Did Humans Evolve? No, Say Americans

Stern Thinker writes "In a 2005 poll covering 33 countries, Americans are the least likely (except for Turkish respondents) to assert that 'humans developed ... from earlier species of animals.' Iceland, meanwhile, has an 85% acceptance rating for evolution." The blurb on the site for Science magazine is less circumspect about the findings: "The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States."

Comments

The Perceived Threat of Science

[RunFatBoy.net]

The current administration has been quite effective in keeping this issue in the public eye and billing it less as an issue of science and more of a threat to society. The issue has taken on the sentiment that if the concept of evolution becomes widely accepted then faith is voided and we enter moral decay (which is obviously wrong, thanks Bush). But it's definitely how a majority of Americans feel. Science threatens their faith.

Jim
http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise for the rest of us.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[p0tat03]

"Science threatens their faith"

You say it as if it doesn't, but it does. Science inherently threatens any form of ill-founded blind belief, and seeks to find support and evidence for all ideas. While I say this is not inherently incompatible with faith in general, it seems to be incompatible with most people's faith.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[morgan_greywolf]

Science threatens their faith.

And if science threatens your faith, perhaps you ought to re-examine your beliefs. Science and religion don't have to be mutually exclusive things. It's really just a handful of overly-dogmatic religious sects (read: fundies) that need science to be wrong on evolution (and a number of other things, for that matter), in order for their religious beliefs to be right.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[EGSonikku]

Evolution makes no claims as to the origin of life. It merly theorises what has happened to that life once it did start.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[PriceIke]

Beliefs not based on logic cannot be swayed by logic.

What a shame that so many people believe this is an either/or thing. It makes me sad. I thought most Americans were smarter than that.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Elemenope]

it tells that most Americans are more likely to believe what they find desirable to believe, rather than the truth.

Hey, buddy, that's everyone. The only thing that changes are the idiosyncrasies, the individual blind spots, usually about the things that we personally or culturally choose to care about. That my fellow countrymen happen to believe a particularly embarrassing one is unfortunate, but in the grand scheme of things is hardly the ultimate sin against 'Truth'. It is a telling fact that in every stage of human history, a large portion of people believed that they had stumbled (by revelation or inductive practices or some combination thereof) onto the basic paradigm that accurately describes truth. They were all, every single one of them, wrong. Why do we believe we are different than them, that this age we are lucky enough to live in is somehow different than all those others? One need not believe in relative truth (and I don't) to believe that for the actual amount of truth that we can be honestly confident to presently hold, our current beliefs might as well be treated relatively.

I agree that it sucks for people who live in an age defined by the scientific enterprise to be lorded over militarily and economically by a scientifically stunted nation. But then so was Greece by Rome, and yet life (historically speaking) goes on.

P.S. Don't ever believe, in this age of media and relative concentration of power that the actions of the US are driven by the opinions of its citizens at large. It's very much the other way around; citizens are the played, not the players. That should be the far more terrifying realization than that rural Kansas doesn't know jack about Evolution.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[SatanicPuppy]

....Okay....You're trolling, but I'll bite.

Deduction is absolutely useless in the real world, because all the premises that could be used in deductive argument are arrived at through empirical observation. Empirical observation is 100% inductive, so therefore the premises can't be suggested to have anything like a truth value, because, as you astutely pointed out, just because something is true today doesn't mean it will be true tomorrow. The sun could go out, gravity could stop working, black could be come white, anything.

So by deciding that induction is completely worthless, as you have, you seemed to have talked yourself into an ontological solipsim. I would like to know why you think this is a benefit to yourself or your argument?

It's the standard move of the creationist, to attack induction, because, of course, that is the weak point of science. All our knowledge is based on the observable world. If that should change, we'd be wrong. Whereas all of the creationists knowledge is based on God, and God is the arch-conservative....He never ever ever changes. You can construct all manner of deductive arguments using God as a premise.

Of course, if you're an athiest, all the same arguments can be constructed with purple unicorns.

