You may have heard of Zack Kopplin. While he was in high school, he testified to the State of Louisiana about how teaching creationism was harming students. He did it extremely well. My favorite was when he presented the Monster.com search results for “evolution” and “creationism”. Guess which one had more hits.
I talked to him briefly while he was in high school. Now he’s in college (Rice!) and has made an impassioned plea to President Obama. I fully support everything Zack says in this article. I have written to the White House in support of this plea. I think it is probably the single most important thing that we, as a culture, could do.
However, I have to be pessimistic here. The space race that inspired a generation of scientists, engineers, and children wasn’t just a grand research project. It wasn’t done because it was hard or because it was cool (though it was both). It was done because the Soviet Union was the great evil and they had a satellite and a man in space before we did.
Kennedy campaigned on being superior to the Soviets. The Apollo program was in doubt (with NASA requesting a 30% budget increase) in 1960. But then, Yuri Gagarin flew in space April 12, 1961. The next day, many congressmen pledged support for a revitalized US space program.
Anyway, the point is that there was a common enemy back then. The soviets. Now, the common enemy is science. And the money (and therefore political power) is mostly on the wrong side. Religions don’t like science. The oil industry doesn’t like science. And, let’s be honest, science isn’t so good at shmoozing.
We need a lot more people like Zack, who managed to become quite an advocate for science. We need to find more people willing to talk to anyone and everyone about science. I’m perfectly willing, but I’m not a ‘name’ with dozens of credentials.
I hope this helps and I’m going to promote it as much as I can. I hope that you will forward Zack’s letter to your friends, post it on facebook, and your blogs. Get the word out. For a society that has everything handed to it because of science, being a science denialist is stupid.
