Umm, doesn't 38% + 13% = 51%?

Yep, but there's "God" in both parts.

Jeff:

You Creationist you!

So, 45% of Americans have no knowledge of, or interest in, science.

This is news ?

99% have no knowledge of Hinduism.

"So, 45% of Americans have no knowledge of, or interest in, science?"

No, just the 13% who insist, as a matter of their zealot's faith in atheist dogma, that there cannot possibly be a God -- although scientific proof of God's existence or nonexistence appears impossible. They're the same folks who are scared to death of the Big Bang theory, since it could support the existence of a god.

To me the scariest part is that 45% are endorsing the idea that humans have only been around for about 10,000 years. It's one thing to argue about evolution as a part of biology. (Sorry, OJ, but I think it's rather well established.) It's quite another to blithely ignore huge, basic chunks of archaeology, geology, chemistry and physics simply because it contradicts a few parts of a book some folks wrote down thousands of years ago.

Why does this stuff "worry" people?

Because high-school biology has been ineffective in its assault against a much more philosophically satisfying religious experience?

Isn't the goal of society to produce friendly, hard-working neighbors that don't steal your b-b-q when you go on holidays?

If we took all of our high-school students and taught them basic investment and accounting skills instead of science, society would be a whole lot better off. Leave the science to university and quit "worrying".

My wife's father tells a story of when he once made nitro-glycerin and nearly blew up the barn. THAT was the result of high-school science.

That only 13% are willing to disclose a belief in an entirely Godless view of man's evolution, in such a religious country as current America, surprises me not at all. In fact, I'm surprised it's that many.

But that nearly half of people should think humans were created in their current form 10,000 years ago is, I'm afraid, a rather damning indictment on the quality of the education system.

Brit:

But does explain our superiority as a nation and a culture.

Randall:

Public school isn't society--it's the secular State.

OJ - Okay. I agree. I just don't see why the brainy science guys on this board think it's a big deal.

I remember my first year biology professor sneering at the class and daring any "Christian" to come up and dispute what he just said. We were staring at a bunch of mating fruit flies that were supposedly our ancestors.

No one went up and that made him feel pretty darn good.

The only thought I had was that the fruit flies were having a whole lot more fun than we were.

Papaya:

Their faith is no stranger than yours.

Randall, that is priceless.

Brit, it is a good point. Leaving aside the ambiguity in the questions asked in this poll, doesn't this point to the tendency of scientists to get their knickers in a knot over whether evolution is taught or not. Why is it considered to be an essential component of a general education anymore than Latin or relativity or Aristotle?

Of course, the other conclusion might be that when evolution is not taught as a compulsory subject, the majority will be attracted to a religious explanation for life irrespective of whether they are active churchgoers.

Even among scientists a consistent 40% believe in a narrowly defined personal God:

http://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/74705879bf5884868525649f0063a2fd?OpenDocument

Randall:

You've got to jump ugly with such folk.

Peter:

Actually I think OJ brought this survey up to show how the American public generally rejects darwinism.

But to answer your questions:

I'm indifferent to Latin, and relativity's probably too difficult for school kids. But if you're going to teach any biology or natural history you should teach evolution, for the reasons I gave on the thread a few weeks ago.

If it's true that "A third of Americans are biblical literalists", then something's gone badly wrong somewhere.

I mean, what do they tell little Jimmy when he asks what happened to the dinosaurs?

Your final point is probably right.

Brit:

God got tired of them.

According to Randall, if one believes that humans have been around for more than 10,000 years, one is more likely to steal a neighbor's BBQ? And according to OJ, our superiority as a nation and culture is somehow linked to disregarding the science that says humans have been around for a lot longer than 10,000 years? You guys are a hoot!

If your religious belief is so delicate and dependent on the physical world that it can be demolished by any geology textbook, that says something, doesn't it? Why is it evolution/science OR religion, when there are ways they can be reconciled? (Though I suppose Teilhard de Chardin is too heretical for you folks.)

58% think that the only interpretation of the Bible is the literal one? That's not good news.

Papaya:

Go ahead and reconcile Darwinism to the fact that Creation is supernatural.

To conform to the literalist worldview would require schools to dump more than just biology. Geology assumes a world older than 10,000 years, as does astronomy and anthropology. How are you gonna explain the Grand Canyon? It pretty much invalidates most of science. Might as well follow the logic of your thinking to its ridiculous end and reject science outright, as OJ has done. Bring back the witch doctors! Trial by ordeal!

