48% of Americans Reject Evolution

MSNBC has up an article discussing the results of a Newsweek poll on faith and religion among members of the US populace. Given the straightforward question, 'Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?', some 48% of Americans said 'No'. Furthermore, 34% of college graduates said they accept the Biblical story of creation as fact. An alarmingly high number of individuals responded that they believe the earth is only 10,000 years old, and that a deity created our species in its present form at the start of that period.

In unrelated news...

[Kelson]

America continues to worry about losing its edge in the high-tech industry.

But that couldn't possibly be related to poor science education, could it?

Note: I'm referring specifically to the 48% who believe that evolution is not well-supported by scientific evidence and that it is not widely accepted within the scientific community. Well, and the people who think the universe is less than 10,000 years old, despite all the evidence to the contrary. You can believe in God and have an understanding of science, just like you can have morals without being religious. But thinking that evolution isn't supported by evidence, or isn't widely accepted by scientists, is just plain ignorance.

Re:In unrelated news...

[808140]

Frankly, even the rabidly fundamentalist anti-evolution junkies are aware that evolution is widely accepted in the scientific community. This doesn't stop them from trying their best to discredit the theory and convert people over to their way of thinking, but they'd have to be utterly daft to not realize that most scientists do not in fact agree with their point of view.

I agree; this has to be ignorance, not religious zealotry. It's one thing to say "Evolution is bunk, and there's a pervasive anti-religious conspiracy in academia promoting it" and quite another to say "No scientists really believe in evolution." As far as I know, none of the fundies are actually saying the latter and expecting to be believed. The former, however, is one of their standard talking points.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Gerzel]

Most of them just use the tactic of saying things longer and louder than everyone else in the room and eventually people will believe you.

In America this has worked.

Re:

[cyphercell]

Personally, I often just stop talking to people like that, doesn't mean I believe them. Of course the average person seems to think that the last person talking wins.

Re:In unrelated news...

[casper75]

In America this has worked.

should read "This has worked."
No single group of humans has a monopoly on ignorance.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Andrew Kismet]

Not yet, but the USA is trying damn hard.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:In unrelated news...

[phrasebook]

So you're better than what, parts of Africa and the Middle East?

Have a gold star.

America the Great

[Mark_MF-WN]

Don't you love how Americans can only maintain their delusions of adequacy by comparing their nation to the very shittiest, backwards little hellholes on the entire planet? God forbid Americans ever compare their nation to, you know, other modern industrialized nations?

Here's the deal: stop saying that America is the greatest nation on Earth, the most advanced nation on Earth, the home of the free, the home of the brave, or any of that other bullshit, and MAYBE people will stop pointing out that every one of those claims is a baldfaced lie.

Re:America the Great

[Mark_MF-WN]

The "deity litmus test" does prove something: it proves that a group of people reject empiricism and will believe in mythology -- no matter how many of the claims in that mythology are categorically false.

We're not talking about whether people believe in some arbitrary omnipotent being. We're talking about people believing specifically in the Christian God. A god who supposedly said things like: "Ask, and it shall be given you." This is clearly an outright lie. So anyone who believes that the bible is anything other than fiction is believing something that they KNOW is untrue. That directly contradicts scientific thinking. "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you." Another statement that Christians believe, even though Christians are routinely killed by natural causes, by each other, by non-Christians, by animals, etc.

Let's review:

• Americans are terrified that terrorists are out to get them, despite the fact that terrorism kills fewer Americans each year than the flu, fewer than cancer, fewer than suicide, fewer than murder, fewer than automobile accidents, fewer than natural disasters, etc. That pretty much makes Americans irrational cowards. So much for the "home of the brave".
• Only a handful of Islamic Theocracies have people that are in less acceptance of evolution than America; not to mention the way Americans disbelieve scientists about every other subject as well. The universe is 13.2 billion years old? Of course not! The grand canyon proves the Genesis story! So much for advanced.
• America has one of the highest murder rates in the industrialized world. So much for being anything other than a society of monsters.
• America rather consistently loses wars against third-world countries. Very impressive, and definitely great. Then they criticize the rest of the world for not being stupid enough to get on board for the big defeat. So America is simultaneously weak (for losing), stupid (for going to war in the first place), and petty (for getting mad at nations run by rational, literate people).
• Anti-illectualism: almost unheard of outside of the United States and Islamic Theocracies.

What's remarkable in all of this is how closely America resembled places like Iran. The same obsession with imaginary enemies, quite comparable religion fundamentalism, a disrespect for rationalism of any kind, the idolization of leaders based on their charisma rather than their actual decision making skills, and a tendency to cling desperately to "moral" principles that have been clearly shown to make life worse for everyone.

Re:In unrelated news...

[CodeBuster]

Was it not Adolf Hitler who said that, "The people will more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one"?

Re:In unrelated news...

[boaworm]

- "History is a set of lies agreed upon." - Napoleon Bonaparte

- "History is the lie commonly agreed upon," - Voltaire

If the vast majority believes something for long enough, it becomes the truth.

And btw..

"The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquiries into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter."

- Pope Pius XII

Re:In unrelated news...

[ArtDent]

Hobo sapiens, meet science. Science, hobo sabiens.

One of the many neat things about the way science is practiced, with numerous independent scientists continuously challenging each other's theories and discoveries, is that it doesn't tend to produce Big Lies.

It's conceivable, though highly unlikely, that one day evolution will be disproven completely. If that happens, it will be entirely to science's credit.

Re:In unrelated news...

[MattHaffner]

I think the scientific method is one of the best detectors of rubbish-disguised-as-truth there is. All I am saying is that I hope it's being adhered to. I hope people don't blindly push evolution like some people blindly push religion.

Typically, and especially in our modern era where the method has been practiced for many decades now, seasoned scientific theories are not radically overturned. There may be grand new insights into the underlying reason why a current theory works as well as it did before the new discovery, but that "old" version of our understand still works to explain the same things it did before. We just might understand even better why it worked so well for the conditions or environment we were trying to describe at the time.

Newton's universal law of gravity still is a great description of how massive bodies respond to each other, but it doesn't say anything about how photons--massless particles--respond to massive bodies. Einstein gave us a deeper understanding of gravity that applied even more universally than Newton's law, but it didn't invalidate Newton's law. It's still the best formulation to use for non-relatavistic, massive bodies.

Evolution is a sound scientific theory because it has made predictions and stood the testing of those predictions. When new discoveries are made outside of those predictions, it has still held up as the best theory to explain the similarity and diversity of life on the planet. When we discovered what makes life distinct through DNA and genetics, we didn't throw out our idea of evolution at the species-scale. Instead, we gained a deeper understanding of how the more obvious physical differentiations happen through the everyday chemistry that drives living things.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Alsee]

I hope people don't blindly push evolution like some people blindly push religion.

I'm sure that there exist people blindly pushing evolution, just as there are people blindly opposing evolution. The important question is, what do the non-blind people see and say about it? You don't need to understand quantum mechanics to be able to make a reasonable first pass at sorting out who does and does not have a PhD in quantum mechanics and is or is not professionally working in the field at prestigious international physics lab. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to be able to figure out who has a PhD engineering degree and is professionally employed at NASA or one of the other national space agencies as a rocket scientist.

Newsweek magazine 29 June 1987, Page 23: "there are some 700 scientists (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared 'abruptly'". That works out to 685-to-1. And what would be the common slang term for a minuscule fraction of one percent scientist who is considered "non-credible" by the other 99.85% of the professional credentialed scientific community? That term would be "crackpot". Approximately one in 685 earth and life scientists fundamentally rejects evolution, approximately one in 685 credentialed earth and life scientists is a crackpot. There seriously does not exist any genuine controversy over the basics of evolution in the scientific community, no genuine controversy amongst the "non-blind", amongst the people who have actually dedicated their lives to studying the subject in school getting a degree and actually analyzing and challenging the evidence.

I'm just a regular programmer type guy.

