Poll: Nearly half of America is creationist

Hotair ^ | 06/02/2012 | Jazz Shaw

[SeekAndFind]

What the heck... it's been a while since we last opened up the flood gates on this topic and according to Gallup surveys, we're no closer to a consensus now than we ever were. The subject at hand is our old friend, evolution vs. creation.

Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

It will come as no shock to anyone that the answers given tracked tightly with the religious views of the respondent, and that a majority of registered Republicans fall in line with creationist views.

Two-thirds of Americans who attend religious services weekly choose the creationist alternative, compared with 25% of those who say they seldom or never attend church. The views of Americans who attend almost every week or monthly fall in between those of the other two groups. Still, those who seldom or never attend church are more likely to believe that God guided the evolutionary process than to believe that humans evolved with no input from God.

What’s interesting about the Gallup survey as compared to some others I’ve seen in the past is the phrasing of the questions. You tend to get more clearly splintered results if you pose seriously confrontational questions such as, “Did God create man from dust or did man evolve from ape-like creatures?” Gallup’s choices are a bit more subtle, asking which phrase best describes your feelings.

• Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.
• Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.
• God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.

You’ll notice that none of the choices go so far as to say, for example, “There is no God so the question is pointless” or, at the other end, “The Bible is literal and God created man from the dust and woman from one of his ribs.” I think such polls provide more value if they add in a couple more choices along those lines and forget about trying to be nuanced or avoid offending anyone.

My own views have “evolved” over the past five decades, (if you’ll pardon the phrase) and I’ve seen a number of theories. As a young man, I once lost my faith entirely (and still struggle with it at times) and rashly published a letter declaring that “God is the answer to a collection of questions which man is either too stupid or too frightened to answer. On the day that science answers the final question, God will be dead.”

I confess, I regret having penned that one now, but the young are frequently rash and foolish. But there are other theories which have come down the pike and stuck around. A very popular one which echoes a couple of the Gallup choices is along the lines of The Blind Watchmaker theory. It essentially states that the universe may well have begun with the Big Bang and men may have evolved from lower primates, but this was all precisely how God designed it, like the greatest software programmer ever, freeing Him up to move on to other projects once our reality was set in motion.

But I still have plenty of friends who come from the “six days and a rib” school of thought, and you have to respect them as well. At the opposite end of the scale you find people like my friend Doug Mataconis, who simply seems to be waiting for the day when all this creationist nonsense “evolves” out of our society.

This is why, as I noted the other day, I am skeptical of the argument advanced by Richard Leakey that increased discoveries in the field of anthropology would lead to an end to the evolution debate in the near future. The creationist position has little to do with evidence, and everything to do with faith and culture. It’s not going away any time soon, at least not in this country.

But returning to my original question, does the phrasing of the survey really impact the results for a strictly non-political topic such as this? Since the Hot Air faithful have never been shy about sharing and debating their feelings in a vigorous fashion, let’s toss up our own poll and compare it to the historical results as well as Gallup’s. But we’ll give you a bit more ammunition to work with in the answers. Have at it.

CLICK ABOVE LINK TO TAKE THE QUICK POLL

[SeekAndFind]

RE: There are so many different creation theories. Not going to get into a debate this am with folks, but there are several that don’t fit into those three.

If you went to the bottom of the article of this thread (by clicking on the article’s link above) , you will see an online survey, asking readers the following questions and giving them the following choices:

_______________________

Which of the following statements most closely represents your feelings regarding the origins of the human race?

* As stated in Scripture, God created the entire universe in six days. The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground.

* The nature of the Bible is somewhat allegorical, so the time spans involved may be different, but God did literally create man as we are today at some point in the past.

* God caused man to rise up above the other animals over a period of time. If you want to call that “evolution” feel free.

* Man evolved over a period of millions of years from lower primates, but this was all precisely how God designed the universe to unfold.

* God was the spark of creation, but left everything and everyone with free will. He made evolution possible, but didn’t much interfere with the process.

* Why are you still asking about God? He never existed. We are the inevitable outcome of the evolution of natural forces.

[SunkenCiv]

Blue = Democrats

Red = Republicans

:’)

[SunkenCiv]

Uh-oh, Red Queen? Please refresh my memory. :’o [blush]

[Explorer89]

I thought it must have been you.....I trust your book recommendations. Maybe someone else mentioned it.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Red-Queen-Evolution-ebook/dp/B006O4227U/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338742138&sr=1-3

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, I guess I’ll have to get that out of the library now. :’)

[BroJoeK]

varmintman: "That's the part of it which makes the least sense. God does not use broken tools. "

central_va: "As far I as I can tell h.sapien is about 200,000 years old.
If you met a person from 200,000 years ago he would look like a modern human.
No gradual changes that an evolutionary theory requires."

