48% of Americans are either ignorant, stupid, or insane

Newsweek just published a survey about Americans and faith. Among their results were the following:

  • 48% of Americans do not believe that “evolution [is] well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community”.
  • 34% of college graduates accept the Biblical story of creation as fact.

Richard Dawkins once said: “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)”.

A typically controversial statement from Dawkins. I think that most people who deny evolution are indeed ignorant, but there are other important motivations too.