A recent Gallup poll shows a majority of Americans agreed with the statement “God created man exactly how Bible describes it.” The poll is behind a pay wall at Gallup, but a summary can be found in this article from Editor and Publisher. An excerpt:
I have two questions regarding this data:[ol]
[li]Is there any research or reputable polling that criticizes or contradicts these findings? It is probably parochial to say to, but I simply cannot believe–given my personal experience–that this high a percentage of Americans are fundamentalist.[/li][li]If the data is true, it seems to me (again, a parochial observation) many in the “God created” group are practicing an unjustifiably willful ignorance (not all, of course, but the alternative is 53% have carefully and critically weighed the evidence and sided with creationism; that, in my opinion, would be even more bizarre). I’d especially like to hear from fellow believers on whether this is a legitimate interpretation, and what in particular it shows about the type of religious devotion held by this group. No offense to atheists/agnostics, but I’m pretty sure I know what your opinion of this group would be (please enlighten me if your an atheist who doesn’t believe people who believe in creationism aren’t, well, certifiable loons:))[/li][/ol]
For the sake of full disclosure, please note I am a believer, though I find the evidence for evolution overwhelming; I’d likely choose “God guided” from the poll options, though I’d be much closer to “no part” than “God created”.
I’m putting this in GD even though the first question is technically a GQ topic; I guess I’m too lazy to open two threads but I also expect any question about the social impact of evolution–no matter how factually based–would soon turn into a GD argument, so I’m saving the mods a little work. Thx in advance for all your replies.
Evolution is pretty easy to grasp in vague, general terms, but it takes some serious study to get the details right. The concept that populations can vary over time is intuitively obvious. The concept that an arm can evolve into a wing is not.
Do these people believe that all life on earth, except humans, evolved from simple organisms? Do they accept an evolutionary lineage for chimps and dogs and horses that goes back to single-celled organisms? I don’t see how you can think God created man in his present form without thinking He did so for all life. But frankly, I don’t think most people put much thought into it.
We do a terrible job of teaching evolution in US schools, and knowledge of it is just not useful for most people. I’d say intellectual laziness is a big part of the issue. It’s easier to say “God did it” than to dig into the details and understand. The funny thing is, I bet if you ask asked this question to most Clergy in the US, you would get a much lower percentage agreeing with those polls. Given the vatican’s position, there should be no Catholic priests who think God created man in his present form. But I’ll bet there are plenty of Catholic lay people who do! Go figure…
It is interesting to note that there is an effort to organize a multidenominational group of Clergy to spread the word about Darwinian evolution. Isn’t it amazing that we have to have the Clergy tell people this! Hey, whatever works.
I wouldn’t say “wilful ignorance” is the best way of putting it. I don’t have that many creationist friends, but I would say that their one common belief is simply that the Bible is true. If anything is presented to them that goes against the Bible, they reject it automatically for that one reason, without feeling obliged to engage in any further discussion. That’s not to say they’re “foolish” or “ignorant” or anything similarly perjorative - they just have different standards against which they assess their beliefs, and of what constitutes “truth” and “knowledge”.
This, of course, only applies to the intellectually honest type of creationist who is prepared to flatly deny the findings of science. I have no sympathy at all for the various “cdesign proponentsists” who distort and misrepresent science to fit their worldview; doing so is, to me, quite obviously invalid and dishonest, and I suspect it’s largely motivated by a desire for money and power rather than by genuine religious faith.
I think the thing is that biology and evolution have little to do with what people are occupied at doing day to day so they don’t think much about it. The majority is (are?) religious so they accept the Biblical account by default.
And, I know this is way off-topic, but in every single creation/evolution discussion we have, This link, to a most innocuous-sounding press release from something called “The Triad Group”, comes up in the Google ads. Does anyone have any idea what it has to do with creationism?
I certainly appreciate the replies received thusfar, but for me the ads at the bottom of this thread are much more telling; three of the four link to anti-evolution sites (the fourth is for an unrelated African issue).
Perhaps the 53% figure reflects a seizing of the narrative frame for the debate by creationists. I believe it is a deliberate strategy of the proponents of Intelligent Design not to argue directly against evolution, but against the perceived attempt to stifle dissent against scientific evolutionary “dogma”. ID may be no more credible than Holocaust denial, but because the narrative is (rightly) in the hands of reputable history scholars, you’d be lucky to find 53 people in America who seriously deny the Holocaust, much less 53% (an exaggeration, but the point is clear).
If scientists controlled the debate better, that 53% figure might be much lower; is this the price of poor science education, or the public deference given to religious beliefs in America?
Are you agreeing with me, 'cause I though that was what I said.
Hey, if Clergymen controlled the debate better that figure would be much lower!
People think religion invalidates evolution. What better way to convince them otherwise than to have their own Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers tell them it doesn’t? Sure, there are plenty of fundamentalists preachers out there, but if you’re attending one of those Churches already, chances are you aren’t going to believe the scientists no matter what they say.
