Remember this is a poll question, to the common man, and it seems to be the first question, so there is no point of reference for the common man to use against the following questions.
Besides obvious strict (and some loose) creationist form could mean:
1 - Any ‘interference’ by God that resulted in man in their present form, at any time. This includes anything before man walked on earth that God intentionally did that He knew would create modern man.
2 - Any ‘interference’ by God that resulted in modern day society (many believe that a free society was God inspired).
3 - The soul of man was created by God, and has nothing to do with evolution, which can proceed normally.
4 - The gift of the Holy spirit was given to man from God, again no effect on evolution.
Taken in the context that this is a poll question, I stand by this question is ambiguous and due to that that I suspect your poll numbers to be artificially high.
In fact, given that the poll gave alternative checkboxes such as “Humans evolved, god guided the process”, I’d say there’s no way the option “God created humans in their present form” can be reasonably described as ambiguous at all. No way.
Mangetout Choice 2 is a subset of Choice 1. Choice 2 does not include things like creating the environment that allows life to begin, but choice 1 does.
Also choice 1 can include:
2 - Any ‘interference’ by God that resulted in modern day society (many believe that a free society was God inspired).
3 - The soul of man was created by God, and has nothing to do with evolution, which can proceed normally.
4 - The gift of the Holy spirit was given to man from God, again no effect on evolution.
Again we get hung up on the meaning of what ‘God created humans in their present form’ means.
Another interpertation of Genesis that I don’t think can be disputed scriptually is that God created the universe down to man in 6 days, this was six days since the big bang however. God created light/dark the flowering plants, animals, and man in those 6 days, basically set things into motion in those six days that would result in modern man and the world we know. God being able to ‘see’ into the future after He set the things up He can see the results and saw they were ‘good’. This would seem to trigger the God created man in his present form also, without triggering guided evolution.
The other thing to keep in mind is that most people, unlike us, haven’t given much thought to evolution or how our species came into being. They probably remember some vauge thing about “survival of the fittest” from school and remember the Adam and Eve story from the Bible. And thinking the latter is the easiest to understand, just go with it. Or maybe they think they’re **supposed **to believe the Bible story wihtout realy understanding the position their particular Church takes. Think of how many Catholics dont’ realize that the Church accepts evolution and does not go by a literal interpretation of Genesis.
I think it’s easy to overstate the lack of acceptance of evolution in these polls. I can believe that most Evangelicals and Fundamentalists don’t accept evolution, but the rest are probably just confused.
Here’s the question as it actually appeared on the survey document:
You’re getting hung up over (what you alone perceive to be) ambiguity in the abbreviated form of the question as it appears in the summary of poll results. Sheesh.
Actually, sorry - that’s the wording of another poll carried out by gallup a short time before, and only loosely connected with the CBS one. I haven’t yet found the exact wording of the CBS poll, but it was based on the Gallup one.
I don’t understand this logic. Why does a god have to be perfect? All-knowing?
Man has often postulated that gods had human characteristics, including petty foibles. Why does the ID argument nowadays assume a deity without imperfections? It would make their argument a lot easier, to wit:
“God designed the human body.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why did he include a useless organ like an appendix?”
“Because, although he’s supernatural, he’s not perfect.”
That’s the exact wording in the Gallop poll (which I’ve been citing), but not the exact wording in the CBS poll (that Der Trihs cited). So, which poll are you guys talking about?
No, you’re getting hung up on the definition of a very straightforward statement. Your argument is even less defensible in light of the other options, which cover your other interpretations of the aforementioned statement.
I feel the questions in the poll should have been more along the lines of:
Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?
1 - As stated in Genesis literally or near literally.
2 - God had some influence.
3 - God had no influence.
I still think that the wording of the poll, only the “God created human beings pretty much in their present form” to be ambiguous, open to vast interpretation and a very bad way to do a legitimate survey.
But from the perspective of a “theistic evolutionist” (nasty and inaccurate term, but it’s achieved some currency, so we’re stuck with it), that phrasing is horrible. It’s like saying that a computer program is not the work of the programmer if it does what it’s supposed to according to the programmer’s intent automatically in the way he programmed it to – that the only good program is the one that requires the programmer’s constant intervention to keep it working right. And as everyone is aware, that’s the inverse of the reality as regards “good” programming.
J.B. Phillips is famous for the phrase, “Your God is too small.” (No insult to God Himself, but to the problems in human conceptions.) To believe in a God who could plan out what would happen biologically on one small planet ten billion years after He set the Big Bang in motion is not minimizing His work – it’s seeing Him as greater and more subtle than the anthropomorphic “Adam-formed-from-adamah/red dirt” figure of the myths taken as literal historical acount.
Your redefinition is on a level with “Things happened in accord with natural law” vs. “A magic sky pixie waved his magic wand to make things happen in accord with Bronze Age myths” as essayed by a religion-scoffer. It’s misrepresenting and discounting other people’s views.
The objectivity of a poll that asks voters to choose between “our great President and his crusade to free the Middle East of radical trrorists” and “disloyal Democrats who cloak their desire to help the terrorists in an appeal to constitutional law” would certainly be called in question. Your version of the poll is no less insulting to believers who happen not to agree with your view of things.
Polycarp I heard what you are saying, and agree with much of it in the general sense.
What I was trying to get at is the first poll question can not be used to find out what percentage of the population are Christian literal (or near literal) creationists, the way it’s phrased I believe at best it can be used as a upper limit.
I was just trying to state what type of poll question would answer that question to my satisfaction.
I wish I could agree with you, but a very tiny percentage of computer designers under 30 were born in the US, and it is getting so that a very tiny percentage of professors of EE and computer design were born in the US. Yup, the US leads in advances in engineering, but those advances are done by those whose education, up to grad school, was not in the US.
Sorry for the hijack, but check out who is driving the Lexi down 237 someday.