population.
Just a couple of years ago, there was a study of what people
thought of evolution. The percentage of the population that believed
in Darwinian evolution at that point was 9%—not all that much
above statistical error. About half the population believed in
divinely-guided evolution, Catholic church doctrine. About 40%
thought the world was created a few thousand years ago.
Again, you’ve got to go back to pre-technological societies, or
devastated peasant societies, before you get numbers like that.
Those are the kinds of belief systems that show up in things like the
God-and-country rally.
Religious fundamentalism can be a very scary phenomenon. It
could be the mass base for an extremely dangerous popular
movement. These fundamentalist leaders aren’t stupid. They have
huge amounts of money, they’re organizing, they’re moving the way
they should, beginning to take over local offices where nobody
notices them.
There was a striking phenomenon in the last election—it even
made the front pages of the national newspapers. It turned out that
in many parts of the country ultraright fundamentalist extremists
had been running candidates without identifying them. It doesn’t take
a lot of work to get somebody elected to the school board. Not too
many people pay attention. You don’t have to say who you are. You
just appear with a friendly face and a smile and say, I’m going to help
your kids and people will vote for you.
A lot of people got elected because of these organized campaigns
to take over local structures. If that ties in with some charismatic
power figure who says, I’m your leader, follow me, it could be very
ugly. We could move back to real pre-Enlightenment times.
There’s also a huge increase in fundamentalist media, particularly
electronic media. You can’t drive across the country without
noticing it.
That was true years ago. I remember driving across the country,
being bored out of my head and turning on the radio. Every station I
found was some ranting minister. Now it’s much worse, and of
course now there’s television.
ann
(Ann)
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