More examples of how religion is destroying our future. Believers in the Biblical "End Times" stifling climate change legislation in America.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The United States has failed to take action to mitigate climate change thanks in part to the large number of religious Americans who believe the world has a set expiration date. 

Research by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado uncovered that belief in the biblical end-times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change. 

“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in their study, which will be published in the June issue of Political Science Quarterly. 

The study, based on data from the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, uncovered that belief in the “Second Coming” of Jesus reduced the probability of strongly supporting government action on climate change by 12 percent when controlling for a number of demographic and cultural factors. When the effects of party affiliation, political ideology, and media distrust were removed from the analysis, the belief in the “Second Coming” increased this effect by almost 20 percent. 

“[I]t stands to reason that most nonbelievers would support preserving the Earth for future generations, but that end-times believers would rationally perceive such efforts to be ultimately futile, and hence ill-advised,” Barker and Bearce explained.

Over and over again we see examples of religion interfering with scientific progress and education in this country, and I for one am damn sick and tired of it!

Make no mistake the push for home school programs, charter schools programs, religious teaching in the classroom setting, and the introduction of standardized tests, are ALL a coordinated effort to keep our children believing rather than thinking, or receiving educations that do NOT encourage critical thinking skills and instead focus on memorizing test answers rather than learning.

EVERYTHING the GOP does is designed to make Americans dumber, and more easily manipulated, and religion is the very best tool they have to help them to achieve that goal.

This country was founded as a secular nations for a reason.