Now it is quite true that the upper cerebral cortex is a recent and poorly integrated addition to the mammalian brain and that putting it into action can be quite painful. but this does not explain why teaching the theory of evolution should have excited far greater opposition than the germ theory of disease. In fact. once a great genius named.
Charles Darwin had the insight to combine
Hereditary variation and natural selection operating upon that variation so as to produce evolutionary changes across generations. These two ideas. variation and selection. are only twice as many as the account given in Genesis. namely that God created the species. On the other hand. the complexities of modern medicine are several orders of magnitude greater than those of the theory of chiropractic. which is much younger than Genesis. dating to 1895 A.D.. and based upon the idea that diseases result. not from germs. but from a lack of normal nerve function. “Chiropractic.” in Britannica CD 2000.
I would amend Mr. Mencken’s statements
Evolution is too difficult to grasp by the average man. or the average Daytonian. to saying that grasping anything new. complicated job function email list or not. is difficult. The fact is. Genesis is familiar and evolution unfamiliar. Evolution was not exactly a brand new theory in 1925. 65 years after The Origin of Species was published in late 1859. but it had not percolated down to the high school level. Recall that only three pages were devoted to the subject in Hunter’s Civic Biology. the most widely used biology textbook in its day.
There were other factors at work. namely
urbanization and industrialization. which upset the familiar order of a country that. in many places. was still rural and agricultural. even if the country as a whole had moved from primarily agricultural to industrial shortly after the War annual interview: how to prepare for it and succeed? between the States. The reaction. then. now. and always. to great changes is to cling ever more tenaciously to one’s familiar belief system. Biblical literalism was not very powerful before urbanization and industrialization hit the country after said War. There was a kind of easygoing generalized.
Protestantism before these changes hit the country
As they did especially hard in the defeated South. On my first date with my current sweetheart. I delightedly took her to the library lack data at the University of Virginia and showed her a book giving sketches of U.S. Needless to say. the author gave no documentation at all for his choices.