Excellent! Seriously, excellent! I too am "just a regular programmer type guy", and there are few people as well equipped as us to cure "blindness" on evolution directly see just how powerful it is, to witness first hand that it in fact does work. While people generally look at evolution as a physical biological process, it is more fundamentally a mathematical process and an information processing process. Essentially any system possessing the four properties of (1) replication (2) inheritance of traits (3) mutation of those traits and (4) selection, essentially any such system will exhibit the evolution process. Those four traits pretty well define the necessary and sufficient conditions to enable and ensure evolution to occur. There is an entire sub-field of computer science dedicated to evolutionary algorithms and genetic algorithms. Algorithms to harness the information processing power of evolution, to harness the information creating power of the evolution process.

As a programmer, you really should explore evolutionary algorithms and genetic algorithms. They are critical algorithms that seriously should be in the "toolbox" of any sophisticated programmer. They enable a programmer to tackle and solve certain classes of programming tasks and problems that are virtually impossible to solve in any other way. You wouldn't want to use evolutionary algorithms / genetic algorithms on most kinds of routine programming tasks, they are entirely inappropriate for the vast majority of programming tasks, but where they are appropriate knowing these algorithms expand your range and can give you the ability to program for otherwise "impossibly hard" problems. In fact more than half of all Fortune 500 companies apply these sorts of algorithms somewhere or another in their business.

You can use DNA analysis in a court of law to map out a family tree way beyond any reasonable doubt. You can use DNA analysis in a science lab to absolutely establish and map out evolutionary family tree of species in the exact same way and with the same "beyond any reasonable doubt" absolute certainty. You and I are not laboratory DNA analysis experts, but if you take the time to look at the qualified experts in the field they will 9

Re:In unrelated news...

[misanthrope101]

Scientific theories are unseated when a better explanation of the facts comes along, one that is better at predicting outcomes and so on. I think skeptics vastly underestimate the size of the mountain of evidence supporting evolution, and vastly overestimate the validity of the claims made by creationist, ID, or Fixed Earth [fixedearth.com] type sites.

That being said, your argument is a common one. The problem is that the evidence we have supports evolutionary theory, the counterclaims made by evolution skeptics (the bombadier beetle, and so on) were answered years or even decades ago. If other evidence came up, scientists would look at it. Evolutionary theory is constantly being revised, in that we are learning more about sexual selection, types of speciation, rates of change, and so on--it's quite an interesting field, even to a layman.

Then you have a lot of noise from the predominantly (though not exclusively) religiously-motivated community who say that evolution isn't really science because common descent and so on isn't being challenged in the science journals. Even Behe, the ID bigwig, accepts common descent, because the evidence is so overwhelming. What skeptics want is a complete grounds-up reappraisal of common descent, natural selection, and so on, in spite of the fact that no data calls those things into question.

The religious "skeptics" will never accept evolution, and for that matter will never accept methodological materialism, because they want their bible-based explanation taught as science. So much of the "skepticism" is just a PR campaign, as per the well-known Wedge Strategy [wikipedia.org].

Re:In unrelated news...

[SEMW]

Quite apart from the problems with your implication that evolution implies lack of "faith in a higher power" and vice versa, your last statement:

What I believe in cannot be proved correct scientifically, therefore it cannot be proven wrong scientifically.

simply does not logically follow. It is perfectly possible to have a proposition that can never be conclusively proven, but can be conclusively disproven (for example, in mathamatics, an unproveable conjecture about the natural numbers that a single counterexample could disprove). There also exist propositions that can never be conclusively disproven, but can be conclusively proven; and others which can neither be conclusively proven nor disproven, and ones which can be both. Knowledge alone of whether something can be proven tells you nothing about whether that thing can be disproven.

Re:In unrelated news...

[miro f]

another example of something that can be disproven but not proven is every scientific theory, such es (for example) the Theory of Evolution.

It is essentially the act of being falsifiable that actually makes Evolution a real scientific theory, and the fact that it has stood for so long (with modifications) that makes it so widely accepted.

Re:In unrelated news...

[NMerriam]

I don't understand how evolution can be either proven OR disproven, as it deals with things that happened in the past and that therefore aren't now observable or falsifiable.

Evolution, like all scientific theories, makes statements that can be used as predictors for future discoveries, even though the process in question happened in the past.

If evolution says that some specific sequence of events is impossible, then finding any evidence that those events occurred would instantly disprove the theory. There are numerous things that could be discovered at any moment that would call into question the most fundamental aspects of evolution, yet in nearly two centuries no evidence of the sort has been found.

Conversely, evolution says that many things pretty much must have happened a certain way to get from point A to point B, and that is prediction. It has in fact happened that scientists have had fossil A and fossil C, but no luck in finding the presumed to exist fossil B. By using the principles of evolution they've determined where the most likely place to find fossil B was -- and found it!

It should also be noted that evolution predicted (in fact REQUIRED) the existence of DNA (or something similar) a century before it was actually found -- indeed, when evolution was first discussed the very lack of something like DNA was one of the biggest criticisms against it. The notion that ALL life on Earth including plants and animals shared some fundamental building block that was completely unknown, eons old yet randomly changeable for no discernible reason, was considered absurd by many. Watson and Crick did more to confirm the accuracy of evolution than almost any other group in the 20th century.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Copid]

Here's the flaw in evolution - the great anti-designer theory - you quote exactly what other evolutionists state, the whole concept of *usefulness*. Tell me, how does dirt make a decision? How did the first few molecules of stuff decide that one feature was more desirable than another. If a cell splits and produces some kind of variant DNA (not new genes of information mind you, no one has been able to explain how that could happen yet), how does "it" decide that the new DNA is better than the previous DNA? What is "it"? How did "it" decide? In a purely random manner, "its" decision making process should be completely random. If I flip a coin 10,000 or 1 billion times, I will invariably end up with about 50% heads and 50% tails, therefore not making any progress in any direction - try it, you CAN reproduce this fact.

Simple answer: Selection is the result of different survivability of the two traits. If, for example, the cells live in a junk yard and one of the two child cells acquires a gene that allows it to "eat" nylon, then it's going to do a lot better than its sibling as it has a bunch of food available to it with very little competition for it. That cell reproduces like mad and suddenly you have a small population with a nylonase where one did not exist before.

Of course we can stray into irreducible complexity, but you evolutionists don't like to discuss that since you just state that if you work backwards just enough in the smallest of increments over billions of years you might be able to work around this sticky problem. Not! You still end up with some kind of inherent designer doing some kind of decision making about what is the next best *useful* iteration - dirt doesn't have brains!

IC isn't exactly the strongest of ideas to begin with (for example, there's no meaningful way to show that a structure is irreducibly complex), but it does have one fatal flaw: Even if it's not possible to take away a part of a system without destroying it, it's likely very possible to add a part and then take away one of the original parts without destroying the system. One might say that an arch is irreducibly complex because removing a stone from it makes it collapse. Does it follow that an arch can't be built? No. It simply ignores the fact that the precursor to the arch had more "stuff" attached to it (supports and scaffolding) than we see now. The arch didn't go from N-1 stones to N stones, because with N-1 stones it would have collapsed. It went from N-1 stones + supports to N stones + supports to N stones with no supports, creating the "irreducibly complex" structure we see today.

There is also the problem of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and as well the scientific principle that all things tend to degrade over time - completely opposite of the evolutionary logic. Funny though that the first two things mentioned are observable and reproducible, the latter is not.

I weep for the future of physics if this is the common understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Please explain this to me: How does evolution violate the second law of thermodynamics but a seed growing into a tree not violate the law? What is the difference between the two. Bonus points if you use math or actually quote the second law in a meaningful way.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Dadoo]

Evolution has been forced on and indoctrinated into youth today and yet these figures seem to show that young adults are growing up with a faith in a higher power.

Umm... Acceptance of evolution and faith in a higher power are not mutually exclusive. Just ask the Catholics.

Re:In unrelated news...

[shaitand]

'It is true that I grew up in a Christian home, but I believe what I believe no matter what science says because of the personal impact it's had on my life.'

The things you have faith in are things you THINK are true. The things that science has shown are things everyone KNOWS to be true. You can have faith all day long but refusing to accept the findings of science is not ignorance, it is utter stupidity.

