Given that 3/4 of all preachers don’t believe in evolution, I’d say people are getting this stuff in the evangelical Protestant pews. I’d still like to hear more anecdotes about sermons though. Note also that the Pentacostle church’s stance is essentially, Teach the Controversy: “Pentecostals concur that God exists and is the Creator, but they do not speak with one voice on how ancient creation is, how much evolution has occurred, or whether science provides evidence for an intelligent designer.” That’s not a defense: it’s merely a factual statement. On the ground clarification welcome.
The General Social Survey asked about creationism and evolution from 1993-2000: blogger Razib Khan constructed an index of creationism and attached it to various groups. Here are the groups with the highers creationist leanings:
Those who say “Bible is the word of God”.
Southern Baptist
Those who say, “Know God Exists”.
Protestant
Conservative
Here are the most evolutionarily oriented groups:
Atheist and Agnostic
Jewish
Those who say, “Bible is a Book of Fables.”
Those who say they, “Believe in a Higher Power.”
Those who ID as “No Religion”.
Interestingly, 19.1% of the atheist and agnostic group think that humans probably or definitely did not develop from earlier species of animals. That’s right, there are reportedly atheist or agnostic creationists. Among those thinking that the Bible is the word of God, 27% believe such evolution is probably or definitely true. The point being is that all the groups have representation in both camps.
What causes changes in creationist belief? Religious sect has been mentioned. Performance on a quick vocabulary test also matters: those scoring average or poorly are equally likely to lean towards creationism (about 55%) while 40% of the top scorers don’t think humans evolved from animals. The liberal group has similar evolutionist leanings as the top scorers. Socio-economic grouping matters slightly less than the vocabulary test. Female creationist preferences are at 56% vs. 47% for males - different but not substantially so. 66% of those who attended college choose evolution (again I combine probably with definitely) while 42% the non-college group agree that humans developed from animals.
The preceding analysis was not multivariate: we didn’t look at college attendance after controlling for church membership for example. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/05/who-are-the-creationists-by-the-numbers/ A rigorously statistical treatment of the issue would be nice.
I’ll end with an anecdote. Most of us are neither science teachers nor biologists, so belief in evolution doesn’t directly matter. So perhaps its unsurprising that many take their cue from their pastor – why not? Furthermore, that may be the only contemporaneous influence. These guys noted that the Creationists had a polished presentation at their local county fair. They responded with a science-based booth, but frankly the effort was a work in progress. It takes time to develop polish.
New Jersey is pretty far from the Bible Belt. Nonetheless only half of NJ residents believe in evolution. [INDENT]Asked “whether or not you personally believe in … the theory of evolution — that humans evolved from lower life forms,” 51% of respondents said yes, 42% said no, and 7% volunteered that they don’t know. Democrats and independents, males, college graduates, and people between 35 and 54 years of age were more likely to answer yes; Republicans, females, those with only a high school education or less, and people over 55 years of age were more likely to answer no. [/INDENT] Polling evolution in New Jersey | National Center for Science Education
From the .pdf I see that 69% of NJ college graduates believe in evolution, which frankly could be higher.
So what gives?
38% of NJ residents believe in astrology. 60% have heard of the Jersey Devil, a disappointingly low figure. Only 9% believe it exists.
Bear in mind it’s not just the sermon in church on Sunday morning. Millions of children go to private, explictly Christian schools (often affiliated with a local church); others are homeschooled. Even among those children in evangelical and fundamentalist families who do go to public schools, there’s going to be some kind of Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, and so on; a combination of a forceful presentation of creationism at home and in Sunday school and at Christian summer camp, and a fairly wishy-washy presentation of science when the kids are in the public schools, will result in a lot of creationists.
A Beka Book is a major publisher of school curriculum materials used by fundamentalist/evangelical Christian schools and homeschoolers (and probably by Sunday schools and so on). Their distinctives state that
Stuff that’s put out by Bob Jones University Press–another major supplier for Protestant fundamentalist schools and homeschoolers–isn’t going to be any better.
