Flawed Logic: Creationism = Scientific Superpower?

It’s time to tackle some more creationist stupidity, this time from blogger and Intelligent Design proponent DaveScot at the Uncommon Descent blog.  Dave argues that, all evidence to the contrary aside, the state of science education in America is just fine.  You almost can’t blame a creationist for holding onto an incorrect belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but there are people out there who buy this tripe hook, line, and sinker, so it’s still necessary to rip it apart.

Enjoy this quote from Mr. Scot:

The notion that science literacy in the U.S. is substandard is rooted in the results of science surveys that include questions about evolution. Without doubt a much larger fraction of the US populace doesn’t believe in mud to man evolution than compared to any other industrialized nation. So in those surveys they give the “incorrect” answer to questions about the origin of life… the weight of the “wrong” answers about evolution pulls down the average and makes it appear a few other countries are doing a better job of science education.

American students don’t believe in evolution.  Evolution is accepted sciene that hasn’t been disproven to this point, and there’s certainly more empirical evidence for evolution than for the alternate idea that an invisible man in the sky snapped his fingers and everything suddenly appeared.  Americans say they don’t believe in evolution, preferring the irrational invisible man theory, and as a result we score lower on science tests.  So DaveScot would have us believe that if you don’t like the results of an exam then you just change the standards until you’re right!

Here’s the thing.  If you want to excel in science standards then you need to actually have a solid grounding in science.  There is overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution, that’s how science works.Saying that you don’t believe the foundational theory that sets the groundwork for the entire study of biology would be like saying that you don’t believe in gravity.  A society where over 60% of the population didn’t believe in gravity would be the laughing stock of the scientific community and would deserve the low scores they received, but these creationists would like you to believe that evolution is somehow different because it contradicts the prevailing mythology of the day.

Sorry, but science education shouldn’t work that way.

DaveScot takes a few more liberties with logic and rational thinking and eventually rapes the law of syllogism in a back alley to come up with this gem:

Disbelief in evolution makes a country into a superpower - militarily, economically, and yes even scientifically… Education in America is working just fine, thank you, judging by the fruits of American science and engineering. Disbelief in Darwinian evolution, if anything, leads to greater technological achievements not lesser.

Let’s parse this: America leads the world in terms of scientific achievement.  Most Americans are in a state of religiously induced self-delusional ignorance concerning evolution.  Therefore, a lack of belief in evolution makes America a superpower! 

This is simplistic and flawed, to put it mildly.  America is a leading scientific powerhouse in the world right now, true, but a lot of those scientific minds are coming from other countries that have a proper science curriculum that is presumably unclouded by the religious myopia our educators are suffering here in the states. 

Then there’s also the pesky little fact that the scientific community that is creating all of this progress does for the most part believe in evolution.  The majority of the American population out there that’s content to stew in their own ignorance aren’t helping to move science in America forward.  A small subset of the population that prefers education over ignorance is doing all the work.  So don’t try to claim that not believing in evolution creates a superpower just because most of the idiots living in that superpower and working outside of the sciences prefer fairy tales to fact.

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