Robert:

There's no reason to teach kids science in public school. The goal is to make them good citizens.

Brit: I'm not sure what they're reporting on BBC or the Guardian these days, but the rampaging fundamentalists here in the States are not in fact going around terrorizing atheists. Let alone calling people on the phone pretending to be pollsters attempting to trick you into denying the divinity of Jesus, then rounding up a lynch mob. My impression is that even in scary "Red America" it's far easier socially to be an atheist than it is to be a devout Christian in much of Europe.

"58% think that the only interpretation of the Bible is the literal one? That's not good news."

No, but it's certainly informative news. It is amusing that anyone would think a literal reading of the Bible is possible, and this statistic tells us just how many have actually read it.

OJ: "God got tired of them."

That's extra-biblical. Or are you a prophet now, too? I can't wait to read the Book of OJ.

OJ again: "There's no reason to teach kids science in public school. The goal is to make them good citizens."

Or at least to indoctrinate them satisfactorily.

51% percent essentially believe that Evolutionary theory correctly describes Natural History. And, as it turns out, about 10% of the self attested Creationists believe the same thing.

Which is an excellent example of irony. A month or so ago, on a similar thread, someone wondered why, given that true faith exists in the absence of material proof, some people were so eaten up by Evolutionary theory.

Just so here. So far as Evolution is concerned, there is no distinction between God guiding, and God having no part in the process. After all, God invisibly guiding material processes still leaves humans with the test of faith.

The irony is with the Creationists and IDers (C/ID). They truly hope to establish material proof of God's existence, thereby obviating the test of faith. What is more, in so doing they would also prove that the God that exists is a wholly malevolent entity alien to that which Christians worship.

So in their quest to disprove an atheistic theory which isn't really, they would instead hoist themselves on their own petard.

And OJ, through torturing survey's own interpretations to the breaking point, is playing along.

Jeff:

If you believe that God driven evolution is perfectly compatible with Natural Selection driven Evolution then I'm confused about what you think makes Darwinism science and Creation not.

M:

Yes, the Founders supported public education for incoctrination purposes. What other interest would government have in it?

To have productive citizens?

Despite Bradley's statements, there's a reason that American peanut farmers raise more peanuts than African peanut farmers, and it has nothing to do with genetics.

A few days ago, you said 20 percent of Americans are darwinists. That may be true.

I'd bet way less than 20 percent of Americans have any clear idea of what darwinism might be.

I have never -- not here, not there, not ever -- heard an antidarwinist make a statement of darwinism that was remotely accurate.

Some of the people who believe in darwinism don't understand it. All of the ones who disbelieve don't understand it.

The peanuts have nothing to do with Darwinism.

PapayaSF - Hey, you guys are the ones up in arms because your theory isn't believed by your students.

I didn't say darwinists are more likely to steal your b-b-q , I said that you are worrying about people believing in God and not in evolution when this is no big deal. Really, why should you care? As long as they aren't stealing your b-b-q...

And, regarding my religious beliefs, you are making some nasty assumptions.

Kind of like the assumptions you have to make to believe that higher species spontaneously come from lower ones...

OJ:

"If you believe that God driven evolution is perfectly compatible with Natural Selection driven Evolution then I'm confused about what you think makes Darwinism science and Creation not."

Yes, you certainly are confused. This has been explained to you before.

The two key words are: "Occam's Razor".

Newton drops the apple and demonstrates gravity.
An obvserver says "it was gravity, but also God willed it to plummet, and a demon sucked it from the underworld, all at the same time. The evidence is consistent with that, why is that not science?"

Newton replies: "Gravity is sufficient. You can believe in your God and your demon, but as a man of science, I simply have no need for those hypotheses."

A darwinist explains evolution by the processes of natural selection, which are sufficient.
An ID-proponent says "yes, but at the same time God was willing each of those natural processes to occur exactly as they did. The evidence is consistent with my theory, why is that not science?"

The darwinist replies: "The natural processes are sufficient. You can believe in your God, but science simply has no need for that hypothesis."

That, in a nutshell, is why God-willed evolution could be compatible with evolution by natural selection, but only the latter is science.

Brit, explain from whence the universe came that gave Darwin his finches and maybe you will convert me.

Until then, natural selection is insufficient for those of us who have never witnessed order coming from chaos without guidance.

