GOP Rep. Who Said Evolution Was a Lie “from the Pit of Hell” Wants His Seat Back

For eight years, from 2007 to 2015, Paul Broun was a Republican member of Congress, representing Georgia’s 10th district. In 2012, as a sitting member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, he made nationwide news when video emerged of him speaking at a Baptist church and telling the crowd that evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang were “lies straight from the pit of Hell.”

God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.

And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.

Broun also “anointed” the doorway through which President Obama walked before delivering his first inaugural address and co-sponsored a bill reaffirming “In God We Trust” as our nation’s official motto. That’s besides all the deranged right-wing policies he supported.

Broun ran for Senate in 2014, but was defeated in the GOP primary. He lost his House seat in 2016 when fellow conservative nut Doug Collins beat him in that primary. It didn’t help that there was an ethics investigation into Broun’s former chief of staff.

Now he’s running for his old seat, now in the 9th district, once again. (Collins has that seat right now, but he’s running for U.S. Senate.)

Broun is already stirring up controversy with an AR-15 giveaway — to help the (mostly white) residents in his district protect themselves against the “looting hordes from Atlanta.” (Wink wink nudge nudge…)

Guns and racism, all in one. What else is new from a conservative Christian?

In a phone interview Tuesday, Broun defended the reference to “looting hordes from Atlanta” as “not racial”.

“Only the liberal press would take that kind of position,” he said. “There are a lot of white people in Atlanta as well.”

…

“You’re the racist,” he added.

This is the best Jesus followers can do, apparently. It’s appalling that in the middle of a pandemic, a candidate who openly rejects science could get anywhere close to Congress. But when Republicans are in the majority, the dumbest people get elected.