Widespread Ignorance

From AlterNet:

More than 50 percent of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who do not believe in God; 70 percent think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious." Because it is taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.) generally gets framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy. Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

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Jeez. There's any number of places I could go commenting on this--it's actually a rather profound statement, and it's not simply about religion, either. My own bias is to blame public education, which, contrary to the conventional wisdom, teaches people that critical thinking is a punishable offense. But there's much more to it than that. The news media distort reality on a regular basis, as do entertainment media. Most politicians on both the left and right are in on it as well. Celebrity nuts like Tom Cruise don't help much either. In short, reality is under a sustained assault by several powerful institutions, and it doesn't appear that an end is in sight. Like I keep saying, we're all in big trouble.

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