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The Fundamentalist Things Apply |
 Can it be possible that only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution? |
Prepare for culture shock:
America is dumb in science
of TheColumnists.com
The New York Times’ excellent Nicholas D. Kristof had an interesting piece the other day about religion in American life. He urged that Northeast elite well-educated types display a little more understanding of evangelical Christians and drop their open contempt for the fundamentalists’ beliefs.
The evangelicals should do the same thing, Kristof advised.
On the way, Kristof let fly some interesting--no, mind-boggling--statistics on Americans and the extent of our scientific ignorance. The extent is great. Worse, it seems to be respectable.
A Gallup Poll cited by Kristof says that 48 percent of Americans believe in creationism. Only 28 percent believe in evolution, the central tenet of modern biology. Not cited by Kristof but available from Gallup is the finding that only about one-third of those polled say that Charles Darwin's theory is well supported by evidence. In the presidential election of 2000, both major candidates said they supported the teaching of creationism in public schools, although Al Gore wobbled on that position later.
In a Gallup poll taken in June of 1999, one-third of American adults surveyed agreed that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word. In the decades that Gallup has taken the poll, there has been relatively little fluctuation in the results.
Some 45 percent of American adults take the Bible’s story of creation literally. Only about 10 percent believe a purely scientific explanation of evolution.
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Nearly half of all Americans believe the Bible's version of creation--literally! |
These views are sharply divergent from those in other developed nations. A 1991 Gallup survey in 17 countries asking about taking the Bible literally found that in Great Britain, for instance, it was 7 percent. In other words, Americans were five times as likely to take the Bible literally as were the Brits. There were also much lower percentages for literal belief in the Bible in Germany, Norway, Russia and the Netherlands.
President Bush doesn’t believe in evolution. Neither does President Reagan. Nancy Reagan regularly consulted an astrologer when she was in the White House.
Think about it. In what amounts to a biological arms race, researchers in the United States and around the world are struggling to stay ahead of microorganisms that are evolving to survive antibiotics. But only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution. Almost half belief in creationism.
In some of our southern states, strong Christian fundamentalist constituencies want to remove the teaching of evolution from schools, or at least allow the teaching of creationism on an equal basis.
“Evolution is only a theory. We should give creationism equal class time, because that’s only fair,” they say.
Right. And while we’re at it, how about equal time for teaching that the Earth is flat? Fair is fair.
(I don’t know if anyone has tried to collect data on it, but I’d bet there is a correlation between literal belief in the Bible and creationism and the so-called “red states’ that voted for Bush. These are folks that drive pickup trucks, smoke, oppose gun control, vote Republican and go to church on Sunday. It might also be pointed out that they also fight the wars, run most of the businesses and grow the food.)
What we’re dealing with here, among many other things, is the failure of American education to teach science at its most basic level. The scientific theory, where a hypothesis is subject to experimentation to determine its validity, apparently is a strange and foreign concept to at least a sizeable minority, if not the majority, of Americans. Where there is a vacuum of education on science, ignorance will swamp reason every time.
We’re also dealing with a sad fact: Logic is hard. Adhering to a set of nonsensical beliefs is easy.
It has been said that at least part of the reason for the estrangement between Americans and some Europeans is the belief by many overseas that Americans are a rude and simpleminded lot, having somehow constructed a society where Christian fundamentalists are, unbelievably, an important political constituency.
I used to think that attitude was merely snobbishness on the part of those effete Continentals. After all, this is the nation that leads the world in biotechnology, electronic research and development, nanotechnology and just about any other technical field you can name. We have won Nobels in literature. Our movies are so good (well, so alluring, anyway) that foreign filmmakers cannot realistically compete, even in their own countries. We gave the world the Marshall Plan, one of the wisest acts of humanitarianism the world has ever seen.
But after looking at the Gallup findings, it’s evident we are at least schizophrenic. The nation that gave birth to Abraham Lincoln and Robert Oppenheimer, that nurtured Albert Einstein and honored Aaron Copeland, has a high percentage of adults who seem not to grasp what to most educated people is self-evident.
I know. It’s a big country. You’re bound to have all manner of belief. Knowledge and sophistication exist side-by-side with appalling ignorance. “Twas ever thus, right?
But 48 percent of Americans believing in creationism? Only 28 percent believing in evolution?
Mr. Kristof’s elite
northeast well-educated types have their work cut out for them.
©2003 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is
©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master
Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA.
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