Grumpy Old Man

In ruminating on my last post, I couldn't help but picture Dana Carvey as Grumpy Old Man answering the telephone when the Zogby call came in. If you don't know the shtick from SNL, go here, and scroll to the bottom.

I can see him now . . .

I'm old and I'm not happy. Everything today is improved and I don't like it. I hate it! In my day, they made us memorize boring "facts" about horses getting bigger and losing toes in a steady line of progress, and we were not allowed to think for ourselves or think about interesting new ideas, and we liked it, we loved it. The teachers gave us false and misleading information about embryos and moths pasted to trees, and told us just to shut up and believe it and we did, and liked it. We loved it. We didn't have any of that critical analysis crap to make us think better, and we liked being stupid drones who just accepted the materialistic pablum of the scientists. We didn't know any better and we were glad. We loved it!

Looks like Grumpy Old Man might have been reading this.

Inherit the Flatulence?

Here are the results of a new poll by Zogby measuring the public's views on Teaching the Controversy v. Darwinian Totalitarianism. The Evo News post is here. What I find most striking is the clear progression when looking at age demographics. Support for teaching the controversy is as follows:

Age //Support
18-24 // 83.9%
25-34 // 79.6%
35-54 // 70.5%
55-69 // 61.1%
70+ // 51.2%

This does not bode well for the future of Darwinian Totalitarianism.

My theory of why this is the case? I call those over 60 or so the "Inherit the Wind Generation." The mythology promulgated by that play and movie permeates that generation's thinking, and provides most of what it "knows" about the Scopes trial. Of course, Inherit the Wind is nothing close to an accurate portrayal of the actual Scopes trial, and the cultural dynamics have dramatically changed since 1925. However, the fact remains that at one point it was an incredibly powerful piece of propaganda.

Younger generations are not as familiar with the play or movie, and are more aware of the current efforts by some members of the scientific community and federal judiciary to stifle or crush (often by means of misrepresentation) any attempts to question Darwinian orthodoxy. They are also likely to have heard about some of the problems with macroevolutionary theory, and may be curious to know more.

I also got a good chuckle out of another tidbit: the education demographic where the Darwinistas do best is the group with less than a high school diploma.