[whatyoucantsay]

As of 2014, well within the 21st century, 73% of Americans believe that God intervened in designing humans. 31% believe that evolution occurred but God guided the process, 42% of Americans believe that God created humans directly in their present form and only 19% believe that humans evolved without divine participation in the process.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-...

How could the educational system possibly be unaffected by most of the country still denying a foundational part of modern science?

Upon further investigation, we can see that it's not unaffected. Pitched battles are still being waged on intellectual ground settled generations ago in nearly every other developed country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_and_evolution_in_publ...

[thousandautumns]

You seem to be the one that is confused. A belief that human evolution occurred with no divine participation is not a foundational part of modern science. Neither 'God designing humans' nor 'God guiding evolution' are supported nor refuted by science because there is no evidence for or against either one. People like yourself often seem to misinterpret "there is no evidence for X" to mean "there is evidence that X does not exist" and that is not the case.

The reality is that only one of the above opinions, "God created humans directly in their present form" is provable/disprovable in any way and therefore the only one which science has anything to say about.

That said, 42% is still an admittedly high number. But you are the one who fails to understand a foundational part of modern science when you assume that correlation equals causation, and that increased religiosity results in poorer education while failing to realize that both are correlated with increased levels of poverty, which seems far more likely to cause poor education than religion.

[deadmetheny]

Belief in God and being a Young Earth Creationist are not the same thing, not at all. I know this may be hard for the oh-so-enlightened atheist tech crowd to believe, but many people can hold religious convictions and also have intelligent and scientific minds.

[wccrawford]

And Europe and Asia aren't similarly affected?