Huffingtonpost.com

A new Public Policy Polling (PPP) poll finds that a majority of Georgians believe in creationism over evolution.

Entitled “Georgia Miscellany,” the Thursday item surveyed a pool of 520 voters on 32 questions. On the issue of creationism vs. evolution, 53 percent believe more in the former, compared to 29 percent choosing the latter, and 18 percent voting not sure.

When that question was transferred over to party lines, Republicans had a staggering split — 70 percent for creationism, 17 percent for evolution and 13 percent not sure. Democrats split along closer lines — 43 percent for creationism, 33 percent for evolution and 24 percent not sure. Independents held an even narrower divide — 46 percent for creationism, 40 percent for evolution and 14 percent not sure.

Back in June 2012, a Gallup poll recorded some national growth among Americans believing in creationism. Among a sample of 1,012 adults, 46 percent said that they were believers, marking a two percent jump over the past three decades.

UFB! Surely this many people don’t still think that Darwin is a bad word? I can’t believe that many people in Georgia missed science class. I went to school in Georgia a few years and I am pretty sure we studied the origins of the earth and man from a scientific point of view.

On the other hand, people can believe what they want. However, that does not give them the right to insist that myth and religious beliefs be taught in science class, as science, like state Rep. Stephen Bloom just tried to do in Pennsylvania. According to Bloom:

“With free discourse in the classroom under threat, I will soon be introducing a bill to preserve academic freedom in Pennsylvania’s schools,” Bloom said in a memo. “Efforts to squelch and stifle free critical inquiry in the classroom have too frequently arisen, often in the context of the teaching and debate of controversial scientific theories and paradigms.”

What the good lawmaker fails to grasp is that creationism isn’t science. It’s faith. It has no scientific back up. Now, there’s not one thing wrong with having faith. The question then becomes, whose faith? Do we bring Brother Coyote into the picture? Father Sky? Adam and Eve?

Does faith have any place in the classroom as either part of values or as science? Where do we draw the line? It wasn’t decided back in the 20’s and in many localities, the issue of evolution vs creationism is just as alive today as it was then. Scopes be damned!

20 Thoughts to “Those Georgians and Creationism!”

  1. Censored bybvbl

    Wow. I spent all my school years in the Georgia school system except time in kindergarten in the Midwest and college in Virginia and DC and am shocked at how the South has marched steadily backward. I know it’s the Bible Belt and more religious than other parts of the country but educated people should be able to separate science from religion. Our school system even figured out that it was time to quit forcing a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in homeroom each morning – although we still got 1/4 of a credit each year (probably for religion) if we attended church or synagog for a majority of the Sundays/Saturdays during a quarter.

    Darwin was taught in our science classes and we even watched a film on the Scopes trial – possibly in government class. I think we were lucky because aside from the Atlanta ‘burbs our city was probably one of the wealthier ones in Georgia and didn’t want the national/international buyers of its product to see its citizens as backwoods knuckle draggers.

    These party rants about God, guns, gays, gynecology, and Guatemalans are tools to stir up the dumb base and deflect from a dearth of ideas. At a time when the US stands to be replaced as a leader in tech and science fields it’s important to recruit more people to these fields and not run with our vestigial tails tucked between our legs.

    1. Would that be the G5’s or the 5G’s?

      Good one, Censored.

      I was in DeKalb County. (One of the ones that apparently went belly up as far as having a triple A bond rating that JoAnne Carter talked about at the BOCS meeting last time.) At the time it was one of the wealthier counties. It was more advanced than Albemarle County was, that’s for sure.

  2. BSinVA

    I recently saw a creationist bumper sticker. It proudly stated that “I believe in Creationism…Man created god!”.

  3. Rick Bentley

    BTW the most recent episode of “Through the Wormhole” on the Science channel is about the subject of whether life on earth could have evolved randomly from chance or whether “intelligent design” is more likely – evolution shaping life forms, but with a guiding hand from some entity. As usual, the show was excellent, highly informative and thought-provoking. Great tv show.

  4. Rick Bentley

    If anyone remembers “Cosmos” … “Through the Wormhole” is a bit like that, but better.

  5. George S. Harris

    What’s to say the two can’t go together? How long was the Creator’s day? If you believe in evolution and the primordial soup business, how far is that from creating Adam and Eve:

    Genesis 1:27 “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” It doesn’t say how they were created–they were created.

