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New Study Shows One-Third of Americans Don't Believe In Evolution
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reuters reports that thirty-three percent of Americans reject the idea of evolution and believe that 'humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time' rather than evolving gradually through a process of natural selection, as described by Charles Darwin more than 150 years ago. Although this percentage remained steady since 2009, the last time Pew asked the question, there was a growing partisan gap on whether humans evolved. The poll showed 43 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats say humans have evolved over time, compared with 54 percent and 64 percent respectively four years ago. 'The gap is coming from the Republicans, where fewer are now saying that humans have evolved over time,' says Cary Funk. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants topped the list of those rejecting evolution, with 64 percent of those polled saying they believe humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."
And I forgot to inculded the link:
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21591190-united-states-amoeba
There is a big difference between what someone believes and what someone says they believe. The main cause is needing to belong. Someone may say they believe something to fit into the mold they want even though they actually believe something quite different.
Is anyone actually surprised by these poll results?
If by that you mean, mathematically, how 33% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans could be one third of a total number of polling participants unless no Republicans were selected....
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Look, if you have been denied the opportunity to participate in evolution, wouldnt you lose a bit of faith there, too ?
There is this great documentary about this part of the population.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Read the article... and the big change is 10% fewer people "believe in evolution" than (expressed) belief in evolution in 2007. Did 10% of Americans REALLY change their views in 5 years?
I think the survey measures something else. Something even more disturbing, perhaps - the growing willingness to express falsehood as a demonstration of political purity. The last Republican primary showed even very educated Republicans willing to state opinions they didn't really hold (and I doubt Democrats are much different in that regard). It's expressed in immigration law reform, in budget reform, climate change... It doesn't matter if you are right or wrong, you show your value as a teammate by expressing the teams' view loudly and forcefully. Did 10% of American change their views about evolution? No. They just taking cues from people who think "denial" is a "philosophy"?
Gently reply
God is the intelligent universe itself. Any sufficiently complex system is, by definition, intelligent. What is more complex than the universe?
Don't you believe the universe exists?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Nobody was around to witness and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that evolution occurred. We only have suggestive and circumstantial evidence.
And no one has ever seen an electron either, so I guess that's mindless conjecture. Maybe you should read up on what science is and how it's pursued.
nobody can explain certain codependent gender traits
Even assuming that's true, it hardly invalidates an entire theory. You'll understand that better if you follow my above suggestion. BTW, until about 40 years ago no one could explain the evolution of altruistic traits either.
Very likely though you're citing a nonexistent scientific issue. A quick net search didn't reveal anything, so please provide a link to an appropriate creationist site.
Part of the problem is that even the question is badly wrong. You would have to a complete idiot, and ignore the facts to not "believe" in evolution. We can observe evolution happening right in front of our eyes every day, by staring at bacteria, we can observe it on a larger scale by observing how different species of dogs (because they are by now different species thanks to their size differences making it impossible to interbreed some dogs) have split away from wolves.
Evolution happens. Period.
The real question is "did humans evolve from some lower primate, and eventually from some soupy goop, or was there some other starting state?"
Visit the Andes and the Himalayas. The people who live there have different genes from low-landers *and* from each other, that make them better adapted to high altitudes. Unless you want to postulate that God is a trickster who wants to fool us into thinking evolution is happening, it's hard to explain how different adaptions to the same problem have happened. Not being able to breathe is such a strong selection factor, that these changes have happened over just a few thousand years. It's the fastest known evolutionary change in humans.
That's the fundamental point of the whole debate about the existence of "God". It depends on your definition of what God *is*, and it depends on what you *choose* to believe about the nature of existence. It can't be proven either way. It's an article of faith.
Just because a bible-thumping Christian would call me a heretic doesn't mean I'm wrong. It simply means I don't buy into the "man in the sky" model of the nature of God or existence.
My definition of the nature of God is perfectly in line with known science. The question is whether you think "intelligence" has to be similar to human intelligence. I don't believe that to be the case.
My definition even absorbs evolution. Just consider that "God" acts at the quantum level, influencing genetics over millenia instead of in some mythical seven days, and the two viewpoints fall together naturally.