I keep thinking of ditching the .sig, but creationists keep making it relevant again. Produce one tiny piece of positive evidence for creationism, and I'll listen. But beating on evolution just makes your theory look even worse.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Nf1nk]

there comes a time in a debate when you realize that no matter how well you prove your point you have no hope of reaching your target.
when you have hit this point you may as well stop arguing.
one method of stopping the argument is to dismiss the target.
A class of people not worth arguing with are fundamentalists, (any kind) they have little of worth to add to the debate and you have no hope of winning their hearts or mind. they are commonly called fundies.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=dipshit
I have foud a reference for dipshit
dipshit Audio pronunciation of "dipshit" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (dpsht) Vulgar Slang
n.

        A foolish or contemptible person.

adj.

        Foolish or contemptible.

failing to acknowlege the advances of science and a blind faith in an old book dispite mountains of evidence to is both foolish and contempible. thus the fundies are as a group also dipshits.
it is correct to dismiss them as Dipshit Fundies.

Although calling them fundies should be enough.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Thangodin]

Uh, no, what he said is that they have evolved into different species which can breed within the species but not with members of the other species. This is how we tell two species apart--they are no longer genetically compatible, and cannot interbreed.

Richard Dawkins mentions the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull, which cannot interbreed and are therefore seperate species. Both exist in Europe. But if you follow the population of Herring Gulls westward around the north pole, to North America, Alaska, Siberia, and back to Europe, you encounter all the intermediate stages leading to the Black-backed Gull. In each area around this ring, the gulls in that area can interbreed with their neighbours. Only when you get to Europe do you have two seperate species.

As for a lot of people being against evolution, the ID people created a petition of all the scientists who disagree with it. They have about 400 signatures so far, almost none of whom have any expertise in an area relevant to the subject. So the scientific community came up with the Steve list. Basically, you can sign it if your support evolution and your name is some variation of Steve. They have over 700 signatures so far. Since the number of scientists named Steve or something like it makes up about 1% of the scientific community, this represents about 70,000 scientists. They did it as a joke (ID is a joke, after all) but you get the point. Or at least, most people would.

Your arguments are referred to as "God in the Gaps", only the gaps here are not in science, but in your own knowledge of it. Even Behe and Dembski don't try the missing link argument anymore, because it's a joke. The reason you don't see a snail evolve into a human is that it takes millions of years, and we haven't been around that long. But we still have the DNA from our earliest pregenitors, and our proximity with other animals along the evolutionary tree can be traced by establishing how much DNA we share. We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. So, if God made us just the way we are, how come he built us out of spare chimp parts?

Note that is hopefully obvious...

[daveschroeder]

...the idea among Americans that humans didn't "evolve" from earlier forms of animals isn't new, and definitely hasn't changed markedly since 2000.

I'd hope that would be obvious to most people. The figures are mostly unchanged for decades, so the assertion that this is because of "widespread fundamentalism" and the "politicization of science" seems to be somewhat of a politically motivated assertion in itself.

Note that about one third of Americans reject the concept of evolution. It's unfortunate that even if people do want to have a religious or spiritual belief, they can't reconcile it with fairly firmly established scientific truth.

Further note that "fundamentalist religions", as the study refers to them as, are also not new in the United States. A lot of people would like to think that these people have sprouted up from nowhere in the last 6 years, but that's simply not the case.

Sigh

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea yea, we suck. Who were the last people to accept Coninental Drift? Americans. We don't believe in global warming, we don't believe in evolution, but 50% still believe we found WMDs in Iraq. If we couldn't brain drain scientists from other countries, we'd probably still be living in caves.

I just don't get it. What is the deal with people never changing their minds, or letting in new information? Most people aren't stupid...I'm sure the average person in Iceland isn't any smarter than the average american (Kansas excluded). It could just be the religious thing; a lot of european social democracies are much less religious than we are. I mean, I understand we're not a pro-intellectual country, but there is a huge difference between not rhapsodising about your elite scientific tradition, and being completely averse to new knowledge.

You can't even blame it on modern schools...We have a tradition of this type of mental blindness going back more than a century.

News for Nerds

[Doc Ruby]

You know those jocks that beat up nerds in highschool for being "too smart"? Those jocks are running America. And you are still the nerds.