Hayride: "If our supposed closest relative differs by 4% (at least) that’s 120 million bits of info separating us and they’re looking for a (as in 1) missing link.
If the theory of evolution is true, shouldn’t they’re be more than 1 link along the great divide?"

to all: how can you look at these transitional fossils and still pretend they don't exist?

Figure 1.4.4. Fossil hominid skulls. (Images © 2000 Smithsonian Institution.)

• (A) Pan troglodytes, chimpanzee, modern
• (B) Australopithecus africanus, STS 5, 2.6 My
• (C) Australopithecus africanus, STS 71, 2.5 My
• (D) Homo habilis, KNM-ER 1813, 1.9 My
• (E) Homo habilis, OH24, 1.8 My
• (F) Homo rudolfensis, KNM-ER 1470, 1.8 My
• (G) Homo erectus, Dmanisi cranium D2700, 1.75 My
• (H) Homo ergaster (early H. erectus), KNM-ER 3733, 1.75 My
• (I) Homo heidelbergensis, "Rhodesia man," 300,000 - 125,000 y
• (J) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Ferrassie 1, 70,000 y
• (K) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Chappelle-aux-Saints, 60,000 y
• (L) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Le Moustier, 45,000 y
• (M) Homo sapiens sapiens, Cro-Magnon I, 30,000 y
• (N) Homo sapiens sapiens, modern

to varmintman: How can a "tool" which produced humans be "broken"?

to central_va: 200,000 years ago there were a number of "not-fully-humans" walking the earth, Neanderthals for one.

to Hayride: Depending on what exactly you count, human and chimpanzee DNA is 98.4% the same, meaning about 50 million mutations separate us from them.
The rate of mutations (nearly all harmless) among humans has been measured as highly variable, up to 50 per generation.
With chimps mutating at the same rate, we are looking at 100 mutations to separate each new generation of pre-humans and chimps.
This suggests something over 500,000 generations since the human-chimp common ancestor, or 5+ million years (chimps begin to mature at age 8).

Other studies using different methods arrived at similar results.

[varmintman]

All of the creatures you mention other than for the Cro Magnons were hominids, i.e. bipedal apes which, as far as we have any real evidence for, are all extinct, most likely because our own ancestors killed them all.

Logic is the most major tool which God has given us for understanding our world; any sort of a science theory or claim which cannot pass a sniff test for basic logic is junk science; on a scale of 1 - 10 for ability to generate logical breakdowns amongst people with PHD degrees, the Neanderthal is at least a 9.

There are several kinds of such breakdowns. One is the claim that we and the Neanderthal have a "common ancestor". The Neanderthal has been abandoned as a plausible evolutionary antecedent for modern man precisely because the genetic gap is too large (DNA halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee). Anything 300K - 500K years back which anybody could try to claim was a "common ancestor(TM)" to both us and the Neanderthal (Usually given as homo Heidelbergensis)", would be much more remote from us THAN the Neanderthal. Too-genetically-remote-to-be-ancestral-to is a transitive relationship and the nature of such relationships doesn't require graduate level math; you'd think the people making this particular claim would figure the problem out sooner or later but they don't seem to.

Another is this new claim of 1 - 4% Neanderthal genes in everybody other than Africans. Once again, the Neanderthal was a glorified ape. Any crossbreeding with a glorified ape PRIOR to the bottleneck and Africans would not get left out. Any crossing AFTER the bottleneck and not involving Africans as claimed, and the genetic gap between Africans and everybody else would be gigantic, rather than minuscule as it actually is.

Then of course there is the problem of thinking that a Neanderthal male could/would rape a woman and, rather than cooking and eating her afterwards as usual, somehow or other keep her alive long enough to bear a cross-species child, raise that child to reproductive age, and have him/her breed back into human populations without anybody catching on.....

In real life, Neanderthal females would kill that woman the first time her new owner left her alone for ten minutes; the woman wouldn't fare any better than the subjects of the commie attempts to breed humans and apes into super workers in the 1930s (no subjects survived); humans would notice the child was different (the fur coat, the odd taste for bananas etc.); and the humans would kill that child and everybody else like him as part of the same program which killed out the Neanderthal. They would not need DNA tests to determine who to kill for that sort of reason, again, it would be exceedingly obvious.

Why would it be exceedingly obvious you ask??

Again this is what a Neanderthal would look like without the 6" ice-age fur coat, image courtesy www.themandus.org:

We're not related to them.

[BroJoeK]

varmintman: "The Neanderthal has been abandoned as a plausible evolutionary antecedent for modern man precisely because the genetic gap is too large (DNA halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee)."

Your claim has been posted and corrected here before.
Here it is again, in a nutshell:

• Any two humans on average are different by about 3 million "base pair" mutations -- that is .1% of 3 billion total base pairs.
  Of course, biologically all humans can interbreed with each other.

