More proof that too many Americans are becoming idiotic morons:
EAST LANSING, Mich. – 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.
For example, in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted the concept of evolution, as did 78 percent of Japanese adults.
Only adults in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation, were less likely to accept the concept of evolution than American adults.
The primary reason the U.S. and Turkey are at the bottom of the list? You guessed it: Fundamentalist religious belief.
“The total effect of fundamentalist religious beliefs on attitude toward evolution was nearly twice as much in the United States,” he said, “which indicates that individuals who hold a strong belief in a personal God – and who pray frequently – were significantly less likely to view evolution as probably or definitely true than adults with less conservative religious views.”
In addition, the issue of evolution has become highly politicized in the United States, with the Republican Party in particular often using it as a litmus test for possible candidates for office, according to Miller.
“There is no major political party in Europe and Japan that uses opposition to evolution as a part of its political platform,” Miller said. “In the United States, there are people who think it is a political advantage to discount evolution.”
When faced with depressing news items like this it’s hard not to wonder if America just might be in a downward spiral headed toward its own undoing thanks to the rotting ignorance of its own citizens. Will history books someday in the future write of the “Great Failed Experiment that was The United States of America” and the efforts by the people who gained the most from its secular constitution to undermine it so that Fundamentalism could gain the upper hand?
I suppose I should take some comfort in the fact that it’s only a third of the population that is so fully committed to rejecting Evolution, but then it occurs to me that there’s still plenty of people who are too close to that same viewpoint for comfort and, really, a third is entirely too much of the population to begin with. For a nation that owes so much of it’s greatness to science and the application of it there’s no small amount of irony in a third of the population being ignorant about one of science’s greatest achievements.
Posted on 08/14/2006 at 12:41 PM 
me during my 40s.
Even worse, that third tends to be the ones who don’t believe in birth control and in being fruitful and multiplying, thus giving them the opportunity to raise large families of ignorant bible-thumpers.
I can’t help but think there will be some backlash in the younger generations. Unfortunately, I also think it will be very Southern, in many ways, e.g. Saturday night sinner, Sunday morning saint.