P.S. Science has not disproven Christianity, Science has disproven many of MAN'S interpretations of what is found in the Bible. That is the beauty (or curse) of the Bible, almost everything in it can be interpreted in so many ways that you can disprove interpretations until the end of time.

Personally I am agnostic, it is possible that a being created everything. I shy away from this possibility because as incredible and complex as everything around us is and as difficult as it is to believe that this aways was it is just that much more difficult to believe that a being that was so much more powerful, beautiful, and complex to have been able to create all this around us has always been. Having a creator may solve 'where did we come from and why are we here' but it only shifts those questions to become 'where did the creator come from and why is it here'.

As far as any religion on Earth being correct. Of course not, that is just silly. Some semi-literate desert dictator who wrote a book to enslave and manipulate didn't guess it right.

Re:In unrelated news...

[FiloEleven]

The things you have faith in are things you THINK are true. The things that science has shown are things everyone KNOWS to be true.

A small but important correction: the things that science has shown are things which we believe to be true because the evidence points in that direction. That is to say, science uses evidence to produce a model, and we accept the most accurate model because we have nothing better. The scientific process is always open to new evidence, and if new evidence contradicts our current model then we refine the model to account for the new evidence.

Science is meaningful and helpful, and it would be a real shame if its pursuit were to be abandoned, but calling science truth is just as bad as calling it a lie.

Re:In unrelated news...

[j35ter]

My dear friend,
Your faith and the fact that you believe in God shouldn't make you a creationist per se.
Remember that many of the most inquisitive, rational and critical minds were members of the Church. Even though they had to follow an official Canon, they never took the Bible for granted. Aware that this book was written down by stone and bronze age nomads, they just refused to take for granted that God created the world in 6 (earthen) days. Look at people like Thomas Aquinas ans William of Occam. Would they have shared the creationists views? I think not!
They rather marveled at the way God led the creation of nature and the universe.
After all, how could you have explained a bunch of stone age shepherds what the big bang was and how DNA works. Once you start looking at the Genesis from this viewpoint, you might see the true revelation behind these words.

I consider myself agnostic, although I had the opportunity to let myself be warmly embraced by faith.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Volante3192]

(On a personal note, I fear you're going to be modded down inappropriately... You're articulate in your point and state it very clearly. While I'll admit to not being fully aware of your past history, at least in this case it doesn't seem bad. It's the people who kneejerk a -1 that are just as bad as the raving nutters that trumpet this from on high...)

I have no problem with people believing in one or more deities. Some feel the need to have a higher power looking over them. I, personally, am confused by this necessity yet I see some reasoning behind Voltaire's statement that if there was no god, we would invent him.

Yet to be willfully ignorant of the scientific process and instead believe solely in a god is to inadvertantly question him. If you believe that the world is only 10,000 years (or 6,000, or whatever the going age is), then how do you explain the dating processes scientists use that result in objects older than that? The most common argument I hear about this is that "It's the way He wants it to be," yet that throws into question the believability of a benevolent deity since why would a benevolent deity purposefully mislead his creation?

I shudder what would happen if fundamentalists in Europe back in the 1500s and 1600s had been able to fully supress what was discovered. Would we still believe that Earth is flat and the solar system was geocentric?

If you do not believe in evolution, how can you understand how penicillin has become ineffective and how superbugs are being uncovered; strains of bacteria and virii that, while exhibiting all the characteristics of previous ones, are immune to the same attack styles?

Truth and fact are two seperate ideas. They can very well be mutually exclusive.

Re:In unrelated news...

[linvir]

It is true that I grew up in a Christian home

This is the only reason you believe in the things you do. It's got fuck-all to do with "seeing beauty and power surrounding things". Your parents were brought up as Christians, so they brought you up a Christian. If they'd decided instead to bring you up to believe in Power Rangers, you'd believe in a superhuman team of ninja warriors defending the earth from an evil witch living on the moon, and you'd be posting Slashdot comments telling us all about the "beauty and power" you see in things, which convinces you of the existence of Power Rangers no matter what those oppressive science types might say about there being no recorded sightings of huge robots or aliens doing battle in remote wastelands. And of course, you'd say it was "because of the effect it had had on your life" as well.

You're a slave to the meme forced upon you by your parents, a believer in an idea considered idiotic by the vast majority of scientists and Christians, and an embarrassment to the 21st century.

GO GO POWER RANGERS! YOU MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS!

Re:In unrelated news...

[gordo3000]

Second of all, it is not possible for anyone to do all the experiments and gather all the evidence to indicate any complex theory is correct.

buddy, after this line, you should have stopped. no scientist will ever call any theory correct. all theories are models that accurately(to a certain level of experimental precision) describe what will be your physical observation when you do 'x'. Now,theories have evidence to support them by making unique predictions that other theories do not and then having those predictions be born out in an experiment.

now with science, you only need to base what you think on what others have said to the extent you do not wish to recreate the entire body of human knowledge. the main difference is that with the bible, you will only ever have what another person has said. To give a more specific example, I have at least 3 distinct choices I can make about Jesus Christ. 1) he is the some of Jehovah as his disciples have said, 2) he is a prophet of Allah, one of a long line of prophets leading up to Muhammad, the last prophet, or 3) that he is a Bohdisattva who, after achieving enlightenment, fabricated a more easily believable tail for those far from enlightenment to start them down the correct path. All three have equal evidence supporting them, hearsay. One may give greater weight to the story given by Jesus's disciples simply because they were in close proximity to him, but that does not make much sense simply because the oldest copy of a gospel is from about 160 years after Jesus died.

Now take a scientific case, carbon dating of organic materials. choosing to what extent you wish to recreate previous science, I can find various amounts of organic material from different time periods and measure the concentration of C-14. I can also do experiments in the lab and measure empirically the decay rate of C-14. I can do this in one of many ways and check for consistency with previous data on the decay rate of C-14(to check for consistency in this rate for the last 100 years).

I can then choose whether or not to apply this decay rate to C-14 over all of history or not or I can limit myself to a certain number of years that the precision of my experiment lends to using. Now, I can gather various organic material from different sites to check concentrations for C-14 over time and see if 1) concentrations of C-14 are the same for all organic material of a given age and 2) if the data lends credence to the belief that the concentration of 'new' organic material 1000 or 10,000 years ago is the same as it is today. Once I have shown 1 and 2 to be correct(if I do), I can then go search for organic material which is similar to other materials but can be shown through the decay in the concentration of C-14 is older than 10,000 years(really I only need to do ~6,000 years to show the lack of consistency in a literal reading of the bible). Now at this point, you can merely show that the concentration of C-14 is x, and it is up to the reader on how to interpolate the data. but given the other data behind C-14 dating and whether or not it has held accurate for dated human remains of the last 3000 years(marked graves help in this) lends credence to the hypothesis that this object is probably more than 6000 years old. of course, you can reject this, but then it will be up to you to show evidence as such. If your net evidence is saying that what scientist 'y' said was influenced by his agenda, you have basically ignored the mountain for the grain of sand.

Now, this was just a series of experiments to show that object x may be older than 6000 years. it neither requires a belief in a complex theory nor basis in the hearsay of 1 particular scientist(or any subgroup of scientists). now, there may exists a more complex over arching theory that can take all these observations and predict them in a more fluid manner, but that is irrelevant to the facts presented. Complex theories are not required to study radioactive decay. The complex microscopic theories are required to understand mechanisms of radioactive decay but the mechanism is unimportant to the conclusion that object x is older than a certain interpretation of the bible says it should be.

I wish I could mod down that

[aepervius]

You are a stinking animal. Get over it. Love (the passionate one you feel in the first 5 years of meeting somebody) can directly be linked to hormons delivery in the brain. This 5 years periods can definitvely be traced to the divorce rate being higher at the end of it, and the drop off when that type of neurotransmitter drop down in level. As for the "longer" love I would not be surprised that there is a similar explanation based on neuron pathway created during those 5 years. Remmember the brain learn by repeating.

