05.01.07
Creationism vs public opinion
Why Creationism Fails at the Polls
Having watched the creationism insurgency flare up in half a dozen different school boards since the mid-1980s, I’ve noticed a pattern. It helps me reconcile some aspects of this issue that don’t seem to fit. Most Americans, according to polls, lean toward religious explanations of the origin of life, and most favor some discussion of that in science classes (a false, but understandable, position for a people committed to fairness and “equal time†who don’t appreciate that in the scientific method, facts and consistency rule with ruthlessly authority and democracy has no place).
Yet school boards that push creationism (or “intelligent design,†to call the emperor’s new clothes by their new name) routinely get voted out, as they were last night in Dover, just across the river from here.