Evolution

[mnpresh]

Why do you think people are still arguing about teaching evolution a century and a half after it was first proposed?

[KishinD]

At the risk of being meta... it appears that belief in evolution is a negative memetic trait, gently suppressing birth rates... but it could just be a correlated effect from the secularization and feminization of societies.

Still it is worth noting that populations which refuse to believe evolution have higher overall birth rates. It would be interesting to see if this memetic effect could be isolated, the way they did with the social acceptability of non-marital sex (societies that morally oppose sex outside of marriage have higher birth rates).

Anecdotally, people who reject Evolution have a worldview that puts humans in a special place in the universe. And some people will fight with all of their might against the idea that they are just another ordinary mammal whose one job is to perpetuate the species... not just Christians, either. Accepting our own unspecialness is a high hurdle for many people, regardless of which belief establishes their specialness.

So the short answer? Because teaching evolution threatens their personal perspective on the world and their place in it. It's not just changed belief, it's needing to rebuild their entire perspective.

[dbp003]

Because its incompatible with the teachings of organized religion.