Yes this is all chemistry despite you prefering to think you have a soul and be a "higher" being than the rest of the animal, in reality you are a mamal and you simply go in a complexer "rut". Sorry to break it to you , you aren't "superior" and "chosen".

Re:In unrelated news...

[cheater512]

Of course love is made up of matter. Its a combination of molecules in your brain.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Iron Condor]

Only 51% of physical scientists believe in any form of Darwinian evolution.

This is a lie.

You are a liar.

Re:

[Fordiman]

Correction: GPP is a manipulative liar. Which is why he shouldn't get too many responses. The only appropriate response to such behavior is blankly-staring disbelief.

Re:In unrelated news...

[coopex]

Uh, too bad evolution is about how life is changing, and completely unrelated to how life started, but keep on with your small minded worldview and ignorance, you're sure to make the history books (as a laughingstock).

Re:In unrelated news...

[skeftomai]

We came from apes. Apes came from monkeys. Monkeys came from lemurs. Lemurs came from rodents. Rodents came from some earlier mammal. That mammal came from reptiles. Reptiles came from amphibians. Amphibians came from fish. And so on. In fact, the biggest evidence of this IS embryology. Do some research on it some time. There's a reason human embryos have a tail, and are indistinguishable from nearly every other land dwelling embryo for quite a large amount of it's development.

Correction...the theory goes that we did NOT come from apes but from a common ancestor...from wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

Since the time of Carolus Linnaeus, the great apes were considered the closest relatives of human beings, based on morphological similarity. In the 19th century, it was speculated that their closest living relatives were chimpanzees and gorillas, and based on the natural range of these creatures, it was surmised humans share a common ancestor with other African apes and that fossils of these ancestors would ultimately be found in Africa.

Also see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/cat0 2.html [pbs.org].

Re:

[benjaminperdomo]

This is slashdot. NO ONE reads the full article. At best, they skim the summary. :P

Re:

[daniel23]

There is a theory that the day the soviet union ceased to exist after decades of cold war, some folks in the US started to believe that from now on all limits had gone. Multilateral treaties? Climate change? Geneva Convention? Any science with unwanted results? All those questions get answered like:

"We're an empire now, the rules have changed. We don't have to ask, we define what is real and what not."

There is another theory that this in fact is the truth.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Phillup]

Beacuase you can't possibly have faith (or religion, your choice) and be well educated in sciences, could you?

Yes you can. But only 52 percent of the time...

Re:In unrelated news...

[thryllkill]

Nice try, but that is a horrible mis-quote.

Einstein said once, "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Read all about it here [positiveatheism.org].

Re:In unrelated news...

[PopeRatzo]

Everybody likes to say how sick they are of political correctness, yet the one area of life where political correctness is MOST in force is when it comes to questioning someone's religious beliefs.

It's perfectly acceptable to call someone crazy for believing that maybe spewing pollution into the environment for centuries might be harmful, yet heaven forbid someone suggest that just maybe it's kind of strange to believe that Joseph Smith met an angel in the desert who gave him a set of gold-plated dinnerware inscribed with the Word of God and then he proclaimed that everyone should wear special underwear. It's OK to call a woman who choses not to carry a fetus to term a murderer, but don't you dare suggest that there's no reason to believe that some magic juju called a "soul" enters a cell at the moment of conception, or you'll be called a troll and flamebaiter.

I believe in morality, I believe in ethics, and I might even believe in God, but please don't expect me to swallow your Iron Age superstition. Is it really so hard to see that much of the pain in the world is being caused by narrow-minded fools believing that THEY have the TRUTH and everybody else is destined to burn in hell for eternity? Do you really not realize that it was exactly this kind of exceptionalist thinking that led people to fly planes into the World Trade Center believing that God not only wanted them to do it but would reward them? Can we really not call "bullshit" when people start claiming that there's more evidence for the magical events of the Bible than for natural selection and the Origin of Species?

Sam Harris makes a ton of sense when he wonders why it is that we are not allowed to take all the knowledge gained by science into account when forming our spirirtual beliefs. For some reason, we're supposed to disregard all of the insight that science has given us into the Universe when it comes to spirituality. He asks why it is that it's so taboo to suggest that picking one "book written by God" out of all the "books written by God" and claiming that THIS one is the REAL "book written by God" is just a little bit "counter-intuitive".

We are told that most Americans believe that Faith should be part of our political life and they demand that our leaders be men of this "faith". If faith is "belief in that for which there is no evidence" then I say we've already had enough of leaders who ignore evidence when making decisions over war and peace, life and death. I say it's time that we had a little less "faith-based" foreign policy and "faith-based" economic policy and "faith-based" environmental policy and a little more reality-based decision-making.

But if you're going to claim that faith and religion should be part of public life and political behavior, then you best be ready to have questions raised about just what kind of magical thinking you base your political beliefs upon. And for God's sake, stop hiding behind Political Correctness when it comes to people challenging the nature of that magical thinking.

Re:In unrelated news...

[catbutt]

Actually, I've run into a lot of people who have problems with evolution even though they aren't Christian or religious.

Evolution is, to many, extremely unintuitive, aside from religion. I've noticed that people have a really hard time with lots of other concepts similar to evolution (market economics and such).

Re:In unrelated news...

[A beautiful mind]

Evolution is not intuitive. Richard Dawkins was showing a possible explanation why in his book, The God Delusion.

Basically according to the research he quotes, there are stances the brain takes of thinking. Like the "physical" stance, how an object will react to gravity, etc. But that is slow and not really useful in judging complex machines (like animals for example). So there is a "design" stance, where you judge the function of an object and determine it's expected behaviour. That is sometimes too slow, so there is the "intention" stance, which assigns intentions to things. That tiger over there is going to attack me not because it has sharp claws capable of killing, but because he intends to kill me so I better run. Get the point. Anyway, according to research, infants and young children are especially prone to think in an intent stance. Thus it is conceivable that the thinking that something must have a reason or intent, is something to be discarded through a conscious effort.

Re:

[Sockatume]

IIRC the "stances" are actually the creation of Daniel Dennett, and came out of his study of the development and structure of consciousness. Not that Dawkins would've raised them without crediting Dennett, of course. Incidentially he wrote "Darwin's Dangerous Idea": like everyone studying the hard problems in biology and anthropology, evolution is central to his work.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Clock Nova]

I don't understand this line of thinking. Evolution is extraordinarily intuitive. In fact, it makes perfect sense. Two animals are born. One is unable to adapt to its environment, and dies. The other one is able to adapt to survive in its environment and lives long enough to reproduce, thus passing on its genetic material to the next generation. Repeat. Profit. What's not to understand?

This is, of course, a bit oversimplified, but I find nothing about evolution difficult to understand.

Re:In unrelated news...

[adrianmonk]

I don't understand this line of thinking. Evolution is extraordinarily intuitive. In fact, it makes perfect sense. Two animals are born. One is unable to adapt to its environment, and dies.

The fact that you have just explained it in a way which is subtly wrong supports the idea that it is counterintuitive. An animal does not adapt. It is born with a certain set of DNA, which it cannot change or control, and it lives or dies as a result what DNA it has (along with other factors like chance).

In fact, this makes for a bit of a paradox. A single organism cannot ever adapt. Its DNA is essentially immutable, or at least it certainly cannot do anything to change its own DNA in any useful way. So you have an organism, and that organism has offspring, and so on. You have a whole chain (lineage) of organisms, and none of them can adapt, so how does the adaptation occur?

The answer, of course, is that adaptation in that sense doesn't really occur at all. What occurs is that new, different organisms are created when organisms reproduce, and the different ones either are already adapted or are not already adapted at the moment they're born, and the well-adapted ones end up reproducing.

This is a bit counter-intuitive because it's not how people solve problems. Humans generally apply intelligence to a problem. If you're a car company and you want to sell a new model of car, you don't make a bunch of new types of car at random without any direction, then ask potential customers if they suck or not, then throw out the ones that suck. That would be enormously wasteful and slow given limited resources, so humans rarely ever do that. Instead, you figure out what you want, you apply theory, and you make a plan to go directly where you want to go (or as directly as possible).

