Only 39% of Americans believe in evolution

[celestial]

...according to Gallup. Pretty amazing, huh?

[finleeport]

Count me as one of them

[doggie]

Not really as the study said lack of education and more church. It has been education that has reduced violent death and made us live longer.

Ignorance makes us primitive and hateful and fearful.

[alaeangelorum]

About 50% in the UK - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... reationism

[Austin]

And people wonder why some of us don't believe in American exceptionalism :roll:

[freejoytoo]

Which is why I am pleased with this piece of news:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/201 ... NTCMP=SRCH

He should go over to the states!

[emmiedahl]

That's because evolution is not taught in public schools, and when it *is* taught, it must be "balanced" with a non-scientific viewpoint. People are being told in schools that they need to choose between religion and verifiable fact, a false dichotomy. So evolution remains a vague, strange idea that involves chimps and early people mating, and only college-level science students ever get to witness the simplicity and elegance of the idea.

[sacrilicious]

I'm pretty sure I started learning the basic concepts of evolution in public middle school and certainly had the theory more fleshed out in high school. I'm flabbergasted that more people don't believe in it. I don't think there was anything extraordinary about my schools.

[emmiedahl]

I was taught evolution in public high school, but only the most rudimentary elements. If the teacher had taken another hour, he could have gotten into the four basic principles of Darwin's theory and various ways we can see them proven around us. Also, this was during the early nineties, when teens in California were also practicing putting a condom on a banana and being tested on the merits of different types of contraception. The world has changed.

Evolution is not touched in my local elementary and middle schools, and my 16 yo's science teacher avoids it like crazy. Ditto with sex ed. I asked my daughter's fourth grade teacher when the children watch The Video. You know the one. :) And the answer is that they don't. I've already had The Talk with her (thanks partially to the help of Freejinger in picking books and such), but it seems odd that the children cannot even learn in an academic environment about their own bodies, at a time in life when some crazy shit is going to be happening soon.

That is the world we live in now. Children cannot be taught anything that even might be controversial, because the fundies will hit the fucking ceiling.

[BayLee_10]

Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution hasn't taken a good look at a chimpanzee.

[ering]

I learned evolution in 6th grade. My teacher actually went into alot of detail. The best part was looking at the models of skulls from the decedents of humans and at the start of the unit we had to put them in order chronologically.

Then again I went to a fairly liberal public school were the majority of the students had parents who were professors at the colleges and the university in the area

[freejoytoo]

I remember watching an episode of Wife Swap (don't judge) a few years ago where this fundy family switched with a family who studied the history of the Bible and the different arguments for its roots, language etc, and the fundy woman said that they had 'studied the truth right out of it'. Sounds like a typical fundy mindset to me. If you bother to research something you'll get corrupted by Satan - he set up those facts, y'know! So if you stay ignorant and breed like a rabbit you're in God's favour.

[Sola]

I'm shocked only 50% of people in the UK believe that evolution is fact. I would have thought it to be much higher over here.

[Laika]

I don't believe these studies are accurate. The results of the UK study alaeangelorum posted about are evidence of that. Most people there aren't religious, so how can it be that only 50 percent believe evolution ?

I suspect they purposely ask a lot of people from places where more are religious, like the southern states in the US.

[Renting with Raggles]

I would suspect that the bulk of "real" creationists in the UK are Muslim, with a smaller portion of their few fundie Christian groups. I don't know if the study inflated the numbers because of the way the questions were worded - in the UK students can opt out of science classes before they really get in depth in any subject - so it may be a case of creationism by default.

My pet YEC at work insists on making such statements as "I can't believe in evolution because it's random" and "scientists don't always have the right answers" and then will turn around and admit that she only took science up to year 8 (13 years old). Far out.

[Avalondaughter]

I definitely had a full chapter on evolution in high school. Seems strange that my school was the exception.

I don't put too much store in Gallup polls. They are slanted to the right and will admit as much. When a Gallup poll leans left, it means the left opinion is pretty danged overwhelming.

[crazyforkate]

Not surprising, still scary.

[emmiedahl]

I wonder if they phrased it like, "Do you believe that God created the world, or that it evolved from nothing?" or some other weird wording.

[Anxious Girl]

... Is it weird that I believe in both evolution and God?

[TheSassyOne]

Raises my hand, because I believe in evolution also. Anxious girl, I do. I believe God was the force behind it.

We had to have a "come to Jesus" moment at our school a few years ago. There was much angst (still some) between the Theology and Science departments. Why you ask? Oh, it wasn't the science teachers that were the problem, but instead a couple of the teachers in my department. They were telling students that the earth was only five-six thousand years old and that God was testing mankind to see if we were actually believing that it was any older. They also told them the science teachers who taught anything else were basically tools of the devil.:o

Now since reading Free Jinger, I'm aware many fundies believe this, but I was appalled. Honestly though, I think both of those teachers would fit the bill as Catholic fundies.

[browngrl]

Why do fundies stop with the theory of evolution? I suggest they also:

(1)Refuse to believe in Einstein's theory of relativity: fly at the speed of light - you will get your work done faster.

(2) Refuse to believe in the theory of plate tectonics - live right on the San Andreas fault - what could go wrong?

(3) Refuse to believe quantum theory - MRI's, nuclear bombs, X-rays ? really who can believe in these things?

(4)Refuse to believe in photosynthesis - you don't like eating greens anyway

(5) bernoulli principle? really? planes fly by magic right?

I could go on and on but I just can't understand why fundies limit themselves so.

[tingeofginge]

All I can think of is this bit.

r0xQcEH7Dqo

[latraviata]

... Is it weird that I believe in both evolution and God?

Yes

[Rosa]

I don't think it's weird at all - most of the Christians I know believe in both evolution and God.

Since you can see evolution happening, if you pay attention (nobody who works in health care and worries about antibiotic resistance should disbelieve in evolution, for example) but that doesn't really explain how life ever existed to evolve, it seems like a perfectly reasonable set of beliefs to think that God started things off and then evolution took place.

[dairyfreelife]

... Is it weird that I believe in both evolution and God?

No, because that's how I was taught too. The creationism thing didn't occur to me until I was in late high school. It seems fairly recent that people are separating-that believing in God and the theory of evolution don't go together. It was taught to me in church growing up that God created everything and he created us to adapt and change-evolution. I think most people don't know enough about evolution to give a decent answer and just listen to what they hear and if they are Christians it's probably been drilled into their head that you can't believe in God and think evolution is real. That's the real problem: telling people that their religion/faith and science don't mix.