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To: GodGunsGuts
LOL...Haven’t you heard, various scientific polls peg the evo-atheists as the kookiest fringies around.

Thanks, GGG, but (excepting the Baylor survey specifically) I was already aware of all that. I have that book by Gardner, and even remember reading that article in the Skeptical Enquirer way back in the 1980s.

I don't think it contradicts the observation, however much anecdotal on my part, that those who believe in one nutty thing tend to believe in others.

And no, despite being a secularist myself, I do not consider religious belief per se to be nutty at all. Nor, on the other side of the question, do I consider paranormal and occult beliefs to complete the universe of nutty beliefs.

As far as "evo-atheists" specifically, I doubt they make up much of that "31% of people who never worship" who "expressed strong belief in the "occult and the paranormal". First, strict atheists tend to consider such beliefs to be religious and disdain them also, and second atheists only make up about 9% percent of the population anyway.

You'll find (as your own quote indicates) wide disparities on this among regularly worshiping religionists, as there are likewise disparities in acceptance of antievolutionary creationism. Interestingly, modern young earth creationism was initially devised, developed and promulgated by Seventh Day Adventists, (no offense to them, but) often considered to be a "cult" by other Christians.

It is obvious that conservative Adventists pushed YEC and flood geology in defense of founding prophetess Ellen G. White's visions of The Flood and her insistence that it was global and had deposited the fossil record. One nutty thing led to another at least in that case. Of course, on the other hand, sober and generally unexciting Lutherans also tended to be early adopters of YEC

62 posted on 08/01/2009 12:33:13 PM PDT by Stultis (Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia; Democrats always opposed waterboarding as torture)
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To: Stultis

...so it’s not a simple picture.


63 posted on 08/01/2009 12:35:02 PM PDT by Stultis (Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia; Democrats always opposed waterboarding as torture)
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