Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of
biology. According to Bill Nye, aka "The Science Guy," if grownups want
to "deny evolution and live in your world that's completely inconsistent
with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make
your kids do it because we need them."

Transcript--
Denial of
evolution is unique to the United States. I mean, we're the world's
most advanced technological—I mean, you could say Japan—but generally,
the United States is where most of the innovations still happens.
People still move to the United States. And that's largely because of
the intellectual capital we have, the general understanding of science.
When you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in that,
it holds everybody back, really.

Evolution is the fundamental
idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's like, it's very
much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic
plates. You're just not going to get the right answer. Your whole
world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place.

As
my old professor, Carl Sagan, said, "When you're in love you want to
tell the world." So, once in a while I get people that really—or that
claim—they don't believe in evolution. And my response generally is
"Well, why not? Really, why not?" Your world just becomes fantastically
complicated when you don't believe in evolution. I mean, here are
these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here is radioactivity, here are
distant stars that are just like our star but they're at a different
point in their lifecycle. The idea of deep time, of this billions of
years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore
that, your world view just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself
inconsistent.

And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny
evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely
inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine,
but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need
scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need
people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve
problems.

It's just really hard a thing, it's really a hard
thing. You know, in another couple of centuries that world view, I'm
sure, will be, it just won't exist. There's no evidence for it.

Directed / Produced by
Elizabeth Rodd and Jonathan Fowler

http://bigthink.com/