Thursday, February 12, 2009

Breaking news: Americans are ignorant!

A Gallup Poll taken on the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth showed that a whopping 39% of Americans "believe in the theory of evolution". Yes, only 39%. While the "No"s only added up to 25% (sad enough to contemplate), another huge chunk of our populace--36%--have no opinion. I can't imagine how someone could have "no opinion" on such a basic tenet of human science inquiry, so I'm going to assume that most of those are actually "No" votes from people too bashful to proclaim their vast disregard for intelligent discourse. If that's true, then a landslide 61% of Americans don't believe in evolution. Utterly disgraceful.
There is good news, of sorts. Unmistakeably clear trends downward for ignorance show up when education increases (duh), but also when age is taken into account; the younger an American is, the more likely s/he is to believe in evolution, but for no age group does a majority emerge from the data. Majority belief in this fundamental truth of biology only occurs for those groups who have earned a Bachelor's degree or when their attendance at church is "seldom/never". The worst performing group were those who attend church weekly, where 76% placed their faith in "No" or "No opinion".
Thanks, Jesus!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dinosaurs were on the ark with Noah, BroDuck. So were unicorns and chupacabras. Bigfoot, too. Just ask Sarah Palin!

4:00 PM  

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