Better living through dumbing down America.

Nicholas Kristof today takes time out to point out that educated Americans need to reach out to snake-handling, speaking-in-tongues, backwoods morons. Okay, maybe that's stretching the point a bit, but Kristof fails to convince me why I should respect the views of these people:

Evangelicals are increasingly important in every aspect of American culture. Among the best-selling books in America are Tim LaHaye's Christian "left behind" series about the apocalypse; about 50 million copies have been sold. One of America's most prominent television personalities is Benny Hinn, watched in 190 countries, but few of us have heard of him because he is an evangelist.

President Bush has said that he doesn't believe in evolution (he thinks the jury is still out). President Ronald Reagan felt the same way, and such views are typically American. A new Gallup poll shows that 48 percent of Americans believe in creationism, and only 28 percent in evolution (most of the rest aren't sure or lean toward creationism). According to recent Gallup Tuesday briefings, Americans are more than twice as likely to believe in the devil (68 percent) as in evolution.

He then says this:

I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything, and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence. For example, evangelicals' discomfort with condoms and sex education has led the administration to policies that are likely to lead to more people dying of AIDS at home and abroad, not to mention more pregnancies and abortions.

But liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable.

Why is it inexcusable to point out the ridiculousness of those who seem hellbent on sending us back to the dark ages, who would let people die because of a misguided belief that sex and pleasure are sinful, who find evolution unbelievable yet unquestionably accept the notion of a unknown, unseen, cosmic producer/director who works in "mysterious ways", and who read crappy endtime pulp fiction written by a hack evangelist, but fear children's books written about a boy wizard? I was brought up to respect other people's religions (although nobody ever explained why...) but that was in a time when religion was a private matter, before evangelicals decided it was their mission to share their devotion to their god whether you wanted to hear it or not. Quite frankly, I don't find the god-smacked to be that interesting.

So sure that's sneering, but how should I approach the willfully ignorant who would dictate social policy? People's lives are at stake while they're playing theological Calvinball.

Kristof then writes:

Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago argues that America is now experiencing a fourth Great Awakening, like the religious revivals that have periodically swept America in the last 300 years

History is full of "Religious Awakenings" and, if I may be so humble to note, millions have died because of someone else's notion of "god" and what "he" wants. Quite simply, that joke's not funny anymore.