The results of this poll, and others that are similar, continues to shock me. Am I so far out of the mainstream to think this is nuts, that half of America takes the Adam and Eve parable as literal truth? And as we slip further and further behind the rest of the world in educational standards, we seriously think we should now submit our woefully lacking science education to a theocratic litmus test?
Here's a hint of how out of touch we are:
American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.
Three word rebuttal to evolution deniers: drug resistant infections. At somepoint in the not too distant future we will enter the post-antibiotic era of medicine. But I digress.
I read a great article about a month ago about the scale of time, and how that works against evolution supporters. Human perception simply can't concieve of time frames of millions or billions of years. It's much easier to fall back on something we understand - what we see here and now - and to think it was created that way from whole cloth. It's counter-intuitive to believe the universe was created through time so huge we literally can't imagine it.
But what takes more faith? What's the greater miracle?
From the not so sublime to the ridiculous:
"We're putting evolutionists on notice: We're taking the dinosaurs back," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a Christian group building a $25-million creationist museum in Petersburg, Ky., that's already overrun with model sauropods and velociraptors.
If anything sinks the creationists, it'll be Dino. Everybody loves Dino.
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