Long before the current attack on science I was dealing with creationists….

Friends would come up to me with quotes from textbooks, all fired up that their kid kins were being taught “notions” that went against what they’d learned at home or in church.

This was a people vs eggheads issue, not one of politics. We’re a nation of shopkeepers and salesmen, craftsmen and farmers; practical people who believe in hands-on training, and take a “common sense” approach to things.

We might have accepted evolution if we learned it while raising the best laying hens, or growing wilt-resistant corn. Or if our doctor explained how penicillin stops working when the germs mutate. But average citizens don’t come to evolution through hands-on contact with the evidence that evolution makes sense of.

Some outsider, some pointy-headed “intellectual” come back from State College, tells them that they have to pick answer B: “humans descended from the apes” as the right one on a multiple choice exam. They pick answer B cause they want to graduate high school. But our culture rejects it. What professors believe “is all just theoretical”. Our real authority figures, preachers and congressmen and business leaders, know that the right answer is A: “God created everything in six days, and man in His image”. That’s the answer that gets you respect in the community, and a ticket to Heaven when you die.