Poll shows Americans divided over question of evolution vs. creation

Poll shows Americans divided over question of evolution vs. creation By Kevin Eckstrom

WASHINGTON (RNS)--A Gallup Poll suggests Americans are divided over how the world was created--either through evolution or at the hand of God--but either way, they appear skeptical that it happened exactly as described in the book of Genesis.

The poll found Charles Darwin's theory of evolution remains controversial among Americans. About one-third say it is supported by evidence, one-third see it as bunk and one-third don't know enough to judge.

A plurality of Americans--45 percent--say man was created by God in his present form, while 38 percent say man developed over time as God guided the process. Just 13 percent said God had no role in the process.

Yet a smaller percentage, 34 percent, said the Bible is the actual word of God and should be read literally.

Pollsters said that discrepancy suggests Americans believe man was created as-is, but not because the Bible says so.

Breaking down the numbers, Gallup officials said about one-quarter of Americans are "biblical literalists" who believe man was created 10,000 years ago in his present form. They tend to be women, conservatives, Republicans and attend a Protestant church at least once a week.

A slightly smaller number--one in five Americans--believe man was created in his present form 10,000 years ago, but not because they read the Bible literally. Just 9 percent of the country read the Bible literally but are open to the theory of evolution.

The largest group--46 percent--do not read the Bible literally and believe humans may have evolved over time. This group tends to be male, urban, more educated, Catholic and seldom or never attend church.

"It is not surprising to find that the biblical literalists who believe that God created humans 10,000 years ago tend to be more religious and Protestant," said Frank Newport, Gallup's editor-in-chief.

The survey of 1,016 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

http://www.reviewevolution.com/viewersGuide/Evolution_00E.php

http://www.panspermia.com/ [homepage, general]
http://www.panspermia.com/neodarw.htm [on Neo-Darwinism]
http://www.panspermia.com/mechansm.htm [evolution vs. creationism]
http://www.panspermia.com/seconlaw.htm [on entropy: boltzmann entropy vs. shannon entropy, and the way most neo-darwinists conflate the two]
http://www.panspermia.com/computrs.htm [critique of computer models of evolution]
http://www.panspermia.com/computr2.htm [paper from Genetic Programming conference 1997]
http://www.panspermia.com/hoylintv.htm [1996 interview with Sir Fred Hoyle]
http://www.panspermia.com/chandra.htm [1981 trial evidence of chandra wickramasinghe in Arkansas]

http://www.trueorigin.org/behe06.asp [Response by Behe to critics re: falsifiability of ID]

"Now, one can’t have it both ways. One can’t say both that ID is unfalsifiable (or untestable) and that there is evidence against it. Either it is unfalsifiable and floats
serenely beyond experimental reproach, or it can be criticized on the basis of our observations and is therefore testable. The fact that critical reviewers advance scientific arguments against ID (whether successfully or not) shows that intelligent design is indeed falsifiable.

In fact, my argument for intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. Here is a thought experiment that makes the point clear. In Darwin’s Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can’t be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum—or any equally complex system—was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven."

http://www.strengthsandweaknesses.org/news.10.01.2003.htm [website asking that textbooks with evolutionary propaganda (like faked diagrams) be revised]

http://www.id.ucsb.edu/fscf/LIBRARY/berlinski/deniable.html [The Deniable Darwin, by David Berlinski, Commentary, June 1996]

"The fundamental core of Darwinian doctrine, the philosopher Daniel Dennett has buoyantly affirmed, 'is no longer in dispute among scientists.' Such is the party line, useful on
those occasions when biologists must present a single face to their public. But it was to the dead that Darwin pointed for confirmation of his theory; the fact that paleontology does not entirely support his doctrine has been a secret of long standing among paleontologists. 'The known fossil record,' Steven Stanley observes, 'fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.'"

http://www.sidis.net/Commentary%20Magazine%20--%20February%201998.htm [Berlinski contra the

Big Bang theory, Commentary, Feb. 1998]

1. List 10 embryologists who deny Darwin.

Since you're a computer geek, I'm safe in assuming that the number "10" is simply binary for "2". I'll therefore list 2 names. If you're talking base 10, you can easily find another 8:

a. Soren Lovtrup
b. Sir Gavin de Beer

In a private email to me a few years ago (responding to some questions I had regarding Darwin's Black Box) Professor Behe wrote that many embryologists he knew in academia secretly had severe doubts about Darwinism, as it contradicted what they knew about development.

