Your argument, as I understand it, is that you’re glad that no one tried to teach you evolution until you were prepared for the challenge to your existing beliefs. But in that argument, you’re acknowledging that you cannot educate people without challenging their beliefs. Having your beliefs challenged is healthy, and a vital part of any real education. However, there’s a big gap between ‘evolution happens’ and ‘religion is stupid’. The majority of Americans believe the first and not the second. We can, and should, teach evolution to every student without spitting on religion. Challenging a belief in literal creationism is not the same as challenging religion as a whole.

We teach children about science because science produces great insights about how our world works. Understanding life on Earth is important, and you can’t fully understand life on Earth without understanding evolution. It is good to avoid unwanted pregnancy and STDs, but there is more to life than that.

Perhaps the hatred and ignorance of science in America is partly fueled by the teaching of evolution in schools?

the war on evolution isn’t just in the US.

The difference is that in America the flat-earthers have power. One of the two major political parties is wholly religious, white conservative christian.
Its the electoral demographics of Distributed Jesusland™

Math is taught primarily because it 1) is useful for getting through life and building more specific models for getting through life, and 2) it exercises critical thinking skills.

Thanks for posting the video though! It really codifies how misguided your argument is!!

Once the science of heliocentrism was proven, nobody was laughing at it (actually, it had more to do with religious leaders opposing it – sound familiar?). And, contrary to popular belief, it has been known for a long, long time that the earth was round. Do you have any examples of people laughing at that idea, or is that just a strawman?

That you think that it was the scientific community that fought these ideas is odd, to say the least. And making a comparison with evolution through natural selection vs “creationism” is simply bizarre.

Very sad indeed.

A lot of things about America are sad today. Unfortunately anglosaxon protestant objectivism and randian free market economics have turned out to be a poison pill for America.

They are stupider

America has extreme high incidence of creationism and AGW denialism for the same reason. The negative correlation of religiosity with cognitive ability.

They should also know that if you chose some sort of other prior – like an equal chance of there being a higher power or not (which is perhaps more reasonable, since we cannot directly observe it, and non-observations are should not be weighted heavily, ala the bayesian solution to the black ravens paradox) – then alternative theories, like the universe being created 100 years ago and made to look like it was created 15 billion years ago – are perhaps “better”.

Induction is all kind of subjective, you see. That’s why reasonable people can disagree on things like this – and why people that dismiss other people’s beliefs out of hand as illogical or irrational are, in fact, themselves being irrational.

^This is exactly how I feel. I’m not mad at silly pageant contestants, many of whom probably come from the most conservative fringes of society. I’m frustrated that some pageant organizer thought that evolution, not creationism, was the more controversial and school-inappropriate concept.

I also wonder how answers would have been different if the question had been phrased the other way, particularly given pageant girls’ desire to be nice and inclusive. Would we at least have gotten one “No creationism” response if it was phrased differently?

In what sense?

Yes, the US will turn up at the top in some things simply because of the large population. Unless that is “advanced” per se, one definitely has to talk about some measure of advancedness (however one defines it) per unit population size. Does the US still come up tops anywhere? If so, where?

I can think of a couple of dozen countries which, though not perfect, are certainly more advanced in the US, with “advanced” meaning that I would prefer to live there.

As Oscar Wilde said, the US is the only country which went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in-between.