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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."
That's pretty shocking. That 15% of any country would not believe in evolution I mean.
"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"
... from earlier species of animals.'? I would say "I don't know, but probably", would this put me down as an evolution denier? I think it is certainly the most plausable answer but I'm not going to say that it is FACT because it isn't, you even mention that when you use "fairly"...
You make an interesting point but maybe it is proving the counter point. If you asked me; is the following statement true 'humans developed
I would need to get a better break down of how responses were classified (but the article is subscription). But this could just be people who are not arrogant enough to think they have all the answers
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
And according to this study 64% of respondents believed that aliens have contacted humans.
Many, many people all of the world do not 'get' science. It has nothing to do with religion. This happens all over the world.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
For the record, I'm conservative, I voted Republican in 2000 and 2004. Yes, it's all my fault, let's move on.
I'm against the idea of abortion but think it should be legal. I don't like flag burning, but I think an amendment against it is a silly idea. I don't care about gay marraige, it shouldn't be banned, but before we allow it, we need to take a careful look at all the societal and economic consequences.
All that said, I am also decidedly NON religious and think that Creationism and Intelligent Design are fairy tales for children. PLEASE do not color me and all the other conservative red stater's in with the religious right. They're not connecting with reality, and I feel bad for those people who continue to blindly follow the paths of organized religion (which has done OH SOOOO much good for the world over the last several years). <sp<sp>We don't ALL live in Je$u$land (perhaps geographically, but not mentally), and some of us choose to follow science, watch the Discovery Channel instead of Pat Robert$on, and sleep in on $unday morning rather than gathering to worship at the altar of Chri$t.
Thus endeth my rant. Thanks for listening. Go Darwin.
Devil's advocate.
Your average non-scientist citizen is not likely to go and check all the sources to verify that, yes indeed, evolution is the most likely explanation for the diversity of species. So, to demand that this average citizen believe in evolution is to demand the same leap of faith as for that citizen to believe in creation. Either way, some "expert" is telling this citizen what to think about something s/he doesn't understand.
Why don't these polls include an "I don't know, I don't have time to check the facts, and it really doesn't matter in my everyday life" option? I think that would be the best response for a thinking non-scientist.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
One little-regarded fact is that the Pilgrims got to North America after the Jamestown colony started. The Pilgrims were such a pain in the gluteus that even the Dutch, the Dutch mind you, kicked them out. At the people of time Jamestown were leading a near subsistence living; the markets for cotton and tobacco would become important later. And here came a ship of fools whose beliefs were basically intolerant communists and religious radicals, bringing nothing to help the colony economically, and would expect to be fed. Oddly enough, when the Jamestown colonists heard this, they bribed the Mayflower captain to dump them off where all the cod fishing was going on up north.
(For the record, I am descended from some of those Jamestown colonists.)
And let's not forget the grand European tradition of sending their religious loons to North America; the results of this should be obvious.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
Wikipedia is your friend, biased language is not.
there are a lot of chemical reactions where "life can arise from non-life" given the proper conditions, conditions which were present on *gasp* early earth!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
Evolution describes how life changes, it has NOTHING to do with how life began.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Have you considered that perhaps it's not so much as a mental illness, but perhaps we're seeing an evolutionary split between homo sapiens that do have brains powerful enough to understand basic scientific principles, and cause/effect relationships, and homo sapiens that can't think any further than primitive "gods"? Sure, religions can certainly be defined by mental illness (talking to non-existent people/"gods"/saints/whatever, having firm beliefs in completely illogical and bizarre things, etc.).
There are evolutionary theories regarding brain capacity in primates, so is it really that far fetched to think that we have old humans, and new, more intelligent humans at this point? Sure, we won't see any specization for thousands of years, if ever, but I can definitely see where this is one trait that can and will be emphasized through breeding (I would never consider marrying and breeding a religious person, for example.)
that said, when the entire fossil record we have supports evolution and predictions are made and proven true, I don't think I need to worry about semantics. It's fact.
Some predictions made based on evolution:
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
I wish I had some MOD points because this is a very important observation. I've been monitoring sites like CNN, Fox News, BBC and others and it is amazing how some extremely important stories will be completely passed-over by one or the other sites because they do not support their agenda. About the only way a person can get any semblence of reasonable news coverage today is to monitor both liberal & conservative news sources plus include a healthy dose of blogs, which oftentimes get a lot closer to the truth if you can try to read them without your own political biases.
Which is why my god is the Scientific Method, and my religion the study of our suroundings.
My god is the philosophy of epistemology -- the study of what, if anything, we can know.