Behe addresses question re falsifiability and ID above. See also the Commentary archives for 2002, "Has Darwin Met His Match?" by David Berlinski (by subscription). See also "A
Scientific Scandal" criticizing a famous paper by Dan-Erik Nilsson and Suzanne Pelger regarding a mathematical model for the formation of a vertebrate eye. Berlinksi is a Ph.D in math (Princeton) and proves that the model is just plain nuts. The "scandal" mentioned in the essay's title refers to the fact that a number or knee-jerk evolutionists -- Richard Dawkins, among them -- have falsely claimed that the authors performed a computer simulation of the model. In private correspondence between Nilsson and Berlinski, Nilsson freely admitted that there is no such computer simulation and never has been. Berlinski criticizes Miller in the Commentary article for not publicly stating this, and for allowing this myth to survive.

2. Whether or not one uses a random number generator to input data is irrelevant. A genetic algorithm writer still has to write the algorithm according to the given constraints required by the model; the constraints INTO WHICH the random data are input. The constraints, of course, cannot be random, but rule-governed -- governed by whatever model one is trying to test. Who chooses the constraints in Nature? Who or what is the writer of the algorithm in Nature?

Berlinski on computer models:

"A computer simulation of an evolutionary process is not a mysterious matter. A theory is given, most often in ordinary mathematical language. The theory's elements are then mapped to elements that a computer can recognize, and its dynamical laws, or laws of change, are replicated at distance by a program. When the computer has run the program, it has simulated the theory.

Although easy to grasp as a concept, a computer simulation must meet certain nontrivial requirements. The computer is a harsh taskmaster, and programming demands a degree of specificity not ordinarily required of a mathematical theory. The great virtue of a computer simulation is that if the set of objects is large, and the probability distribution and fitness function complicated, the computer is capable of illustrating the implications of the teory in a way that would be impossible using ordinary methods of calculation."

Berlinski criticizes some genetic algorithms written by Richard Dawkins in "The Deniable Darwin," linked above.

3. Check any good bio text (such as Darnell). DNA single-nucleotide substitutions (copying errors, or "point mutations") usually result in injuries to the organism. In fruit flies, induced mutations result in legs sticking out of ears, but these flies are obvious cripples, not new, thriving varieties. Some mutations are merely neutral, and don't affect evolution one way or the other. As for mutation frequency in a population, Sir Ronald Fisher (along with Sewall Wright one of the inventors of population genetics) says:

"A mutation, even if favorable, will have only a very small chance of establishing itself in the species if it occurs once only." [Fisher 1958, "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection"]

According to physicist Lee Spetner ("Not By Chance"):

"Fisher has shown that most mutants, even if they have positive SVs ["survival values"], will be wiped out by random effects. He noted that a single mutation, even if it is a positive one, has only small chance of survival. As a result, a single mutation is unlikely to play much of a role in evolution. Fisher concluded thatif positive mutations are to play a role in evolution, many of them have to occur."

And they all have to be positive, and they all have to occur at the same time. To find one needle in one haystack is one thing; to find 100 needles in a 100 haystacks, all at the same time, is something else -- like not believable. That's why population geneticists came up with the ad hoc notion that the populuations must be small in relation to the number of mutations; and to protect the small populations from natural catastrophe, they would have to be conveniently hidden in especially favorable environment. Again, not believable; it could not have all happened that way, for every species, or even for the majority of them.

You clearly don't know the literature, pro or con, very well. Obviously, you've never even read Darwin, probably with the excuse that he's "so pre-1940s." You, therefore, have little knowledge of the debate, and no historical context. Additionally, Behe has published many purely technical articles on histones (his narrow specialty within the field of biochemistry) in peer reviewed journals. The significance of Darwin's Black Box is not that it was published by a commercial publisher (Simon & Schuster) rather than a peer-reviewed journal, but that it was the one of the first anti-Darwin books NOT to be published by a religious press. Another fabulous anti-Darwin book, for example, had no such luck. "Not By Chance -- Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution" by Dr. Lee Spetner (physicist from MIT, and specialist in information theory) summarizes and critices modern neo-Darwinism from the standpoint of information theory. The book is published by The Judaica Press, Inc.

