Bryan Fischer is clueless about evolution. Movie at 11

Here’s how the American Family Association’s Crank-in-Chief Bryan Fischer responds to new findings that a large number of intellectual disabilities may be due to random genetic mutations rather than inheritance:

Random gene mutations cause of many mental disabilities. Thot random mutations were key to evolution! fxn.ws/PqJySV

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) September 27, 2012

The minimally educated observer may note both the crank’s characteristic knack for using a tangentially related topic as a sloppy attack on a subject they don’t like, and also, said crank’s remarkably brazen display of scientific illiteracy.

The reality (something Fischer would never be caught dead living in) is that mutations can be good or bad in terms of how they affect one’s chances for long-term survival and reproduction. Mutations that increase an individual’s physical or psychological abilities are thus more likely to be passed on to future generations, whilst mutations that impair an individual physically or psychologically are less so. Evolution is unable to give a damn about which of these genomic changes end up helping or harming a given population; it’s a blind, directionless, stochastic process that’s driven by the laws of nature.

But, of course, cognitive shrimps like Fischer are unable to grasp such nuanced and complicamated principles, regardless of how fundamental to science and even life itself they may be.

Tags: Bryan Fischer • gene mutation • mental disabilities