... and Jeff, faith is not mustering up some sort of belief in the impossible. That is what you could call hoping that the sum total of dissipating energy in the universe came from nothing, and all by itself ...

Randall:

I have no interest in converting anybody to anything.

But when people decide to attack darwinism, I expect them to have taken the trouble to at least try to understand what it says.

"From whence did the universe come?" , ie. "why is there something rather than nothing?" is an interesting question, and a valid one, but a separate one from the questions we're discussing here.

I haven't the remotest idea why there is something rather than nothing, and darwinism does not concern itself with that question: it is silent on the subject.

Personally, I have never seen any reason to assume that there is something rather than nothing because some kind of personal, conscious Deity who somehow existed in this nothing, decided to make it.

That explanation only leads me to the question: "so where did the Deity come from?" and thus an infinite string of similar questions.

But that's just me, and I've never had Faith.

Brit:

But if you can't tell whether the step from dinosaurs to birds happened because of God or Nature, but simply choose to believe in Nature ythere is no science involved, as your concession that you're simply using a philosophical tool, Occam's Razor, rather decisively demonstrates. If you're in agreement with Jeff then perhaps we've reached closure on all this. You guys have your Big Spook and we ours.

OJ:

That's feeble.

In order to attack my explanation of why darwinism is science and the darwinism-plus-God theory is not, you need to show:

a) how it differs from the gravity example;
or
b) that it doesn't differ from the gravity example, but that the gravity-plus-God-plus-demon theory IS science, and therefore darwinism-plus-God is as well.

And even that wouldn't get you to the conclusion that darwinism was flawed as science.

Come on, give me something to get my teeth into. You can do better than that.

(Except probably, you can't).

Brit:

Gravity, whatever it is, is observable, testable, etc. Darwinism is none of those things, so we fill the gap in evolution with a mechanism whose sole basis is faith--you have faith in Nature, we in SuperNature.

Brit,

A wonderful physics professor of mine once said that most of the scientists he knew who look into microscopes are atheists. And most of those who look into telescopes believe in God.

Perhaps that explains why you are missing the point I try to make: People who believe in Creation feel that a science that does not care about why or how the universe came into being, but contents itself with a theoretical mechanism of how it works, is moot.

You may well be right. Someday, somehow, someone will find that "missing link".

But they will have nowhere to attach that chain they are linking together.

OJ:

You’re dissembling.

We disagree over the observation and tests for natural selection. I think there's overwhelming quantities of both in its favour; you claim there's none.

But that wasn't the point under discussion. Nor is the question of whether Darwinism is true the point under discussion.

The point under discussion is why natural selection is science, while 'darwinism-plus-God' (a brand of ID which accepts natural selection but involves God by insisting that He’s overseeing the natural processes), is theoretically compatible with natural selection, but is not science.

The answer, as the gravity example illustrates, is that science does not need to accept additional supernatural theories if the best minimal theory of the time, which depends solely on natural processes, is sufficient. In other words, science applies Occam's Razor at all times and as a matter of course.

This is an area where your woolly thinking and obfuscation is exposed. In this thread you're arguing that science is flawed because it uses Occam's Razor, and that Darwinism is not science because it uses Occam's Razor.

Randall:

All science is concerned with the mechanisms of how the world works. Not many have anything to say on why there is something rather than nothing. Darwinism is under no more obligations to do so than any other science.

And, without wishing to sound too curmudgeonly, sorry, but that telescope/microscope thing is far too Disney for my tastes.

Brit:

It's precisely the question: you and Jeff now concede that there's no way to differentiate Natural Selection from Designed evolution but insist one is science and the other not. That's mere sectarianism.

Yes, the use of a philosophical tool is antiscientific. String theory isn't wrong just because it's more complex than the alternatives.

OJ:
If someone proposed the following theory of evolution: "everything darwinism says is true, and the natural processes it observes do indeed entirely cause evolution, but also, God is watching on and he wants it all to happen", then there would indeed be no way to tell the difference between that theory and darwinism on the material observations.

There would be no way to prove it wrong, either.

Now, why do you think it is that there are no scientific papers arguing for this theory?

Brit:

So we're agreed that Natural Selection and the other proposed mechanisms are scientiifically indistinguishable. That was my only point.

No. Answer the question.

Brit:

You just said that there's no way to scientifically prove or disprove that what appears to you to be Natural Selection is instead God. I agree.