Just as the mainstream media contol the "official" press outlets, mainstream evolutionists control most of the peer-reviewed journals. We're all happy that there are alternative venues for news (book publishers like Regnery, upstart newspapers like the NY Sun, websites like freerepublic.com) and we should all be happy that there are alternative venues for scientific/speciality publishing (take-a-risk publishers like S&S, religious presses, websites, etc.). Your bigoted, narrow-minded attitude regarding the sacrosanctness of peer-reviewed journals is the same sort of prejudice shown by the protectionist freepers. The latter do not want a free market of goods and services. They speak, rather of a so-called "fair market"; i.e., one that favors them and their industry at the expense of everyone else. This is done under the excuse that their industry is "essential" to the economic well-being of the country; unless they are protected from "unfair" foreign competition, all sorts of injurious things will happen to the nation (the worst of it being, apparently, that they will go out of business).

You, on the other hand, are an intellectual protectionist. You don't want a free market of ideas (or maybe you merely want to limit the free market to venues that you don't find threatening, such as private institutions, religious presses, religious magazines, etc.). The economic protectionist doesn't believe that the competition is "legitimate"; i.e., those foreign goods were made under "slave labor" conditions; or they were made with an unfair foreign subsidy industrial policy; or they are of inferior quality (and they kindly wish to protect us from them). The intellectual protectionist doesn't believe that anti-Darwin ideas are legitimate; i.e., those foreign ideas are anti-scientific (and they kindly wish to protect us from them, lest we come to believe in magic as an explanatory force in nature), or they come from an unwholesome source (rednecks, hicks, biblical fundamentalists), or they are of inferior quality (the "best" people from Harvard and Yale won't touch them; you shouldn't either). It's still protectionism, and should be rejected on that account.

Your earlier statement about "trusting scientists" on this issue is touching, though naive. Trust no one. Here's Berlinksi on the matter of trust:

"In science, as in life, it is always an excellent idea to cut the cards after the deck has been shuffled. One may admire the dealer, but trust is another matter." [Commentary April 2003, "A Scientific Scandal"]

Finally, I should point out that, while my ignorance may not be your problem, YOUR ignorance surely is. Unfortunately, the hostility and just plain stupidity of your posts is now making your ignorance everyone else's problem too. Come back when you've caught up in the debate. I'd be happy to recommend a reading list for you, which I feel sure you can find at your local library.

My knowledge of this subject is unlikely to be less than yours. Everything you mention in your post I have pretty much encountered before, with only your ordering of words and paragraphs that is original to my eyes. This is because much of it is well known quotations and concepts.

It is when you make statements like this that I have doubts with your understanding:
"And indeed it is. I doubt if most of those scientists would really accept that the fossil record really proves neo-Darwinism"
As scientific theories cannot possibly be proven your argument only attacks a strawman you have created.

Behe says:
"Now, one can’t have it both ways. One can’t say both that ID is unfalsifiable (or untestable) and that there is evidence against it."

Interestingly enough I believe this to be true. I view creationism as bad science, but intelligent design is not even science. It is true that there is no evidence against intelligent design, simply because it doesn't provide any predictions that could yeild potential falisifications. In crude language it doesn't put its ass on the line.

Behe says:
"In Darwin’s Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can’t be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum—or any equally complex system—was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven."

Behe's proposed falsification is unworkable. If the flagellum did evolve it is highly unlikely it did so in just a few years. Therefore Behe's proposed falsification via a few year long experiment is already bound to failure and therefore isn't a potential falsification.

It is like claiming that different dog breeds are created by an intelligent designer and could not have evolved from a wolf-like ancestor, and then claiming that a potential falsification is a 50 year lab experiment that evolves dog breeds from wolves. While it is true that if such an experiment suceeded it would falsify the theory, we know this would be highly unlikely to suceed from the beginning. Therefore it is not good enough as a potential falsification and the theory is still not testable.

