Praising Stupidity, Espousing Willful Ignorance

THE MESSAGE on the billboard outside the conservative fundamentalist church read, clearly, "The more educated we become, the farther we move away from God".  No, I'm not making this up. It was pictured on Facebook, and was not photo shopped. This begs response on so many levels that one hardly knows where to begin. Just jump in. Billy Graham was well educated. So we're the Falwells, both father and son. So are most ordained ministers. At the world's best divinity schools, places such as Harvard and Princeton, the campus is overflowing with  folks with doctorates in Bible studies who can read the Bible in its original ancient Hebrew and Greek, as well as Latin, and, in some cases, German and middle English. Folks professors and graduate students, who, when you give them book and verse by number, can recite the passage without aid of a cheat sheet.  Then too, all across America;s fruited plain, there sit in pew by the millions well educated people with all manner of college degrees, bachelor and advance, who are as close to God as they can possibly ever, so close as to feels the Lord's sweet breath lovingly touch and embrace their upward turned faces, in prayer. And yet, according to the illiterate inane message on the billboard outside the presumably snake handling tongue talking, the more educated you become, the farther away from God you move. There are two essential problems in refuting the educate and far from God nonsense. First, its too easy. Second, the people to whom the arguments need to made most are the least able to comprehend them, the least willing to even listen to them, for, verily, they are the least educated, the least educated illiterates on the face of God's green Earth. Upon cursory reflection, one can easily discern the target of the spewing idiocy. That target, is well educated secular liberals, "liberal elites" as they are often termed by conservatives, to whom the very fact of being well educated and being progressive in ideological orientation renders them, somehow, "elite". It is a proven, demonstrable, easily notice reality that college campuses, pales where  the best educated people gather together in academic scholarship, tend, on the whole, to be much more progressive politically and much more secular., non religious spiritually than the general poorly educated population. That's what education does for a human mind. It inspire thought, inspires minds to question everything, to become interested in reality as revealed by science rather than religious dogma, shows people that the world is directly revealed to us in nature, not is some primitive collection of manuscripts which are deemed "sacred", "holy", unnerving by virtue of having been authored by an alleged anthropomorphic sky god. In other words, education does exactly what poorly educated religious fanatics dread the most; it enables  humans with brains to question and easily see through the primitive barbaric nonsense preached and screeched on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings by the purveyors of fantasy, who personally benefit by gaining power and wealth at the expense of the teeming, gullible exploited ignorant congregants.