The Enlightenment has ended in America. It was nice while it lasted.
Why? Take a look at the depressing and astonishing results from a survey on creationism, reported in the New York Times today.
In brief, 64% of Americans are open to the idea of teaching creationist pseudoscience alongside established science, while 38% don’t want evolution taught at all. 42% believed in strict creationism – that current living things have existed in their current forms since the beginning of time.
One of the researchers involved in survey is quoted in the NYT, saying that the results on the education questions are “a reflection of American pragmatism”. That just won’t do. It’s a reflection of American stupidity, or perhaps irrationality, but it’s about as far from pragmatism as it’s possible to get.
There is, of course, no science in support of creationism, and lots of science in support of evolution. Evolution is only semantically a theory – in practice it is self-evidently, obviously true.
The last comment on this – another disheartening statistic for fans of democracy – is that 41% of respondents wanted the parents to decide on what science was taught to their children. At last, a chance for the Flat Earth Society, not to mention the eugenicists. Perhaps the next step is going to be parental choice in the field of history.