John Derbyshire sees Copernicanism in crisis:
“Only half of US adults know that the Earth rotates around the Sun once each year (NSB, 2000). One in five US adults say that the Sun rotates around the Earth, and 14 percent of US adults think that the Earth rotates around the Sun once each day (see Figure 2). A comparative study with Britain in 1988 found that only one-third of British adults understood that the Earth rotates around the Sun once each year…The level of adult understanding of the solar system shows little change over the last decade….”
I am, as most of you know, an evolution skeptic. However, I am also not an advocate of Intelligent Design, Young Earthism, Hollow Earthism or any other theory of human and Earth origins. I am firmly of the opinion that we do not now know how everything came to pass*, that our most educated guesses today will look ridiculous tomorrow and that the strange arrogance of the cocksure Creationist is exceeded only by that of the egotistical evolutionist.
I do not care at all what is “taught” in the public schools, partly because I believe the public schools should be dismantled brick by brick, their grounds sown with salt and holy water and the teachers and administrators hunted down like bounty vermin, and partly because it is quite clear that most of the millions of children being forced to endure public schooling aren’t going to understand the first thing about any of these theories anyhow.
*And yes, fellow Christians, “God did it” is not an explanation of how anything to pass. An omnipotent Creator God CAN do X in any number of possible ways but knowing that is not the same as knowing precisely how X was done. What aspect of the bit about human minds being unable to comprehend divine ways is so difficult to grasp?