As America Grows More Polarized, Conservatives Increasingly Reject Science and Rational Thought
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/155906/as_america_grows_more_polarized%2C_conservatives_increasingly_reject_science_and_rational_thought/
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Public education and even modern science are relatively new developments in human history. So it makes sense that it would have taken the populace a while to catch up to understanding that evolution did happen, and that angels probably aren’t real.
But recent polling data suggests that gradual acceptance of the facts may not be the trend when it comes to the theory of evolution. In the 30 years since Gallup started asking people whether they believe humans evolved, evolved under the guidance of God, or were created fully formed by God, the percentage of people adhering to the creationist view has actually gone up slightly over time, and now stands at 46 percent of the population. This is just the tip of the iceberg of a growing problem of public rejection of science.
At the same time, there’s been a steady rise in people who believe that humanity evolved without any supernatural guidance, and now stands at 15 percent. What this seeming conflict suggests is that the issue is getting more polarized, as people feel they either have to pick Team Evolution or Team Creationism.
It turns out that education isn’t enough to fight ignorance, not when it comes to heavily politicized issues like evolutionary theory. As Chris Mooney argues in his book The Republican Brain, political identity generally trumps sober-minded assessment of the facts when it comes to convincing people of an argument or idea. The theory of evolution isn’t being rejected on its merits by the people who don't buy it. It really can’t be by someone who is honestly assessing the evidence.
The Tea Party has only intensified social pressure on conservative-leaning Americans to shun anything perceived as irreligious or academic. Science has always had a political edge to it, but the culture wars ramped up by the Tea Party have taken the problem to a whole new level.
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Damn, it's scary that 46% of Americans completely reject evolution.
I've read some comments on news stories about education the last few months, and I've realized that many people simply don't understand evolution ("If we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys today?"
. I think that a big part of that is that schools do not teach evolution on purpose or that the teachers simply do not teach evolution and they shy away from it because they are afraid of the "controversy" or the teacher themselves do not understand it. We have a wasted a whole generation of people who simply don't understand what they are talking about.
It is real easy to tabulate the results of a poll, but even those are fraught with survey error (asking "do you believe people were once monkeys?" is vastly different than asking "do you believe that organisms genetically adapt to changing conditions?" Putting aside the potential bias in how the question was framed you still have the perhaps bigger error factor--people lie.
My MIL is a classic example and although purely anecdotal, she is a common type. She is intellegent, educated, and a strict republican. She delights in baiting my wife with the latest Teaparty/Rush-inspired trope just to stir up my wife. She knows for instance that Obama is an American, but thinks it is hilarious to claim otherwise and finds it amusing that opinion polls show a huge number of people "believe" the birther nonsense.
It really isn't only the tea party types. If there had been a poll asking if Dick Cheney was actually the spawn of Darth Vader and Cruella DeVille, I'm sure many of us would have answered in the affirmative. Playing the polls has become just what you do.
That said, there are some ignorant people on the right. It is truly dangerous that their silly denials and games will be taken seriously and the faux-ignorance will become true ignorance.
