One of the great paradoxes of America is that although more Americans have won Nobel prizes in the fields of science and medicine than any other nationality, and given the fact that the nation has the best universities and some of the greatest research and development centers in the world, Americans as a whole remain woefully ignorant, if not completely hostile, to basic scientific knowledge and rationality.
Over the past twenty years repeated surveys have found that as much as 95% of the American population is scientifically illiterate. A recent study conducted by the California Academy of Sciences found that 47% of Americans did not know how long it takes Earth to revolve around the sun, and 41% believed that dinosaurs and early humans coexisted. Another recent poll done by the Pew Research Foundation, found that only 52% of Americans understood the basis of stem cells in relation to normal differentiated cells and a mere 46% knew that atoms are larger than electrons. As described in the Boston Globe, "On a highly contentious issue like global warming, meanwhile, the gap between scientists and the public was vast: 84 percent of scientists, but just 49 percent of Americans, think human emissions are causing global warming."
So it should come as no shock to discover that only a mere third of the population "believe" in the theory of biological evolution. Worst, more than 50% of the population "believe" in literal creationism. It is this latter group of simians that I wish to highlight. In the state of Alabama, a state that is ranked as having the largest percentage of obese citizens and least educated persons in the country, the local Republicans managed to achieve a new intellectual low through a primary election campaign commercial. According the online political news-blog TPM,
[An Alabama] state PAC recently went on the air with an ad attacking one of the Republican gubernatorial candidates for supporting the teaching of evolution in schools and for saying that parts of the Bible aren't true.
The candidate, Bradley Byrne, responded with a lengthy press release vehemently defending his belief in creationism and the infallible truth of the Bible.
The aggrieved Republican pol went on to further dismiss every piece of scientific analysis in the past 4,000 years -from the ancient Babylonians who studied astronomy to 19th C. scholars who developed theories of electromagnetism and nuclear chemistry to modern 21st C. molecular biologists- by making the ludicrous claim of "I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true ..."
All these dunces and like-minded inbred yahoos south of the Mason-Dixon line are a burden to the rest of humanity. They are idiots, who are morally debased, scientifically illiterate, and lacking in any common sense. Just watch the following clip as evidence.
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