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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."
The average IQ is 100, after all...
yes - a third of the american population don't have a basic science education
33% of monkeys don't believe in it, either.
Republicans are such a perverted facsimile of what used to be a very reasonable party. If 6 years of Obama has taught us anything, it's that the empty can gets the grease. USA Politics desperately needs the GOP to fork into two factions - there are enough independents currently voting "D" to jump over to make a center-right candidate feasible. Center-right by US Standards, that is.
There is a statistically significant difference between Republicans and Democrats on this issue. That's just the reality of it.
At least 33% of Americans are fucking morons, so why should this be any sort of surprise?
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
...is that it's true whether or not you believe it.
Many people reject science and education in general. Make no mistake about that.
I had the misfortune of attending school with such trash (until rescued by boarding school), and rejecting science was the least of their problems. Such folk are why schools are Hellmouths. They are stupid, base and want to stay that way.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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
33% of the population are age 50 and over, where a significant portion had to suffer through "new math" and "bauma reading" during their school years, rather than actual math and phonics.
"His name was James Damore."
Oh, you mean a SCIENTIFIC theory? Then in that case it's a conspiracy of mass proportion. My god trumps your heathen lies.
Actually, I thought it would be higher than that, somewhere around 50% don't believe in evolution.
Although honestly I find the wording somewhat awkward, if someone asked me if I believed in evolution I would probably glare at them. Believe? I certainly find the evidence supporting that theory convincing, but what does it have to do with belief?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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
yes - a third of the american population don't have a basic science education
If it was only about education. Unfortunately it isn't about the extreme religious types being ignorant. They know about evolution, the debates have been made, the evidence has been brought fourth and the facts presented time and time again. But it is not the answer they want.
I have on two separate occasions debated with close relatives about religion and evolution and after coaxing the same answer from them both it is clear that they and other like minds embrace a delusion. They wanted answers to two questions that they absolutely felt must have answers. Questions about where we go when we die and why we were put on Earth in the first place. Not only did they need, and I mean absolutely need these answers, but they had to be good; like their is a heaven, and life has a divine purpose and a plan and its all sunshine and butterflies. They wouldn't even allow the conception that other possibilities could exist because that would shake the sanctity of the delusion that they embraced. To them if their was not heaven or divine purpose and god didn't lay everything out in this nice little plan for us then their was no meaning or purpose and what's the point. ....And this was not something I came to the conclusion by analyzing what was said to me from those arguments with family members. Those were literal statements, not the exact wording, but the idea was the same. So they willingly embrace a delusion and want, and I do mean want, to kill any facts, evidence or arguments that challenge their worldview. They would rather embrace a fantasy and believe they can make it real by closing their eyes and clicking their heels.
But notice that word: BELIEVE. Belief is not scientific. It is, I dare say, RELIGIOUS.
Dare! But there is the matter of what is more compatible with the evidence we see. Scientists didn't come to believe in the theory of evolution by happenstance.
A lot of people are not democrats neither republican. Stop thinking in binary terms.
That's okay. Personally, I don't believe in Republicans. Indeed, I'm pretty confident at this stage in my life that "Republicans" and "Americans" were things my Dad invented for bedtime stories when I was young to scare the crap out of me and keep me on the straight and narrow.
Yaz
Perhaps:
Thirty people asked the question self-identified as Democrats, and twenty said they believed in evolution. Of seventy self-identified Republicans, thirty said they believed in evolution. Another fifty people refused to give a party affiliation or said they had none, and all fifty said they believed in evolution. That means 50/150 "rejected" it, or 33%.
That's just my hypothesis to fit the observable data from TFS. We'd need to test it by reading TFA, or maybe the original polling data. Or we can practice bad reading comprehension and poor critical thinking, pretend we've found a flaw in the data, and reject it out of hand. Kind of like many people who don't believe in evolution.
You must be living in some alternate reality version of America. Because where I live, people with PhD in physics/math have 0 or 1 children while the welfare moms and illegal immigrant street vendors have 3++.
Economic success is only loosely correlated with IQ. You know what the best indicator of IQ is? A direct IQ test. An advanced degree is far closer to an IQ test than how much money one has.
'humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time'?
If this is really how they presented the question, then I dare say that a good amount of those 33% did not understand what was being asked here.
Someone who has no preference on the topic, or in science in general, would not necessarily make the connection to evolution, or even biology with such an abstract wording.