Re:ugh

[SatanicPuppy]

Well, I mean if you're arguing that we should be a feudal society, where the elite understand the issues, and the masses wallow around in ingnorance with no say in things, fine.

But if we're going to be a democracy, people need to have a basic understanding that the world is not about pixie dust and fairy tales. They need enough basic understanding to cast an intelligent vote, and to be able to recognize when someone's shoveling a pile of horseshit.

Basically, that's why democracy sucks: people can't be bothered to be anything other than ignorant.

Remember context, and your own quote

[CrazedWalrus]

"Insightful", indeed. There's very little insight to be had in your post, I'm afraid. Be careful focusing on six words and making a generalization. To ancient folks, and to some degree modern ones, which god you identify with determines which set of rules you follow.

In many cases, "religious law" seems to have been "engineered" in a way. In other words, the reason for the law was not really religious in nature, it was pragmatic.

Examples in health:

Don't eat food XYZ. Why? Because God said so. In reality, they likely noticed that people who ate XYZ wound up getting sick or dieing of food poisoning more often. In reality, it was probably due to bacteria proliferating in certain types of food more than others. For them, it was wrath of their god. The result? Dietary laws.

Circumcision has long been protested as "pointless mutilation", which it may well be. However, there's strong evidence that circumcision may save your life if you have sex with an HIV-positive person. I think the figure I heard was that you'd have 60% better chances if circumcised, due to a lower white blood cell count at the tip of your penis (white blood cells which are directly infected by HIV). Someone will correct me, I'm sure. Did ancient people have *anecdotal* evidence that suggested circumcision would prevent certain diseases? I don't know, but for such a large percentage, it seems plausible. They didn't have microscopes, but they weren't blind or stupid. They were simply misidentifying the causes of some very real observations.

Apart from health, sociology was a big target (in fact, the stated target) of religious law. How do people treat each other? What rules define the interactions of people in a society? How do we attempt to avoid a "welfare class", "bankruptcy", a certain few owning most of the property, etc? (For just one example, think "Year of Jubilee" and imagine its economic impact).

All I'm saying is that many of the religious laws were anything but. They were laws that were a response to issues of the day. Just like today, there were lots of pointless and stupid ones -- some probably downright harmful. How do you get people to obey the laws? Threaten death, jail, etc? Sure, and they did. What's a more pleasant way to do it? Tell them their god said so. That way you don't look like the bad guy for creating rules, and, what's more, people don't think they can get away with unseen crime when an omniscient god is the judge, jury, and executioner.

So this is where people argue that "that was then, and this is now". Wrong. Human nature doesn't really change much over time. People are still basically greedy, hateful, lustful, kind, loving, and generous. They always have been, and always will be. The essence of religious law is the most time-tested way of dealing with the way we've been since we've been human. Do situations change? Would Moses have envisioned the internet and motor vehicles? No, of couse not. But he would have known what people would act like on the internet, and how they would drive. See? The *things* don't change the *people*. They just change the *object* of the desire, or the *cause* of the murdurous rage.

Insisting on monotheism was, in a way, insisting that people follow a uniform code of conduct. They didn't want their carefully constructed legal system to be polluted by outside influences, which would generally prove destructive to Jewish society.

On a more theological note, you quote the "you shall have no other gods". The actual passage is "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me." (Ten Commandments)

Jewish tradition never said that there were no other "godlike" entities in the spiritual world. They just said that you shouldn't worship them in a higher precedence than the I AM. In fact, the Bible is chock full of stories about angels, demons, spirits, and precognition,

Re:Not quite....

[Dr. Manhattan]

this would be evidence that terrorism isn't really a threat to the country

Terrorism isn't a threat to this country. Terrorists can cause upset and, sometimes, kill largish numbers of people. (Nowhere near as much as traffic accidents or obesity or cancer or workplace accidents, but somewhat significant.) They can't threaten the survival of the United States. Sure, it makes sense to take some precautions against it, but (for example) a wholesale restructuring of our legal system is disproportionate. (And largely ineffective anyway, and has too many bad side effects. Go read up on the Red Scare.)