Posted on 08/11/2006 11:54:04 AM PDT by presidio9
A comparison of peoples' views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower.
Among the factors contributing to America's low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, the researchers say.
“American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close,” said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.
The researchers combined data from public surveys on evolution collected from 32 European countries, the United States and Japan between 1985 and 2005. Adults in each country were asked whether they thought the statement “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals,” was true, false, or if they were unsure.
The study found that over the past 20 years:
The percentage of U.S. adults who accept evolution declined from 45 to 40 percent. The percentage overtly rejecting evolution declined from 48 to 39 percent, however. And the percentage of adults who were unsure increased, from 7 to 21 percent.
Of the other countries surveyed, only Turkey ranked lower, with about 25 percent of the population accepting evolution and 75 percent rejecting it. In Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted evolution; in Japan, 78 percent of adults did.
The findings are detailed in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Science.
Religion belief and evolution
The researchers also compared 10 independent variables—including religious belief, political ideology and understanding of concepts from genetics, or “genetic literacy”—between adults in America and nine European countries to determine whether these factors could predict attitudes toward evolution.
The analysis found that Americans with fundamentalist religious beliefs—defined as belief in substantial divine control and frequent prayer—were more likely to reject evolution than Europeans with similar beliefs. The researchers attribute the discrepancy to differences in how American Christian fundamentalist and other forms of Christianity interpret the Bible.
While American fundamentalists tend to interpret the Bible literally and to view Genesis as a true and accurate account of creation, mainstream Protestants in both the United States and Europe instead treat Genesis as metaphorical, the researchers say.
“Whether it’s the Bible or the Koran, there are some people who think it’s everything you need to know,” Miller said. “Other people say these are very interesting metaphorical stories in that they give us guidance, but they’re not science books.”
This latter view is also shared by the Catholic Church.
Politics and the Flat Earth
Politics is also contributing to America's widespread confusion about evolution, the researchers say. Major political parties in the United States are more willing to make opposition to evolution a prominent part of their campaigns to garner conservative votes—something that does not happen in Europe or Japan.
Miller says that it makes about as much sense for politicians to oppose evolution in their campaigns as it is for them to advocate that the Earth is flat and promise to pass legislation saying so if elected to office.
"You can pass any law you want but it won't change the shape of the Earth," Miller told LiveScience.
Paul Meyers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study, says that what politicians should be doing is saying, 'We ought to defer these questions to qualified authorities and we should have committees of scientists and engineers who we will approach for the right answers."
The researchers also single out the poor grasp of biological concepts, especially genetics, by American adults as an important contributor to the country's low confidence in evolution.
“The more you understand about genetics, the more you understand about the unity of life and the relationship humans have to other forms of life,” Miller said.
The current study also analyzed the results from a 10-country survey in which adults were tested with 10 true or false statements about basic concepts from genetics. One of the statements was "All plants and animals have DNA." Americans had a median score of 4. (The correct answer is "yes.")
Science alone is not enough
But the problem is more than one of education—it goes deeper, and is a function of our country's culture and history, said study co-author Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education in California.
“The rejection of evolution is not something that will be solved by throwing science at it,” Scott said in a telephone interview.
Myers expressed a similar sentiment. About the recent trial in Dover, Pennsylvania which ruled against intelligent design, Myers said "it was a great victory for our side and it’s done a lot to help ensure that we keep religion out of the classroom for a while longer, but it doesn’t address the root causes. The creationists are still creationists—they're not going to change because of a court decision."
Scott says one thing that will help is to have Catholics and mainstream Protestants speak up about their theologies' acceptance of evolution.
"There needs to be more addressing of creationism from these more moderate theological perspectives," Scott said. “The professional clergy and theologians whom I know tend to be very reluctant to engage in that type of ‘my theology versus your theology’ discussion, but it matters because it’s having a negative effect on American scientific literacy."
The latest packaging of creationism is intelligent design, or ID, a conjecture which claims that certain features of the natural world are so complex that they could only be the work of a Supreme Being. ID proponents say they do not deny that evolution is true, only that scientists should not rule out the possibility of supernatural intervention.
But scientists do not share doubts over evolution. They argue it is one of the most well tested theories around, supported by countless tests done in many different scientific fields. Scott says promoting uncertainty about evolution is just as bad as denying it outright and that ID and traditional creationism both spread the same message.
“Both are saying that evolution is bad science, that evolution is weak and inadequate science, and that it can’t do the job so therefore God did it,” she said.
Another view
Bruce Chapman, the president of the Discovery Institute, the primary backer of ID, has a different view of the study.
