“Welcome to the new dark ages
I hope you’re living right
These are the new dark ages
And the world might end tonight”
Bad Religion pretty much sums it up right there.
I see good news in this report, though it’s obscure. This poll treats people who believe in change over time as believing in evolution. This is in contrast to some older, widely-cited polls where people were only treated as believing in evolution if they believed in change over time and that no God had any part in it. Those who couldn’t sign on to that were treated as creationists. This led to the conclusion that a majority of Americans are creationists. In my mind, it also plays into the real creationists’ storyline of science at war with religion. Religious people who see that there’s a fossil record which leaves no doubt of change over time should be welcomed into the world of sensible people, not lumped with fundamentalists and driven away.
So first they lost climate change, then evolution. Angels and ghosts are concrete entities to many to most. But tell people you believe we can provide universal health care and develop alternative energy and they tell you you’re not being realistic.
To be fair, a quarter to a third of Americans will reject anything.
But correlation does not imply causation. I wonder to what extent the GOP has manipulated evangelicals into voting against their own best interests?
Evolution is just a theory! A brilliant, scientifically sound and rigorously tested theory but nevertheless!
Theory does not mean hunch in science.
I think Agonist was being sarcastic. At least, I hope they were.
Sounds particularly specious.
Do you think that no evolutionary biologist is Christian?
Don’t get me started on evolution.
De - evolution is where it’s at!
There’s a variety of ways of understanding evolution. There’s also a wide variety of ways of believing in God, and many kinds of Republicans. Maybe a yes/no poll is the wrong way to get a deep understanding of these things.
This might not be so much Republicans who previous believed evolution are now turning to creationism but rather the GOP is starting to succeed in purging the impure “RINOs” from their ranks. Those kicked out/leaving are more likely to be moderate or fiscal conservatives so the creationist percentage of those left behind grows even if their real numbers are down or steady.
The 1800s called - they want their senseless controversy fueled by willful ignorance in the face of overwhelming physical evidence back.
You make one helluva point.
However, you forgot at least one more item of pinko unrealism: Freezing, let alone reducing, the military industrial budget.
What? I’m arguing against that line of thinking. But if you mean it’s unlikely that such widespread misinterpretation could go unanswered by those Christian evolutionary biologists, you have a point. I blamed the poll itself when I should have blamed its misinterpretation, and I shouldn’t have implied that such misinterpretation was wider than it was. But it was there. Here’s an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about: http://colinpurrington.com/2013/charting-with-images/
edit: removed unneeded second paragraph
problem in two words: Obama & dirtystinkyhippies
no true christian subscribes to that pack of modernist drivel known as evolutionary biology. Why, the very nature of biology as a unifying theory should remind us all that satan uses man’s arrogance to turn us all away from the Bible…
…and God is just a hypothesis. A brilliant unfalsifiable violently defended hypothesis.
[quote=“jerwin, post:18, topic:18050, full:true”]
no true christian subscribes… [/quote]
I have to assume that is over the top sarcasm.
The problem with evolution is it has been politicized and used to attack religion by some people. So some people will instantly reject evolution because the “enemy” supports it - and they have no rational reason to alter their view.
Conversely, I am sure there are people who accept evolution with little to no understanding of it - they just assume since XYZ promote/accept it, then they should too.