Of course if these kids go on to a real college (public or private, including colleges and universities that have some sort of Christian denominational affiliation but aren’t completely whacko) they’ll be in for a rude awakening–but they may not go to college at all; or they may go to someplace like Liberty University (“We affirm…Human beings were directly created, not evolved, in the very image of God”) or Patrick Henry College (“Any biology, Bible, or other courses at PHC dealing with creation will teach creation from the understanding of Scripture that God’s creative work, as described in Genesis 1:1-31, was completed in six twenty-four hour days. All faculty for such courses will be chosen on the basis of their personal adherence to this view.”)
The question being worded poorly may also explain some part of it.
If I was asked that question, I would also say that, no, I don’t personally believe in evolution - it’s a fully quantifiable and observable scientific fact. It doesn’t require belief, just acceptance of the overwhelming evidence. That might explain a few additional percent, brought to you by the pedants amongst us.
Well, if the universe is only ~10,000 years old, what about stars that are more than 10,000 light years away? I understand the common fanwank for this is the stars were created with their light already on route, but what happens when we observe nova from a star more than 10,000 light-years away, showing the death of that star? Did God create stars that were already dead, with the announcements of those deaths already on route to Earth?
Yep, He created all the evidence that the Earth, Sun, galaxies, the universe are all many billions of years old then tells us to believe Him (or his nutcase followers) that it’s all a mindfuck and everything is 10,000 years old.
[some amazingly Pit-worthy statements deleted, including calling all of you a bunch of semi-evolved rodents]
Okay okay okay, this is Great Debates, so I should get off the soap box here and actually make coherent statements:
I’m going grocery shopping today. It’s said that 90% of the products on the shelves contain GMOs, which I will buy and, if you can believe this, eat them. That’s right, the corrupt fruits of Satan’s own design, in my mouth and in my belly. So I wonder, are these ten’s of millions of creationists doing all their grocery shopping at hippy-freak acid-dropping free-sex organic food stores? Hell no they don’t, lazy bastards. Their faith only goes as far as their wallets.
Would someone please post here the equations for the chemical reactions that took compounds that are not life and made compounds that are life. I give you liquid water, methane and ammonia; now you tell me how these made life. If you can’t, then you’re asking me to believe something as absolute scientific fact that can’t be described. C’mon, scientists, what are the equations? More importantly, how’s is this any different from “God made mud”.
I’ve always found that people who debate Creationism vs. Evolution know very little of either.
It may certainly be true that many people who debate creationism vs. evolution know very little of either, but I’m afraid your post doesn’t do anything to break from that tradition.
Scientists don’t claim to have any real idea where the very first living things came from. Maybe God made them. Maybe aliens came and put them on Earth. Maybe they drifted across space all by themselves and landed on Earth. Maybe they–by some as yet unknown process–spontaneously developed from non-living chemicals.
Of course saying that aliens seeded life on Earth, or that life on Earth drifted across space all by itself, doesn’t actually answer the question of how life got started in the first place, it just pushes it off into the Universe somewhere. (Arguably, saying “God did it” doesn’t really answer anyting either–well, where did God come from, then?) To say that these “explanations” don’t actually answer the question isn’t even to say that they’re wrong, but as long as there’s no reason to think that they’re right–we don’t have any evidence like finding life on other planets that’s clearly genetically related to Earth life (or, at this point, finding life on other planets, period), or finding spores drifting through space, or having the aliens come back to check up on their big Petri dish and see how it’s doing–we don’t accept the unnecessarily complex idea that life on Earth somehow developed elsewhere and then drifted or was carried across space. We assume (for the time being) that since we know there’s life here, and we don’t know of life anywhere else, the life that’s on this planet presumably developed here, though we don’t know how.
No scientist would claim to know how life developed from non-living matter, though certainly a bunch of them would very much like to know. Of course science isn’t about "believing things as absolute scientific fact ". But, while we don’t know where the first living things came from or how they came to be on Earth, we do know–as well as we know anything in science–that the overwhelming evidence is that once life got started here (however that happened), that life then evolved into all the living things we now see, from bacteria to trees to people, all of which are descendants of that ancient common ancestor.
I have not seen good surveys of what fundamentalists have regarding anti-gmo positions so I’m really curious about the levels the fundamentalists have about that issue, do you have a link?