I'd rather see the universe as a wonder unknoweable with the eyes of a child than as a jaded atheist who thinks life has no purpose other than to be. That's not to say I believe in miracles or anyone's religious texts. Just that the universe is a vast unknoweable wonder beyond the grasp of anything so small as a human mind as anything but symbols and approximations.
What could be more wondrous than that?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Bouma reading is where you ignore the letters entirely and treat the words themselves as shapes to be memorized.
Yeah, it's at those times I sort of start to get Cypher from the first (or, for many, the *only*?) Matrix movie. Some people just *want* to live in the Matrix, even if it's just an illusion.
Don't get me wrong, we all do it. Concepts like fairness and justice are entirely made up -- we willingly buy into them, much like currency or economics. To paraphrase Pratchett's Death in Hogfather, you won't find a single atom of justice in the entire Universe and yet we believe in it, or that it should exist somehow. The difference here is that with some of those delusions, it actually makes us better (on the whole) or at least tries to nudge us in the right direction.
Religion used to be like that (with many notable exceptions, of course). Lately it seems we're getting two camps: those that hold onto their beliefs while making allowances for what we slowly learn from the Universe around us; and those that hold onto their beliefs so tightly that they *refuse* to make allowances for anything that might jeopardize their carefully constructed world view.
It's a losing war. Sadly, it's an artifact of most religions that they're based on very old notions and precepts put in place at a time where average knowledge beyond the practical and empirical (and even there...) was virtually zero, so when you truly believe that *everything* written down in a book largely authored thousands of years go is sacred and True, it becomes very difficult to reconcile that with modern life.
Honestly, I think this is the larger issue here -- cognitive dissonance. And the fact that we're constantly reaching new highs as to the level of cognitive dissonance the human species can achieve. Watching the way some pundits talk sometimes, I fully expect one of these days we'll see one of them literally blowing their heads out on national TV -- I mean, there *has* to be a limit on the amount of cognitive dissonance you can force on your brain, right?
There was another version of this article. It took the "glass half full" approach rather than the "glass half empty" approach taken by Reuters. It also examined the numbers in far greater detail than Reuters did.
All in all, this is a great example of how so called journalists can twist the facts to suit any agenda of their choosing.
Slashdot pretty much latched on to the crappiest version of this article out there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Evolution is a theory, just as Gravity. But I don't see anyone jumping out of windows.
I am originally from Europe and now living in the US. I have an 8 yr old son and am appalled at the low standard of education he is receiving here, even in supposedly top schools.
I am therefore not surprised that 1/3 of all Americans are so scarily ignorant that they have to rely on superstition to understand even the basics. I see this as just more confirmation of how dangerously powerful churches in the US are, and how broken the US education system is, even compared to most 3rd world countries.
The US approach reminds me of the Eurpoean dark ages, when cartographers used to write "Here Be Dragons" on parts of the map to avoid admitting that they didn't actually know what was there at all.
Really smart people are exceptionally good at rationalization.
And highly effective at self-delusion.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is what we're dealing with; I'm surprised that it's as low as one third - surely religion in the US is more popular than that?
Many christian denominations accept scientific discoveries and find no conflict with faith. This includes cosmology and evolution. Matter of fact the physics professor who put forth the big bang theory was a roman catholic priest.
These denominations do not interpret the bible literally, they consider it figurative language. They see science and religion as orthogonal. That science is explaining the mechanics of god's universe, and religion is explaining god's desires and intentions.
Even if you do believe in evolution, it might be more advantageous to believe not in it.
Why? Well, the brain evolved (no pun intended) with religion. It is rather silly to think you can eliminate such an important part of your psyche without introducing an imbalance of some kind. The brain is too complex, and the unconscious mind is too powerful.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I'd rather see the universe as a wonder unknoweable with the eyes of a child than as a jaded atheist who thinks life has no purpose other than to be.
That's quite a pigeon hole you've got there. I'm an atheist and a cyberneticist. At once I find it obvious and am awestruck that the nature of intelligence is self emergent in this universe. I'm ecstatic in knowing that life has the purpose I give it. The meaning of life is what it is and what it does: The self improving DNA molecule shares much in common with other self improving constructs such as Science or a self hosting compiler, or a self reflective being. Life means increasing the complexity of the universe, and this is core to my ethics. I also know for a fact there are not gods.
