The United States has always had a strong fundamentalist Christian base. Always. So no, I don’t think that’s the problem. I do think that there is a problem, but I think that it’s because we have far too much politicization of science and technology in general. That is, too much of it depends on research grants delivered by the federal and state governments through various agencies and into universities. (I don’t think the universities themselves are the major problem, but they’re part of it.)
It’s not that we’re not willing and anxious to do science, both pure and applied, but the various governments tax us with the promise that “we’re going to do all this great science stuff” and then when problems such as our current economic malaise come along they divert the money into more pressing issues which means ‘anything that will help them get elected next time’. And that’s not “science” or “research”.
I think that if our tax policies were aligned to a) tax us all less heavily and b) reward risk-taking by lowering capital gains taxes and taxes on business in general, then there would be more interest in building better mousetraps. As long as we continue to treat our economy as a zero-sum game, however, where if “A” gets ahead then we assume that “B” is automatically losing, then we’ll continue to fall down the well.
Franklin was right when he said that “A rising tide raises all of the boats.” Unfortunately in tough times we forget that.