[off-topic gibberish removed.]

Much of America's scientific R&D has been done by foreigners who have come here from places like India. Universities, historically, have recruited students who are the cream of the crop in their homelands. These students usually end up staying in the US, thereby adding their expertise to the advancement the US economy.

As research facilities improve in countries like India and China, fewer cream of the croppers will be coming to the US for their graduate studies. This will be a huge loss to the US economy, especially if we're stuck with the "teach the controversy" philosophy in our science classes.

Although there are surely plenty of Repbulicans who are closet Darwinists, they are so caught up in holding on to power that they are sacrificing future US economic stability in order to keep the fundamentalist Christian vote.

Russell Sadler writes:

"Significantly, the students who encounter this problem have almost always been raised as fundamentalist Protestants. I do not remember encountering a mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic student with this problem."

I hear ya bro'. I spent 34 years teaching HUMAN EVOLUTION at PSU. That put me on the front lines of this debate from 1970 until just last year. I can tell you that the vast majority of these students are raised as fundamentalist Protestants, although I also encountered resistance, disbelief, and refusal from students with conservative Catholic backgrounds, occasionally with traditional Muslim values, and most strangely, with orthodox judiasm as a background.

I also agree with you that this is a majorly serious problem as we find ourselves competing more and more in the global economy. Intelligent design and its antecedent, the oxymoronic "scientific creationism" are uniquely American products and will prove to be one of America's most significant obstacles to science literacy now and in the future. This is why the fight against the attempts to substitute religious dogma in place of serious science education is so important to those of us "in the trenches". We appreciate all the help we can get.

Thanks for your cogent essay.

Russell, rather than offer a comment at this point other than to agree with your analysis as far as it goes, I think it might be more interesting to ask first about your thoughts on the responsibility, if any, the scientific and rest of the scholarly communities bear as members of civil society for the current anti-science state of affairs you so aptly describe?

That was an absolutely excelent article. I read Scientific American regularly and used to read American Scientist, although I don't read it much anymore as I don't get to the book store very often. I read an article in American Scientist a few years ago lamenting the fact that people seeking degrees in any of the science fields was alarmingly low in the USA. I remember when I was in highschool that the two main languages you needed to know in the international scientific community were English and Russian. Now that science is being undermined in this country, I wonder what the important languages will be in the coming decades. I really whish that people who want to mix religion with science would remember is that every aspect of our society is based on some branch of the sciences, whether it's physics, biology, chemistry, etc. If religion takes over biology with intelligent design, what will be next, physics? Anyone who uses a GPS enabled device is reliant on physics and the general theory of relativity. I don't have a problem with with religion itself, but I have a big problem with letting religion have anything to do with scientific theory or research in any way.

Good post, Russell.

Several members of our family spent Christmas Eve at the Episcopal church where a relative is music director. It was very interesting to hear the Episcopal priest say during the service that Emanuel means God with us, and thus he was sad to hear in the intelligent design vs. evolution debate that God was on one side of the debate. He said by definition God was on both sides of the debate because God is everywhere. I suspect that a study of major scientists historically involved in the study of evolution would show at least some of them were regular church attendees if not active members of a church congregation.

One does not have to agree with the above to know that we are a religiously diverse country. Although the children raised not to believe in evolution have the problems Russell described, there is a form of intellectual laziness (to put it politely) in adult activists, politicians and press involved in this debate. Whenever anyone says, "religious people support the teaching of intelligent design", they are claiming people who don't agree with them are not religious.

As an Iranian-American said once on Meet the Press (in a discussion of religion and politics), Iran is not necessarily more religious than America--it is just that America has religious pluralism.

Parents have the right to raise their children as they wish, but it is not just in the sciences that sometimes basic information isn't taught. Mark Noll wrote an excellent book titled something like THE SCANDAL OF THE EVANGELICAL MIND. It basically says that there are many religious colleges that are intellectually rigorous, and until evangelical colleges do the same, scholars will not take them seriously.

It is hard for any history major to consider European history without a study of the Catholic Church during the Dark Ages followed by the Reformation.

But some evangelicals write books saying they aren't real sure that Catholics are "Christian". And of course history of E. Europe and parts of Asia is not complete without discussion of the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches and the differences between Orthodox and Roman Catholic denominations.

