This new Pew research report shows that 42% believe everything on earth was created as is. The Gallup poll shows 44%. I am not making fun of those who think God guided evolution, just the astounding mass of Americans who think it all arrived as is. Most of these people walk through a supermarket and stand amazed at the extraordinary bounty of God's natural harvest. Most don't realize that virtually none of the stuff they see has much resemblance to the way it existed in nature before it was selectively bred to our liking. Apples were tiny and difficult to eat, Almonds were bitter and poisonous, and the precursors of our bananas had nothing in common with Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort's inconceivably idiotic video. Produce of today was grotesquely (and deliciously) warped from the natural state humans found it in.
A recent Gallup poll stated that 2/3 republicans do not believe in evolution. About 1/3 democrats. I don't know how specifically the question was asked. Somewhere around 1:30,000 people with a biology degree do not believe in evolution. There is an information gap here, and it is not closing the way you think it would. The same phenomenon can be found with things like homeopathy, where despite further research showing that it does nothing beyond the placebo effect, its popularity is ever on the rise. The same phenomenon of denialism in the face of overwhelming evidence seems to be a common trait of the far right (talk radio fans) and far left. In fact, the more evidence against their dogma, the more stridently they will defend it.
Have fun for a week. I am going to the Washington D.C. to nerd out for awhile.
5 comments:
Astonishing.
And it illustrates how an educated society is anathema to religious institutions in every society, including ours.
Cool the smithsonian has free wifi. I've accomplished much today and it isn't even noon. I watched the entire recent dawkins documentary "the genius of Charles Darwin" on the plane. Excellent show condensing god delusion and selfish gene into one in a way that would make people hard pressed to remain willfully ignorant.
Oh god, am I really in the right mental state to spend the next three hours at the holocaust musem?
Holocaust and Disney animal movies are the only things that make me cry.
By the way...
Welcome to my time zone. I've been wanting to take my girls down to see the Air & Space Museum.
Day 2 here, it is an amazing place to see. I stayed in the holocaust museum longer than anyone there and was finally ushered out at close. What I got most out of it was not the death camp brutality but the political atmosphere of the period which gave rise to dictatorship. Anger and desperation led to a desire for radical nationalism and frankly, a hatred for "liberals", democracy, and dialogue. Berlin was the epicenter of modern society up to that point.
Aaron,
You write: "A recent Gallup poll stated that 2/3 republicans do not believe in evolution."
Jesus. (Or Xenu, if you prefer.)
Steve
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