    Genesis 2 confuses things but still the idea that Adam (or mankind) came from “the dust of the ground” still isn’t far from primordial soup. Adam’s rib and Eve???

    But attempting to say that creationism is the ONLY true beginning is a stretch. But for the very devout, this is it. I once knew a physician who actually believed the earth was only something like 6,000 years old–based on the Bible. When I asked him, “What about the evidence of dinosaurs and other evolutionary “things”, he simply said that because he is a believer, he accepts what the Bible says. Interestingly, the Bible does not say how old the earth is. Those who do believe in the “young earth” idea have added up all the years people supposedly lived and came up with a date. I say, “Head in the sand”.

    The earth and mankind–they are what they are. We know f rom carbon dating that the physical earth is 4.2 billion years old. Man, probably 7 million years old if you consider the very earliest: Sahelanthropus tchadensis. As to homo sapiens sapiens–well maybe 200,000 years ago–a lot of candles on the cake!

    And BS may be more right than wrong: God or whatever you wish to call some supreme being may well be the creation of mankind rather than the other way around. How else could humans explain the unexplainable? Even our forefathers, for the most part, were not “Christians” as we think of them–they did believe in an “Almighty” or “Creator” or “Almighty Father” but rarely invoked the name of Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, except maybe when they hit their thumb with a hammer. Before anyone jumps on me, it is not meant as disrespectful, but the whole conservative thing that we are a “Christian” nation and they are the party of God if pure masculus bovine merde.

  6. @George S. Harris

    Well, one of the purposes of myths, according to scholars, is to help man understand the world around him and to provide a reason for his existence. All myths are someone’s religion.

    I don’t think intelligent design is incompatible with science…the guiding Hand theory and all. However, I don’t want that taught in schools. It isn’t science. Go to Sunday School for the guiding Hand part.

  7. Furby McPhee

    The Creationists and Darwin are both wrong. It’s turtles all the way down!

    I’m not sure how many Creationists will get that joke.

    1. I didn’t get it but I am not a creationist.

  8. Elena

    I believe you are talking about the “G-d particle” episode Rick.

  9. When people say God created all that is, that is a religious belief. When people say how God created all things, they are perhaps claiming to know more than God has actually told us. Such is a religious belief, and both Republicans and Democrats make such claims. I fear Democrats arogantly claim an intellectual superiority they just don’t have.

    Although some claim scientific support, most creationists will readily admit they believe in creationism because of what the Bible says happened. Perhaps they read the text a bit too literally, forgetting that the people in Moses’ day knew nothing of modern science. Nonetheless, many Democrats make a similar mistake when they accept the Theory of Evolution as a proven fact.

    There is no way to prove the Theory of Evolution using the scientific method. To demonstrate a theory, the scientific method requires reproducible experiments, but we are unable to conduct any experiments that demonstrate evolution could have occurred.

    What we have is data that causes us to hypothesize that evolution did occur. That data consist largely of the fossil record. In addition, there are clues in the DNA and biological traits of the animals and plants alive today that suggest an evolutionary origin. Yet none of that provides, not even when all summed together, an irrefutable proof.

    Consider the monumental scope of the problem. To study the process of evolution, scientist must extrapolate what happened over a period of hundreds of millions of years. We only live about 80 years, and human civilization — at best — only goes back about 10,000 years. Thus, when we state that the Theory of Evolution is a proven fact, we are saying that a process we have conjectured to exist — but cannot demonstrate — actually does in fact exist.

    By the way, I got Furby McPhee joke, and it is an old one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

    1. Science is always in a constant state of change in that the more we find out, the more theory is tweaked and altered.

      I don’t think anyone here has suggested that evolution happened a certain way beyond a shadow of a doubt. Science does suggest that life started off in soupy pools of amino acids and organic matter. The process of getting to where we are today is suggested in many ways by science. There is no one great answer.

      Creationism is faith. Nothing wrong with that other than it isn’t science and shouldn’t be treated as such. It especially shouldn’t be taught in schools.

  10. Lyssa

    So now religion is based on party? Democrats that accept the theory of evolution as fact accept it differently than Republicans do if ANY of them do accept it as fact?

