re: #35 Charles Johnson

When I was a kid we didn’t get any of this Biblical absolutist stuff either. I went to Catholic schools and there was nothing but respect for science and no hint of creationism from any of my teachers.

For the past 40-50 years, the religious right has been engaged in a very deliberate effort to build an alternate society within America based on fundamentalist religion, through homeschooling and other separatist tactics.

If it seems like America has moved backwards in this area, it has. The reactionaries gave up on trying to get mainstream society to join them, so they’re just creating their own mainstream society based on fantasy. The problem comes when these thoroughly indoctrinated people have to interact with the real world - and we can see the results. Politicians like Paul Broun an Louie Gohmert and James Inhofe are products of this reactionary world view.

It’s a very bad trend.

And it’s unlikely there will be a another “Sputnik Moment” soon that will scare the political structure into feeling the need to tamp things down and concentrate on science and science education and research again.

The Chinese launching some sort of space mission might cause a bit of a scare, but I doubt that would do much beyond triggering a lot of yelling about needing to increase defense spending and perhaps toss a few extra nickles to NASA.