New poll: Most Americans still reject evolution

While the (hopefully) final vote on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” gets underway, I thought I’d take the time to remind you how the US education system still deserves its solid “F” rating: Less than 20% of Americans believe in secular evolution and four in ten adults still hold onto the fairy tale that some intangible force in the sky just magicked us all into existence. From a new Gallup poll:

Well, that’s depressing. I suppose the silver lining is how there’s still a slim overall majority (54%) who do believe in evolution, one way or another. But that’s hardly more than damning with faint praise, considering the massive 46% left who either believe in their chosen fairy tale or who don’t even have any particular opinion on the matter.

Another little ray of hope (and I mean little, given these numbers) is that the numbers seem to be slowly but surely turning in favor of scientific fact and away from pious hocus-pocus, with a relatively sharp decrease in the Creationism line since roughly 2006 and a slow but steady increase in belief in secular evolution. But as always, we’ll have to wait for a few more years and examine a few more surveys before we can really determine any long-term trends.

The Gallup page continues to break the results down further, showing what’s already been known for probably as long as Evolutionary Theory has existed: Those who doubt it are generally uneducated religious conservatives. Never has any poll result been less surprising. So, believing in absurd myths and and thinking education is for those librul eggheads isn’t conductive to a healthy belief in scientific fact? Why, I never …

(via @todayspolitics)