One wonders whether the putatively respectable skeptics are these. That would be too bad, for the people on that list, whatever else they are, are certainly not respectable.

Diagnosis: Virtually a professional Boolean negation operator. “Craig says p, therefore not-p” seems to be a fairly reliable inference rule for the rest of us.

#548: Rod Butterworth

Rod Butterworth runs the Creation Museum of the Ozarks in Branson, Missouri, one of several such “museums” in the US constructed around the premise that The Flintstones is a documentary to offer tacky displays of plastic dinosaurs living together with humans as evidence for a young earth and against evolution (no, they don’t quite get the distinction between evidence and imagination, but according Butterworth “evolution teaches that there is no God, and everything evolved by lucky chance  over millions of years,” which doesn’t much resemble the theory of evolution).

The museum was founded by Butterworth, who is originally British (it seems like the US are attracting a plethora of raving Commonwealth morons – Ken Ham and Ray Comfort being obvious others in that group), as a response to his concern that most “dinosaur museums” around were completely “evolutionary in nature”. Their mantra is the same as the more famous Kentucky museum’s, namely the interestingly post-modernist “same evidence, different views” (+presuppositionalism). Again, the mantra should be interpreted keeping in mind that these guys wouldn’t be able to distinguish evidence from wishful thinking if their lives depended on it – which is of course how they are able to present “evidence” that “evolutionists” have overlooked, such as Ica stones, the London artifact, polystrate fossils, chameleon art, a variety of fallacies, and claims strikingly reminiscent of “the Loch Ness monster disproves evolution” (which made it into the curriculum at certain Louisiana private schools) – rivers run south from Missouri, just sayin’), fire-breathing dinosaurs (hence dragons, therefore Jesus QED), a Paluxy footprint with the comment that “yes, most of these have shown to be fake, but this particular one looks like the real thing,” but which really is the very same as one previously offered  by Carl Baugh). You can read a detailed (hilarious) report on a visit to the “museum” here. You can see Butterworth trying to defend the perfect benevolence of the God of the Old Testament here.

The museum’s vice president, Barry Dullum, claims that he used to be an evolutionist, but then someone told him that there has really been a Great Flood and a great hoax played upon Western Civilization by the Humanists, and that made him open his eyes. I’m not sure I believe him.

Diagnosis: A magnificent display of sheer idiocy, ignorance and dishonesty, Butterworth and his museum makes Casey Luskin look well-informed by comparison, and that takes some deep stupid. Moderately dangerous, since they, as all creationists, are targeting the children instead of even attempting to actually apply critical thinking or look for evidence.