Fighting for (and in) the heart of America

Today’s Guardian has an article on creationism in American public schools. Most of the article will be familiar to those versed in the subject matter, but what turned my stomach was this quote:

But the largest applause of the evening was reserved for a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blue blazer. “I have a question: if man comes from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”

You poor, poor Kansans…At least they should supply your creationists with some new material every now and then.

The article further fleshes out the reasoning behind the attacks on evolution:

“They believe that the naturalistic bias of science is in fact atheistic, and that if we don’t change science, we can’t believe in God. And so this is really an attack on all of science. Evolution is just the weak link.”

I’m always surprised when they say this type of thing. Evolution is more strongly supported than many other theories in science. I’ve said before that religionists ought to target the germ theory of disease instead: the mere existence of a carrier state could have been used as the death knell to Koch’s postulates, for example. But I’ve not yet seen any takers. At least they must see the absurdity in challenging some well-established theories. For now.