You know I wonder, is the US electorate really this dumb? How can people down there not see that turning their back towards science and progress is a bad thing? Science is what put the US in its place in the world and now a large portion of the populace (or at least the right wingers, conservatives, evangelicals, etc) is trying its darnedest to turn back time… Evolution is the gold standard of scientific theories and there’s a consensus among scientists that climate change as we know it is a man made phenomenon. Neither of those topics are in dispute despite in the scientific world despite what you may hear in the media.

Then there’s stem cell research… While I agree there may be an ethical issue here, frankly we can not stand in the way of progress. To be clear, I have no issue with it and it’s going to happen whether you like it or not so we might as well do it and try to shape it’s path. I always have a chuckle here, the conservative movements are always trying to “save unborn life” yet they don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about people who are already on this planet.

An article in NewScientist spurred this blog post and the author hit all the right points…

On evolution: intelligent design is “a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science class”. And don’t believe in “a theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea or from monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”

On the use of embryonic stem cell research to cure diseases: it should be shut down because it involves “the wholesale destruction of human life”.

On climate change: variations are “natural, cyclical environmental trends”. That “we can’t say with assurance that human activities cause weather changes” and that climate problems in Texas are best solved through “days of prayer for rain”.

You would probably be even more disturbed to be told that these are the opinions expressed by potential Republican candidates for the US presidential nomination (see “Science rears its head in Republican debates”). It’s alarming that a country which leads the world in science – the home of Benjamin Franklin, Richard Feynman and Jim Watson – might be turning its back on science. How can this be happening? What can be done?

This is one of the many reasons why the US is going down the toilet…