What intelligent design should do is throw some potential falsification that could be easily tested. The theory of evolution already does this. Every fossil unearthed could potentially falsify evolution in the extreme, or at least give it difficulties.

Basically the theory of intelligent design needs to make a number of predictions that can hopefully be tested over future decades.

"in a private email to me a few years ago (responding to some questions I had regarding Darwin's Black Box) Professor Behe wrote that many embryologists he knew in academia secretly had severe doubts about Darwinism, as it contradicted what they knew about development."

I am not suprised, so little is understood about the expression of DNA and embryonic development. At such a low level it does indeed look impossible. But what looks impossible today with, may be shown possible once it is understood better.
There is enough evidence that evolution has occured at higher levels (species geographical distribution, fossil evidence, DNA homologies) to show that it happened. It's a bit like how we can know planets are orbitting the sun without understanding how. So I can well imagine that if embryologists do not see these higher-level evidence they will have doubts.

"Whether or not one uses a random number generator to input data is irrelevant. A genetic algorithm writer still has to write the algorithm according to the given constraints required by the model; the constraints INTO WHICH the random data are input. The constraints, of course, cannot be random, but rule-governed -- governed by whatever model one is trying to test. Who chooses the constraints in Nature? Who or what is the writer of the algorithm in Nature?"

It doesn't matter who wrote the algorithm as long as it works. The running of the algorithm produces design without interferance in the process from the writer. Whether or not God wrote evolution, evolution still works.

"3. Check any good bio text (such as Darnell). DNA single-nucleotide substitutions (copying errors, or "point mutations") usually result in injuries to the organism. In fruit flies, induced mutations result in legs sticking out of ears, but these flies are obvious cripples, not new, thriving varieties. Some mutations are merely neutral, and don't affect evolution one way or the other."

Beneficial point mutations can improve the efficiency of genes. Viruses such as SARS adapt via mutations. Clearly beneficial mutations and uphill evolution of fitness occurs regardless of how many deleterious or neutral mutations are occuring.

"A mutation, even if favorable, will have only a very small chance of establishing itself in the species if it occurs once only"
Sure but at any given instance there will be many different potential mutations that would be beneficial, and many individuals in the population for these to occur. Even if only 1 in 100 beneficial mutations fixes in a population then that is still a beneficial mutation that fixes.

"Fisher has shown that most mutants, even if they have positive SVs ["survival values"], will be wiped out by random effects. He noted that a single mutation, even if it is a positive one, has only small chance of survival. As a result, a single mutation is unlikely to play much of a role in evolution. Fisher concluded thatif positive mutations are to play a role in evolution, many of them have to occur."

A positive mutation might only have a small chance of survival, but a non-positive mutation has an even smaller chance of survival. We are talking about many mutations over many generations. Eventually a beneficial mutation will fix. I have directly observed it in genetic algorithms. Even when any beneficial mutatants are only marginally better than the rest of the population, you still get an upward climb of fitness over time so some beneficial mutations must be fixing.

"And they all have to be positive, and they all have to occur at the same time"
No they don't. They could fix at different times. In a population you could have dozens of beneficial mutations that may or may not ultimately fix. Plus of course with sexual reproduction two parents with two different beneficial mutations can pass both to their offspring via crossover.

"You clearly don't know the literature, pro or con, very well. Obviously, you've never even read Darwin, probably with the excuse that he's "so pre-1940s.""
Actually I have, but if it makes you feel better you can pretend I haven't.

You then go on a lot about how closed minded the mainstream and I are and how I am an "intellectual protectionist", etc, etc. The problem is I can now see these arguments are subjective.

In some cases there really is such intellectual protectionism of a majority in acedemia against ideas supported by a minority. You point out some of these.

But in many cases an idea is flawed but the minority of acedemic advocates of that idea will not drop it. In such cases they often label the majority as "intellectual protectionists" and condemn them for not considering their pet theories. For example the pseudo-history of Graham Hancock.

So which is the case with intelligent design? Well it depends which side you are on. I believe it is the latter, you believe it is the former. So calling me an "intellectual protectionist" really fits in with what I expect you think of me.

I am in fact all up for exploring ideas, including the idea of intelligent design. But intelligent design is not a scientific idea, nor is it new.

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