I would think the U.S. is less religious and irrational than 100 years ago, Der Trihs. Am I wrong?
Are there even poll numbers from that long ago ? Lacking hard numbers, my belief is that there at least as many religious people now as then, and the believers are less complacent. I definitely think America is less rational and more religious than it was, say, 30 years ago.
Well said.
Mangetout (and Der Trihs) if I understand how you want to define creationism it is identical to ID, which has to support your point by definition. So to you what is the difference between ID and Creationism then?
From Wiki…:
I will take that as a huge compliment.
I am not a Christian, but I agree with your sentiments 100%.
Did God create the universe? I don’t know, but this is where I stand: Father, Creator, Intelligent Designer, and even the pronoun He do not describe God, because God cannot be described. These words are metaphors describing not God, but our relationship to the Mystery of our existence.
ID is simply a subset of creationism, one that tries to add a scientific gloss to it.
Specifically, ID is a subset of Creationism that has had a scientific gloss placed upon it, in order to be placed in educational surroundings in lieu of science.
This was proved to be true in a court case, recently, where a ID text was proved to have been a creationism text, with creationism removed and ID put in. Literally so, word replacement.
Believing that God guided Evolution is not creationism or ID. Calling it such obscures the point and misdefines the terms.
Yes it is the definition of the 2 which adds confusion and allows one to prove either case. I still contend that:
1 - Strict (what Der Trihs calls YEC) creationism is not a majority viewpoint
2 - Believe that God was somehow involved in creation is the majority viewpoint
3 - Believe that the process had nothing to do with a deity is not a major viewpoint.
and in general:
People in camp 1 want biblical creationism taught as origin theory.
People in camp 2 want a mention of God in origin teachings, but to follow the scientific theories.
People in camp 3 don’t want God mentioned in origins at all.
I am in camp 2 and do not want God mentioned in the teachings (if we are talking abot public education) about the origens of the universe, unless it in the context of a comprehensive study of creation mythologies.
People mean different things by “creationism,” so much so that the word is almost meaningless. A while back someone started a thread here called “Ask the Creationist”; she claimed to be a creationist, but it soon came out that she did not take Genesis literally and did accept evolution; she was essentially is kanicbird’s camp 2.
Gallop has been doing this poll since 1981, asking the exact same question. That link is from the 1991 poll, but the results have been pretty much the same since 1981:
Strict creationist 47%
Evolution w/ help from God: 40%
Purely natural, no help from God: 9%
That only asks about the origin of humans, but I think it’s safe to assume that the 47% number would be the same or slightly lower (not higher) if the question were asked about “the earth” or “the universe”. Interestingly, the numbers are significiantly different for men vs women (39% vs 53% are strict creationists), although education level seems to be the biggest factor (65% vs 25% for “no HS diploma” vs “college grad”).
I don’t know that i’d say that. People in camp 3 are usually (apart from the nutcase athiests) alright with God mentioned in origins in theology classes. It’s when God is mentioned in a scientific context that we get unhappy.
Wrong on 2. According to my cite, the majority of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form, and want that taught alongside evolution. That is not “following the scientific theories”. It doesn’t even make sense in terms of the teaching part, since the two positions contradict each other.
I assume that poster was referring to people in the US. This link gives some recent poll numbers on American’s views of teaching evolution/creationsim in schools (go down a little past the half-way point for the table). As the article notes, though, the data points to some confusion in the minds of the people polled. It’s hard to believe, for example, that 19% of those who accept a completely naturalistic view of evolution want creationism taught in schools instead of evolution. But what is clear is that a significant majority of Americans want creationism taught in addition to evolution almost no matter how you slice the demographics.
This site gives the data from the Gallop poll over a 20 year span (1981-2001), with 5 different polls. Each poll shows less than 50% of Americans are strict creationists, and the number has stayed between 44-47% every time.
I think there is a lot of dishonesty used in this term as well. Some use creationism to mean any divine actions at all in any aspect of the universe to find out how many creationists there are, then turn around and say that that percentage of people want to teach your children the story of Genesis instead of science in school.
God created humans in their present form is a very ambiguous statement and very open to interpretation. I don’t think you can make such a claim.
:dubious: It’s not ambigous at all.
ID supposedly posits *some kind of intentional design, somehow, being responsible for certain aspects of living systems or other parts of the universe; ID supposedly says “we don’t know exactly how, but we do know it’s purposely designed”. Creationism says “actually, we do pretty much know how it came to be; it was like this…”
So ‘God created humans in their present form’ is a creationist statement - it (admittedly not in any detail) states "we do know how it happened, and it was God’.
Alright, then let me rephrase my statement then for the benefit of Bryan Ekers and any others who do wish to nitpick.
“Well not really, if you consider evolution in a broader sense than just how homo sapiens evolved from some of their ancestors.”
Is that better? :rolleyes: