Dog help us

From the NY Times:

Teaching of Creationism Is Endorsed in New Survey

In a finding that is likely to intensify the debate over what to teach students about the origins of life, a poll released yesterday found that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.

The poll found that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."

In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time. But of those, 18 percent said that evolution was "guided by a supreme being," and 26 percent said that evolution occurred through natural selection. In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism.

The poll was conducted July 7-17 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The questions about evolution were asked of 2,000 people. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.

All I can say is, we're living in an age where we've been to the moon, sent probes looking for life on other planets and their moons, mapped our genome and those of several other creatures, and, most disquieting of all, have realized the power to vapourize all life on the Earth in an afternoon. With all that in mind, I find the fact that we're still sharing the world with so many stupid, willfully ignorant people truly terrifying.

There may or may not be a God. I, personally, hope there is. But His/Her/Its plan was not, evidently, to make the world in six days and then take a snooze. The senses and intelligence we're endowed with (be it by God or the simple mechanics of the universe itself) lead us to this conclusion. Anything else is wishful thinking and a denial of the world around us.