One in three Americans doesn’t believe in evolution, according to new survey results from the Pew Research Center.
The results, released Monday in report on views about human evolution, show that 33 percent of Americans think “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”
Among Americans who said they believe in evolution, a quarter said “a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today.”
While six-in-ten Americans said they believed that “humans and other living things have evolved over time” and about half of them said processes such as natural selection — not God — that led to evolution, religion continues to play a significant role in how it’s viewed.
I find these statistics very surprising. Nearly 88 years after the “Scopes Monkey Trial” the debate rages on. Oddly enough, I can’t think of a time in my life when I didn’t believe that evolution existed, and that today’s birds descended from pterodactyl. Perhaps I was fortunate. I had next door neighbors who were scientists take an interest in me and teach me about birds, fish, rocks, lizards and how they all got here.
My parents bought me “The World We Live In” which , page after page, with what the earth looked like in the beginning. There were no people running around covering their genitals with fig leaves on those pages. Instead there were block mountains being pushed up in diagrams and fold out pages of the Mesozoic period. There were some artist renditions of what early man might have looked like, based on fossil evidence.
No one ever made the evolving earth and its creatures, past and present, an either/or situation. The God of the First Presbyterian Church and “The World We Live In” both comfortably co-existed in my home. One didn’t extinguish the other.
Surely I wasn’t that unique, all those years ago. Statistics tell a different story today:
Agh! It’s beginning to look as though the Moral Majority is quickly becoming the moron majority.
It has been pointed out here before, and I can’t believe anyone can argue the point, to believe everything the Bible, Koran, Torah or other religious foundational documents, is to either wholly or at least partially voluntarily suspend ones capacity for critical thinking.
To take the Bible literally is to deny logic. It speaks clearly about the Earth having four corners.
There was an episode of “Through the Wormhole” that I watched called “Did God Create Evolution” or a similar title; it’s probably available on In demand on The Science Channel. Truly interesting. It put forth the argument for intelligent design – that the complexity of life indicates a creative force sparking us off. But also put forth the argument that we could be here completely by chance – that life on earth happened when amino acids bumped into each other, against significant odds, in such a way as to create nucleic acids. It put that case forth well.
Actually the structure of DNA, with lots of empty space in it, looks more like something that evolved through chance than a product of intelligent design. And there are indications that DNA itself “evolved” from simpler forms to the more complex ones that are the basis for life as we see it. My best guess, life as we know it is a random side effect of the universe’s movements.
We understand so little about the universe. We don’t understand a purpose to it, or where it came from. We don’t understand what the most granular particles of being are yet. Frankly some of what we do uncover – quantum mechanics – is consistent with a nagging feeling that the reality we are living in is some sort of projection, where granularity becomes limited as it would if you kept magnifying a movie or TV image – this is consistent with our deductively reasoning that at a subatomic level particles can be in two places at once and can never be precisely measured.
(And one of two things is possible. One scenario, there is some most granular form of particle (or particles) which nothing can be smaller than, and it behaves consistently according to rules. Second scenario : that the first scenario isn’t true. In the first scenario there is no free will, the future is entirely predetermined. In the second scenario, we can never understand the laws of nature in a fundamental way).
Call the whole universe “God” if you want. And feel free to believe that there is some larger purpose to it.
But don’t try to convince me that angels are someday going to blow trumpets from the four corners of the earth, or that some guy named Jesus whose life history seemed modeled in large part from the Egyptian God Horus, had magical powers and rose from the dead in some strange blood sacrifice. Let’s all have a bit more respect for ourselves than that.
So how do others feel about the notion that we might not be the many-greats grandchildren of Adam and Eve?
Could there be first people?
This study, based on the rate of mutation compared to the genetic differences between people, indicated that all men and women probably did have a common ancestor – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/genetic-adam-eve-chromosome-men-man_n_3691084.html
Not a creationist by any means but I sure do believe Christ rose from the dead.
I find this sad. There’s no reason to not incorporate the two. I absolutely believe that God imitated evolution. And since we’re free to translate what God thinks, I’m pretty sure God thinks he initiated it as well.
If we promise not to try to convince Mr. Bentley, will he oblige by just shutting up about it?
Maybe it doesn’t matter if evolution is random or God-inspired. Rick can believe one thing and Lyssa can believe another. I am perfectly willing to live and let live at that level.
Where I get intolerant is someone trying to tell me that the Grand Canyon is only 6,000 years old, ignoring all scientific evidence to the contrary.
The genetic Adam and Eve makes my head hurt to think about. How can there be one ‘father’ and ‘mother’ who didn’t mate, know each other, or even live close to each other. Not saying it isn’t possible. Just hurts to think about.
Wolverine, to I see a glimpse of intolerance to others ideas coming from you?