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.
At least this way we know where the Neanderthals ended up...
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.
Bouma reading is where you ignore the letters entirely and treat the words themselves as shapes to be memorized.
Is math not your forte? Here's one simple example:
270 people were asked.
100 of them identified as Democrats.
100 of them identified as Republicans.
70 of them identified as Green, Libertarian, Independent or some other affiliation.
33% of Democrats plus 57% of Republicans would be 90 people. That's one third of 270.
It's odd that proponents of the free market (with its "invisible hand") can reject evolution -- suggesting that only intelligent design (or straight up creationism) can explain how life got this way. The market and evolution are both amazing examples of "survival of the fittest"; why not accept the same mechanism/explanation for both?
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?
Some people believe in religion. Some people do not. Why do you feel so strongly about it that you have to condemn a significant portion of the population by belittling their beliefs? This reeks of the grand double standard. Be tolerant, but not of things you don't agree with. Schools aren't supposed to be indoctrination centers.
The responses that topics like this receive here are really disappointing. It doesn't speak well of the technology crowd.
About a quarter claim to believe in evolution, but say it is divinely controlled. The whole point of the theory of evolution is that speciation and adaptation result from natural selection rather than design. So "divinely controlled evolution" is really a longer way of saying "creationism".
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.
Age and Education are the interesting findings here, not political views:
Age:
- 18-29 age group - 68% evolution, 27% existed, 4% don't know
- 65+ age group - 49% evolution, 36% existed, 15% don't know
Education:
- College grad - 72% evolution, 24% existed, 4% don't know
- Some college - 62% evolution, 33% existed, 5% don't know
- High school or less - 51% evolution, 38% existed, 11% don't know
Side note: Kudos to the survey methodology being described in detail. Looks like it was properly designed.
No, it is not. It is a model that fits the observable facts pretty well and far better than all other serious competing models, and hence it is promoted from a hypothesis to a theory (also called a "standard model"). A theory is by no means a fact. Here is a competing hypothesis, that could well be true: All this evidence was planted as an intelligence test for the human race by some aliens. As that hypothesis has zero supporting evidence, it does not get to be a "theory". It could be the truth though.
What Science does here is to use Occam's Razor: If you have a well-supported theory and no serious competitor, assume the theory is likely the truth as basis for further scientific study. As such, assuming Evolution is right is just a way to allocate research resources rationally and efficiently. As long as the Scientific Method is in continued use down that path, it will either find more supporting evidence (a win for Science) or it will eventually find enough contradictory evidence that allows the formation of a new theory that is consistent with all known evidence (a win for Science as well). The thing about Science is that it works, no matter how bizarre the circumstances. Sometimes, it seems to indulge in runaway complexity though, see, for example, Quantum Theory. Whether that one is a good model of reality seems to be highly doubtful to me. Still the best one we have at this time.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, here is one fact: Most scientific output is of very bad quality. If anything, reviewing papers for publication has taught me that. By implication, most scientists are not very good at their job. Commercialization makes this worse: The mediocre is declared the norm and actually good scientists find it hard to get funding or find that they cannot do science anymore. This great dumbing down has been vastly advanced by the "MBA plague" taking over the universities. It is getting worse. Look for example, what Peter Higgs says about his chances of having a scientific career today http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-interview-underlying-incompetence. And he is certified one of the greatest minds in physics alive. Or think what Stephen Hawkins chances would have been if he had already been in a wheelchair.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Considering in 2012 29% percent of people identified as independents, 32% as Republican and 38% as Democrat my simple example numbers are actually pretty close to today's reality. In fact, if you look at 2004 (26 Ind, 37 Dem, 37 Rep), my percentages match up to the population exactly. Entirely plausible indeed.
So that makes neither math, nor English nor research your forte.
Many people reject science and education in general.
That is a tough spill to swallow for a lot of people who blame schools for everything. There are kids in school who just don't want to learn. No amount of shiny iPads or newfangled courses will change that. Ask some college kids why they are studying there, and most will answer:
I need to get a college degree to get a job.
. . . not many will say:
I'm here to learn.
