Posted on 10/23/2009 8:18:13 PM PDT by john in springfield
After spending time on some of the recent discussions here at FR about Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and other points of view (which I will call Old Earth Creationism (OEC) and Naturalistic Evolution), I found myself wondering: how many FReepers (and how many Americans) hold each particular view?
Obviously, there aren't any statistics on FReepers. But there are on Americans as a whole, and on certain groups of Americans.
The best general resource I've found so far on people's viewpoints is located here. I will summarize some of those here.
(Note: This page uses slightly different terms for a couple of these viewpoints, but as far as I can tell, they mean the same thing.)
About 45% accept the Young Earth Creationist viewpoint, about 37% accept the Old Earth Creationist viewpoint, and around 12% to 14% accept the Naturalistic Evolution viewpoint.
This has held fairly steady over the past 25 years or so. The percentage who believe in NE may have increased slightly, but overall, the numbers have held fairly steady.
A CBS News poll gave a bit different percentages: YEC 55%, OEC 27%, NE 13%.
Observations:
There are a lot of people who believe in young earth creationism, and there are also a lot of people who believe in old earth creationism as well.
The vast majority of Americans believe in God.
The majority of Americans believe in evolution.
The numbers change significantly among the college-educated:
YEC: 25%
OEC: 54%
NE: 17%
It is interesting to me that most - a full 54% - college-educated Americans accept the Old-Earth Creationist (or theistic evolutionist) view.
Note also the effect that a college education seems to have: With a few exceptions, people who go to college don't stop believing in God. However, quite a few do seem to shift from YEC to OEC.
This graph also means that an awful lot of people who don't go to college believe in YEC rather than in either OEC or NE.
Note that while this poll is nearly 20 years old, based on what we know from some other polls, overall beliefs do not seem to have changed greatly during this time.
YEC: 5%
OEC: 40%
NE: 55%
Note: The word "scientist" seems to be very vague in this poll, which apparently includes a lot of people with professional degrees in fields completely unrelated to biology, geology, etc.
In any event, a majority of "scientists" don't seem to believe that God was involved in the development of life on earth. It's not a very large majority, though. "Scientists" are divided as to whether God was involved. Most of those who think He was believe that this involvement included the process of evolution.
However, given that only 5% of "scientists" support YEC, the under-1% figure may well be true. I just don't know. Nor do I have access to the original 1987 Newsweek article to see exactly how they got their information.
If there's another poll or two out there on this, it might be interesting to know about.
A 2007 Harris Poll showed the following percentages of Christians who accept the theory of evolution:
Catholics: 43%
Protestants: 30%
"Born-Again Christians": 16%
Finally, a 2005 CBS Poll stated that a full two thirds (67%) of Americans believe that it's possible for one to believe both in God and in evolution.
You mean like “The Three Faces of Evo”? A real classic.
==Honestly, the level of ugliness on the part of a couple of “Christians” here is astonishing to me. Presumably they read from the same Bible that talks about the love of God, but personally, I can’t see any evidence of it from here.
Spare me the phony holier than thou attitude, Johnny-boy. I might have even fallen for it if you had not revealed what you are really all about on so many other threads.
Are these quotes from previous threads not from you, Mr. Manners? (can’t you just feel the love...LOL!):
“GGG posts brainless YEC claims which promptly get ripped to shreds by multiple people.”
“By continuing to post this crap...”
“Personally, I will NEVER waste my time with you again...”
“Your faith is weak...”
“It would be a good idea for you to stop posting this nonsense.”
“1) You’re incapable of even reading it.”
“2) You’re probably incapable of really understanding it, even if you did read it.”
“So just go on and ONLY read the crap that reinforces your already-arrived-at conclusions. That’s what you’re going to do anyway”
Only thing I can say to ANYONE who doesn’t like messenger or the posts:
“DON’T READ THEM/DON’T CLICK ON THEM/TURN OFF THE COMPUTER/FIND A HOBBY/READ A BOOK/GET A LIFE/ETC.”
Or...and this is a biggie....actually debate the subject at hand!!!!! How much less “ugliness” there would be.
What's your Ph.D. in? I am at a medical school now, some of those graduate students hang around forever. I know one guy who has been here for something like 8 years. The MD PhDs tend to get out quickly though.
(I cannot for the life of me believe the Dolphins are beating the Saints 24-3 halftime).