I do know that anti-gmo sentiments are assumed by many conservatives to have a lot of left leaning proponents, but I do know that surveys show usually opposition to research and in favor of labeling of GMOs is based on the most universal of sentiments: NIMBY
And I wonder in your case, biologists do work with evolution, but they do no work in abiogenesis or it is not relevant:
No, but I’ve heard some on the radio. I recall one questioning a theory that whales are descended from cow-like creatures who returned to the water – how could that happen, when cows live on grass?
As with Brainglutton my experience comes mostly through Christian radio which I used to listen to to get my heart rate up. For the most part it doesn’t take the form of hell fire and Brimstone against those who believe in evolution but instead in the direction of mocking. Basically along the lines of…
“Oh those scientists who think they are so smart, but believe something so against commons sense as evolution. How can fish evolve into land based creatures if all fish if any fish that tried to go onto the land would instantly die? Scientists also arrogantly ignore the evidence of the great flood found in the grand canyon. But you and I read the bible so we know better than those god hating scientists.”
For the most part it doesn’t appear to be the main topic of the sermon but just a part of a sermon making a larger point about the glory of god.
<Chico Marx> 8,000 years. 10,000 years, I got plenty of numbers. </Chico>
I’m just curious where they got that non-Biblical number. The 4004 BC value is fairly easily derivable.
I believe 144,000 comes from Revelation, the number of the saved. The interpretation might be debatable,. but the value is clear.
When I spoke to this JW woman who came to my door I was quite curious on how much she knew about the subject. I gave her ample opportunity to speak. I asked her what she thought evolution said, and she couldn’t answer.
I’d be really curious about the results of a poll that asked a sample of people to describe evolution in their own words. I’m sure those who accept evolution would do somewhat better, but I’m not sure how much. It might be mostly trusting science versus one’s preacher - or trusting one’s preacher if he or she has no problem with evolution.
It might be really helpful if some ministers gave sermons about how evolution shows the glory of God. I think it could be easily done.
You see a lot of this in the Midwest with the evangelicals, and other groups like the Charismatics. They can be like the Mormons in that, if you question things too much, you can end up shunned by the whole group and even tossed out of your family. In a rural area there is not really anywhere else to go, so people are kind of cowed into toeing the line.
It has the advantage of not contradicting physical reality, the way young-earth creationism does. It’s a kind of “gentlemen’s capitulation.” It’s the way moderates can say, “Okay, we were wrong. But, who knows, God might have had a hand in the affair.”
Classical God of the Gaps.
In scientific terms, it’s nonsense. It’s “not even wrong.” It isn’t testable or falsifiable. But in religious terms, non-falsifiability is not a drawback.
Theistic evolution is a face-saving measure. It’s “defeat with dignity.” I have no real objections to it. It’s like “Every time a bell rings, an angel receives his wings in heaven.” Okay, right, fine, whatevs.
I think I would trust a poll like that better even though I suspect you might find the results shocking and highly unscientific even for many educated and anti-religious people. For many if not most people, understanding of evolution isn’t based on any real understanding at all - it is simply about spitting back a corrupted version of evolution from the types of authority figures that you trust the most. People even here get basic facts about evolution wrong all the time and the general public is much worse no matter what their beliefs are.
As to your second paragraph about ministers using evolution to show the glory of God, we did have one like that once in the Methodist church. A lay minister who was also a chemist gave a great sermon demonstrating why intelligent design worked because ice floats because water becomes less dense as it freezes unlike most other compounds. He went on to explain how that allowed the oceans to generate primitive life and eventually mammals including people rather than have the whole planet freeze over if ice simply sunk to the bottom and stayed there. I wouldn’t buy it today but it was a compelling argument for a 6th grader like me who was into science.
Sermons are intended for a broad audience. There are lots of opportunities to preach only to the converted. In order of age: Sunday School, Youth Groups, Awana groups, first communion classes, confirmation classes, bible study groups. Young adults group, couples groups, women’s group, men’s group, church based substance abuse recovery groups, various “retreats” and on and on and on. Then there will be special events like touring speakers, xtian rock bands, etc.
Then there is at least one Xtian radio and TV station in most markets, and more like a dozen or more in even modest sized cities with under a million residents.
So the young earth stuff may only come from the pulpit a few times a year, but the average church member will be exposed to it at least monthly, and often far more than that. People that go to church for more than an hour on Sunday can end up living in an echo chamber of Christian dogma.
