Brain Cramps

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) last month dismissed evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory as “lies straight from the pit of hell” to convince people they don’t “need a savior.”

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, the Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said in videotaped remarks to the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet in Hartwell, Ga. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

Broun, a medical doctor who sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said 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,” he said.

Broun said the Bible informs much of the way he does his job as a congressman.

“What I‘ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it,” he said. “It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches and it teaches how to run all the 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.”

The liberal nonprofit group Bridge Project highlighted Broun’s comments and provided them toTalking Points Memo. A link to Broun’s full 47-minute remarks posted by the Liberty Baptist Church was no longer available Sunday morning.

In an email to the Athens Banner-Herald, Broun spokeswoman Meredith Griffanti said the congressman was “speaking off the record to a large church group about his personal beliefs regarding religious issues.”

Broun, first elected to Congress in 2007, is running for re-election unopposed.

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