Nope. Intelligent Design and the Omega Point are Teilhard de Chardin’s work, but it’s not dogma: neither the RCC as an institution nor the majority of Catholics believe that. On one hand, a large amount of Catholics wouldn’t know who TdC is, nor have they heard of his hypothesis; on the other, there is nothing which makes it necessary for God to have designed His “intended end product” exactly as we are, or for us to be the only version of it. TdC’s work was an important exercise, but it was like going from butt-slipping to crawling - nowhere near the final desired action.
There are many of us who believe in a Clockwork God who occasionally adjusts the machinery, there are many who believe we’re not the only species to have souls, there are many who are perfectly happy to accept both “God made the world” and “evolution happens” without getting into details.
That’s a question far more related to belief in evolution than in Creationism. Creationism can start from “God created the Big Bang” to as far as “God created everything as it exists today.”
I was out with a colleague at work one day when the conversation fell to religion, he described his belief in the literal word of the bible, I burst out laughing only to see his distinctly unamused face, “No, I really do believe that…”
Whoops, until that point my knowing interaction with real-life creationists was zero.
I’m from Northern Ireland, I knew hardline biblical literalists existed, I just had never met one before.
Its right there in the OP. Maybe he could have fleshed out the OP a bit but its not that hard to understand.
The OP states that 46% of Americans believe in Creationism. The link provided goes right to the poll which defines what that means. I just repeated it.
I’ve never met anyone who knew they were A Creationist, but I met quite a few people in Brazil who had never heard of evolution but did know about Genesis. They were usually also illiterate though, so I didn’t vote in the poll so as not to skew the results.
I worked in a children’s home there, and when we’d get new kids in the others used to delight in telling them about evolution just to blow their minds. It was pretty funny to watch, and made me quite proud of how we taught them. Some of them could talk a newbie through some serious biology, epistemology and philosophy of science at a pretty rapid pace.
I am not aware of knowing anybody who believes in creationism, Of course, it is not a topic that often comes up in conversation with most people.
On the other hand, I did spend many years teaching the history of science, including Darwin’s career and the historical background to his thought, in a US university. I never had a student object, or indicate that they did not believe in evolution, although certainly some were religious (mostly Catholic, I expect, given the demographics). One student asked me if there really was a firm consensus amongst scientists about the matter. I told him yes, and he seemed satisfied.
My ex-wife is Congregationalist, and sings in her church choir, but she has a biology degree and firmly believes in evolution (consistently with her church’s teachings).
Did you vote, “Over 2/3”? Because I intended to ask about all acquaintances rather than limit it to those close to you.
CLee has a solid interpretation. What I had in mind though was merely the flip side of “Accept evolution”. Except that didn’t match the poll the most closely, so I took the creationist angle.
Anyway, by my way of thinking the Catholic Church is not creationist since they don’t have a problem with the world being older than 10,000 years and they teach evolution in their schools.
Unfortunately, I’m the original poster, but it’s a little late for me to be clarifying the original post. Apologies to all.
Anyway, I’m not surprised that less than 10% answered, “Between 1/3 and 2/3”, despite the fact that 1/2 of the country believes in creationism.
Oh, and here’s a tip for a select number of Xtian haters: check out the number of those voting “Less than 1/3”. There are plenty of Christians who believe in evolution and that furthermore put Young Earth Creationism under the category of “Crackpot”. Similarly, I acknowledge that there are parts of the US where disbelief in evolution is conventional wisdom.
I did not vote in the poll because I wasn’t sure of your intent, but I shall do so now, and yes, I will click over 2/3 if you’d like me to include acquaintances.
Ok, I see I voted incorrectly now based on further comments from the OP and others.
Defining creationism (wrongly) as YEC and not just “God created the universe and let things go from there” (which is every bit of creationy as YEC), then I would say less than 1/3 of the people I know are creationists.
But why conflate YEC with creationist this way? Why exclude “people who believe that God created the universe and the natural laws of science” from the title of creationist? This seems disingenuous to me, at best.
Possibly around 20 percent if we mean those who don’t believe of evolution, but more around 60-70 percent if we mean go by the literal (HAW HAW) definition of creationism to include those who believe God guided evolution. Most of my acquaintances and friends at school are theistic or naturalistic evolutionists of some sort, and even my church is divided roughly 50-50 (at least among those whom I’ve talked to).
I don’t know, and I would rather not know. (I doubt very much that any of my family or friends are creationists unless you count one or two people I’m Facebook-friends with but haven’t spoken to since high school, and I would be surprised if any of my colleagues were, but there are students. Oh yes, there are lots and lots of students, and most of them are from the Bible belt, and at least one of them turned up in my office a few years ago complaining that her biology professor was “biased in favor of evolution” and should have warned her about it on the syllabus.)
Because the OP was motivated by a desire to understand the survey linked in the OP. The survey specified YEC.
Your contention is extra-topical and I suspect has been discussed in GD before. (Translation: Hey, nothing wrong with what you said, but it would be inappropriate for me to debate it here.)
Since I work for a scientific organization, virtually nobody. I only know one staff member who is even a Christian. Some of the support people probably are.
It’s so rare amongst my acquaintances that when a friend hinted that he didn’t believe in evolution, I was shocked. I felt compelled to tell mutual friends, “Holy Cow, John doesn’t believe in evolution!” John was a pretty smart dude, but he grew up in a bizzaro family with a fundy preacher dad.
Ok, now that I better understand we’re specifying YEC as opposed to any old conglomeration of “Evolution bad, God good” I need to amend my answer. I was a 2/3s response before, but I’d say less than a third of the creationists I know are hung up on the less than 10,000 years part. More like two that I can think of off the top of my head.
Well the original post is about 10,000 years. But I had the conglomeration of “Evolution bad, God good” in mind. If you want, imagine how your acquaintances would respond to the Gallup survey. They may not have gotten hung up on 10,000 years then either, but still answered in a YEC consistent manner.
Following Drew’s point, there are plenty of Christians who accept evolution and the scientific method: indeed, the Catholic church doesn’t have a problem with it. There also a certain number who don’t accept evolution: those are the folks I defined as creationists.
