I know a few young earth creationists (who are much less common in the UK than the US I believe). I wouldn't say any of them were stupid or rationally impaired.

I know a few young earth creationists (who are much less common in the UK than the US I believe). I wouldn't say any of them were stupid or rationally impaired. Most of them are quite intelligent, but they are often uninformed scientifically about evolution. The impression I get is that in the US there is quite a lot of anti-evolution 'information' put out by the YEC organisations, some of which /looks/ scientific. To those who are not properly trained in such things it will be hard to tell the difference. Also for most religious people (in the UK at least) it's not a big issue so they have not put any time in to looking in to it. I work at a biological research institute in the UK, and my former group leader (an atheist) was extremely angry on one occasion about Dawkins. When I asked him why he said it was because Dawkins tries to use science to advance his atheism, leading to religious people feeling that they have to choose between science or religion. While for some they will choose science and become atheists, more often this leads to people rejecting science, and he was annoyed that Dawkins turns so many young people from religious families away from science. It's clear that religion in general, and Christianity in particular are not obviously incompatible with science (and particularly evolution) given organisations like Bio Logos http://biologos.org/ http://biologos.org/ and the Faraday Institute http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/index.php http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/index.php