  11. George S. Harris

    Well Lyssa, I am not sure I would say religion is based on party, but it sure seems like Creationism is pretty much the exclusive “property” of Consevatives. From what I have seen and heard, Conservatives have laid claim to being God’s Party. So, I guess you might say that religion is, in fact, based on party–at least as far as Conservatives are concerned.

  12. @Lyssa
    You may as well ask: why do birds of a feather flock together?

    What we believe makes a difference. What causes people to group themselves into different political parties is that they believe different truths, and what we each believe about God is foundational.

    What we believe to be true provides the basis for our assumptions about how the world work. That includes what we believe government exists to do and how it should do it.

    We once had a republic. Unfortunately, many of us are not content to go about our own business and leave others to go about theirs. So our republic is very likely in the process of dying. We have forgotten we have no right to insist that others believe what we believe and do what we think they should do. So we are giving government too much power, and that creates strife even over silly things.

    Consider the subject of this post. If someone wants to believe in Creationism or in the Theory of Evolution, why does it make any difference? Since the theory has no real practical applications, it should not. Unfortunately, there are people on both sides of the issue who insist that others must be taught what they believe to be true. One side argues fairness. The other touts science. Yet if the government did not run the school system, what difference would it make?

    And why is the government operating the school system? That too is because of rigid ideological beliefs. Just to make certain poor children receive a good education, the government must operate a public system? That’s rubbish! Is the public school system about educating children, or is it about power to decide what children learn?

    1. Actually we have public schools so all sorts of kids have an education. It isn’t just for the poor historically or now.

      No one cares what kids believe. They should know what main theories exist about the origins of the universe and life. Take them to Sunday School for their faith.

      If you don’t want your kids to learn science, have them to go a non-accredited private school or home school them would be my answer. Don’t inflict ignorance on the rest of society.

      Knowledge isn’t dangerous.

      Creationism isn’t knowledge, it is faith.

  13. Lyssa

    No, that’s not what I might have asked – that’s a bit shallow for my kind of thinking. No one can say Democrats all believe in Darwin and Republicans believe in Creationism. The birds I belong to think each issue through thoroughly and separately and avoid sweeping generalizations. And labels. And attitudes of superiority. That makes the thinking part harder. Which might be the problem. I’m not going to go summa theologica here but you get the point.

    Yes George, I agree. No group can claim to have the corner on morality or religious beliefs no matter how hard they insist. When I come across that I realize they’ve missed the whole point of both. And they should be prayed for.

  14. Censored bybvbl

    @Citizen Tom

    If the government doesn’t operate the school system, who is going to step in and educate all those thousands (locally) and millions (nationally) of poor and middle class children? If thousands of private religious or secular schools suddenly pop up, who pays the tuition for the students or subsidizes the schools? I hope you’re not implying that all the mothers of those children have to homeschool them.

    I think that even if school systems added a required “religion” class where these theories such as Creationism could be discussed under “Christianity”, the same parents would complain that their children were being exposed to Judaism, Buddhism, Atheism, Islam, Wicca, etc. Their objective is to have their particular version of Christianity (usually) taught and the rest be damned.

  15. Scout

    Tom’s idea that American political parties, in significant part, reflect personal theologies is a troubling one to me. I have known persons of all major religions in both parties. I haven’t done (and I won’t do) a scientific survey of this, but it seems to me lately that there is a discernible tendency in recent years to conflate religious leanings with particular secular political parties. This is one of those trends (if it indeed is a trend and not just my anecdotal small-sampling) that strikes me as corrosive of the American political system. From reading Citizen Tom’s blog, I get the impression that he tends to assume that if you are his kind of Christian, you must be a Republican (or “conservative”, as that term is often used in that space).

    Back to questions posed by Censored, Lyssa and Moon (explicitly or implicitly): If we don’t have public schools, how do we ensure that we have population capable of coping with modern science and technology? How do we ensure that every child at least has a shot at competence in a complex society. I’m no idolator of the public education system – it has lots of problems. But I have trouble envisioning an alternative, especially one that relies on home instruction or a series of madrases run by clerics of various religions. In the latter case, I think we’d end up looking much more like Iran than a socially-mobile USA.

    1. Well said, Scout. I especially like the madrasa parallel.

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