Ignorance is … ignorant

I know this will come as no huge shock to some, but I still find it appalling.

Surveys by a Michigan State University researcher find that about one-third of the American population does not believe in evolution, a figure which is much higher than those found in similar surveys in European nations and Japan. The research of Jon D. Miller, MSU Hannah Professor of Integrative Studies, is published in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Science.

“One in three American adults firmly rejects the concept of evolution, a significantly higher proportion than found in any western European country,” Miller said.

Far be it from me to assert something about people, especially when it comes to beliefs — but one in three American adults are blithering idiots. Or so I assert.

Folks, this is not rocket science. This is not obscure branches of astrophysics or understanding General Relativity or the Unified Theory. This is just plain, outright observed fact. Claiming that it’s just a “theory” (and thus patently false) because there remains debate about the precise mechanisms of evolution is like claiming that the stars must really be pinpricks shining through from Heaven because scientists aren’t precisely sure about dark matter and black holes.

That people are using magical thinking to disbelieve something they find aesthetically or theologically unpalatable is irksome. That some demagogues use it as a means of dividing folks is more than irksome.

The researchers combined data from public surveys on evolution collected from 32 European countries, the United States and Japan between 1985 and 2005. Adults in each country were asked whether they thought the statement “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals,” was true, false, or if they were unsure.

The study found that over the past 20 years:

• The percentage of U.S. adults who accept evolution declined from 45 to 40 percent.
• The percentage overtly rejecting evolution declined from 48 to 39 percent, however.
• And the percentage of adults who were unsure increased, from 7 to 21 percent.

Of the other countries surveyed, only Turkey ranked lower, with about 25 percent of the population accepting evolution and 75 percent rejecting it. In Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted evolution; in Japan, 78 percent of adults did.

How charming that we are marginally less ignorant than the folks in Turkey.

The three factors that the study authors correlated or attributed the “opinion” difference to were:

1. Fundamentalist Christianity, which insists on a Biblical literalism regarding Genesis and the creation of Man.
2. Politicization of evolution, esp. by the GOP, which makes evolution a litmus test for political virtue and “us against them.”
3. Craptastic American science education, which leaves people unsure whether plants and animals have DNA, how similar human DNA is to other critters, etc.

Rrg.

The one “bright” note is that while only 40% of Americans explicitly accept evolution, the folks who explicitly reject it has gone down, too (and to fractionally less than the preceding group). A fifth of Americans say they’re not sure — which is still appalling, but at least correctable.

Mutter mutter mutter …

UPDATE: I don’t know if this makes me feel any better — I mean, at least it’s not (directly) Americans, but Kenyans:

Powerful evangelical churches are pressing Kenya’s national museum to sideline its world-famous collection of hominid bones pointing to man’s evolution from ape to human.

Leaders of the country’s six-million-strong Pentecostal congregation want Dr Richard Leakey’s ground-breaking finds relegated to a back room instead of being given their usual prime billing.

There are times when I all too easily understand why some people I know consider Christians to be freaks, dunderheads, and a danger to the survival of humanity.