QuoteIn an unusual last-minute edit that has drawn flak from the White House and science educators, a federal advisory committee omitted data on Americans' knowledge of evolution and the big bang from a key report. The data shows that Americans are far less likely than the rest of the world to accept that humans evolved from earlier species and that the universe began with a big bang.
They're not surprising findings, but the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), says it chose to leave the section out of the 2010 edition of the biennial Science and Engineering Indicators because the survey questions used to measure knowledge of the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... itted.html (http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/04/evolution-big-bang-polls-omitted.html)
Reminds me of a Simpsons quote. "A prayer in a public school! God has no place within these walls, just like facts have no place within organized religion." -Superintendent Chalmers
I was actually looking for those questions in the latest Science and Engineering Indicators. Actually, the last time questions about evolution appeared in the report was 2005 I think and the public knowledge of evolution was saddening, very saddening. Hell, the overall responses were terrible - people know more about Lindsay Lohan's labia then they do about basic science - no wonder we're falling further and further behind other countries.
Quote"The universe began with a big explosion," with which only 33% of Americans agreed.
This is a very poor and misleading statement. A more proper question would be "Do you accept that the Universe was once far more hot and dense and expanded while continuing to expand today?" Then again, the misconception that the Big Bang theory mentions anything about a literal explosion is quite rampant, so it's still likely that the people who disagreed were still disagreeing for their religious purposes. Quite sad.
It is stuff like this which answers the questions asked in the below TED talk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_specte ... enial.html (http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_specter_the_danger_of_science_denial.html)
The slow erosion of basic scientific knowledge because of religious hogwash will be the reason stuff like polio and rubella will reappear with a vengeance. I wonder how long huge swathes of the deeply religious community will let themselves die out from these easily treated diseases before they start to put 2 and 2 together.