This even goes right up to the top of the heap. I've heard premed students complain:
I hate organic chemistry . . . but I need a good grade in it to get into medical school
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
But today, we can't easily determine if all those specimen formed a single, continious procreation community, or if they were actually separated by time and place. There is just not enough of the fossil record right now to give a definite answer, we just have some hypotheses, that make more sense to us than others. But we are looking at a single genus (Homo) with several species and subspecies, which are very closely related. And we are looking at a time frame of 2.5 to 6 mio years (not 60,000 as you stated).
Dinosaurs are a very different kind of beast -- in the literal sense of the word. First, dinosaurs are not just a species or a genus, they cover two orders (Ornithischia and Saurischia), which would be comparable to analyzing the orders Primates and Dermoptera (colugos, batlike mammals from Southeast Asia), which are closely related and part of the superorder Euarchontoglires. The last common ancestor of the colugos and Homo sapiens lived about 80 mio years ago, which means that the evolution of the Homo sapiens from a comparably encompassing group than the dinosaurs took 80 mio years until today.
And then the time frame from the last known common ancestor of crocodiles and dinosaurs to the dinosaurs as we know them today took much less than 100 mio years. The Crurotarsi (modern crocodiles and their ancestors and related, but extinct groups) split about 270 mio years ago from the Ornithodira (pterosaurs, dinosaurs and today's birds), and the first dinosaurs appeared about 245 mio years ago (Prorotodactylus).
"it's self-evident. if you believe in unprovable things your brain is defective." not so long ago, radio was considered to be "magic". "Unprovable" things could also be worded as "things we haven't been able to prove / have not discovered / our senses do not detect, yet". We know that ultra violet light exists, but our eyes and brains do not detect it. Without technology, we would not know that UV existed, so, using your premise, our brains are defective. Uh, wrong... And This: "religion is the politics of spirituality". IOW, a smart person sees through the dogma of a religious sect, which is, after all, nothing more than a social group that functions the way all social groups do. They have rules of membership, and it is these rules that smart people see as being irrelevant to their spiritual values. For example, it is not true that you will go to hell if you are not baptized by complete immersion. Silly. Smart people see that there is no need to belong to a particular religion to have any spiritual values, and by and large, they are suspicious of the motivations of the religious leader, and skeptical of "worship"of some deity. Which is why some religions have a fit if you do not belong to a religious group. That makes you a threat to the foundation fo their social group, and they can't have that, so, whether you be atheist or an independent believer in some sort of cosmic order / cause and effect / karma, that makes you "the enemy". Religions do not liek people who ask too many questions and they insist that their dogma be taken on faith alone, and you are showing a lack of faith by asking too many questions. Which is why I got out of organized religion long ago. They do now want their followers to be too self aware, because self awareness leads to seeing through a social construct, and society in itself.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
It is reading based on short sentences printed on billboards making a witty slogan. The last billboards reads "Burma Shave".
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
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.
Perhaps it might be worth reflecting on the probability that the majority of people on either side of the debate have no real justification for their belief for or against evolution than that they identify with a social group who holds a particular stance on the issue. It's just as easy to fall in to the trap of thinking you're more intelligent and learned by looking down on creationists - while never having applied any kind of personal critical analysis on evolution except to think that God doesn't exist therefore the theory of evolution must be true - as it is for creationists to accept a thousands of years old interpretation of creation - without sharing the cultural context in which it was written and understood - from the book of Genesis.
We see the same thing with politics. Very few people have any real idea what the Republican and Democratic parties really believe, except for lazy mischaracterizations of the opposing party fueled by whatever echo chamber a person tends to consume their news and media from. Meanwhile we're completely distracted from the abuses of both parties in nearly every single newly passed piece of legislation pandering to lobbyists and campaign donors.
The obvious solution is to raise citizens who are able to critically think for themselves, but we're only getting worse in this regard the more we see the government intervening in public education, and things aren't looking much better in the private education sector.
really? i wonder why 1. energy and or matter cannot be created or destroyed. 2. there is no know process of turning inorganic matter into organic matter 3. there is no know process of turning organic matter into a life form.
#1 - This has relevance for what reason?
#2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea You are incorrect, it's been done since 1828.
#3 - http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703559004575256470152341984 You are incorrect, again. This is just one example of continuing research.