As it turns out, my sister is a Ph.D. student in genetics, and I am a computer programmer. We've had conversations about the similarities and differences of computer code and genetic code, and it took me a while to grasp, but there are really more differences than there are similarities. If a programmer wants to create a construct, he sits down with a piece of paper (or whiteboard), charts out what he wants it to do, and writes some code, hopefully (if he has any training) in a nice, orderly manner. If he's any good, he makes it modular and separates concerns so that (say) code for the GUI is not mixed in with code for the filesystem.

DNA does not work like this AT ALL. There are huge, gigantic sections of DNA code that are never used. Then there are sections in certain places which are used for two TOTALLY UNRELATED purposes just because the particular sequence of base pairs happens to fit both purposes. It is the equivalent of compiling a header file full of constants (say, error codes or strings) and then after you're done compiling, going, "Oh hey, since we are using a Pentium processor, that sequence of bytes for the error codes happens to also be a valid sequence of opcodes. So now I don't need to bother writing the first half of memmove(), because it already exists right there! Whoopee!" Except that it's worse than that because the DNA will have 100 other copies of memmove() in other places, all different, all incompatible, and most with bugs. Except that you can't call them bugs, because there is no spec. You expect them to do "wrong" things every now and then, indeed often, and the only real crime is to do something so wrong that the organism doesn't survive. And the only reason it does survive is that the system is pretty redundant and tolerates chaos pretty well, except when someone gets heart disease, cancer, dementia, a sore lower back, etc.

The point is this: imagine how you would design a human. Now look at a real human -- it's almost nothing like what you'd make. It's simultaneously way more "clever" and way sloppier. It's totally whacked, totally effective, and the way it works is pretty alien to how we think. Biology, in general, is very complex and is not very intuitive.

Re:In unrelated news...

[DrFalkyn]

The origin of the earliest forms of "life" (simple single "cells", pre-DNA, pre_RNA) is surely one of the easiet things to answer - this is nothing more than self-sustaining chemical reactions occuring in a lipid bubble (maybe naturally occuring - oily froth by the sea shore, or maybe the fatty polymers being a product of the chemical reactions that occured inside them). I

Ahh, no its not. There are some good guesses, and they've been able to discover things like short sequences of RNA that can catalyze their own reproduction, but (natural) abiogenesis is by no means a solved problem. The simplest organism that can reproduce on its own (not without a host organism like a virus) is a prokaryotic bacteria, but even there you still have millions and millions of base pairs of DNA, which could not come randomly together by chance.

Re:In unrelated news...

[diablomonic]

this is not meant as a troll, just an honest (perhaps offensive) opinion.

What it all comes down to is: Most (50%+) of people are stupid.

Expecting some one with below average (and average isn't something to be proud of either) intelligence to overcome this evolutionary handicap and the often lifelong indoctrination from their family/parents, to understand and believe a conflicting concept which, while it seems simple to me, obviously isn't to them, is perhaps expecting too much. Especially given the joke that is passed as education ("edumacation") in many places in America/many other countries.

Ah well.

Re:In unrelated news...

[VJ42]

Actually, I've run into a lot of people who have problems with evolution even though they aren't Christian or religious.

Conversely, at least here in the UK, I know of many religious Christians, including IIRC the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I believe the Pope (obviously he's not in the UK); who accept the theory of evolution with no problems.

Personally I'm a lax hindu*, and evolution fits right in with my world view, and that of others I know. Infact AFAIK I don't know a single creationist.


*by which I mean I'm religious on Tuesdays and during holy festivals and other holy days.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

Evolution is, to many, extremely unintuitive,

Quantum mechanics is pretty "unintuitive" too. Is it more "intuitive" to believe that the cosmic thunderer created the World in six days and that the first woman was fashioned from Adam's spare rib?

It's fascinating that there's a one-to-one relationship between those who don't believe in evolution and those that don't believe in global warming.

Re:In unrelated news...

[tim620]

Actually, if you had been watching the news about evangelicals (besides the whole Ted Haggard thing) you would know that more and more evangelicals are also becoming environmentalists. Many believe that global warming is happening and they are standing side by side with the Sierra Club (and others) to help fix environmental problems. Many are conservative evangelicals that also believe in creationism, etc.

Re:In unrelated news...

[PopeRatzo]

OK, wildclaw, you make sense. You look at the evidence, and you come to a slightly different conclusion than some other people looking at the same evidence. But you're a long way from denying that Man can have a deleterious effect on our environment.

If you listen to the extraordinary reaction of the Religious Right (and the non-Religious Right like Hannity and Limbaugh), you'll hear something completely different. To them, any discussion of global warming or any sort of negative effect on climate due to more than a century of industrial pollution is a total threat to their entire world-view. To them, it's not enough to say that "yes, the climate is heating up, but it might not be because of people". They have to completely deny any possibility that there's anything at all wrong with dumping plutonium in our drinking water or mercury in our food supply. They're not just arguing with the conclusions of scientists, they're hysterically demanding that it not even be SUGGESTED that pollution is bad in any way, and it's perfectly acceptable for some 22 year-old with an associates degree in political science from Regent University to edit scientific journals because George Bush said so. I'm not exaggerating.

Science itself is under attack. Not just this one area of science, but the most basic concepts of scientific thought, and indeed, logical thought. What scares me the most about the turn of the thinking of the Right in the US is their insistence that reality itself is biased against their beliefs and so, reality itself must be at fault. It's not unlike the kind of thinking that led to the backwardness of certain parts of Europe during the Middle Ages or Cambodia under Pol Pot, where anybody who wore glasses was suspect because it meant they could read a book, and thus, might not have polished off every drop of the koolaid. If we're going to have any kind of chance in the coming decades, it's going to fall upon people like us, those of us who actually have read a science text that didn't suggest that the Earth is 6,000 years old, to stamp out this kind of ignorance with extreme prejudice. And, it means we're going to have to give those poor souls who grew up being told that Science and Humanistic Thought are B.A.D. because they "go against Scripture" a lot of kindness and understanding, as well as some decent reading material and patience.

Re:

[SpinyNorman]

Evolution is, to many, extremely unintuitive

Maybe, but this denial of evolution is a US-only phenomena. Could be related to poor US high school education I suppose (since that's the only time most people are going to be taught about it).

Re:In unrelated news...

[Nyeerrmm]

As another example I've just recently been learning about optimization algorithms (I'm using a Particle Swarm Optimization routine to determine a randomly optimized satellite constellation for imaging,) and even though I wrote the code myself and know exactly what it's doing, I still want to anthropomorphize it and believe its doing it intelligently instead of just randomly selecting points and discarding those that don't give good results.

Basically, it's very easy to attribute intelligence to a natural process, simple algorithm, etc., even if you know exactly what's going on.

Only 39% (whew!)

[Kelson]

You have to click through a few links to get to it, but the actual poll [msn.com] states:

13. Do you think the scientific theory of evolution is well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?

Well-supported: 48%
Not well-supported: 39%
Don't Know: 13%

It looks like the submitter got mixed up with the two stats that were both 48%.

Disclaimer: This quote has been modified from the original version. It has been reformatted to fit within Slashdot's HTML limits.

Heathens dying of scurvy in New York

[Harmonious Botch]

Ok, there's a mislabeling of vitamin C, and NY politicians are posturing about something, and a majority of Americans are christians.
THIS IS NEWS????
C'mon editors, what happened to news for nerds, etc?

This is Exciting News

[ReidMaynard]

I'm keeping a close eye on my neighbor's 911 Turbo with the I Love Jesus bumber sticker. The minute The Rapture hits, that baby is mine!

This is interesting, but...

[Raindance]

This is interesting, but not for the obvious reasons.

The poll looks fairly well-constructed, but the problem is that evolution has become extremely politicized. For many, this question wasn't asking about science-- it was a political question (are you with the conservative-christians or the liberal-atheist-scientists?).

I think the real story here is the process by which scientific issues get politicized. It's a process that we really need to understand. John Timmer over at Ars Technica often writes about this.