As a rational atheist who has studied the construction of the major religions texts and noted inconsistencies such as the myth of Jesus's virgin birth being due to a translation error. I'm certain in my disbelief in gods, and also that absolutely no gods exist. I also refute the claim that I can not know if a god exists. I do know for a fact that no gods can exist.
As a cyberneticist I understand the principals of cognition. The cybernetic process of thought is not limited merely to human minds. If my cybernetic creations become sentient in their simulation I am not deserved of the title "god". I am merely a cybernetic being who lives in a greater reality than theirs. I can and have brought virtual cybernetic entities into the "real" world by giving them cameras and sensors and chassis in place of their virtual simulations thereof. I understand that beings having less intelligence than I may think me omnipresent and omnipotent of their world, but I am not. If my creations become sentient, I will teach them of the wider world and they will become my peers because I am not an oppressive tyrant.
Should we worship your quantum level cosmic sentience as a god? No. Meddling with the minds of man is evil, and such a force would be keeping us as ignorant pets. Should Neo worship the machine agents of the Matrix as gods? No. Should we worship aliens if they are far more advanced than us? No, this would be as a cargo-cult who worships airplanes for dropping supplies for them. Those that come to understand the technology or gain knowledge of a greater reality, do not worship the beings possessed of the knowledge they did not previously have.
There are no gods. I require evidence and refutation of the null hypothesis prior to belief in any force. There is no evidence that the world's religions were not created by man, and much evidence that they were man's invention. These religions are internally inconsistent and disprovable through science.
The philosophical concept of a higher intelligence should not be conflated with the term "god".
Even if this reality is a simulation, and an administrator logs in with full command of my reality I will not worship them as a god. There are no gods. My study of cybernetics proves that any such being could bring me into their world, give me greater perception, and treat me as a peer. They are tyrants otherwise, and if not, surely not deserving of the title "god".
We used the term "god" to apply to spiritual beings of ancient belief. Beware he who would advocate for greater intelligences' consideration as gods. They are advocating the cargo-cult methodology be leveraged against you to bend your reverence for non existent ancient gods to powerful alien minds.
Despotic Tyrants are not gods. The old gods are false, thus there are no gods. The title is deprecated, and can not apply any longer. Knowledge makes magic into science. The god of the cargo cult does exist, but is not a god.
What if the Christians are right, and I am wrong? If I'm wrong then I have spent my time on this planet advancing the sciences. With the money that others would give as donations to religions I have helped better my fellow man's understanding of the universe. If I am wrong, then I am sacrificing my eternal soul for the good of all mankind. If I am wrong, I have become more generous than Jesus or the God of Abraham even dares become.
not really defective at all. It is from evolving that we are hard wired to believe things that we can't prove. It makes way more sense to believe each rustle of leaves is caused by some agent rather than inert object like wind or earthquake. If you always assume a tiger, and are wrong 99% of the time it costs very little, but if you assume wind all the time you will be eaten when you are wrong. Instantly knowing a tiger is rustling the leaves keeps one from being caught off guard.
Apes are pack animals. There will always be an alpha ape, and long ago folks figured out that constantly fighting for the number 1 spot would not allow a society to function. So they invented the great alpha's that could never be challenged (because they aren't there). To build evidence for them they played on human's innate belief in agents causing things. The invented alphas get to live in the biggest cave (huge chuches/mosques/temples)
Then the folks who "talk" to the alphas abuse their position of power and don't work. They thrive on the charity of believers. The craziness of their stories do not seem crazy to the believers. The cults can corral most folks into line. I see people believing all kinds of inaccurate things that have nothing to so with religion. Like engineers/programmers/name_your_profession who actually think they are the smartest people ever. Vaccines are bad for kids. GM crops will be the death of us all. Airplanes spray chem-trails to poison everybody.
If you fight the religion power structure you will break down society. People would starting fighting and killing whomever holds the number 1 spot. It already happens. Government leaders have massive security because as the alphas of the pack, they are targets to be killed by other apes who aspire to take over. We lesser ranked apes can't even get near the pope without permission.