Rumsfeld should be fired, but I love this quote:
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
-- Donald Rumsfeld
Carl Sagan had a line about how people who think that evolution and creationism are incompatible don't really understand either.
William Gibson had a line about people who don't know shit about anything, and hate the people who do.
I've got a line in the water, because I'd rather fish than listen to dipshit fundies.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
I'm not religeous, at all, so perhaps I just don't get it. Why can't evolution be the process in which whatever diety you believe in produced us? For that matter, why couldn't the big bang be It's process?
Do you really think the "six days" were actually six twenty four hour periods? Couldn't it be six days as measured in some other way? Days on other planets are not 24 hours, so why would a day in Heaven (or wherever) be 24 hours? Couldn't six days actually be several billion years? Perhaps it was meant to be six awake-rest cycles but was interpreted wrong by the people who transcribed the different books of the bible.
Another point to look at is are we pets or an experiment? When you set up a cage for a pet you put everything together and you keep it that way, you keep feeding it, and you keep the cage clean. In an experiment you set the initial state and then, for the most part, you leave it to whatever it'll do. To me, the latter seems to be the case...
I'd bet that the majority of people in the US believe in what they do because of ignorance and fear or changing. I am referring to creationists and evolutionists.
Many who believe in creation do so not because they see the logic in attributing the order in nature to a designer (just as we would in any other circumstance) but because it's what their parents|churche$ taught them.
Many people who accept evolution do so not because they see evidence thereof, but rather because it is taught as the "scientific" truth. This in spite of the very good points you make, of course.
I will stick my Karma out there and agree with you. I'd add to your list a third point: the fact that nature's laws that scientists spend lifetimes unraveling show tremendous order. This implies a designer. It's not that things are too complex to understand therefore they must be miraculous. It's that in any other context when you see order and structure you credit that to a designer. Trouble is that so many in the scientific community have a religious (yes, I said it) objection to the notion of a creator. Yet, neither evolution nor creation is testable, so in that respect both are a matter of faith.
Of course, it is with good reason that many people reject the position of the churches. They persecuted Galilleo for being right but against their obviously wrong scriptural interpretations. Belief in a creator (or the genesis account, for that matter, if correctly read) does not fly in the face of scientific fact. It only flies in the face of conclusions drawn by those in the scientific community who prefer the philosophical implications of a purely naturalistic origin of life rather than accept belief in a creator.
--
WAIT! Are you modding me down simply because you disagree with me?
blah blah blah
Science is no threat to my faith. I can think of no significant scientific discovery that hasn't boltstered my faith by revealing more of the complex design of our universe.
To believe that the cosmos, life, and my soul all come from random interactions and as yet undiscovered scientific principles requires more blind faith in science than I have in my religion.
You can mod me down, but you cannot call me a coward.
Despite how it sounds, I don't mean it racist. First of all, we didn't evolve from monkeys, apes, baboons, or anything along those lines...we evolved from a species SIMILAR to them. Which is also similar to us. So people need to stop saying that. Now that that's out of the way, I have never met a Creation-believing Christian I haven't been able to "flip" on evolution using the following logic, in a very calm manner. It works especially well if the other party is pregnant or the spouse of a pregnant woman. 0) You cannot attack the Christian's beliefs. Doing so just makes them not believe anything you say as they enter Zealot, and possibly Martyr-mode. 1) Determine the subject's race. If you want, just ask them. 2) Ask them the races of their birth parents. If they are mix-race, chances are if the first answer was "Irish-German" you'll get a response similar to "My mom is Irish, my dad is German" 3) If expecting a child, ask what race(s) their child will be. They'll probably look at you funny because you should know the answer. 4) Ask if they resemble anyone in their families, if they get any traits from another member of the family, what diseases run in the family, etc. When they answer, tell them "congratulations, you now understand the basic of genetics." This is quite possibly the toughest part of the flip, because it's not evolution that gives the Christian (well the one willing to think) reason to pause, but genetics. That genes are passed down from generation to generation, and that over time these genes mutate (which is why you asked about diseases). Simply passing your genes on is evolution on the most miniscule of scales. 5) If they're anemic, or know someone who is, this is great! Inform them of the malaryia-ridden areas of the world, and how those living in those areas evolved anemia to survive. Make sure they know that they didn't decide "crap we better become anemic or we'll all die!" but that only those in the area who weren't affected by malaryia survived, and the majority of those people were anemic, hence its existence today. That that is evolution on a tiny tiny tiny scale, but a little bit larger than simply passing your genes. Here is where we see "survival of the fittest." Make sure they know that "fittest" means "most fit to survive in the area at the time" and not "strongest"- because in this case, the inhabitants of the area got weaker to become more fit for survival. 6) Usually at this point they will realize that they agreed with evolution all along, but their church prevented them from admitting it. The thought that "God didn't make us the way we are now" is probably the largest hurdle for them to jump, but once they can see the cracks that we really aren't the same as we were when the bible was written, the fissures begin to grow. Usually they come to understand. It doesn't hurt to tell them that proof of evolution is not disproof of God. You can also inform them that nowhere in the bible does it say man and woman would always remain the same as when God made Adam and Eve. If that were the case, how come we all look so VASTLY different? Evolution shouldn't shatter their faith. I think, when properly educated on the matter while receptive to the idea, it can strengthen their faith. The real problem isn't the faith, it's the church's enforcement of it. The church, like any other institution, seeks power. And the more that is unknown, the more power they have. Faith isn't the enemy of science, but the Catholic church is damn close.
