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.
Why would that in any way mitigate an out of context citation?
Not in your post 10 which is why I posted 367. I repeat "Apples/oranges. If anything those numbers show a drop in people who believe in evolution, because the previous answers allowed a person to have belief in evolution with God guiding the process. Therefore you would add two separate groups to end up with believers of evolution, those that believed God did not have a hand and those that believed he did. The last gallop poll had the total at 50%." Once more, a 50% belief in 2008 to a 39% belief in 2009 is most certainly a drop. Thus "Apples/oranges".
BTW, what is the percentage of Christian schools teaching YEC?
Apples to apples then. Creationists went from 44 to 25%.
Yes, that chart. "Apples/oranges"
BTW, what is the percentage of Christian schools teaching YEC?
I have no idea. I don't pay for those. I do pay for public schools. Therefore, I think it is no business of the federal government what is taught in the public schools. That is a state and local issue.
Every case I have seen it has been the school board. That is about as local as you get.
Doesn't make sense. You pay federal taxes also.
Can you do anything but post strawmen?
(rhetorical question)
Yes, for things constitutionally provided for, like armies, navies, and air forces.
Kitzmiller was a federal case, to name one.
We can see which side of the bell curve you’re sliding down!
Are you saying it is unconstitutional for communities to take your money without your choice to pay for public school systems?
Would they? - All of them?
You’re putting your evo friends theories in jeopardy now :o)
No, that is still "Apples/oranges". They are two different questions. What is not an "Apples/oranges" comparison is the one that RightWingNilla pointed out, and that was the rise from 9% to 14% in the evolution group during the period from 1982 to 2008. Part of that rise could have come from those that believed in evolution with God directing it plus some who were previously in the group "other/no opinion". That is because those who did not believe in evolution remained constant as a percentage over the period involved.
No. It is pretty clear that I stated that the federal government had no business in the decision of what should be taught in the public schools.(I should add that does not apply to schools provided by the federal government for federal employees outside of any state's territory.)
What about sea snakes, whales and dolphins?
Must have fed them the unicorns.
I live in the real world, and I've been engaged in these creation-evolution debates for the better part of the last 40 years.
I have also had the privilege of knowing and working with some of the best and most accomplished minds in their therapeutic fields, particularly in pain and cancer vaccine development research.
These evo-dweebs wash up here on FR and try to make it seem as though "those-in-the-know" in modern science have no misgivings about materialistic models. All they are really saying is that for all their talk they don't have enough experience living in the real world, or simply haven't acquired sufficient mental maturity of their own to be able to separate what is fact from fantasy.
Their insecurity is obvious. Their lips are planted squarely on Darwin's backside to the point that their mental growth is stunted and their view of life never improves, as a result. They are the ultimate Darwin suck ups, because they derive their identity, self worth, and what ever position they deceive themselves into thinking they have from what emanates from Darwinism's backside. They live among the ugly meaningless voids of their opportunistic, miserable, and pointless little existences. Some show up around here pretending to be conservatives, but their pathologically smarmy, snarky, bottom feeding bilge betrays them as the worthless, liberal, atheistic, snot-nosed agnostics they are at heart. Many are Darwin Central retreads and some are just DU plants, and newbie-trolls. None are true conservatives.
Darwinism leaves some of the most brilliant and intellectually honest scientists I've known utterly cold, and they find the whole thing leaves them intellectually empty, and unfulfilled in its purposelessness. Life scientists in health care are largely driven by purpose. The purpose of research and practice is to have meaning and meaning defines a therapeutic purpose. To design a therapeutic strategy for healing based upon models of consistency is to restore health by restoring system order. Order and randomness are mutually exclusive concepts. A healthy body is well ordered machine functioning at a top level of its performance.
It may interest you to learn that many of the esteemed scientists with whom I work confide their strong doubts about Darwinism as any kind of a credible foundational model upon which to design a therapy, because of what they observe as implying... there's that word again.... design. Life, for all intents purposes and by every credible observation simply doesn't work any other way.
I have also busted enough academic posers and incompetents in my years in the fields of healthcare and life sciences too. Not unsurprisingly they also tended to be Darwin's biggest defenders. Some are even posting on this thread right now.
As I said earlier: NONE are true conservatives.
BUT, true conservatives are ready to tear them a new one just the same.
bkmk
“That there remains free thought is a testimony to the truth and the strength of God’s Word”.
Ummm, you should be very wary of pinging bop to a post mentioning God’s Word...because he’s already clearly told metmom, GGG and myself that understanding Biblical scripture as being the Word of God, is mere idolatry.
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