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

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, you're wrong. The Urey-Miller Experiment tested a theory that organic compounds evolved from inorganic compounds over time, in hypothetical ancient Earth conditions. That's nothing like the blind belief that god created the universe with a word.

It's anti-intellectual posers who are afraid of science who look at the ongoing philosophical debates on the definition of "life" and flee into useless blind beliefs like Creationism. People who use the words of logic to pretend to dissect science. You know, the kind of people who post badly hidden Creationist propaganda on Slashdot, using their stupidity and disrespect for learning as a cover for their theocrat agenda.

The people we're discussing in disgust while reading this story, because so many Americans are so ignorant.

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

[Tet]

Isn't evolution still based on a blind belief that someday in the past, life just magically began with a strike of lightning?

No. Evolution explains how one species turns into another over time. It says nothing about how the original one got there in the first place. Sure, there are various theories, such as the lightning strike you mentioned. But they're not part of the science that is evolution, (at least as the word is most commonly used).

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

[hackstraw]

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

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[tsm_sf]

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.

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

[Sirfrummel]

I concur, the only wooshing sound that happened in this circumstance was the other poster falling back in his chair.

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?

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Thangodin]

Yeah, but you usually fix the bugs. Our eyes are built inside out, the birth canal should not go through the pelvis (the opening is too small for our huge human head, requiring babies to be born with immature brains and women to have problematically wide hips), the size of our brains has squashed our sinuses and pushed our jaws out of alignment, etc, etc.

Can you imagine the comments in the code?

// I'm not happy with this but it *seems* to work...

// HACK HACK HACK HACK HACK

// Old generic mammal code, needs to be replaced!

// Required by large brain code--refactor if time permits

// Copied from chimp project--doesn't really work well there either.

// FIX ME!!!

I wouldn't want him working on my project...

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Brett Johnson]

The most apparent flaw is that the theory of Evolution as I understand it proposes that living, conscious creatures were generated from inanimate matter.

Evolution occurs in increments - some big, but most very small. The origins of life are believed to be extremely simple organic molecules that had some ability to replicate. [See research into the origins of life, such as the primordial soup experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life/ ] Complex attributes, such as binocular vision, opposable thumbs, and consciousness arrive much later in the evolutionary timline. This relates to your second "observed flaw":

Another, albeit less easy to understand flaw is that the theory of Evolution proposes that higher forms of life (e.g. humans) Evolved from lower forms of life (e.g. monkeys/apes).

This pattern is driven by the "survival of the fittest" mechanism described by Darwin in the book. Evolution is spurred by mutations in the genome [mutations caused by transcription error, radiation/chemical damage, etc]. Most mutations are benign. Many mutations are detrimental - resulting in disability and/or death. Some mutations may allow an organism to better survive in its environment - better camouflage, faster attack/escape, ability to digest different "food", etc. Organisms that are more likely to survive are more likely to live long enough to procreate and pass on those beneficial attributes. [See http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/1 1/18_smallpox.shtml/] Some mutations are both detrimental and beneficial - the defect that causes sickle-cell anemia also provides some protection against malaria. [See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/2/l_0 12_02.html/]

Our definition of "higher forms of life" is obviously biased, but we could probably agree it involves the addition of some attribute that increases the complexity of the organism in such a way as to significantly improve its chance of survival. The increased brain mass of humans allowed us to push our use of tools and language to the point where we could hunt and gather more effectively, communicate abstract ideas, maintain a record of experiences, radically adapt ourselves to our environment and our environment to ourselves, and ponder the origins of the universe and life.

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.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[tbone1]

It's certainly been around since 1620.

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.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[zerocool^]

Right, "Theory" in science, and "Theory" in popular conversation are not the same thing. When you say "I don't know where I left my keys, but I've got a good theory", you mean hypothesis.

A "Scientific fact" is usually something that can be expressed as a simple equation or formula. Anything that can't be reduced to that level of certainty probably will never be anything but a Theory.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[btlzu2]

i don't think so whatsoever. the good thing about science is it systematically corrects itself via peer review when contrary evidence arrives--even if "correction" means scrapping the whole thing. That's what WORKS about science.

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:

• Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa. That prediction has been supported by fossil and genetic evidence (Ingman et al. 2000).
• Theory predicted that organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments should have higher mutation rates. This has been found in the case of bacteria infecting the lungs of chronic cystic fibrosis patients (Oliver et al. 2000).
• Predator-prey dynamics are altered in predictable ways by evolution of the prey (Yoshida et al. 2003).
• Ernst Mayr predicted in 1954 that speciation should be accompanied with faster genetic evolution. A phylogenetic analysis has supported this prediction (Webster et al. 2003).
• Several authors predicted characteristics of the ancestor of craniates. On the basis of a detailed study, they found the fossil Haikouella "fit these predictions closely" (Mallatt and Chen 2003).
• Evolution predicts that different sets of character data should still give the same phylogenetic trees. This has been confirmed informally myriad times and quantitatively, with different protein sequences, by Penny et al. (1982).
• Insect wings evolved from gills, with an intermediate stage of skimming on the water surface. Since the primitive surface-skimming condition is widespread among stoneflies, J. H. Marden predicted that stoneflies would likely retain other primitive traits, too. This prediction led to the discovery in stoneflies of functional hemocyanin, used for oxygen transport in other arthropods but never before found in insects (Hagner-Holler et al. 2004; Marden 2005).

Note that the poll only covered Japan and Europe

[bunions]

I can't believe I'm trying to defend America's honor by pointing out that we may still be better than Burma or Pakistan. :(

Praytell!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some claim politization. I say Americans are simply observant. Take a look around in America lately, would you believe evolution?

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.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[bunions]

"I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"

Maybe you should think a little more.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

because you don't know the very first thing about evolution.

humans did not evolve from apes. humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.

apes are just as evolved as humans. evolution does not have a goal. apes are not trying to become human. everyone is just trying to survive in their environment as best as they can.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[nizo]

Ahh, but humans didn't evolve from apes; they shared a common ancestor (who no longer exists). Nowhere in evolution does it state we descended directly from apes, current day or otherwise.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[polyomninym]

It's called a fork in development. Consider OpenBSD and FreeBSD.

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.

I believe

[Phoenix666]

in evolution because I personally evolved from a lower life form--I used to be a Republican.

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,

No evolution here

[ubergeek65536]

It's understandable why many Americans don't believe in evolution -- It's because evolution only happens outside of the US.

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.)