The score would seem to indicate the Dolphins are the superior team.
I would love to believe that! We’ll see...
I’m back. I seem to recall on some of your posts that within three minutes the insults and complaints would start and I still wonder why if the thread was so terrible they bothered to post at all.
The guys with the Super Bowl rings believe it. But, yes, we’ll see and be surprised.
How far back did you have to go to come up with those quotes from me, GGG?
Oh, wait. I know the answer to this: all the way back to May 6, 2009. Almost 6 months ago.
Let's look at the "worst" of what I've posted, that you were able to dig up from 6 months worth of postings:
GGG posts brainless YEC claims which promptly get ripped to shreds by multiple people.
This is a factual statement, and one which (unlike a great many of your own postings) DID NOT ATTACK YOU PERSONALLY. It attacked the content of what you were posting (which by the way, consisted of some brainless YEC claims that promptly got ripped to shreds by multiple people).
“By continuing to post this crap...”
Again, a statement about some of the nonsense you've posted, NOT a public personal attack on you.
“Personally, I will NEVER waste my time with you again...”
And why should I, when you 1) post nonsense, 2) routinely engage in ugly personal attacks including all kinds of name calling, and 3) can't be reasoned with, even if it's just to lay off of the ugly and unnecessary personal attacks?
On the next one, let's include the entire quote in context. I said:
I understand why this is often the situation in cases like yours. Your "christian faith" probably depends on a belief in young earth creationism, or at least you think it does. You're afraid that if you accept the proposition of evolution, your faith will crumble.
So your faith is weak. That's okay. But it's not a good reason to browbeat other people with it, or to claim that people who don't believe quite like you do aren't Christians at all.
When I said, "your faith is weak," that was an honest assessment. From what I can see, you believe that if you were to stop believing in young earth creationism, it would damage your faith in God. From my perspective, that looks like weak faith. I personally don't think God is afraid of the scientific truth. I don't think he's afraid of people concluding that he didn't hand-created earth and its inhabitants in 6 literal days. And I don't think God made it look like the world is billions of years old just to confuse and mislead us. I think God can handle the truth.
Even here I was trying to reason with you and persuade you to behave in a Christian manner - an appeal which fell completely on deaf ears. To repeat:
So your faith is weak. That's okay. But it's not a good reason to browbeat other people with it, or to claim that people who don't believe quite like you do aren't Christians at all.
Let's go on:
"It would be a good idea for you to stop posting this nonsense.”
This was in response to you posting some stuff that contained (among other things) the following quote:
People are just too well nourished these days, and thus have optimally maintained immune systems, for microbes to attack more than just the fringes of the ever growing human herd.
Frankly, that was an astonishingly ignorant statement; and all the more so by virtue of having been made by a scientist.
Once more, I attacked the content of your post (which was nonsense, and in this case dangerous nonsense). Unlike you have done many times to me, I did not attack you personally.
To continue:
1) You're incapable of even reading it.
Ah, so after trolling through SIX MONTHS worth of postings, we FINALLY arrive at the first (and apparently only) thing you found that (at first glance, at least) could be considered a public personal attack. But let's look at the full context again:
I should mention that the authors of the book [unChristian] are avowedly, devoutly, and full-time Christian.
But... I'm wasting my breath, for at least 3 reasons.
1) You're incapable of even reading it.
By this I obviously did not mean that you're illiterate. I meant that your attitude, as expressed in our previous conversations, is such that you would never read something that might threaten your preconceived notions.
Frankly, my purpose was to goad you into reading something that might help you become more of a Christian than you are. But I expected the effort would be rejected, and it was. Continuing:
Obviously, "no true Christian would write such a book," since it doesn't agree with your own personal all-authoritative, God-given, bigoted personal view.
Continuing the attempt to get you to read something that would actually help you...
2) You're probably incapable of really understanding it, even if you did read it.
And I meant that. Your attitude is such that you seem incapable of understanding that I am a real human being, and a darn nice one at that.
There are a lot of people out there - pretty decent people too, at least as decent as you yourself are - who simply can't stand the church and Christianity, and the book unChristian tells me that it's largely because of the kind of behavior I see you exhibiting, which includes outright nastiness both to people who are and are not Christians. How do you ever expect to "win people to Christ?"
