Someone must be kidding!

So I’ve been sitting here this morning, waiting for some information packets to copy for a staff meeting this afternoon, and instead of doing busy paperwork while the copy machine whirs and clicks in the background, I’ve been reading an old National Geographic magazine. The cover asks “Was Darwin Wrong?” and that’s enough to pique my interest. My brother Mike used to have a subscription to NG when we were living at Mom’s, and in rare acts of kindness, he’d pass the issues along to me when he was finished reading them. I used to be something of a science geek when I was a little kid. I imagine it was my fascination with the physics behind superheroes. I really wanted to believe that it was possible for people to have superhuman abilities. But I digress …

The Darwin article (by NG writer David Quammen) is a great read. It is, of course, exquisitely written, perfectly documented, and a pleasantly straightforward piece on how the evidence supporting the “theory” of evolution is overwhelming and nearly unquestionable. I consider myself a bit of an evolution buff, but I learned a great deal from the article … and I certainly love learning new things. Acquired knowledge is a huge turn-on for me. Hehe. The article never downplays the importance of evolution as a concept – in fact, it points out rather persuasively that the idea is crucial to human welfare, medical science, and to the basic understanding of the world. My favorite quote from the piece:

“…the supporting evidence is abundant, various, ever increasing, solidly interconnected, and easily available in museums, popular books, textbooks, and a mountainous accumulation of peer-reviewed scientific studies. No one needs to, and no one should, accept evolution as a matter of faith.”

Here’s the thing that almost blew my brain apart:

“According to a Gallup poll drawn from more than a thousand telephone interviews conducted in February 2001, no less than 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” Evolution, by their lights, played no role in shaping us.

Frightening, huh? It gets better.

“The most startling thing about these poll numbers is not that so many Americans reject evolution, but that the statistical breakdown hasn’t changed much in the last two decades. Gallup interviewers posed exactly the same choices in 1982, 1993, 1997, and 1999. The creationist conviction – that God alone, and not evolution, produced humans – has never drawn less than 44 percent. In other words, nearly half the American populace prefers to believe that Charles Darwin was wrong where it mattered most.”

I can’t even wrap my brain around that. Of course, I guess given the very scary wave of conservatism sweeping the nation, I shouldn’t be too surprised. What is it about nearly indisputable facts that frightens Americans so much? I just don’t get it. I doubt I ever will.