My suggestion is that you quit listening to whomever it is that's been filling you head with bullshit, and perhaps start learning some basics of chemistry and biology.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Before the gloating sets in, you have to put these numbers into perspective: a significant fraction of Europeans also do not believe in evolution; here is data from the UK:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/feb/01/evolution-darwin-survey-creationism
In addition, although scientific literacy is low in both Europe and the US, American adults are generally better informed on science than European adults:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-public/science-literacy-us-college-courses-really-count
Even people that claim to be "educated" fail at science.
Last I checked, "Science" and "The Scientific Method" had numerous requirements. If you wish to claim that humans evolved from other primates, or dogs evolved from another species, or cats from another, we lack proof. This is why "Evolution" is called a "Theory".
Actually, no. An idea without proof is a "hypothesis." When you get evidence that confirms the hypothesis, it becomes a theory. No matter how much evidence piles up, it never graduates to anything else in practice. A scientific theory is only upheld if it is a way of explaining a set of observations. the more observations a theory fits or "explains", the more powerful and well supported the theory is. In this case, the facts are that people keep digging up fossils out of the ground. They can date those fossils by using many dating techniques, and can determine that they are very old. that the younger fossils show up higher in the strata than the older ones. When they put some of the fossils together to get a good idea of the animals they came from, it seems the animals are different at different times (the remains and fossils you find at different depths are from different kinds of animals.) There are for examples, many identified versions of dog-like animals, that aren't exactly dogs in the fossil record ( http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/otherprehistoriclife/a/Prehistoric-Dogs-The-Story-Of-Dog-Evolution.htm ), cats that aren't exactly cats ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felidae#Fossil_felids ) and yes different types of monkeys/gorillas/humans that aren't exactly like the ones we see walking about today ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fossil_primates. ) These different types of animals show up in the same place at different times, based on their depth in the fossil record.
There is also that in many parts of the world there are species that are similar to, but different from other species which are in neighbouring areas but separated by barriers such as mountains or large bodies of water. Classic example here is the Galapagos Finches. They don't look like finches from the mainland, they are all different on each island, with the differences suiting type of food available. There is also the fact that humans have been able to make dog breeds over relatively short periods of time, selective breeding clearly can alter skeletal characteristics.
There is also the strange poverty of designs in large animals. They have the same types of skeletons, same number of appendages and limbs, and innumerable common features that lead to groupings of animals into hierarchies of similarity. Once genetics were discovered, these hierarchies of similarity were found to be reflected in the degree of similarity of species genomic variation. Humans have genes that are 98% identical to those of chimpanzees, but only 50% identical to those of bananas.
but we can go beyond fossils, taxonomies, and genetics into innumerable examples from the living world that make perfect sense through an evolutionary lens. take a look at this: ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22848088 ) where it shows how there are hundreds of different species of fig, and each one or two has a corresponding single species of wasp that pollinates it. Or the fact that our eye design (same design used in all animals with a backbone) is "backwards" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye#Evolutionary_baggage ) in that nerve fibres pass in front of the retina and all go to the centre whe
My kids came home from their first day of school asking "are people really this stupid?" They weren't asking about the students. They were asking about the teachers. They knew kids didn't know stuff, but the idea that their teachers might be ignorant also was a shock. My answer: yes dear, but don't let them know you know how stupid they are, or they will hurt you.
I wish I could claim this was the benefit of my genome, but it is environmental. If the kid learns to read at 18 mos, they will develop some way to evaluate the text on their own and establish their own ethical domain. They will experience the mainstream educational method in that context, objectively finding it ridiculous.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Although honestly I find the wording somewhat awkward, if someone asked me if I believed in evolution I would probably glare at them. Believe? I certainly find the evidence supporting that theory convincing, but what does it have to do with belief?
I see this particular stupidity come up whenever evolution is discussed. It needs to stop. If you find the evidence convincing -- and you are convinced -- then by definition you believe in evolution. The role of evidence is to provide good grounds for belief. There's no sense in denying that evidence has nothing to do with belief, because to do so would require that there is some "knowledge fairy" that somehow drops the knowledge in your head, bypassing belief, when the evidence in sufficiently strong.
If you are rational, the role of evidence should be to shift your beliefs. Weak evidence should shift it weakly; strong evidence should shift it more strongly. The problem with creationists is not that they believe in creationism, but rather that evidence does not shift their beliefs at all. That's why they are irrational. Rationality is not about what you believe but in your beliefs' response to evidence.
Stop claiming that scientific evidence has nothing to do with belief. It makes you look almost as dumb and unsophisticated as creationists.