"A better explanation for the high percentage of doubters of Darwinism in America may be that this country's citizens are famously independent and are not given to being rolled by an ideological elite in any field," Chapman said. "In particular, the growing doubts about Darwinism undoubtedly reflect growing doubts among scientists about Darwinian theory. Over 640 have now signed a public dissent and the number keeps growing."
Nick Matzke of the National Center for Science Education in California points out, however, that most of the scientists Chapman refers to do not do research in the field of evolution.
"If you look at the list, you can't find anybody who's really a significant contributor to the field or anyone who's done recognizable work on evolution," Matzke said.
Scott says the news is not all bad. The number of American adults unsure about the validity of evolution has increased in recent years, from 7 to 21 percent, but growth in this demographic comes at the expense of the other two groups. The percentage of Americans accepting evolution has declined, but so has the percentage of those who overtly reject it.
"I was very surprised to see that. To me that means the glass is half full,” Scott said. “That 21 percent we can educate."
"U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution"
BUT...
Snapshot of attitudes about actually using genetics...
In America: Don't you mess with the embryos!
In Europe: Don't you mess with the tomato!
That's a paraphrase of an observation by Matt Ridley, author of
a biography of Francis Crick.
He said that during his travels, he finds Europeans much more fearful
of application of genetic research and Americans much more excited about
benefiting from it.
Here's a link to the book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006082333X/sr=8-1/qid=1155339126/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4548298-7623034?ie=UTF8
Here's a link to the info on Ridley's recent appearance on BookTV (C-Span2 weekends).
Looks like you can even watch Ridley's talk by clicking the "Watch"
link on the page.
http://www.booktv.org/PublicLives/index.asp?schedid=443&segid=7274
I will wait until my degree is in hand so that not only can I answer your question but have my own set of supporting evidences as to why I answered them as such, until then I am nothing but an ex-military guy getting some A's in class.
Not many of the linge rats talked about "evolution" except as a given. In any case, if you are teaching kids the basics of science and want to get away from textbook talk, the last thing you want to do is to spend time on "grand theories." If you do, then what they come away with is the notion of "gravity" as something "essential" to matter, or more creduly as a "force." Easy enough to start with a repetition of Galileo's experiments, and try to get them to record and see the pattern of the results. Not so easy to go from these to the standard formulas. in part because Galileo used geometry, not algebra, but kids will surprise you.
I have an an 8th grader pick up a relationship I never saw until I got to college. That's because his mind was not cluttered up with a lot of badly taught math. But for most people, even the bright ones, "generalities" in the bad sense are just easy to go with. So most physics students graduate from high school with only a slight advantage over Aristotle.
Now if they can't grasp something as simple and demonstrable as dynamics, how the heck are they going to deal with something like evolution? Even assuming it is right. it is as counterintuitive as relativity theory.
Call this variation --as I think Wallace did--rather than evolution. Evolution brings to mind an outward spiral from simplicity to complexity.
It is also possible that science will never achieve either goal , or that it will take another fifty years, or about the same time that our high schools produce literate graduates.
"By the strictest definition of species (absolutely unable to interbreed); speciation has been observed several times both in and out of the lab.
IF they interbred, then they weren't species by definition!
I'm sorry that I don't have the detailed answers in front of me which I think you might appreciate, to counter your claim. I might suggest a book by Michael Behe, or an easier starter, even Ann Coulter's Godless: the Church of Liberalism has a third of the book on evolution. You might try online Reason to Believe in Pasadena California as well.
What I do have: let's work backwards from something you might think is irrelevant but which is not. We have historical documents of eyewitness accounts of the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Bible. The historical evidence is good,and the internal and external means to verify evidence are along the same standards as we would require in research of any other ancient document, verifying and affirming the claims.
Jesus rose from the dead proving His claims to be God the Son come to earth. Now, what does HE say about the beginning of the world? As God, He would know! He goes along with the teachings that the Bible is God's word and has accurate coverage of this. It is not a scientific textbook, but its account is true. The accounts in Genesis really happened, God actually created the beasts, and that man was created differently, "in the image of God." So we have God Himself, now who can be talked to, who has a fully human body because He has assumed a human nature along with His Divine nature, God the Son verifying that our historical records are correct for our cosmology.
We have a choice from there: when we hear theories which contradict Him, do we want to believe them, or Him? It is a widely accepted presupposition that miracles cannot happen, and yet Jesus raised Himself from the dead, so that 'scientific' presupposition is false, because the evidence overturns it. Do we want to believe a theory, or Him?