"You may well be right. Someday, somehow, someone will find that "missing link".

But they will have nowhere to attach that chain they are linking together."

Randall, how do the "just so" stories of the Bible knit it together? I agree that people like to think of things in narrative, but if it is just a made up narrative to satisfy a need, it better be able to answer every question thrown at it, or after awhile people will figure out that it is a made up story. They'll still crave to know what "really" ties it all together.

Whatever ties the universe together has to be a lot more powerful than the human personality. That is what you theists believe, that a human personality is responsible for it all. I think that you are aiming way too low, you want the universe to be familiar. I think that the human personality is way too limiting and shabby an entity to create such a strange and wondrous place. It is familiar, though, and makes you feel comfortable in the world.

Robert:

God.

OJ:

"So we're agreed that Natural Selection and the other proposed mechanisms are scientiifically indistinguishable. That was my only point."

You would do well to stop the obfuscation and misdirection.

We are not agreed that Evolution and C/ID, or Lamarckism, for that matter, are scientifically indistinguishable. It would also do well to keep in mind that the survey results I have cited don't make that claim, either.

C/ID makes the claim that certain features of life are impossible without overt, gap-leaping direction from God. That is a far cry from what I said, which is that 60% of people either believe in evolution as a solely materialistic process, or that God has influenced evolution in ways that are completely indistinguishable from a materialistic process.

The difference between that and C/ID is as night and day.

Brit has stated this very well. I would never deny that science is never more than about five steps away from "because." Science is descriptive far more than explanatory.

But to fill that explanatory gap in with a conclusion from sheer ignorance means you prefer an imaginary friend in the closet to "I just don't know."

And you should keep in mind that if C/ID is right, you are worshipping an entity that would make Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin combined appear to be 2nd grade teacher's pets in comparison.

Randall:

"People who believe in Creation feel that a science that does not care about why or how the universe came into being, but contents itself with a theoretical mechanism of how it works, is moot."

In mootness, how is conclusion from ignorance any different?

It is a long way from deciding the Earth was created to Leviticus.

Jeff:

I fell aslepop after your concession that "God has influenced evolution in ways that are completely indistinguishable from a materialistic process"

OJ:

I don't understand you on this issue. Presumably you dangle these little darwinism-baiting titbits in order to engender debate...

But then when you get it, it only takes a few gentle pushes before you resort to inane repetition, childish retorts, ya-booing and comments like the one above, which have all the intellectual rigour of "I know you are, you said you, but what am I?"

What gives?

You make a new argument I'll give a new answer. Or answer an objection.

My role here is to keep you guys occuppied so you don't bother normal people in the real world.

OJ,

Why?

OJ:

I made a new argument but you didn't give me an answer: why do you think it is that there are no scientific papers arguing for anything resembling the darwinism-plus-God theory?

Quick, before I go and bother people in the real world...

Brit:

Peer review--the peers are all as closed-minded as you.

Try sitting down with a piece of paper and writing down your explanations for all the holes in Darwinism and then try to objectively determine how your beliefs differ from a religious faith.

Here are some of the more obvious objections:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/000527.html

Robert:

That's above our payscale--we just know what He's told us.

OJ:

"Peer review--the peers are all as closed-minded as you"

Actually, that's about right, and the point I've been making. There are no scientific papers proposing darwinism-plus-God because scientists always apply Occam's Razor as a matter of course.

It's not a bolt-on bit of philosophy. It's a key part of the scientific way of thinking. You accept the minimal theory, based on the minimum number of assumptions, sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, until such time as further tests or observations show the theory to be insufficient, or a better theory with even less assumptions is proposed.

Ah, but there are no scientific papers supporting Darwin either. The scientific ones disprove it. You should read the Larson book, you'd find it revealing:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1390/Evolution%20%3A%20.htm

Randall, so you never saw anything turn from chaos to order without direction.

I guess that's one way to get out of giving your sweetie a diamond engagement ring.

Brit:

An axe grinding quote from the review: "The expanding fossil record was a favorite source, though the most famous and important find, Piltdown Man ..."

(Italics mine)

Whether Piltdown Man is more famous than, say, the fossils Leakey found, is open to debate.

But I suggest OJ look at fossils recently discovered in China. Then point to the "macro" evolutionary point separating birds from dinosaurs.

OJ also has an interesting definition of "scientific:" Anything he agrees with.

Harry:

No one ever has.