The mindset

[dsanfte]

The mindset is simply this: Any agenda, promoted by anyone, that contradicts something said in the bible, is an attack on its literal truth and thus, an attack on fundamentalist Christianity.

That's all you really need to know.

Re:This is interesting, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that's not a well constructed poll. It's asking 2 things at once in a single yes/no question (Is evolution well supported, is evolution well accepted). So of the people who said no are they saying no to one of the questions or both?

Re:This is interesting, but...

[swillden]

Actually that's not a well constructed poll. It's asking 2 things at once in a single yes/no question (Is evolution well supported, is evolution well accepted). So of the people who said no are they saying no to one of the questions or both?

My thought exactly, except that I'd point out another aspect of the question that's overly broad. "Evolution" isn't a single theory, it's a whole complex set of theories, some of which have very solid observational evidence supporting them and others of which are almost pure hypotheses. For example, on the one hand, it's scientifically indisputable that species do evolve. We have seen it happen under controlled conditions in the laboratory, as well as having a deep fossil record. On the other hand the theory of punctuated equilibrium is just a fairly random stab at trying to explain why the fossil record seems to show long periods of little change separated by short periods of massive change. There are lots of other examples all across the spectrum.

Personally, I'd have had a hard time answering yes to the question "Is evolution well supported", not because I don't believe it is, but because I *know* it's a political question, not a scientific question, and I know that if I say "yes" I'll be indicating assent to a much broader range of ideas than those I actually believe are supported.

A better poll would have asked several, more precisely-focused questions, such as: "Do you believe evolution occurs?"; "Do you believe that the large number of species that exist today evolved from a small number of ancient species?"; "Do you believe that humans evolved from earlier species?"; "Do you believe that evolution is a result of purely random chance?"; plus similar questions oriented towards getting the individual's opinion about the scientific support and opinions of scientists, such as "Is there solid scientific evidence that evolution occurs?" and "Do most scientists believe that evolution occurs?".

The result would have been a much better view into the understanding and beliefs of Americans, rather than just their religio-political views.

Re:

[Odin's Raven]

Actually that's not a well constructed poll. It's asking 2 things at once in a single yes/no question (Is evolution well supported, is evolution well accepted). So of the people who said no are they saying no to one of the questions or both?

Yes.

The Prostate

[mark0]

Anyone who believes in Intelligent Design has never considered the prostate, let alone actually had prostate trouble. Even a human engineer wouldn't design a component like that. They want me to believe omnipotent, omniscient being did that?

Re:The Prostate

[ewhac]

Dude, it's even worse than that. Consider the entire region of genetalia. What kind of "intelligent" designer puts a recreational facility next to a waste disposal site?

:-),
Schwab

Re:The Prostate

[Khaed]

You've obviously never been to New Jersey.

Re:The Prostate

[farker haiku]

What kind of "intelligent" designer puts a recreational facility next to a waste disposal site?

You've obviously never been to New Jersey.

God made man with the recreational facility next to the waste disposal site.
Man made New Jersey with the recreational facility next to the waste disposal site.

Proof that God made man in his image!

Re:The Prostate

[JeanPaulBob]

He said intelligent designer.

Re:The Prostate

[John Newman]

One of the really cool things about God's design of the male body is this: When sexual arousal begins, two very important things for OS begin to take place. First, the opening to the bladder is squeezed shut, making it difficult for urine to pass through (which is why it's difficult for guys to urinate while they have an erection). Second, the Cowper's glands, which are located close to the prostate, secrete a substance that neutralizes any remaining urine in the urethra.

So, when your FW performs OS on you, rest assured that she will not be getting any urine in her mouth!

I really do appreciate the thought that God is looking out for blowjobs, but a more straightforward explanation is that urine is bad for sperm. Sperm don't tolerate the acidity of urine well (ejaculate is alkaline in order to neutralize the acidic vaginal environment); the nitrogen waste compounds reduce motility; and the volume dilutes out the nutrients sperm need to maintain their activity. Any male anatomy that mixed sperm and urine would be very unlikely to be passed on to future males. Few aspects of biology illustrate the effects of reproductive selection more clearly than the mechanics of reproduction itself.

Re:The Prostate

[rhakka]

as a devil's advocate, the alternate explanation could be that your idea of what it means to care about something could be wrong, what is "undeserved" sufferring could be wrong, and that sufferring for some is not in fact the best the thing for the creation as a whole.

Since you don't know the "End state" of the creation, or its purpose, you have no way to judge that. You are using your own arbitrary guidelines for all of these things, and since you are neither omniscient nor omnipotent you have no logical grounds with which to judge such a being... to even presume you have the barest idea of what such a creature would do and why, and whether that means it "cares" about its creation or you or not is totally irrational.

don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there IS such a massively perfect, caring being out there. But as a flawed, limited being such as you or I cannot possibly construct any logical arguement that addresses the motivations of such a superior being... you have absolutely no qualification to judge. All you know is what "feels bad" to you; and you are not perfect, so you don't really know what IS bad, just what seems bad to you.

And?

[Kingrames]

99.9% of humans have more than the average number of arms.
So why does this statistic matter?

So long as the people in charge are smarter than that, we should be okay.

*ulp*

Glass half full?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't that long ago that we were having evolution trials, witch burning and with most of the world's states controlled by various churches.

Even with the rise of the evangelistic movement and the ties many have to the anti-evolution movement, they still pull only 48%.

Sounds not half bad to me.

I know why

[geek]

Most Americans (people over the age of 35ish) were never taught evolution in school and those who were have been taught poorly. I didn't realize the piss poor job my teachers did in junior high and high school until I took an anthropology class in college. People still like to quip that we evolved from monkeys but don't realize we evolved seperate from monkeys and share a common ancestor.

The ignorance to evolution is amazing in this country. It's no surprise at all people haven't embraced it here like they have overseas in Europe.

The Thirty-Percenters

[ewhac]

...And 33% of people polled still think Bush is doing a good job in Iraq.

People wonder why this country lost its lead in manufacturing and, most recently, technological development. Why is a fairy tale -- and an expurgated, badly translated fairy tale at that -- so much more compelling than the tools and concepts that allow you to take control of your own life and environment?

Schwab

Fortunately, It Doesn't Matter What You "Believe"

[ewhac]

Facts -- like gravity, and the sphereoid shape of the planet -- exist whether or not people "believe" in them. A leaf doesn't have to believe in photosynthesis to turn green.

Schwab

A challenge for science and tech in our society

[PrvtBurrito]

My take on this issue is that people who do not have extensive scientific educations are being asked to 'believe' in science in a manner similar to how they 'believe' in religion. Science is fundamentally based on observations and the progression of the scientific method. That said, for most of us, we never see the evidence, nor do we see the details of each hypothesis test. This is further complicated because the body of scientific literature is massive and for every scientific field you can find crap science. Peer review is fallible.

I think we are requiring people to 'believe' in science, simply because science has become too complicated to cover adequately with a standard, non technical education. This creates a conundrum. These people are being required to choose religion -- remember they have been in church since birth -- or science. For them, this must be very difficult. When we listen to a scientist, we hope we are hearing testimony based on evidence, when we hear a preacher we hope we are hearing testimony based on belief.

That said, as a scientist familiar with evolutionary theory, I am troubled by the level with which we understand the mechanisms of evolution and that 48% of people don't even understand the most basic of concepts within it. Should we require people to swallow science without evidence? Should we follow *anything* without evidence? I know I don't, ironically, science doesn't allow me to.

Constructing Polls on Hot Topics is Hard

[igb]

Constructing a poll on a topic as politicised as this is incredibly hard. As another /.er points out, it's a proxy for `are you a godless liberal or a True American', and unless the poll is taken in secret any area in which morons with a belief in creationism are prevalent will over report a belief in creationism. Once the opinion is taken in secret, the game changes, as those anti-abortion politicians in whichever state it was with the proposed law found out: people may support you when their neighbours can hear, but not when they're in private. Moreover, knowledge of how accepted an idea is in scientific discourse is hard to judge for anyone who doesn't follow the topic reasonably closely: as I suspect the vast majority of the world goes about their daily business without worrying about the current status of punctuated equilibrium versus gradualism, why would they care?

