You really think that the 9 percent of non-religious people contribute many to the do not believe in “the scientific theory of evolution”?
As far as quibbling over the 50/50. “Majority of religious people” does actually mean 50% of religious people +1 religious percent. You asked how DanBlather got majority and I explained it. It seems pretty easy to follow and I thought you missed the sentence in the article as it was not quote in the thread earlier.
Jim
Without data to the contrary… 
It’s really hard to find the percent of non-belivers who accept evolution. This site says that 69% of the secular belive that evolution was through natural selection and 9% of them think it was guided by a supreme being. Using either figure still results in a majority of religious folks who do not accept evolution.
Therefore, slightly over 52 percent of the public do not reject the scientific theory of evolution.
Now they may have differing levels of acceptance and differing opinions on it or maybe they haven’t made up their minds yet. But that is a logical conclusion based on what you stated.
I also think that much depends on how the question was worded and that no conclusions can be drawn about how religion affects that “nearly” 48 percent.
Looking at the same statistics I could just as easily state the following as a finding:
A majority of Americans reject Creationism and Intelligent Design as explanations for the origin of the earth.
That’s what that 52 percent + means!
(That’s without seeing how the question was worded.)
I’m new to discussing religion here, so forgive me if you’ve already explained this in other threads. But I’m confused here. Because that does seem like an odd discrepancy.
Why do 41% of Catholics ignore something that’s not in their official religion? Is that common practice in other areas besides creationism? Since creationism is not taught in schools, where does the idea come from?
OK, for all you nit pickers and apologists the actual data is here.. You can compare the 48% of the total population who believe “God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so?” with the 13% of atheists and agnostics who believe that. That gives more than 51% of non-atheists/agnostics who think God created humans in the last 10,000 years.
DanBlather, how do they account for those of us who believe in God, believe in evolution and don’t believe in a 10,000 year old earth?
Guess I’d better read your link…
It never was ‘in the official religion’. Catholicism does not require strict adherence to the creation timeline as explained in the Bible, especially since there are two different accounts. People keep confusing Catholics with evangelical Protestants. The two are not the same; the growth in the protestant evangelical movement is a fairly recent phenomenon and, while Catholics had sort of a version (Pentecostals), last I remember dealing with any of them, none insisted on literalism when it came to the Bible.
Evangelical Protestants and other fundamentalists make up only about 20 percent of Christians in America, but that is who many Dopers are thinking of when they use the word “Christian.”
I’m still trying to grasp all of the information from the poll. One thing that I spotted right away is that 40% of agnostics and atheists most closely identify with the statement “Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.” Interesting…
It does seem to be a legitimate poll. Princeton based.
Still absorbing…
I’m reading it as 27% ? :dubious:
And I’d call it either silly or evidence that something is wrong with the poll; If you don’t believe in God it’s silly to think he guided evolution or anything else, and if you think God guided evolution it’s either silly or dishonest to call yourself an agnostic.
That’s the 30% that think God guided evolution over millions of years. I am also scratching me head over the atheist/agnostics that think either God guided evolution (27%) or God created life in it’s present form <10,000 years ago (13%) which add up to 40% thinking God had some part. I guess those are the “really, weak atheists” 
This Pope and my own Archbishop are pushing me, against my will, out of the Catholic Church. I’m just going to be responsible for my own salvation, I guess. Good thing I’m not an asshole.
I am shocked SHOCKED to see that 41% of people either don’t pay attention to sermons in church or categorize themselves as something they don’t fully understand.
You’re correct. Sorry. As Dan suggested, the other 13% that I tacked on was from “God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so” – still strange.
Poll results can accurately reflect bizarre responses. I agree that it doesn’t make sense.
I was never Catholic, but I attended Catholic schools for my entire primary and secondary education (1966-1978). I vaguely remember a generally negative view of evolution through my early science classes, and I do have a very clear and explicit memory of my class being told by a science teacher in 7th grade (1972-73) that “we don’t believe in that” we being Catholics, and that being the theory of evolution.
Then when I got to high school, and was shocked, as was the rest of my class, (most of whom came from Catholic schools from the New York metropolitan area–mostly Westchester County and the Bronx) when our biology teacher began the section on evolution. She mentioned, to our great surprise, that the Catholic Church approved of the theory of evolution. One the students remarked that she’d better tell that to the nuns upstairs (religion classes were taught on the second floor.)
Based on my experience I have no trouble believing that many people my age (mid-forties) and older, and possibly those somewhat younger as well, were taught erroneous information about the Church’s stance on evolution, by people who represent the church in their eyes (teachers in parochial schools) and never looked any further.
Not at all. It could simply mean that large numbers of U.S. Catholics are ignorant of the teachings of their own religion, but have been influenced by pervasive creationist propaganda. Since that propaganda has a religious source then the origin of this ignorance is religious.
Are you claiming that this 41% believe there must be some other (perhaps so far undiscovered) naturalistic explanation for the existence and complexity of life? That’s seems extremely unlikely to me.
The fact of the matter is that nearly all of these people reject evolution in favor of divine creation, which is a religious belief and therefore of religious origin. No, I can’t prove that from a cite but please… can’t we use some common sense here?
I posted the above before reading KayElCee’s post on this matter. KayElCee’s explanation is likely the correct one.
The complete paragraph (in the linked story) that talks about the “symbolism” of it is a reference to the “fire” part of it. The whole paragraph was
The “eternal separation from God” (rather than physical fire) has been a pretty standard explanation inside the church for decades (at the least) and caused a bit of a stir among Evangelicals when Pope John Paul II made the same sort of statement about eight years ago.
I’m pretty sure that Pope Benedict was reaffirming a belief that Hell (in some form) existed to an audience he fears may come to believe that everyone gets into heaven regardless how evil they have been, while not changing Pope JP II’s statements that Hell is a state, not a place.
Two ways one can believe in Theistic evolution for most things & yet still believe in
a specially-created 10,000 yr-old humanity-
The straightforward way: God created everything using evolutionary processes, including prehistoric human-like beings, then- BAM! He then created fully ensouled God-conscious humans distinctly seperate from everything else. A lot of Old-Earth Creationists hold to this, though they mostly seem to see humans as created much further back in time.
The cheating way: God created everything, including humanity, via evolution, but it was only about 10,000 years ago that He then gave humanity souls & God-consciousness, the “human soul” being the special creation.
You’ve pretty much reiterated what tomndebb said that prompted my question.
I don’t know who these “people” are and how they’re relevant to my question.
So let me rephrase the question to tomndebb.
This seems an odd explanation to me. I didn’t grow up religious, so I had no access to information from the church. I only learned evolution through school. But if I was lazy, the only thing that would happen is that I’d probably mess up the specifics of how evolution worked. I would not make up a whole new theory to explain what I was too lazy to study. In fact, I didn’t learn about what creationism entailed until very recently. . . and I had to make an effort to do that.
If the information is not passed on in the church, where does the idea come from?
And I also find it unlikely that if those same people were to lazy to learn about evolution at school, they’d take the time to study their Bible to figure out the creationism theory by themselves.