Anti Knowledge: Christian fundamentalism & the GOP

[Danmark]

Thanks to these overlapping and mutually reinforcing segments of the right-wing media-entertainment-“educational� complex, it is now possible for the true believer to sail on an ocean of political, historical, and scientific disinformation without ever sighting the dry land of empirical fact.
Or, as humorist Josh Billings put it, “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that ain’t so.�
http://billmoyers.com/2015/10/29/the-go ... knowledge/
Is ignorance and disinformation a hallmark of religion and the right wing of the GOP?
If so, why? Ben Carson appears to know little outside of his field, surgery. Trump gets his foreign policy advice from TV Shows. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/d ... 016-213345 Between the two of them they currently have 52% of Republican votes. Why is anti knowledge so favored by Republican voters and supported by Fox News and its ilk?

Note: If you reply without reading the full Moyers.com article, http://tinyurl.com/q7t2ypf , you demonstrate the proposition that ignorance and the will to not know predominates your thinking.

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 1 by Danmark]

Don't you think a fair article would examine ignorance on both sides of politics?

I think we sometimes think the other side are so X that we fail to see the propaganda in our own eye.

As for knowledge, a CEO doesn't need to know how to bake the bread and I think the political class tries to embarrass others who might intrude.

I must confess that when I go to church I want to hear the good news - perhaps that is why these articles exist?

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 1 by Danmark]

Don't you think a fair article would examine ignorance on both sides of politics?

I think we sometimes think the other side are so X that we fail to see the propaganda in our own eye.

As for knowledge, a CEO doesn't need to know how to bake the bread and I think the political class tries to embarrass others who might intrude.

I must confess that when I go to church I want to hear the good news - perhaps that is why these articles exist?

Thanks Wootah! Good points!
I confess I did not think an advocate of Christianity or GOP politics would answer at all, or so forthrightly.
You are absolutely correct, an article on this subject should address the disinformation exhibits of the left and the right, the fundamentalist and the other. The problem is that it is Fox News and the GOP in general that is grossly more anti information and anti intellectual than what they call the "lame stream media" and the values of the secular Universities. Quoting from the article,
"[Fundamentalist Christians begin] "with the core belief that truth is revealed in a subjective process involving the will to believe (“faith�) rather than discovered by objectively corroberable [sic] means."

For context:
Anti-knowledge is a subset of anti-intellectualism, and as Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, anti-intellectualism has been a recurrent feature in American life, generally rising and receding in synchronism with fundamentalist revivalism.
The current wave, which now threatens to swamp our political culture, began in a similar fashion with the rise to prominence in the 1970s of fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But to a far greater degree than previous outbreaks, fundamentalism has merged its personnel, its policies, its tactics and its fate with a major American political party, the Republicans.

An Infrastructure of Know-Nothing-ism

Thanks to these overlapping and mutually reinforcing segments of the right-wing media-entertainment-“educational� complex, it is now possible for the true believer to sail on an ocean of political, historical, and scientific disinformation without ever sighting the dry land of empirical fact.Buttressing this merger is a vast support structure of media, foundations, pressure groups and even a thriving cottage industry of fake historians and phony scientists. From Fox News to the Discovery Institute (which exists solely to “disprove� evolution), and from the Heritage Foundation (which propagandizes that tax cuts increase revenue despite massive empirical evidence to the contrary) to bogus “historians� like David Barton (who confected a fraudulent biography of a piously devout Thomas Jefferson that had to be withdrawn by the publisher), the anti-knowledge crowd has created an immense ecosystem of political disinformation.
Thanks to publishing houses like Regnery and the conservative boutique imprints of more respectable houses like Simon & Schuster (a division of CBS), America has been flooded with cut-and-paste rants by Michelle Malkin and Mark Levin, Parson Weems-style ghosted biographies allegedly by Bill O’Reilly, and the inimitable stream of consciousness hallucinating of Glenn Beck.

Whether retail customers actually buy all these screeds, or whether foundations and rich conservative donors buy them in bulk and give them out as door prizes at right-wing clambakes, anti-knowledge infects the political bloodstream in the United States.

Thanks to these overlapping and mutually reinforcing segments of the right-wing media-entertainment-“educational� complex, it is now possible for the true believer to sail on an ocean of political, historical, and scientific disinformation without ever sighting the dry land of empirical fact. This effect is fortified by the substantial overlap between conservative Republicans and fundamentalist Christians.

The latter group begins with the core belief that truth is revealed in a subjective process involving the will to believe (“faith�) rather than discovered by objectively corroberable means. Likewise, there is a baseline opposition to the prevailing secular culture, and adherents are frequently warned by church authority figures against succumbing to the snares and temptations of “the world.� Consequently, they retreat into the echo chamber of their own counterculture: if they didn’t hear it on Fox News or from a televangelist, it never happened.
http://billmoyers.com/2015/10/29/the-go ... knowledge/

The issue is not whether or not the article is fair or balanced. The issue is whether disinformation is a predominate theme of the GOP candidates, chiefly Carlson and Trump who combine to own the majority of votes in current GOP polls.

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 3 by Danmark]

What is scary is that clearly educated people can be labeled anti knowledge.

Doesn't that concern you that your media sources can do that?

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 3 by Danmark]

What is scary is that clearly educated people can be labeled anti knowledge.

Doesn't that concern you that your media sources can do that?

Please offer a source for your claim.
I agree that many who may have a formal education that includes a 4 year college degree may still be anti intellectual, ignorant, and intellectually incurious. Just because someone was awarded a college degree, even an advanced degree, does not ensure they actively are interested in empirical truth or objective evidence.