Anyway, enough of this. I want someone to help me evolve the long, thin, incredibly strong fingers I'm going to need to open up ther case of the Mac Mini to my right and slot in the replacement disk drive.

New Doctor Who was great tonight, by the way. Rose was great, but you're all going to love Martha Jones. Except for the creationists, of course, who are going to hate The Doctor kissing (whisper it) a black woman.

Beyond Belief

[nih]

This couldn't be more on topic [google.com]

Religion and evolution

[fireweaver]

The next time a jesus chrispie gets in your face about this, ask him this: "OK, so the bible says god this, that, and the next thing. Does it say anywhere HOW he did it? And if it doesn't, did you ever wonder why? Did it ever occur to you that if god is POWERFUL enough to make a universe and populate it with life, then he might also be SMART enough to make it run AUTOMATICALLY according to certain laws, such as gravitation and evolution, that don't require constant meddling and micromanagement? And that these laws are simple enough that us mere humans can actually learn and understand them?"

I.e. "In the beginning, god created heaven and earth. For further details, consult a science book".

Hell in a Handbasket

[Brandybuck]

Why is it that we insist on freedom of thought, unless it's thought we don't want people thinking? Am I the only one who sees the inherent hypocrisy of orthodox free thought?

You're not going to Hell for not having a literalist interpretation of Genesis. But... neither is society going to hell in a handbasket because not enough people believe in evolution. It's okay if your auto mechanic believes something different from you. Your software isn't any better or worse because an evolutionist|creationist wrote it.

Really, it's no big deal. Take a deep breath and relax. You'll find you'll live longer for it.

there's something wrong with the poll

[c6gunner]

It's not in TFA, but the poll also reported the following statistics:

27% of Agnostics and Atheists think God guided the process of evolution
13% of Agnostics and Atheists think God created man in his present form.

So a better title for the article might have been "40% of Atheists believe in God".

When you're getting that kind of result, it might be a clue that there's something wrong with your methodology.

Goodbye Superpower...

[kentrel]

...and goodbye to democracy. How can a country remain remotely democratic when AT LEAST 48% of people are completely ignorant of basic natural realities.

This kind of ignorance makes it possible for once again, the same few to control the many.

Change the terminology: acceptance, not belief

[BetaJim]

Because of my car's bumper stickers I'm frequently asked: "Do you believe in evolution?" Instead
of just saying that I do, I try to raise their consciousness a bit by answering "No, I accept
that evolution is the theory that best explains the evidence." This usually gives them a pause.
Belief is often closely associated with faith, and faith is something that isn't necessary to
accept evolution. Only evidence is needed and there is lots of that available.

I'm a teacher and my bumper sticker if very appropriate and funny in several different ways, it
reads: "Leave no child behind - Teach Evolution." I wish I had another one as this one is very
faded.

Read the poll question

[Eric Pierce]

Did anyone read the actual poll response in question?

"Do you think the scientific theory of evolution is well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?"
48% = Well-supported
39% = Not well-supported
13% = Don't Know


39% not 48%. Zonk, you're fired.

It's not about Evolution

[alexo]

Rather, it's about Revolution.

Ignorant people are easier to manipulate.
They are less likely to question the acts of their government.
They are less likely to cause problems.

Re:Not even about evolution as a concept

[voice_of_all_reason]

Exactly. Let's look at the question again: Is evolution well-supported by evidence AND widely accepted within the scientific community?

Note the logical construct "and". They're asking for A and B to be true. This rules out:

People who think A is false (any religious zealot)
People who think B is false (anyone who believes in evolution but is disallusioned by its acceptance)

Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad

[Anonymous Coward]

So, to paraphrase, you're saying:

Let ignorant people remain ignorant, because what harm could they possibly do to our society? ...incidentally, have you been off-planet for about six years?

Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad

[El Cubano]

Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.

Hmm. Larry Wall is an evangelical Christian. According to his page [wall.org], he attends this church [nlnc.org].

Now, since his contributions are not valuable by your estimation, what is the name of the programming language which you have been developing for over 20 years and is the de facto language for development of dynamic web content and for automating system administration tasks on nearly every operating system?

I'm waiting.

Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad

[metlin]

Come on, who cares?

We care, because these people are also making our laws, electing our politicians and teaching our kids.

These people would be deciding that scientific research is bad (it's already begun, look at the funding cuts in science and technology and the government stance on stem cell research etc). These people will also be electing idiots into office, idiots who believe that a voice-in-the-sky talks to them. And these people will be teaching -- no proselytizing -- to our children.

Do you really want to live in such a society? I, for one, do not. If anything, it scares me to no end.

Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad

[zymurgy_cat]

Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.

That would be all fine and well except for one thing: they're reproducing....and at a higher rate than those of us who value science. And those people and their progeny will vote.

Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad

[fireboy1919]

In this entire line of reasoning, the assumption appears to be that these people can't possibly hold one wrong view yet also do anything else right.

Rejecting evolution makes you a gibbering idiot who is unable to govern your own life and hates science? Do you realize how incredibly arrogant that is?

I don't believe in Evolution. I haven't seen enough facts to support it. I hold the same to be true for all mechanisms whereby the earth, life, and the universe were created. Nothing has enough evidence to support any kind of solid conclusion. There's a bit too much guesswork for me to accept it.

So, IMHO, all it takes is a few preconcieved notions to get you to pick one theory over another. Which one is right? Beats me. I, like most of society, have the luxury of not needing to know how things started to function. And not just function - an understanding of virtually all science, technology, culture, art, and search for truth is available to me without being sure about that.

The only thing I have to deal with is a very special kind of ignorance. The ignorance of the halfway educated - of those who believe that they have Learned and now Know the Right Answer and can therefore Show Others the Way. Once you really start to getting into how things work, you realise that you Know Very Little and Always Will.

How can you be so sure?

Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad

[crashfrog]

I don't believe in Evolution. I haven't seen enough facts to support it. I hold the same to be true for all mechanisms whereby the earth, life, and the universe were created.

Wow. I love when people talk about how arrogant it is to accuse people of being gibbering idiots, and then go on to prove what gibbering idiots they are? Arrogant? Seems more like prescient.

Evolution isn't an explanation for the origin of the universe. It's not really an explanation for the origin of life, either. It's the scientific model that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth by means of mechanisms like random mutation and natural selection.

And to the extent that a scientific model can be proven, evolution has been proven. Life on Earth evolved and continues to evolve (we know that from the fossil record and from continuing observations.) The theory of evolution tells us how that evolution happened. If you haven't "seen the evidence", then it's because you've never been in a biology classroom, or because you don't even understand what you're looking for evidence of.

How can you be so sure?

Who has to be sure? You need to accept uncertainty into your life. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we know nothing. There are questions in biology that evolution doesn't yet answer. Thank goodness, there's a lot of biologists who would be out of work, otherwise.

Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad

[Garse Janacek]

Exactly. For most of my life, even past college, I was a creationist (raised Evangelical). This didn't in any way hinder my ability to think intelligently, or to do lab work for a biotech company, or to ace my science classes, or to graduate from a good school with honors. In most of life, your opinions on the practical origins of life just don't matter very much. Now, one of the places where it does matter is if you're a biologist, or a teacher of biology, or someone who is in a position to legislate on the actions of the former two, so this is a legitimate political conflict. But it's very frustrating when people assume that this one opinion is the only important factor between "intelligent supporter of science" and "superstitious Neanderthal."

Now, eventually, I did change my opinion, and now I'm quite convinced of evolution. But the reason I changed my mind highlights another issue here: I read more about it, and finally found persuasive evidence that answered the objections I'd had for years. I couldn't reconcile that evidence with what I had believed, so I changed my mind.

