What is it about America? Does America's education system just suck?

[mediamogul]

Here in the UK theres almost noone who still believes in creationism, and the majority of young people are atheists.

If you go to church you just find it full of old and middle aged people, and some captive kids who are forced to go. I guess we're smarter than our parents generation.

What is it about America that so many people still believe in the virtually literal word of the Bible and are such strong Christians.

Do they actually teach kids science and evolution in American schools?

It makes me think either Americans are genetically stupider than other countries or their education system must be absolutely terrible.

America has had an extremely aggressive marketing campaign of religion. Plus our religion is inevitably wrapped up our politics which makes it even more difficult to seperate the two. There has been a huge upswing in the Right Wing movement in the last fifty years largely in reaction to the ideals and values of the 1960s. Republicans have coopted this "return to values" moral majority type movement to get people voting "values" when in reality they crystallized this vote to solidify their economic policies which strongly favor the rich and corporations. This is the trick they have used to get people in poor states to vote against their own economic interests based upon "values". So what we have is the richest and most highly connected group of white men in the world funneling their money and power into the christian agenda as a byproduct of their Republican/Right Wing vision for the world. The poverty created by the policies that these poor southern Christian folks vote into effect helps to ensure that they never get educated enough to ditch Christian thinking (studies show there is almost a direct correlation between religiosity, republican voting tendencies and poverty in the US). Win win for them. I think that's it in a nutshell.