It is time for more study of the diversity of religion in this country. And time to question anyone who says, "religious people believe...". Stereotyping groups like that is generally a mistake. Anyone who has read this blog knows it would be folly to claim, "Blue Oregon bloggers believe..." given the debates that take place on this blog.

askquestions1st asks:

"on the responsibility, if any, the scientific and rest of the scholarly communities bear as members of civil society for the current anti-science state of affairs you so aptly describe?"

I can't speak for anyone but the people I know, but we've all been working very hard to speak out on this issue, to engage the issue directly, and to educate our students. What I won't do is engage in public debates about "intelligent design" or "scientific creationism". They are NOT science and to engage in such a debate gives them credibility they don't deserve. But that doesn't mean that others don't confront this issue directly. I have close friends who work for the National Center for Science Education who literally devote their lives working towards stopping this level of intrusion of religion into science classrooms and to provide local school boards, teachers, and college/university faculty with the tools they need to confront this. In addition, they deploy teams of experts to testify in front of school boards, legislatures, and Congress.

I'm not sure what you're asking or implying by your question. But if you're suggesting that the blame for this sad situation belongs at the feet of the scientists, I think you're dead wrong.

The most useful and enlightening discussion of how this whole situation came about is in the late Dorothy Nelkin's superb books "Science Textbook Controversies and the Politics of Equal Time" (1977, MIT Press), and her followup book "The Creation Controversy: Science or Scripture in the Schools" (2000, iUniverse).

To me the most important observation in the above was:

We have sent so many manufacturing jobs offshore, our country now consumes more than we produce. When manufacturing jobs leave the country, research and development, engineering and scientific innovation follow the work.

What have we done wrong and how can we fix it, both nationally and locally?

Why is it cheaper to put a multi billion semiconductor fab plant overseas? Labor can't be much of the difference in such a capital intensive plant. Yet most semiconduictors are now made overseas.

Thanks JK

Just an observation and a comment:

Way back when, I lived in Germany for a year and attended their 13th year of public high school. The course load was rigorous overall (I was in honors Chemistry and Biology), but I remember something in particular. I was required to take a religion class! But, I was offered a choice: Catholic or Episcopal (yeah, surprisingly not many Jews or Muslims in Bavaria). I thought the idea of religious education in school was very odd at first... The science classes were top notch, better than their American counterparts from my experience...and even though most everyone at the school came from a very religious family background, there was NEVER any discussion or doubt of Darwin or evolution espoused during genetics or cell biology (or anthropology for that matter). On several levels, religion and science co-existed peacefully.

But now a comment: I think a lot of the American Christian Conservative fight against science is caused by a lack of understanding (or intellect) on the part of these crusaders on both extremes. Science (and evolution) and religion/God don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The process of evolution and cell biology is simply amazing...miraculous, if you will. Personally, I think that my science education and practice has brought me closer to God. But even as I am a believer of science, there are certain things that I (personally) leave to God. That doesn’t mean that 20 years down the road, scientists aren’t going to discover an answer. There’s just always going to be more questions, and that’s the beauty of the mystery of science and the mystery of God.

LTT- I don’t always agree with you, but I really appreciated your comment (esp. the beginning re: Christmas service and “god is everywhere”). Thanks.

Actually, I was asking whether the scientific and scholarly communities stood by as the cultural wars started heating up about 30 years ago. Widespread efforts to fight back now are commendable, but arguably are a tardy reaction to cultural events that started in the 70s and 80s towards which the baby boomers entering academia in significant numbers in those times had a certain condescending attitude. In addition to head-on intellectual battles over evolution, this included concerted grassroots political efforts of anti-evolutionists to get their adherents elected to local offices, most notably school boards.

This really isn't the forum for a deep debate, so I'd just point out that one has to be very careful to understand history, and to distinguish between the Scientific Creationism of the 1970s and 1980s and the recent Intelligent Design incarnation of the anti-evolution movement in formulating political strategy. At a time when the baby boom is nostalgically returning to The Chronicles of Narnia, the author of which is credited with having penned the quintessential thesis of ID: "It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt. Human minds. They do not come from nowhere", it is fair to point out that a strategy which ham-handedly repeats the failures of the scientific and wider academic community in addressing the early Scientific Creationism stage of the movement quite possibly will further alienate significant segments of society.