• Humans and Neaderthals' DNA differs by about 9 million "base pair" mutations, which is .3% of 3 billion total base pairs.
  DNA analysis shows about 4% interbreeding between Neanderthals & Europeans, down to 1% with Asians, but zero with Africans.

• Depending on exactly what and how you count, human and chimp DNA differs by 50 million to well over 100 million "base pair" mutations.
  Of course, humans and chimps can not interbreed, under any circumstances.

Bottom line: Neanderthal DNA was over 90% closer to humans than to chimpanzees, indeed Neanderthals were close enough to interbreed with Europeans, which means they were not a separate species at all, but rather a sub-species of homo-sapiens.

varmintman: "All of the creatures you mention other than for the Cro Magnons were hominids, i.e. bipedal apes..."

The word "hominid" refers to all great apes -- orangutans, gorillas, chimps and humans -- who branched from common ancestors around 14 million years ago.
The word "hominid" also refers in a more restricted sense to humans and pre-human relatives more closely related than chimpanzees.

varmintman: "Anything 300K - 500K years back which anybody could try to claim was a "common ancestor(TM)" to both us and the Neanderthal (Usually given as homo Heidelbergensis)", would be much more remote from us THAN the Neanderthal.
Too-genetically-remote-to-be-ancestral-to is a transitive relationship "

All modern Europeans and Asians are recognized today as having migrated "out of Africa" beginning around 125,000 years ago.
So no pre-existing pre-human populations in Europe or Asia were our ancestors, but there is DNA and fossil evidence of some interbreeding with Neanderthals.

varmintman: "Another is this new claim of 1 - 4% Neanderthal genes in everybody other than Africans.
Once again, the Neanderthal was a glorified ape.
Any crossbreeding with a glorified ape PRIOR to the bottleneck and Africans would not get left out.
Any crossing AFTER the bottleneck and not involving Africans as claimed, and the genetic gap between Africans and everybody else would be gigantic, rather than minuscule as it actually is. "

We are "glorified" apes -- hominids.
Neanderthals were rather more humble, I'd think.

Whatever interbreeding happened as modern humans migrated out of Africa into Asia and Europe, was relatively minor, leaving traces of 1% to 4% in our DNA.
This suggests an occasional "boys night out", but, but, which were the "boys" and which were the "girls" they went to visit? ;-)
More important, why did their parents allow these offspring to live and grow up?

[varmintman]

Images courtesy www.themandus.org, what Neanderthals actually looked like:

Without the ice age fur coat, for illustration purposes:

There is zero genetic evidence of any relationship between humans and Neanderthals.

and there is zero evidence of crossbreeding in the Levant despite the two groups living there in close proximity for long periods of time.

Neanderthals were smart, and they did not lack for courage. They were big game hunters taking on mammoths and other large ice-age prey animals with thrusting spears, but their only real form of interaction with humans was eating them, and they paid the price for it.

[BroJoeK]

varmintman: "There is zero genetic evidence of any relationship between humans and Neanderthals."

Your data from 2004 appears to be obsolete.
More recent studies show 1% to 4% Neanderthal DNA in Europeans & Asians which is not present in Africans.

Your pictures are gross distortions of what fossil evidence provides on Neanderthals, among other things missing their large noses and necessarily white skin color.
Your pictures seem driven by some agenda which is neither accurate nor let's call it, very nice.

My post #28 pictures (except obviously the last one) are intended to provide accurate representations of what physical evidence tells us.

Here is another character study of an old Neanderthal man found in France:

[varmintman]

Your pictures are gross distortions of what fossil evidence provides on Neanderthals, among other things missing their large noses and necessarily white skin color.

Evidence offers no clue as to skin color. If you try to draw a more human-like Neanderthal with the eyes and nose as large as the bones indicate they would have to be, what you end up with is outlandish:

That's courtesy of the Subversive Archaeologist: (http://thesubversivearchaeologist.blogspot.com/)

Who also notes:

"...So, I thought I'd do a wee comparison between a modern day "top" carnivore and our cousin's, the Neanderthal, face. Do you see what I see in the image below? It looks as if the felid and the Neanderthal face have more in common than either has with the modern human.

"So, I thought I'd do a wee comparison between a modern day "top" carnivore and our cousin's, the Neanderthal, face. Do you see what I see in the image below? It looks as if the felid and the Neanderthal face have more in common than either has with the modern human.

The lion has a keen sense of smell. Which of the bipedal cousins do you think has the better sense of smell? Relative to the rest of the face, the big cat has a nasal aperture that's equivalent in size to that of the Neanderthal. Not so that of the modern-day hominid on the right.

A cat can spot its prey from 3 km away. Can you? Do you think the Neanderthal could?