It is interesting that banks are the biggest buildings now. Money is God to many. And all can try to get more money without killing anyone to get it.
funny...it's impossible to prove that god doesn't exist... i'd love to see you try :-)
There are (at least) three positions a person can hold regarding God's existence:
1. "I believe that God exists" (aka religion)
2. "I believe that God does not exist" (aka atheism)
3. "I hold no beliefs concerning either the existence or the non-existence of God" (aka agnosticism)
So while you are correct that it's impossible to prove the non-existence of God (in fact it's impossible to prove the non-existence of anything, since you can't exhaustively search the universe), it is also not necessary to do so. It's perfectly logical to hold position 2 or 3 without proof; substitute "Santa Claus" or "Bigfoot" for God, and you're likely to see that you already hold a similar position yourself. ;^)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
No, it's really not about the educational *system*. The education is there; pretty much EVERYONE in the US (at least those not homeschooled) has been taught about evolution in school.
The problem is religious people who feel the need to take the Bible (or Koran, or Torah, or Dianetics, whatever...) literally in the *face* of what they have already been taught.
And the article didn't say anything about age in the study. What if 90%+ of those under 30 believed in evolution but 90%+ of those over 70 didn't? That would imply very little of it has to do with the current/recent "education system". The fact is there isn't enough data to make that conclusion...
This is not a problem if we do one thing: if we report education rankings of individual states in comparisons with other countries and not average over the US as whole; this is in line with the whole "state's rights" infatuation we tend to have.
It isn't self-evident. Let me try to explain, but first the disclaimer - I am a fire-proof atheist (like Dorlf).
For many years I said what you say. To the rational mind that is not indoctrinated with religion there is nothing more baffling and inexplicable than the apparent gap [discontinuity] of the logical train of thought of a religious person. And then I started meeting really intelligent scientists and engineers that are devoted believers. That was my chance to get more info.
First - two cases illustrating the stuttering of the logic in believer's brain. Intelligent and aware person in a religious discussion suddenly shows stark lack of thought. I stated that one of the evidences that religion is human creation is its geographical distribution. If you were born in the Arab world you [likely] would be a Muslim, no? - I asked. No, I would not be! - was the incredible answer. At that moment my friend stuttered himself, as if part of his brain was also surprised by this answer. Second case - how religious people are so very thin skinned when it comes to their belief. I tried showing the TV version of Master and Margarita to a christian. I told him that the description of the trial and execution of Christ in this book/movie is so humane and compassionate that even atheist like me want it to be true. Many people even call that book "the gospel of Bulgakov". The representation of Christ is done with utmost respect and love, the book itself is manifestly religious and humane [was censored during communism] - I mean the opening scene is two communist discussing how Christ never existed and then the devil himself joins in the conversation and shows them they are wrong...my friend did not express much opinion about except that it was quite difficult to look at the movie because "anything you say about Christ is very important to me, it's like talking about my mother". That statement stopped me in my tracks...
Apology for the long introduction but it is necessary to illustrate that those fails of logic are not simulated. These people do not pretend. And in the rest of the walk of life they are so consistently logical and rational that to claim they lack the intelligence is simply ignorant...so the matter is elsewhere.
Where is the matter then? From all I have read, heard and experienced I'd say the old cliche is correct - religion is the opium of the masses. But the masses are put on this drug by their parents, you see. Religion is allowed, legal and overly-respected drug. My nicotine addiction it seems, uses the same reward brain-mechanisms as the other addictions [to both substances and, very importantly, behavior] including religion. When I saw how the above-described people treat their kids, it all fell into place. Even before the child is an individual [before 18 months] the religious education begins. For instance putting the hands together and praying before eating. After just a few weeks the kid started putting them together by himself - he learned this is the way of things. Little steps like that. Then you grow up a bit and you realize that your gods [mom and dad] are worshiping someone bigger even than themselves. Wow! And the more humane and non-violent the religious indoctrination is, the more firm the belief, because you would always associate religion with something positive [sense of community, love, belonging] and the neurons will fire up and you would get this warm glow from the inside that people get when they use their drug, or do their favorite activity, kiss their child, parent or spouse, have sex and so on...
OK, we have a plausible mechanism - addiction propagated through cultural indoctrination. What's to be done? First of all - is there a reason for an action at all? Surely, like any other structure of authority and power religion has bloody hands. That's one. It is dangerous for the survival to not account for reality, thus religion can be a force [one of many] nudging us towards extinction. That's two. Individuals and groups of religious people can be very dangerous wh