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- Intellectual achievement used to be revered in this country, not detested. For hundreds of years, progress has been defined by a reliance on independent inquiry and the study of objective data that could be tested, analyzed, and repeated. That process is usually described as the scientific method and, more than any religion, person, or movement, it has transformed the world.
- Even highly educated people seem to feel the need to mount what Stephen Colbert recently referred to as “an impressive retreat from knowledge.” He was talking about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, one of America’s most prominent intellectual cowards. Jindal, who was a Rhodes scholar and before that received an honors degree in biology from Brown University, was recently asked at a public forum if he believed in evolution. “The reality is I was not an evolutionary biologist,” he responded, as if study in that one field was required to address the issue. He then went on to say that local school systems should decide “how they teach science” in their classrooms.