Do you remember back in elementary school and then high school when you were taught critical thinking, logic, problem solving, and the scientific method as applied to making everyday decisions? Yeah, nobody else was taught any of that either.
When I was in junior high, we actually had a course for half a semester called Critical Thinking. I thought it was a great course. Although, everyone else I knew expressed dislike for the class and it was cancelled the year after I left. Oh well.
-- dR.fuZZo
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
As to evolution, what you are talking about with the evolution of bird flu and the evolution of lower species to human are two different things. Certainly there are forms of evolution. After all Noah didn't carry two beagles, two German Shepherds, etc onto the ark, he carried two canines onto the ark and all the different breeds have evolved from those two canines by bringing out different traits via breeding (go forth and multiply as it is called in Genesis). The same is true with Bird Flu, it is still H5N? when it infects a person. However, there is no evidence of one species becoming another and that is what would have to happen for a lower form to evolve into a human.
Why can't you accept the fact that there is a being greater than man? A being that has the power to create the universe in which we live. A being that set up the rules that we discover via science. That being is God, and he is the one that is responsible for us being here today.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
Whose? Not mine.
Some people undoubtedly have a tenuous hold on their faith and have gods that are only a scientific discovery away from irrelevence. Mine is not a "God of the gaps", though. Science can tell me how he made the universe, but only he can tell me why he made it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
... the greater acceptance of scientific explanations of human origins among Icelanders than among Americans does not seem to hamper their simultaneous belief in the supernatural.
According to reports here, here and here, the Icelanders may just be experienced at distinguishing elves from trolls.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Evolution is no threat to the Bible. It is a threat to a literal interpretation of the Bible, but it is no threat whatsoever to the veracity of the Bible. Personally, I believe that the Bible is 100% "true". I do NOT believe that the Bible is "literal".
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in Darwinian Evolution that counterdicts the Bible's creation allegory. Of course, when anyone tries to take an allegory literally, all kinds of problems arise, and Christians are, as a group, exceptional at taking allegory literally. I find it rather amusing that there is no perceived conflict between Judaism and Evolution given that Genesis is a foundation of both the Jewish Torah and the Christian Old Testament. Jewish theology seems to grasp the allegorical nature far better.
There's a widespread misunderstanding of evolution, mostly on the part of creationists, but even some of those who believe in evolution make this mistake.
Understand this: evolution is not a linear process from "less-evolved" to "more-evolved."
That is, just because one species evolves from another, that does not mean the new species is in some absolute sense "better." What it means is that the new species is better suited to its current environment.
If a giant asteroid hit the earth tomorrow, or some massive radition burst hit the earth, it is possible that all human and mammalian life would be wiped out, and the earth left with little more than cockroaches and bacteria.
In that scenario, humanity would be a branch that died out because it could not evolve fast enough for its changed environment. Mass extinctions have happened a number of times before in the history of the earth, with a large percentage of species being wiped out. The trilobite has no known living descendants, for example.
Cockroaches would then evolve to be better suited to this new hellish world, though I doubt you would consider them more evolved. Their evolution would be dramatically different from how they would evolve without this cataclysmic event. In the eyes of evolution, neither evolutionary pattern is better in a general sense; each one was simply better suited for the environment in which it existed.
So as for your question about humans and apes; if the apes were better suited for a particular environment, but not for others, they might split into two groups, one in the old evolutionary niche, and the other in a different environment which triggered changes in that group that led to the evolution of humanity.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Why Do You Believe in God?
Have you ever asked yourself
I mean seriously asked yourself?
Pierre Charron once noted that we are baptised or circumcised a Christian or a Jew, long before we are even aware we are a human.
