A letter to the New York Times magazine about sums it up.

[NNadir]

Iraq war propagandist Tom Friedman wrote an article in the NYT Magazine a short while ago about the "flattening of the earth" by which I assume he was referring to economic flattening.

A reader responded with this letter:

"The headline for Thomas L. Friedman's insightful article is meaningful in another sense (April 3). I refer to the increasing encroachment of religious extremism and biblical literalism into the realm of science. First in biology, then spreading to physics and onward, it seems there are forces at work trying to bring us back to the flat earth of the Middle Ages. Like Galileo, we are in the midst of a battle between scientific progress and dogmatic belief. Is there any better gift we could hand to the rising scientific forces in China and India than the compromising of our future scientific achievements in this manner? We must assure the integrity of our scientific education or yield to others who do.


Zvi Doron
Pittsburgh"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/magazine/17LETTERS.html?

It couldn't be more stark.