U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

Most of the people that I have personally known from working in biology and geosciences fields are not atheists. Contrary to popular notions many of them are church (or synagogue) going people, and most of them have some measure of religious faith. None of them believes that evolutionary theory, or other scientific theories such as big bang cosmology or plate tectonic theory, is in conflict with their religion.

What we are seeing in these threads, then, is not a conflict between science and religion. For most people, including most religious people, science and faith are not opposed to one another. What we are experiencing is a sectarian conflict. This conflict exists between those with highly literal interpretation of the Genesis chapter and people who hold more mainstream theological viewpoints. The theological position of mainstream Judaism and Christianity (including conservative denominations such as the Southern Baptists) is that Lord exists beyond scientific scrutiny. The creationism/intelligent design movement, on the other hand, seeks to demonstrate the existence of the Creator through forensic evidence. When the physical evidence does not square with their theological position, it is the evidence and scientific method that become suspect. The result is the hostility demonstrated on these threads towards modern biology and science in general.

How many times in these threads have I heard people say "Liberal Christians are worse than atheists" or "You can't be a true Christian if you believe insects came before birds" and the like? This is a sectarian conflict. It is not "atheist science" versus Christianity at all. In actuality, this conflict is about the creationist/intelligent design movement seeking to elevate their theological position above the theological position of others.

Those nations which originated agriculturalism later 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)

As the world came out of the Dark Ages there were three powerhouses in the world.

The Middle East had repelled several Christian invasions, but their environment was so depleted that never again would the term "Fertile Crescent" apply. Not until the discovery of oil would they acheive any importance on the world stage.

China had better technology and almost a hundred year head start on "treasure fleets" - ie colonizing and looting - but one bad decision on the part of the ruling class completely ruined their worldwide prospects. They chose to forgo sending out more fleets and lost out on the greatest period of exploration and expansion in history.

This left Europe to dominate the globe by default, as no other area of the world could compete at all. Saying this domination has happened for the past 2000 years is obviously wrong, though.

"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"

That's kind of funny.

Any stats on what these 34 countries of superior "understanding" rank in scientific discovery? How about in medical discoveries since that is closely aligned with biology.

Rubbish.

Evolution contributes little to the progress of science.

I agree. Most scientists aren't atheists like myself and probably never will be. Religion (seems to me, anway) is intrinsic to humanity itself, so scientists of all stripes are probably going to be reconciling their findings with their faith for thousands of years to come.

Personally, I think it's great that an atheist "amature-junior-scientist" like myself can come together with Christian, Hindu, Agnostic, Whatever professionals to see the evidence support such a beautiful and parsimonious theory like Evolution.

Rubbish. Evolution contributes little to the progress of science.

Thats a bit like saying "Astronomy contributes little to the progress of science". Astronomy, like evolutionary biology, is science, so any progress in these fields is -- by definition -- scientific progress.

I get the feeling that when you say "scientific progress" you really mean "engineering applications" -- neato gadgets to make life easier and perhaps to blow things up. Those are wonderful benefits of scients, of course, but the neat thing about human beings is that we thirst for Knowledge, even if said Knowledge doesn't help us to build a better widget or increase our profit margin.

Knowledge is a reward unto itself.

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