Refighting the Monkey Trial in Third Period Biology

This is an interesting article about the difficulties of teaching evolution in high schools today. It seems like a completely unfamiliar environment from me. Not only did I not grow up in Missouri, but I graduated from high school during the Clinton years, before half of the country apparently decided to lose their minds and think that evolution is false. Teaching high school age students is hard enough, I can’t imagine also having to deal with this kind of thing.

Half of Americans believe that evolution is false. Just let that roll around in your brain for a minute.

It’s an unbelievable statistic. Is this simply a religious fad? For the most part, religious groups didn’t have a problem with evolution for almost all of the twentieth century. Even the Catholic Church supports the teaching of evolution. Why is it that these evangelical, protestant groups have a problem with evolution? And why just evolution? Why are they not protesting tectonic plate theory, carbon dating, geological science or mineralogy? Why do they still cling to discredited dates made up by an Irish bishop in 1654? It just seems like a strange, nonsensical place to decide, “This far, no further.”