Is it any wonder then that, through early indoctrination while the critical mind is still developing, we almost without exception go on to inherit the precise religion of our parents or surrounding culture?
No, of course not - its only natural. But that doesnt say much for the actual truth of that particular religion, does it?
Don't be afraid to question:
The Truth is never embarrassed by honest enquiry
150 years ago: the abolition of slavery
100 years ago: the emancipation of women
50 years ago: inter-racial marriage
Today: same-sex relationships
Why is it that the church always has to be dragged kicking and screaming (by secular outrage) towards the tolerance and compassion that, ironically, it claims to hold a monopoly on?
Morality
Contrary to what your church may have told you, atheists do not automatically turn to hedonism and anarchy. In fact, those who suggest that a man must be ethically restrained by a religion reveal, quite frankly, just how deep-seated their own morals are.
It is an easy target for the church to blame society's ills on man's inevitable shelving of the god myth. But the fact remains that there is a fraction of the immorality now than there was when the church had complete, unchallenged influence over every aspect of society.
This was a time of Crusades, Inquisitions, and witch- and heretic burnings.
It was a period known as the Dark Ages, and that they truly were both morally and intellectually.
The Ten Commandments are woefully inadequate as a moral guide:
The first four are blatant religious propaganda - basically a plug for the Hebrew God.
The remaining six are dangerously held up as exhaustive and inspired by those who apparently haven't read them. For example, one wonders how 'lying' and 'envy' make the big list of don'ts, but not rape, torture, child abuse, racism, slavery. And surely nobody still seriously believes that black and white moral guidelines are of much use in a greyscale world. &Thou shalt not kill& - but what about in genuine self-defense? &Thou shalt not bear false witness & - but what about lying to the Nazi officer who asks if you are hiding Jews? True morality requires judging each case on its own merits, not just overlaying the same clumsy morality stencil on everything.
Prayer
To the critical mind, it seems that the proportion of prayers that are specifically answered do not deviate too far from what the simple law of averages would suggest.
Having never prayed in my life, I can certainly attest to having a better than fair share of good fortune.
Regardless, what never fails to surprise me is the egotism and arrogance of the Christian who, by praying for divine favour or intervention, actually calls doubt on the very wisdom of their god!
Who told you that you were a sinner?
Your church? But wait, don't fret! There's a magic cure, and your church just happens to have it! (Of course some might suggest that your church has merely cut you in order to sell you a band-aid.....)
Did Adam and Eve sin?
They disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Right and Wrong). So, yes..... Right?
Just one problem. How could Adam and Eve have been expected to comprehend the implications of their actions if, prior to their indiscretion, they had no concept of wrong, evil, punishment, suffering, pain, and death?
Even if God had been successful in adequately explaining all of these concepts and the distinction between right and wrong to them beforehand, this means that he would have had to have given them knowledge of good and evil anyway, which turns this entire story into one big ridiculous farce.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not
In regards to your point about whether religion determines someone's disposition to believe in evolution versus some other scientific theory (of which so-called Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory because it cannot be tested and verified - it is, by its very nature, non-verifiable), the mainstream religions all provide a literal explanation that says a supreme being created humans. It is a fundamental premise that is at odds with a scientific explanation of how humans came into being. There are, to be sure, plenty of people who have resolved this conflict by taking a less than literal approach to their own religious teachings. So to believe in evolution, it was their religious beliefs that had to be altered - not the other way around. Religion is pretty much self-admittedly not based on logic and rationality - it is based on faith. The two are largely irreconcilable on a logical basis unless one of them is adapted.
With 1,000+ comments already down, I doubt anyone will see this. However, I have an on-topic anecdote I think is worth sharing.
The gf and I were walking on the beach yesterday when we came across a crab. We both noticed that it looked and moved like a spider, and so, wondered aloud if they (crabs and spiders) are related.
They are.
Then we sat on the beach and watched the sky turn pink as the sun set. Somewhere in the sky I saw the face of God. Of course, it wasn't a literal face, but rather, some sort of symbology that was picked up and processed somewhere in my primordial brain.
I felt loved.
I accept that God is my creator, and I accept that [S]He might have used a methodology such as evolution to create me. If God is "intelligent", it might be argued that mine is an "intelligent design"- but that is an issue for Philosophy class, not Biology class; I know of no way to objectively test this hypothesis.
But Godless science? What unmitigated nonsense! Einstein was godless? Newton was godless? It hurts my soul to see a force as powerful as God being whored to win elections. If Jesus does exist, and if he keeps a watchful eye on us (as his fanatics declare), I have to assume he is very disappointed in us right now.
barack to the future?