If evolution were true, God could have done it that way. But we don't have the evidence. What we have is lack of any evidence, with the godless liberals trying to push their anti-God beliefs upon us, not wanting this information to get out. There are changes within species, but there is no evidence that species evolve into higher species.
What you mean by "if they interbred, they were species by definition?"
And indeed there is evidence, a wealth of evidence indeed. To summarily assert that there is no evidence is intellectual dishonest.
Coulter's arguments were the same creationist arguments which have been continually refuted; also, Behe's IC proposition was shown to be false multiple times.
Evolution is not a belief, as you implicitly posit. It is however a scientific theory.
The current study also analyzed the results from a 10-country survey in which adults were tested with 10 true or false statements about basic concepts from genetics. One of the statements was "All plants and animals have DNA." Americans had a median score of 4. (The correct answer is "yes.")
They state that Americans have a median score of 4 as if that statistic by itself has some meaning. Their implication is that Americans doubt evolution because Americans don't know as much about genetics as non-Americans. However, they failed to state the median score of any non-Americans. What was the median score of those from other countries? I suspect that they didn't give this statistic because this statistic wouldn't support their opinion. If the median score for other countries was also 4 or near 4, then ignorance of genetics is not the explanation for Americans' skepticism about evolution. I also noted that they didn't try to compare the median score of Americans who don't believe in evolution with the median score of Americans who do believe in evolution. Again, if the evolutionists generally have a much higher score, they would have some support for their smear that only people who are ignorant of biology are skeptical of evolution.
I'm also curious why they used median scores and not average scores. I'd like to see the distribution of scores. I suspect that they'd like us to believe that scores were a normal distribution around that median. I also suspect that the real scores were much more scattered.
Science alone is not enough
But the problem is more than one of education—it goes deeper, and is a function of our country's culture and history, said study co-author Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education in California.
“The rejection of evolution is not something that will be solved by throwing science at it,” Scott said in a telephone interview.
In other words, Americans don't doubt evolution because we lack knowledge of science. This guy is admitting that the problem isn't ignorance of biology. Instead, he's just upset because educated people believe something different from what he believes.
The article makes clear that there are fanatics on both sides of the issue. In this article, most of the attention is given to the pro-evolution fanatics and advancing their point of view. Personally, I have no use for the fanatics on either side of the issue. Evolution is one of the least likely areas of research to produce anything useful. People care about evolution because they are asking science to tell them who they are. I think science is a poor tool for telling me who I am.
Bill
My point is that the term "variation" is sufficient for discussion of what we can see. Evolution goes far beyond that to encompass virtually every field of knowledge. It is interesting, however, that you should mention animal husbandry. Almost as soon as Darwin published, he and many of his supporters began to relativize human life. Like it or not, eugenics is part and parcel of darwinism.
No, eugenics is a philosophy that has bearing on research. It is analogous to marxism, where revolutionary actioin is supposed to "speed up" an inevitable process. The term "natural selection" is value laden, because it leads people to help nature along. The biologist tends to play the role that deity does in ID. We recognized this in the work of the Nazi scientists. I see it in the work of the IVF practioneers and the cloners and the stem cell researchers ( the ones that lust after the flesh of enbryos)
I mentioned Marx because he presented his views as scientific. The harm he did was less in the economic or sociological theories he proposed than in what opportunists like Lenin made f it. The basis of the present furor over stem cell research is the resurgence of eugenics, not as a legitimate scientific theory but as a kind of view of what is moral. The researchers who demand access to the "extra" embryos generated by the horrific IVF industry have a view of human nature like Francis Galton's. It is related to evolution per se only by the famous recapitulation theory of embryology, which (falsely) compared stages of human development to stages of human evolution. The implication, of course, is that if champs are less than human beings, then certain kinds of human beings are likewise also not fully "evolved," fully human. Since personal traits are inherited, it is allowed to work toward a kind of "speciation " by the manipulation of genetic "matter." Human nature becomes a kind of garden and the researcher is allowed to operate like some modern day Luther Burbank.
LOL
Good grief, you clearly show your utter ignorance. The development of agriculture did not begin in those Western regions which later dominated the phenomenl growth in technology and culture over the past 2000 years
Agriculture began in mesopatamia, north eastern Africa and spread to central Asia and then to the West.
Those nations which originated agriculturalism ;ater fell far behind western nations because they did not embrace Christianity. (the correlation is prfound if you would care to scratch below the surface, should your preconceived bias allow such)
You take exception to the blatantly obvious, so there is clearly some agenda or bogtry in your "argument".
In particular consider the explosive expansion of economies and technology as Christianity took on even purer form after the Reformation.
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