A pro­foundly depress­ing sta­tis­tic from today’s New York Times:

“Accord­ing to a CBS News poll last month, 51 per­cent of Amer­i­cans reject the the­ory of evo­lu­tion, say­ing that God cre­ated humans in their present form. And reflect­ing a long­stand­ing sen­ti­ment, 38 per­cent of Amer­i­cans believe that cre­ation­ism should be taught instead of evo­lu­tion, accord­ing to an August poll by the Pew Research Cen­ter in Washington.“

Fifty. One. Per­cent. And yet, a voice of rea­son from the least expected source:

“The Vat­i­can has issued a stout defence of Charles Dar­win, voic­ing strong crit­i­cism of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists who reject his the­ory of evo­lu­tion and inter­pret the bib­li­cal account of cre­ation lit­er­ally.” (News.com.au)

My head is spin­ning. It used to be so easy to blame the old Ital­ian guys in silk dresses for West­ern fun­da­men­tal­ism. We’re now offi­cially liv­ing in an age when the Vat­i­can is more ratio­nal than Bush, who believes “both sides” should be taught in schools.

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