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Nearly half of all Americans believe in in Young Earth Creationism, that humans were created in their current form by God (around 42-47% depending on the year of the survey). Less than 20% of Americans believe in non-theistically guided natural evolution (9-19%).

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Then it will be amusing to see what happens if they succeed in raising funds to tow it to Brazil for the Olympics.

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Good one. I was focussing more on the interesting separation of church and state at work here, but your general point certainly applies. If we accept the report that Jesus was the son of a carpenter, he probably grew up with a pretty acute idea of the relationship between correct estimating and getting your dinner reliably.

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I bet they specify that all disputes will be settled by a ā€œreligiousā€ mediation firm, too.

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canā€™t we just agree that it sounds like a drunk German with a throat disease? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(secretly iā€™m jealous of such a lovely people many of whom are fluent in more languages then myselfā€¦every time i travel and fly back into JFK I think that east coast americans sound like a flock of nasal geeseā€¦it wears off in a few hours once i acclimate, but it is startling at first. i always thinkā€¦do we really sound like that?)

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that is soooooo depressingā€¦ sighs

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beyond depressing.

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Itā€™s kind of shocking, and the inverse of what I imagined.

From the 2012 survey:

[quote]While 58% of Republicans believe that God created humans in their
present form within the last 10,000 years, 39% of independents and 41%
of Democrats agree.[/quote]

In 2012 41% of Dems are YECs. 41%. :scream:

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Unfortunately all too possible based on SCOTUS favoring the Federal laws that were meant to encourage business to business, voluntary mediation between equals but are instead being used to enforce unequal, mandatory binding arbitration against consumers and employees.

As far as I know though, itā€™s mainly a US belief. Certainly not something the CofE would teach.

If it makes you feel better, American science shows are leading the way in teaching alternative explanations.

The Creation of the Universe was made possible by a grant from Texas Instruments.

  • PBS
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Young Earth Creationism is an oddly strong thing in US when it comes to Christianity.

Note that the US ranked just above Turkey in disbelief of evolution.

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Iā€™ve heard that Turkish creationism is actually a US export

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Ahh, cā€™mon now. Clearly Noah had a Shrink-O-Matic ray so he could fit all the animals into a few dozen cubic cubits.

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I donā€™t know whether to be pleased that the UK ranks above Germany or depressed that we rank below France.
But @phuzz is right about the CofE. It helps that a lot of early geology was done by academics who were ordained CofE clergy, because in those days you had to be. 19th century Cambridge had a good supply of clergy who were busily increasing the estimated age of the Earth, working out the significance of fossils in establishing chronology, and along with the Germans developing the linguistic tools and comparative theology that would completely cut the ground from under the feet of Biblical literalists. In 1844, Tennyson - a poet - was telling educated people that species were going extinct all the time due to the action of natural law, not a Flood. And now itā€™s 2016 and in the US (and elsewhere) there are even Roman Catholics who donā€™t believe in evolution even though it is the accepted belief of their own church. Errare humanum est indeed.

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There must be something wrong with that study you are quoting. What was the question that was answered with True / Not sure / False here?

If I read that diagram correctly, it has the US at 40% believing in evolution, 40% disbelieving it, and 20% not sure. This seems to roughly fit with other studies Iā€™ve heard of.

OK, Austriaā€¦ Looks like 55% believing in evolution, 30% disbelieving it, and 15% not sure. I wonder what question they were asked exactly. Because if 30% of Austrians were creationists, I would assume that I would know at least one of them. Or maybe Iā€™d have seen a post in an online forum written by one of them. Only about 44% of Austrians even believe that there is a ā€œGodā€ in the strict sense of the word, and I know many who fit in that category, but none of them are creationists. About 60% of Austrians are at least nominally members of the Catholic church, and they havenā€™t picked fights with science in a while now.

Strange.

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my post is basically just religiously flavored sniping at a failing enterprise. Your point - that a whole lot of christianity seems steadfastly dedicated to avoid paying caesarā€™s things unto caesar - is a more incisive critique

The question in the 2006 study apparently was "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animalsā€.

That is a question that lumps natural evolution and theistically guided evolution together against creationism. Whereas the Gallup poll separated natural evolution, theistic evolution and Young Earth Creationism:

Hence why the numbers are not exactly the same. Also, the numbers are different, IIRC, if you ask about animal evolution vs. human evolution. Peopleā€™s gut human exceptionalism kicks in more or less depending on how you ask the questions.

Noah was Reducto?

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The real questions areā€¦

  1. Isnā€™t this the same god that parted the red sea with walls of water on either side and dry land in the middle? he obviously has some sort of water holding back technology/power so why in the hell would he make noah make an fā€™n boat when he could simply leave a dry area for his family and the animals?

  2. Isnā€™t this the same god that made all the animals to start with? why cram them all onto a boat for 40 days when he could just remake them in 1 day?

  3. What did the animals do to deserve to die, couldnā€™t he just smite the humans like he did to all the Egyptian first born children?

  4. how did no one else have any boats?

clearly this god character doesnā€™t think things out very wellā€¦

it really is too bad that the flood wiped out all the giants who were half man and half angel, it would be cool to still have some giants around. what a waste, it is too bad he didnā€™t see this coming in advance to prevent it from being necessaryā€¦oh wait shouldnā€™t he have?

also also also alsoā€¦thats what i get for applying a modicum of logic to something so absurd.

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