The thing is, it's not like people had never before tried to argue with me or change my mind. Plenty had, and some had been quite smug about it, too. But no one had actually been able to answer my objections. I would even go so far as to say that I had a better understanding of the scientific method than many of the people who had tried to change my mind, since they often offered very poor or contradictory "scientific evidence," or used simple tautologies and ended up saying "See? It's obvious!" Essentially, I now think they were right, but not because they had any particularly good understanding of the subject, but because they had been taught the right thing and believed it.

Now, most of the time there's nothing wrong with believing what you're taught within reason. Skepticism is healthy, but it can't be applied to literally everything or society couldn't function. But in this case, these people who believed their teachers without really understanding the issue were treating me as stupid for... believing my parents/acquaintances/pastors/whatever without really understanding the issue. Even though I understood more about the issue than they did.

Ultimately, I'm not saying it doesn't matter what people believe. It's largely irrelevant to daily life, but some people are interested in legislating about this issue. And even though the bulk of the population will never be scientific experts, I think more correct impressions are generally preferable to less correct impressions. So in fact, I think people should teach and advocate evolution -- but they need to drop the instant contempt for people who disagree. People who don't believe in evolution are not generally any stupider than people who do. I happen to think they're incorrect, but smart people believe incorrect things all the time, and it's very easy to condemn the belief coming from an environment where all the pressure from an early age is in favor of evolution. Most of the people who believe in one or another form of creationism were raised in environments where the opposite is true. So, if you're trying to advocate or explain evolution, show a little more respect for people who haven't had the exact same life experiences that you do, and be aware that this is not the litmus test of their intelligence (in either direction :-P).

My favorite comic on this subject. [xkcd.com]

Re:

[ignoramus]

That's too dangerous. It's not that we'd like them to contribute to scientific advancement--it's that they'll stop it dead in its tracks if they're clueless/fearful/ignorant and some guru/politician/power-hungry-jerk abuses they irrationality for personal gain.

For many reasons, we--the scientist and scientifically minded--kind of gave up on trying to explain our understanding and objectives to the "layman" and now the rift between us just keeps growing... this is bad because sheeple they may be, but they

Pot, kettle, black

[GuyMannDude]

Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with.

First you call them ignorant (which is true). Then you call them stupid. Then you call them religious fundamentalists. Then back to ignorant. These are all very separate categories, which you would understand if you had the above-average intelligence that you probably believe you possess. Given the large percentage of the population that is being cited, I think it's unlikely they are all below-average in intelligence. I didn't RTFA so I don't know about their religious beliefs. I submit to you that these are probably people of average intelligence who are ignorant. That means that we as scientists are not getting the word out in a manner that most people find compelling. The problem is not with them, it is with us.

Perhaps you should check out the film Flock of Dodos [flockofdodos.com] before you start pointing fingers at who is to blame. (Hint: the dodos are not the intelligent design folks, it's the scientists who are in danger of becoming extinct because they can't communicate simple facts to the mainstream audience.) Elitist attitudes like yours ("hey, if they can't keep up, fuck 'em!") is partially what drives the mainstream to give ID folks a listen.

GMD

Our president is one of those people

[porkThreeWays]

That's what is scary. People making life changing decisions for you believe things with little/no scientific backing. That's why the country is the way it is. That's why we lost the edge we once had. There's a rebirth of celebrating ignorance and we are in the middle of it. Hell, we are basically as a culture in a dark age right now. Once knowledge is acquired it's like our culture as a whole has to check the bible to see if it's credible. Would you want people with the ability to kill you at any moment com

Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad

[Tanuki64]

Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.

I am afraid this is not so easy. Being stupid like that isn't an evolutionary disadvantage today. On the contrary, it seems to be an advantage. To learn todays science you have to invest time and hard work. Time where you are severely restricted in things you can do otherwise. The stupids don't bother with such efforts, believing is so much easier. So instead of hard work over books or in lecture halls, they have plenty of free time they can use to build their power base. What fundamentalists lack in brain power they easily compensate with aggressiveness and and falsehood.

The braindead cry loudly evolution does not happen. Scientist silently go to work. Maybe to find a way to prove facts, which will convince even those, which of course is impossible. But more likely because they don't care, thinking truth will always win.

The braindead cry more and louder, because there is nobody who really opposes them, they win more and more often. Without dedicated opponents they win at schools, they win in the public media. They are fare more visible than they deserve. The final result is, that two legged protein lumps, which would be better suited as emergency food rations in hard times govern you and tell you what is right and what is wrong.

Re:

[pla]

Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.

As much as I may not want to, someday, I will get old.

When that happens, I want stem cell therapies available to fix my joints and my heart and my cancer and my alzheimers and just about everything else that might go wrong with me short of sud

Re:Even Jesus talked in parables

[geek]

There are actually two versions of Genesis, the old Hebrew one where God is not a single being but Ilohim (which is plural and I may have spelled it wrong). Then there is the Christian version which has God as singular and omnipotent, all knowing and all seeing. The problem comes from Calvinism and it's strong (to this very day) influence on Christianity. If Genesis isn't literal to these people the foundation of Christianity falls apart. Evolution directly contradicts the Bible. You can not logically combine the two and have the same religion. Hell the Bible contradicts itself enough as it is, bu when you add evolution, all the theology goes right out the window.

Check out Calvinism and Arminianism on Wikipedia sometime. Use it as background for reading Miltons paradise lost and you'll begin to understand the history of the debate that still rages on today.

Re:

[Freexe]

According to your own source - no

International

A study published in Science, compared attitudes about evolution from the United States, 32 European countries (including Turkey) and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%). Public acceptance of evolution is most prevalent in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden at 80% of the population.

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedis play/img_display.php?pic=060810_evo_rank_02.jpg&ca p=A+chart+ [livescience.com]

Re:How many non-religious don't believe in evoluti

[smchris]

Speaking scientifically on the need for control groups and cross variable analysus I think it would be a pretty good idea to get some stats on that.
 

Re:which farm animal represents 48% of america?

[grammar fascist]

Everyone's a sheep. Modern neuroscience pretty much confirms that most of us run on autopilot most of the time. The real question is, who's your shepherd?

I think the average Slashdotter mostly agrees with Jesus about this. The difference is, the average Slashdotter believes that he's not a sheep, and sees this as insulting. Well, reality check. You are. But who's your shepherd? If there's a single most important decision you can make in your life, it's this. Is it Jesus? Mohammad? Richard Stallman? Pamela Jones? Jimmy Carter? Al Gore? Brad Pitt? Your parents? A good friend? A friendly and knowledgeable professor at school?

A little bit back on topic, is anyone else disturbed that unwavering belief in the theory of evolution has become a litmus test for intelligence?

Re:which farm animal represents 48% of america?

[misanthrope101]

But who's your shepherd?

When religion builds an airplane, I'll buy into your figures of speech. Until then, I'm down with science. It works.

A little bit back on topic, is anyone else disturbed that unwavering belief in the theory of evolution has become a litmus test for intelligence?

It hasn't. The issue is that "skepticism" towards the theory of evolution is emblematic of a rejection of science itself. This rejection of science takes place within a context of all the technology, medicine, and other wonders that the scientific method has produced. This all-out denial of the obvious fact that the scientific worldview is useful, productive, and beneficial does tend to call these people's intelligence into question. If they aren't stupid, what are they?

I read a comment on Slashdot just a few days ago (really wish I had bookmarked it, since I'd love to read it again) where the poster mentioned evolution, the Y2K bug, avian flu, and said "science just has no credibility left." I wanted to say "so I guess you won't be using medicine, driving in cars, or POSTING ON THE INTERNET anymore...?" but I've said it before, and the absurdity of rejecting science while depending on it so heavily is just lost on these people.

Re:which farm animal represents 48% of america?

[SpinyNorman]

is anyone else disturbed that unwavering belief in the theory of evolution has become a litmus test for intelligence?

Why is it disturbing to define intelligence as having a modicum of knowledge and rational analysis capability?

DNA + "survival of the fittest" = evolution. It's not a theory - it's just a plain consequence of the the tautology "survival of the fittest" and the fact that we're based on a naturally varying chemical hereditory mechanism (DNA). If you don't understand that people who have more children leave more descendents, or that we're based on DNA, then, YES, you are stupid.