To me, based on my personal experience, you seem just about incapable of even treating others as human beings, at least in the online context. To you, we're all "evo-atheists who pretend to be Christian while denouncing genuine Christians in the name of Christianity," "wolves in sheep’s clothing," not "actual Christians."
And this is when talking to a fellow Christian!
And 3) You CERTAINLY wouldn't accept any truth from a book that challenges any of your already-decided-upon conclusions.
So just go on and ONLY read the crap that reinforces your already-arrived-at conclusions. That's what you're going to do anyway.
Which you've certainly shown, again and again and again.
So compare my statements, which are all true, NONE of which was really a personal attack, and which you had to troll through SIX MONTHS of postings to come up with, with the following from you, in one single post - your most recent one:
Spare me the phony holier than thou attitude, Johnny-boy
In one single phrase you accuse me of being a phony, accuse me of a "holier than thou attitude," and attempt to belittle me by calling me "Johnny-boy."
Mr. Manners
Another saracastic name, obviously intended as an insult...
can’t you just feel the love...LOL!):
And yet more of the same attitude.
I hate to tell you this, GGG, but this is not an attitude, or a way of interacting with others, that honors Christ or Christianity.
Your friend Agamemnon has recently produced even worse:
evo-breath... evo-atheist... stupid swan songs... all you Darwin diaper-drippers... as the pseudo-scientific pussy-wimps that you are... like the common bottom feeding evo-liberals that you all are... I simply call you out as a poser... phoney scientist wanna-be... you liberals... slobbering... Wacka'd out fellow evo-atheists...
Believe it or not, that was all from a single post.
So my statement was quite a fair one:
Honestly, the level of ugliness on the part of a couple of “Christians” here is astonishing to me. Presumably they read from the same Bible that talks about the love of God, but personally, I can’t see any evidence of it from here.
True. So make vaccines illegal except for those who sign an affidavit of belief in evolution...
I’m not sure what you mean. My point had been that polls have importance in the political realm. And often, genuine science (or genuine truth - about candidates or whatever) may or may not be listened to.
John attempts to justify his insults as “factual”...LOL!
Thank you. Replying with a derisive one-liner is a pretty good indication that you really have no meaningful response to the points I made.
John, I want you to know that I appreciate your many factual, literate, informative, and polite posts, such as this one to which I am responding.
You bring, in the words of my old Artillery buddies, “dignity” to what would otherwise be “an ugly brawl”.
Keep your powder dry!
I think my advice and contention is #163 is spot on and if followed....well, that would be a good thing. Anyone don’t like it? Oh well, I’m not trying to please them.
That’s probably good advice. However, what do you advise when a person actually does engage the matter at hand and only receives all kinds of personal attacks in return for doing so?
I don’t think you mean to justify the ugliness and personal attacks. Do you believe that such behavior reflects well upon the Christian faith or Christ? I don’t believe you do. I’ve interacted with you personally some on these boards, and I can’t say that I would agree with you in every area - but I take you for a better person than some, and a better person than that.
In this case, the matter at hand is that I have suggested that people who claim to be Christians should behave in ways that bring honor to the name of Christ. The response was a derisive one-liner.
From what I see, I’m the one who has engaged this particular issue. The reply was only derision.
By the way, this is consistent with the numbers I posted at the beginning. Although creationists make up the plurality when you divide things up into: creationists, theistic evolutionists, and naturalistic evolutionists, to find a direct creationists/evolutionists comparison you have to combine the number for the theistic and naturalistic evolutionists. A poll I referenced says the numbers (when it's strictly creationists/evolutionists) is currently around 45/55. CW's referenced chart says that creationists-in-the-minority is true for all three of the major age groups definied.
And it's a much bigger division the younger you get. In the "55 and older" population, creationists are almost even with evolutionists. But by the time you get down to the "18 to 34" age group, there are nearly three people who believe in evolution for every one who believes in creationism.
In other words, creationists are losing the debate. And whatever your perspective, that is a meaningful bit of data.
“I found The Great Global Warming Swindle to be very interesting.
If you really want to get at truth, you always have to look at both sides. View a film, for example, and then read up on the criticism of it. View an opposing film, and then read its criticism as well.
TGGWS seems to be a good place to start. And then, here’s a summary of some of the criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle";
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2153502/posts?page=14#14
ping to 178, since you’re mentioned there...
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