The downward spiral of American intelligence continues

[elfs]

After reading about Kansas's continuing to make a mockery of science, I came across an article today in which I learned that not one corporate sponsor stepped forward to support the American Museum of Natural History's "Darwin" exhibit. The entire $3 million display had to be funded by private interests.

I mean, c'mon. Pharmaceutical companies and agribusinesses that rely on evolutionary biology to further their business are terrified of pissing off the anti-science know-nothings in our midst? They want there to be no next generation of great scientists? What's wrong with these people?

I mean, contrast this with the Creation Museum in Ohio, run by Ken Hamm, aka "Dr. Dino." This is the guy who's going around the country buying up all the cheap roadside dinosaur exhibits and relabling them with biblical quotes. His campaign to do this is called "We're taking the dinosaurs back," and it has raised $7 million in the past year.

That's just sick.

Comments

Re: Sick?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yes, sick. Evolution certainly hasn't been "debunked"; if anything, it continues to be robust and reliable, without a serious challenge to it. There isn't a pharmaceutical company in the world that uses any other assumptions than those given by the post-Darwinian synthesis, which is what you get when you combine Darwin's basic theory with a knowledge of genetics. Darwin had doubts because he didn't know the mechanism of heritability, he got hundreds of details wrong, but he got two right: descent from a common ancestor, and the mechanism of selection. For those two alone, he is honored. Newton got thousands of details of chemistry wrong (he was an alchemical hack), but for his work in physics and mathematics, we remember him too.

If our country turns its back on evolutionary theory, we'll be giving up our position as the country on the vanguard of research into biology. We've led in physics, chemistry, and cybernetics; the 21st century will be the century of biology, of the brain, and of our understanding of life itself. There has not been, and is not now, single fruitful biological research program that uses as it premise anything other than evolutionary biology. I'm not happy to see my country flirt with its own destruction.