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In America, 46% of People Hold a Creationist View of Human Origins
An anonymous reader writes "The latest Gallup poll is out, and it finds that 46% of Americans hold the view that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. According to Gallup, the percentage who hold this view has remained unchanged since 1982, when they first started asking the question. Roughly 33% of Americans believe in divinely guided evolution, and 15% believe that humans evolved without any supernatural help."
Sure it is.
Who created the devine creator?
In fact the idea of a devine creator is 2x as silly, since it requires that the devine creator was created and from nothing.
There's a big difference between what people tell pollsters because they think that's what they *should* say, verses what they actually do or believe
Even assuming what you say is true, it's still a pretty strong reflection on how screwed up your society is that people are coerced into espousing a particular worldview due to pressure.
Land of the free indeed.....
They are not dumb. They are victims of an virulently infectious and devastating mental illness (faith). They can't really help it and they should not be insulted for it any more than a kid with polio should be insulted about being in a wheel chair.
That doesn't tell you much about the demographics involved.
Those 1,024 adults could have been somewhat self-selected. What kind of person answers the telephone without first confirming who the call is from, then proceeds to answer a bunch of inane questions? A person stupid enough to believe in creationism, that's who.
You'd think this is actually just the ignorance of 'Dumb Americans.' That isn't so. The reason is evolution is a deal breaker due to the structure of the Christian religion.
Kalinka told me the following.
It doesn't have anything to say about the existence or non-existence of any gods. It is a problem with the way the Mythos of Christianity works in particular.
The Mythos of Christianity absolutely depends on a a literal understanding of Genesis. In Judaism, Genesis can be metaphor, it changes nothing. But the Sacrifice of Jesus is contingent on an event called the fall of man, where Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, angering Yahweh (God) and damning all Humans to Hell save for a few Jewish Prophets and anyone who accepts Jesus as the Savior.
The fall of man is considered the *Primary Sin* which sends us to Hell. (The main Reason.)
If The Book of Genesis is metaphorical, then Jesus died for nothing because no fall of man ever occurred for Yahweh to have a reason to send us to Hell to begin with. Ergo, Christianity is collapses because Saint Paul was a liar.
This is why Christians have a problem with Evolution and Jews do not.
The real reason that this doctrine that Paul created was put into place was to exclude the Jews from Salvation.
He didn't for see the evolution problem. That came along later.
If the Garden of Eden never happened, the fall never happened. then there would be no need for the death of Jesus Christ. Which means that Christianity was wrong all along. Biological evolution collapses a core foundation of Christianity.
in other words, 46% of americans are dumb
If by "dumb" you mean "below median intelligence", that's approximately correct.
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Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn if these people firmly believe life on earth is less than 10.000 years old, or they are just saying that because they heard it in bible class. The fact is these morons vote, and they are ruining things for the rest of us.
Not that it matters, but your logic is flawed anyway. The definition of a divine creator is an entity that just is and was never created. Since such a creator would have created even time itself, it is nonsensical to ask who created the creator since that would imply that time existed before creation.
I think the problem is in the inability of religious people to come to terms with the fact that adding a "creator" into the equation only complicates things, it doesn't simplify them. Arguing against the notion of the relatively simple entity that was the primordial universe just springing up into existence, with the idea that universe was created by another entity "just existing", only much more complex, capable of human-like mental processes combined with vast knowledge and abilities, seems somewhat redundant and ridiculous to me. Ultimately, you are facing an even more difficult question.
Ezekiel 23:20
Wow, 8 AC responses to the question so far. You should get a /. achievement for that or something.
It does amaze me how many people believe "anyone who disagrees with me is just to stupid to vote". Yeah, here's the thing: if we did have a dictatorship, you wouldn't get to be El Presidente for Life, the guy who disagress with you on everything would get the job. Stupid people voting beats stupid people in tyrannical control any day!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No.
The minister who believes all gays should be jailed believes that because his faith in his religion demands that he condemn homosexuality.
Where do your morals come from?
Do they have an objective rational basis?
Or do you believe them because someone or something you are not permitted to question told you to believe them?
Morality dictated by authority is not moral. It is just as likely to be abhorrent as it is to be good. It is arbitrary. It is the exact same thing if it causes you to believe as the minister you mention, or to respect your parents, to not eat pork, to not kill, or blow up airplanes.
My morality is a superior morality. It is formed from an objective rational basis. Justice, liberty and equality are not well served by irrational thought based on the crumbling edifice of religions built on a mountain of skulls.
Why do I say that faith is a mental illness? Because it is. It behaves exactly like a virus The mechanism of infection takes over the mental machinery of the host and modifies it to ensure that it propagates throughout the population, just as an organic virus infects a cell and takes over its genetic machinery to propagate itself. The faithful are strongly compelled to spread their faith to others.
Faith itself is belief in the absence of reason, belief in the face of contradiction. It makes it easier for someone to believe in things that are objectively and morally wrong. And these sometimes malevolent and violent memes follow in the wake of faith like secondary infections follow the compromised immune system of an HIV victim. These memes con often not be separated from the basis of faith and they form a complementary complex that further spreads the infection (often by eliminating the uninfected or those infected by a competing vector by violent force).
I used to be very religious. I was a fundamentalist christian once. The more I learned about God, the happier I became to realize that he was nothing more the dark specter of a fevered mind.
You don't need science to disprove god - logic is sufficient.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.