Ah, another issue of vanishingly little consequence. I mean, really and truly, I doubt that even a majority of those who said they believed in 'non-theistic' evolution could say more about it other than 'we came from the apes' or 'survival of the fittest innit'. In the end, an understanding of the principles of evolution is pretty f-ing worthless unless you are or want to be a biology teacher, a biologist or possibly a medical practicioner (and no, those involved in animal husbandry do not count, as humans found that process easy enough long before evolutionary science even came to the fore).
It seems that this poll is just another excuse for the clever chappies to gush about the ignorance of the 'dumbs' (or whatever it is in Atlas parlance) despite the fact that most of the 'dumbs' a probably perfectly content.
That's not only a stupid point, but it's wrong on its own terms as well.
Evolution is key to the fastest growing industries of the economy like healthcare and biotechnology. When you're in school, you have no idea whether you're going to work in those fields. So, it only makes sense to educate people in the basic principles of biology as it does for chemistry and physics. If you've learned about evolution in school and you don't believe in it, you're either stupid or willfully ignorant. Stupidity and willful ignorance are not exactly good traits.
But, on top of that, this whole conservative idea that all knowledge must be immediately practical for everyone's daily life is sickening. If nobody ever pursued knowledge for its own sake, we'd all be wiping our butts with rocks in the caves we lived in. We should all be curious about the world and open to learning new things. And, it's actually practical. If everyone has a base of knowledge in a range of concepts, a few of them will take those basic concepts and discover new things.
An understanding of evolution may be important to the sectors of the economy that you mentioned, but its worth pointing out that those sectors aren't simply going to be employing scientists and researchers. For every one scientist employed they'll be several accountants, tea ladies and security guards employed by the firms in question, who certainly
won't need an understanding of the theory of evolution in order to do their jobs. It does make some sense to educate people on the basic principles of biology, but, at the end of the day, I repeat, it matters little that those who
aren't going onto higher study in Biology (or related degree) don't understand evolution. I mean, I vaguely know as to what evolution entails, but I couldn't for the life of me explain it properly. But, fortunately, I don't need to, since I do not aim to have anything to do with the theory of evolution, educationally or career wise.
As to your second point, I never said that. I was attempting to rebut the hissy fit thrown by some posters in this thread over the fact that some Americans don't believe in evolution. I obviously don't believe that we should only know information that is directly useful to our lives here and now; on the other hand, I am not of the opinion that a belief in the theory of evolution is essential to getting through life smoothely. If 40% of Americans said that they could not speak a word of English, or add two and two together, then I would agree that that would be concerning, as both of those
are essential to living in modern America. Understanding an abstract scientific theory as to how life came to be in its present form is not essential, and thus people should not worry about it.
Let me put it another way; in British schools at least, most children, when they start secondary school, are taught in History about the basics of using sources to analyse History; whether a source is primary or secondary, whether it is biased or unbiased etc. It is highly important that kids who go onto study History at a higher level learn about the importance of sourcework; for those that don't, sourcework is an irrelevance, and so its not a great crisis if those who don't study History at a higher level don't understand the importance of sourcework. The same applies to evolution.
You commented that 'if nobody pursued knowledge for its own sake, we'd all be wiping our butts with rocks in the caves'. That is nonsense. We did not expand and develop as a race through pursuit of 'knowledge for its own sake', we did so for practical reasons, e.g ouch, this rock is a bit painful, that animal hide is so much softer. All to often, being 'curious' about the world and 'pursuing knowledge for its own sake' are highly dangerous things, with the potential to rock the boat for no good reason. Just look at the French writers of the 18th century, picking at the scabs that covered the French monarchy and looking at the rot that existed inside, or the Marxists of the 19th century, questioning the authority of Kings, Popes and men of means. Far too often, trying to do 'new things' simply leads to lots of unneccessary pain and hurt being caused. Far better to stick to what one already knows, and the established way of doing things.
