America is now a post-literate, post-logical society where truth and reason no longer matter: Asia and Europe poised to kick our collective butts

WHEN FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL HACKERY TRUMP SCIENCE: "By Randolph T. Holhut | American Reporter Correspondent | www.OpEdNews.com

Can a country where more people believe in the devil than in evolution maintain its leadership in the sciences?

That's a question that David Baltimore, Nobel laureate and president of the California Institute of Technology, asked in a recent
op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. Baltimore believes that "Asia has the potential to blow us out of the water" because their scientists and engineers "are as good as ours, as imaginative as ours - they work longer hours and are more dedicated."

The numbers bear him out. India's colleges and universities are turning out more than 40,000 computer science graduates each year, and the enrollments in those programs are rising while U.S. colleges struggle to fill their science programs. And China produces more 325,000 engineers each year, or five times more than the United States.

By contrast, Baltimore wrote that our nation has a "lack of federal leadership in funding schooling that emphasizes math and science" with a "fragmented educational system that leaves much to local control" and an attitude of "general anti-intellectualism."

China is not a paradise politically, but it isn't having arguments over whether Darwin's theories are correct. It isn't rewriting science textbooks to give the Biblical version of creation equal weight with evolution. It isn't letting narrow political agendas or special interests trump scientific or medical facts.

Anti-intellectualism has always been a powerful force in America. Combine that with religious fundamentalism and you have a recipe for economic, scientific and political disaster. Because scientists in secular societies like Asia and Europe aren't fighting fundamentalist dogma and political hackery at every turn, they are now poised to kick our collective butts. And when this happens, most Americans will never know what hit them.

Why are we still arguing about Darwin? Why are more schools around the country forcing teachers to treat "intelligent design" (the new euphemism for creationism) as something as valid as evolution? Why do two-thirds of Americans (according to a CBS News poll taken last month) favor teaching creationism and evolution side-by-side in public schools? This is happening because America is now a post-literate, post-logical society where truth and reason no longer matter.