We CAN All Get Along

People talk a lot about cultural decay and declining values and the blame is usually placed on evil liberals. I suspect it is something much more simple than that. It’s because we are dumb as posts. If you don’t believe me, read this:

A recent Gallup survey shows that just about three in four Americans hold some paranormal belief — in at least one of the following: extra sensory perception (ESP), haunted houses, ghosts, mental telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, communicating with the dead, witches, reincarnation, and channeling. There are no significant differences in belief by age, gender, education, or region of the country.

Now, since we all know that a vast, vast majority of Americans are Christians and huge numbers of them are flocking to church pretty much seven days a week veritably drenching themselves in sanctimony, these numbers would seem to show that a good many of the pious Christians also believe in reincarnation or ghosts or astrology. I’m not sure how that works, but then I don’t find a whole lot of difference, personally, between any of it. But that’s just me.

However, it’s now obvious that we should be prepared to teach astrology, clairvoyance, witches and channelling alongside creationsim in the science classroom. After all, a lot of people “believe” in those things — and these beliefs have been around for millenia — so it isn’t right not to have them be part of any comprehensive science curriculum.

I expect, by the way, to see this movment come out of Un-Real America, in places like my own town, where “psychics” form a rather large part of the local new age belief systems. (People around here talk about psychics as if they are professionals.) But hey, if the Bible can be taught in science class, I see no reason to exclude the works of Shirley McClain or John Edwards (the ugly one.) And according to this poll it doesn’t sound as if most people would have a problem with that, even in Kansas.

Since more than three quarters of the public believe these things, then it’s possible that Real America has more in common with Un-Real America than we think. Maybe this is a Kumbaya moment in which we can all join hands and celebrate our common tradition, across all regional, gender, ethnic and religious lines, of believing in utter bullshit. Let the healing begin.

Thanks to Lindsay for the link.
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