As someone who went to fundamentalist Christian schools from 2nd grade through college, I'd like to weigh in on this. Without question, fundamentalists do not teach science scientifically. It is always colored by their literal interpretation of the Bible.

I was taught that the world was created "with the look of age" to test our faith, that dinosaurs first never existed, and then that they were created by wicked men guided by Satan doing genetic manipulation before the flood (hence the need for the flood), and that all of the early humanoids were either extinct monkeys, deformed humans, or figments of archeologists' imaginations based on a few bone fragments. Twenty years later, I am endlessly fascinated by documentaries on archeology, dinosaurs, outer space, ancient cultures, and geology. I feel terribly let down by the fundamentalist schools I attended and by the church - as a very curious person, I would have absolutely loved real science, biology, geology, and astronomy.

You write, "Between Darwin or Genesis there is only one correct side." I disagree with this statement. I have read that even Darwin was not completely satisfied with his theory. While I firmly believe Genesis is a myth, I also believe it is entirely possible that creation has been (and still is) an ongoing process of divinely guided evolution. Of course, that cannot be scientifically explained, which is why science teachers ought to stick to facts and recognized, credible theories and leave the discovery of God to their students. The persistence of religion throughout history is evidence that most of us have a sense that there is more to all of this than the physical world, and for those who are students of science and believers in God, each new discovery increases their sense of awe for God. Perhaps we are of insufficient intellect to understand it and it is the mystery itself which leads us to jump to the conclusion that there is a God involved. Who knows?

One thing is certain, in my opinion. Unless we approach science with open minds, uncolored by preconceptions based on religious beliefs, we will not be capable of learning the answer to that enduring question - How did I get here?

I daily consider the reality of our "short, brutal, but sentient life." The seemingly heartless cycles of destruction and re-emergence of life on our planet are indeed sobering and thoroughly contradict the fundamentalist Christian view of God as an all-loving, good, caring being in charge of everything. So Pat, I don't disagree with you in the slightest. But I also don't discount the possibility that there is a God. I recognize I do not now, and probably never will, understand that mystery. But I FEEL there is a God. Whether it's to ease my pain over impending death and the evil evident in the world every day, or because God is actually there is a question I can't answer because it isn't based on fact, but faith. And that's why faith does NOT belong in science class, which is entirely a fact-based field of study.

askquestions1st opines:

"Actually, I was asking whether the scientific and scholarly communities stood by as the cultural wars started heating up about 30 years ago. Widespread efforts to fight back now are commendable, but arguably are a tardy reaction to cultural events that started in the 70s and 80s towards which the baby boomers entering academia in significant numbers in those times had a certain condescending attitude. In addition to head-on intellectual battles over evolution, this included concerted grassroots political efforts of anti-evolutionists to get their adherents elected to local offices, most notably school boards."

This is a little too glib to be ignored. Most of us "working the trenches" in academia have been fighting this battle since the beginning of our careers (mine started in 1969). I participated in those head-on battles over evolution and in organizing grass-roots efforts to defeat anti-evolutionary candidates running for local school boards, and to insinuate ourselves into the statewide and district wide textbook selection process. Unfortunately, lots of scientists from outside the immediate area of Biology, geology, and Biological Anthropology, didn't have the foresight to grasp the implications of the longer term problem this would create. So we mostly fought the battle against better organized opposition who had taken a page right out of the 1960's antiwar movement and the civil rights movement (the politics of "equal time"). While "WE" won the local skirmishes for the most part, the opposition just regrouped and reorganized under some very well-financed organizations (including some of the very wealthy organized fundamentalist protestant ministries). When you're in academia and your job depends on teaching, research in your OWN area, and publishing in your OWN area, there are no rewards for the extracurricular work done organizing grass roots or professional level opposition to something that is not valued in the academic world. It has only recently been the case that educational institutions (i.e. higher education) have come to value this kind of community service. If you want to blame anyone, find someone else.

<h2>In part, one of the reasons I retired from academia was my bone-weariness from fighting this battle year in and year out for more than 30 years with no resources to do so.</h2>