The cat has dagger-like fangs and molar teeth that would put a deli meat-slicer to shame. "Aha!" you might say, "that chap from Forbes quarry couldn't be as effective as the lion--it doesn't have the appropriate dental accoutrements!" Umm. It's possible, isn't it, that all those flint flakes lying about came in handy for more than whittling?"

The Renegade Archaeologist missed the possibility which Vendramini notes that the huge Neanderthal eyes were for nocturnal hunting, as are the lion's.

[BroJoeK]

varmintman: "I've gone over that in the past, you simply haven't absorbed the reality of it yet."

I well remember these discussions from 10+ years ago, and at that time there was no serious evidence of human-Neanderthal interbreeding.
Today there is evidence from multiple sources showing some small interbreeding.
SunkenCiv has posted some of the evidence on FR many times.

varmintman: "Think really hard: What do you think the chances are that this same group of people who hated hominids badly enough to extirpate them from the planet root and branch, would have tolerated any human/hominids (i.e. human/glorified ape) cross-breeds amongst their own population??"

I'd put it to you a little differently.
Suppose you are a scrawny little ancient human just "off the boat" from Africa, 40,000 years ago, trying to migrate into Europe, and making no headway -- zero, zip, nada -- against those powerful brute Neanderthals.

So, pal, whatchagonnado?
How you going to get along with these big brutes?
What do you have to offer that they might want?
Remember, 40,000 years ago, you're no smarter than they are -- your weapons and tools are no more "high tech" than theirs are.
So what do you have that they might want?

Well, one thing's for sure, your women are a heck of a lot prettier than theirs, and if you have little ones running around your camp which look a lot like their little ones, they might see you less as supper, and more as a hot date in the big city.

Think about it... ;-)

[varmintman]

Think about it... ;-)

I don't waste time thinking about idiotic stuff.

[BroJoeK]

varmintman: "I don't waste time thinking about idiotic stuff."

Not true, everything you've posted here is "idiotic." ;-)

Here is a summary of recent years DNA findings:

"On 16 November 2006, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory issued a press release suggesting Neanderthals and ancient humans probably did not interbreed...."

"In 2008 Richard E. Green et al. from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany published the full sequence of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and suggested 'Neanderthals had a long-term effective population size smaller than that of modern humans.'[64]
Writing in Nature about Green et al.'s findings, James Morgan asserted the mtDNA sequence contained clues that Neanderthals lived in 'small and isolated populations, and probably did not interbreed with their human neighbours.' "

"...However, an analysis of a first draft of the Neanderthal genome by the same team released in May 2010 indicates interbreeding may have occurred.[4][5]
'Those of us who live outside Africa carry a little Neanderthal DNA in us,' said Pääbo, who led the study.
'The proportion of Neanderthal-inherited genetic material is about 1 to 4 percent.
It is a small but very real proportion of ancestry in non-Africans today,' says Dr. David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who worked on the study.

"This research compared the genome of the Neanderthals to five modern humans from China, France, sub-Saharan Africa, and Papua New Guinea.
The finding is that about 1 to 4 percent of the genes of the non-Africans came from Neanderthals, compared to the baseline defined by the two Africans.
This indicates a gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans, i.e., interbreeding between the two populations.

"Since the three non-African genomes show a similar proportion of Neanderthal sequences, the interbreeding must have occurred early in the migration of modern humans out of Africa, perhaps in the Middle East.
No evidence for gene flow in the direction from modern humans to Neanderthals was found.
The latter result would not be unexpected if contact occurred between a small colonizing population of modern humans and a much larger resident population of Neanderthals.

"A very limited amount of interbreeding could explain the findings, if it occurred early enough in the colonization process"

Expansion of human populations into Europe beginning around 1,600 generations ago = approx 40,000 years:

[varmintman]

All of your fictitious images show human-sized eyes, which is totally wrong, Neanderthal eye sockets are twice the size of ours or more (from themandus.com again):

Danny Vendraamini's reproductions show the thing right:

That's without the ice-age fur coat for illustration purposes. The Ice age in Europe was really cold, you'd last five or ten minutes without the fur coat if you were lucky.

With the fur coat:

[BroJoeK]

varmintman: "All of your fictitious images show human-sized eyes, which is totally wrong, Neanderthal eye sockets are twice the size of ours or more..."

Now you've gone back to posting inaccurate caricatures of Neanderthals -- wrong in every respect -- from skin color to noses to over-sized "bug eyes".

In fact, Neanderthal eye sockets were no larger than most pre-human hominids, or than modern chimpanzees.
And we can see exactly how large are chimpanzee eyes.
So your caricatures are just not accurate.

A = modern chimps, J, K & L = Neanderthals, M & N = modern humans:

[varmintman]

Mind telling us what your motive is in all of this?