Leave the pursuit of Truth for philosophy and religion.
Religion has nothing whatsoever to do with truth, capital-T or not. The basis of religion is faith - ie. belief in the abscence of, and indeed in the face of, any evidence or support.
Thos religious people trying so desperately to find evidence for their belief, to show that some contrary idea must be wrong no matter what, do not, in all probability actually have faith. Whether they came to their religion unthinkingly, via their parents, or converted from a desire to belong, to find answers, or just because all their neighbours did, they did not really have the unthinking, against-all-evidence accepting faith that is required (or if they had it, they lost it again after the first heady rush).
They have, somewhere, a small voice insisting that their religion doesn't match reality, and that it doesn't seem supported by any evidence - that indeed the more we learned about the world, the less it seems to fit with what's being told in the pulpit. This seditious thinking horrifies them, and so they become loud, vocal and argumentative, tryign at every turn to discredit and distort anything and anybody perceived to threaten that which they wish oh so desperately to be true, but that they can't just accept on faith. These people are not trying to convince the rest of us; they are just trying to convince themselves.
And yet, truth would destroy religion. If we got real, solid, uneqivocal proof of the reality of, say christianity, being correct, it would be destroyed. With a god as a matter of fact in the heavens, and with Jesus sitting in the branch office in Rome taking petitions and holding press conferences it'd cease to be a thing of wonder or comfort. We'd just have another repressive dictatorship, but a supernatural one this time. It would not longer be a religion since there is no longer anything there to believe in - you do not need to believe in something which is manifestly there, after all. It's be just another power messing up our lives, but this time something powerful enough that we can (and will) lay the responsibility for every messed up thing in the world at their feet. I'd give it all of six months before approval ratings of the most benevolent Jesus to zoom past Bush on the way down into the basement.
And meanwhile, every attempt at connecting religion with science in the way these people are doing ends up weakening religion, just as the connection of religion to conservative politics does. Every time religion is pitted against science and ends up being wrong, that is one small blow against its credibility. Each time one of thosevocal religious people get caught dissembling or spouting hate it's another indication that the talk about religion inducing honesty and respect is just talk with no meaning. And the tighter religion is tied to any particular cause or political stance, the less all the people not espousing that stance feel welcome in that religion.
Me, I welcome it. Tie religion hard enough to a specific, far-right set of politics, and the societal ubiquity of religion in the US may well take a body-blow when those policies crumble (and all political movements falter and wilt - or self-destruct more spectacularily - eventually).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
That Dawkins does not suffer fools gladly is well-known. That he shows convincingly that evolution is not only possible but demonstrable to an intelligent (not necessarily "well-educated") layperson is a tribute to his grasp of science. Read "The Blind Watchmaker", "The Selfish Gene", and then try to argue "faith". He may be a "zealot" in the sense of "inspired, enthusiatic" but not as "fanatical or dogmatic" like many religious folk I meet. Read him first, then think.
The strong are bad and the weak are good - because they're not strong enough to be bad.
It discusses such things as:
When I first saw your post, it was being moderated "insightful", not "funny". There clearly were people who weren't getting the joke, including moderators. History has repeatedly shown that on Slashdot there is a significant percentage of people who will believe just about any foolish idea about the United States or the current administration if it portrays them in a bad light, even when it is plainly contrary to evidence, common sense, and other people taking responsibility for it. You only have to look that the appalling nonsense over the 9/11 conspiracy, blaming it on the US government, to get a taste of it. Clinton Derangement Syndrome was bad enough, Bush Derangement Syndrome is ever worse.
As to my point, it was that the "science hostile" Bush administration (that has a plan for space flight to Mars) is in fact monitoring and testing for the dangerous strains of bird flu, and that they aren't being so stupid as to deny mutation/evolution of it.
Kudos on a +5 funny though.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
> I've always wondered how they could have evolved from something like the sabre toothed cat.
Actually, it is the other way around. Large, saber-tooth cats evolved separately several times throughout history from different base feline stocks. The domestic house cat likely derives from similar sized wild cats: http://ds.dial.pipex.com/agarman/blackfoo.htm/
If i'm not mistaken (no sources, but I do recall reading as such a few years ago), science refuted that theory many many years before it was generally accepted to be false, but was censored by the religious powers of the day.
Ah... here's a source: http://www.imahero.com/herohistory/galileo_herohis tory.htm
And another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo#Church_contro versy
Don't accuse science of being wrong, but then turn a blind eye to the fact that religion has actively tried to suppress scientific knowledge (based on evidence determined via scientific method), simply because it does not agree with their stories.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.