Actually, the Holocaust “narrative” was sufficiently widely disseminated by U.S. troops who took part in the liberation of several of the work camps, (I don’t recall that any U.S. troops saw extermination camps), and there were enough films made of and distributed about the extermination camps that it did not require any special attention from reputable history scholars. (The case for the recognition that the Holocaust occurred is not harmed by the fact that the people who most frequently attempt to deny the Holocaust are generally recognizable as hate-mongers and loons.) Once a person can get over the sheer enormity of the numbers (a point that is effectively reinforced by reports of Stalin’s purges, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution in China, and the Rwandan genocide, among others), there is nothing counter-intuitive to accepting the Nazi atrocities.
In contrast, the Theory of Natural Selection suffers from two separate phenomena (one related directly to evolution and one connected to human consciousness):
the sheer magnitude of the time required for life to bump ahead by trail and error to develop such marvelous complexity;
the (apparently inherent) desire for humans to see themselves as special, in some way.
Regarding the first point, even people who can grasp that an eye might develop over stages can have difficulty accepting that the operation that produced separate species that interact in very specific interdependent ways is an undirected process with no goal or designer.
Regarding the second point, even Alfred Russel Wallace, who proposed a theory of Natural Selection nearly identical to that of Darwin in the same year and to the same science group (Linnean Society of London) as Darwin, later backed away from his own theory when faced with the challenge of applying it to humans.
Given what you mentioned in an earlier post, absolutely; I probably should have said “If proponents of evolution controlled the debate.”
I certainly appreciate the clergymens’ active attempts to correct the perceived conflict between religion and evolution. But I wonder if it will really be effective, or just perceived as a curiousity, much like “Jews for Jesus” (no slam intended there; a recent thread on this board made me think of it in these terms).
It is difficult to convince people who don’t bother to look into the matter that humans are rather ramshackle assemblies that are only marginally good enough. The intelligent design folks marvel over some features, like the eye which really isn’t a good design, and ignore the bad parts like teeth, the appendix, the fact that air, food and liquid go in the same tube so we can choke to death while a dog almost can’t, and on and on.
I think there are additional reasons. Soon after WWII, films of the camps were shown as part of the popular movie Judgement at Nuremburg. Other popular works, including the Diary of Anne Frank and Exodus discussed them. And not only were Holocaust deniers considered loons, but as supporters of a movement against which a war had just been fought. There were also survivors who arrived in the US with first hand testimony. I don’t know about the relevant importance of these, but I suspect the movies were the most important.
So how do we stop trying to address the creationism through science and start doing it with popular culture? Inherit the Wind only goes so far. If people think evolution works the way it is shown in most movies (mutations producing giant ants) no wonder it is not believed in.
I really think this can be a big part of the effort: The Clergy Letter Project. The key is to keep it going, and not just have it happen on anniversaries of Darwin’s birth.
That sounds great - but evolution in popular culture might be able to get to those whose clergy would have no part of this effort. I tried to find statistics on belief in evolution among Catholics, where there is no institutional bias towards creationism, but haven’t been successful. That could help us understand how strong the influence of clergy is.
The idea of “narrative” I was trying to express is only tangentially related to the matter the narrative relates. I’m not sure, for example, that all or even many people today have made a conscious choice to believe the Holocaust occurred based on an outlay of facts. The culture itself has so thoroughly (and rightly) absorbed the narrative of the Holocaust that most people just accept it as true without even thinking; this, I believe, is what leads to the perception that Holocaust deniers are loons rather than the demostrable falsity of many of their “facts”.
Because we’re talking about the Holocaust here, I think I need to make it plain that I know (not just believe) the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews in Nazi Germany–in all its horror–did occur, and that I base this knowledge, like tomndebb on the evidence I’ve seen. I also have a similar certainty in the theory of evolution, but am somewhat shocked that the majority of Americans (according to the above poll) do not. I believe this may be because the cultural approach to the question is so dominated by the pro-Creationism crowd.
Actually, it’s easier to say “God did it”. That has fewer syllables. Anyway, I don’t believe in Intelligent Design. I think it’s clear that we were Designed By A Committee.
I don’t think we are in disagreement, here. I was responding to your phrase regarding “reputable historians” and my point–that I think you have supported–is that knowledge of the Holocaust entered society on a massive scale that would have been difficult to deny (if one does not have a prior bias to disbelieve it). In other words, it was not the really “reputable historians” with training and education that informed the public, but the popular media that spread the (easily understood) information. In contrast, any science that requires particular training will not readily get spread through popular culture. Look at the persistence of astrology, fad diets, “miracle cures,” homeopathy, and even herbology (where there may, indeed, be medical benefit–but not based on the anecdotal “evidence” that is disseminated in place of actual research). These persist in the popular culture because it takes actual education to understand (which, as David Simmons and John Mace have pointed out, are outside the daily lives of most people).