Well, Moon, you sure did. While being personally an apostate from organized religion, I still have no use at all for people who seem to make it a hobby to keep slamming the religious beliefs of others, as if it gives them a perverse pleasure to verbally hurt those of faith. For some unfathomable reason Mr. Bentley’s anti-religious rants are getting louder and louder, and even more irritating. One would hope there is more to his life than just crapping on Christians every day and watching every movie ever made. But his latest rant sort of puts him on the same old page with Herr Karl Marx: Religion is the opium of the people. How nice. So sweet of him to brighten up our days with his long-winded insults.
Intolerance? Yes, Ma’am. Turning the other cheek to insults from caustic-tongued atheists is not found in this camp. I read the last paragraph of the latest Bentley rant to Mrs. W, who is a devout Catholic . She could not believe that there was someone on this blog in particular who was spewing such anti-religious hatred at people of faith. Mrs. W, as a good Catholic, prays for lost souls. I, on the other hand, tend to get on a keyboard and do some plain speaking about blog civility.
I don’t think Rick has been uncivil. I think he is expressing his opinion.
I am actually watching all of this unravel. If Rick is an atheist, and he says that religious beliefs are fairy tales, is he being any more offensive than someone saying that he knows that God created the world in 7 days and that anyone who doesn’t believe that is a Godless sinner, bound for the fiery pits of Hell?
I also expect that Rick is more than willing to share the wealth with non-Christian religions. As for watching every movie ever made, why does that bother you? Now that is intolerant of you. That is his hobby. Why is it worse to be a movie goer and critic than to say..go to the range or the gym?
His hobby hurts no one. Why is it worse to be a movie goer than a library addict? Is it worse to watch movies than read books?
My brother, asked me if Downton Abbey wasn’t just a soap opera. I wasn’t sure what he meant. Being PBS, obviously there was no soap being sold. Did he mean a series? To that I said, “So what.” Why are series “wrong.”
Wolverine, you might have a slight point on the religion stance. As for the movies, you are being intolerant, in my opinion. (so was my brother about Downton Abbey…did I add that he is an English major with a PhD. so he has no excuse not to watch it.)
“One would hope there is more to his life than just crapping on Christians every day and watching every movie ever made.”
Of course … there’s television and pornography.
“spewing such anti-religious hatred”
It is not hatred. It is a logical argument.
The movie remark is funny IMO; no offense taken on that.
I do feel that movies and television are the dominant art form of our time. movies long ago eclipsed painting and other visual art as a means of artistic communication. They’ve eclipsed literature in recent times I believe. “The Sopranos”, “The Wire”, “Six Feet Under” … they sprawl and illustrate as well as any book can, and reach many more people and enter popular consciousness. “Wolf of Wall Street” will be seen by millions over the coming weeks and will illustrate the emptiness of a materialistic lifestyle as well as any book.
It is a soap opera. Top of the heap, but soap operas nonetheless. I think the definition is dramatic series – ongoing storyline. Lots of emotional drama. Like an opera. It is used by some as a negative. Interesting as that is more emotional than accepting the definition at face value.
Original radio series were sponsored by soap companies – the little woman at home. “Just”‘a soap opera!!!! Professors…… :)n
It is a soap opera. Top of the heap, but soap operas nonetheless. I think the definition is dramatic series – ongoing storyline. Lots of emotional drama. Like an opera. It is used by some as a negative. Interesting as that is more emotional than accepting the definition at face value.
Original radio series were sponsored by soap companies – the little woman at home. “Just”‘a soap opera!!!! Professors…… :)n
As you can tell, I was highly insulted. ho ho ho.
All opera, no soap. I tried to catch him on some other things like Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Masters of Sex, Big Love, to no avail, although I think I heard Game of Thrones under the din of my outrage.
I couldn’t say no but I think we have evolved past the concept of soap opera. For that matter, The Waltons and Falcon Crest were ‘soap operas’ if we use that definition.
Not long ago, a prominent Republican politician in Loudoun, while awaiting the arrival of former AG and gubernatorial candidate Cuccinelli on a campaign swing, told a joke which involved the Pope and the “leader of the Jewish faith” (actually, in the orginal joke, it is the Chief Rabbi of Rome). That politician was immediately jumped upon by the Democratic Party attack machine, the Democratic Party candidates, newspapers like the WaPo, commentators like Maddow, by assorted rabbis and Jewish organizations,and even by cowed members of his own state party. Although no one could point to an instance where this man had ever told a joke like that before or had ever been known to be anti-semitic, he was paraded before the public as a stupid anti-semite unfit to hold public office. One old and unfortunate joke, and the political lynch ropes came flying out, some out of obvious partisanship and some out of claims of an ethno-religious insult. The man was also chided for not knowing that there was no “leader of the Jewish faith,” chided by people who apparently were not even aware that the chief liaison between the Vatican and the Jews is the Chief Rabbi of Rome, who leads the oldest Jewish community of the original diaspora. That is currently Chief Rabbi Di Segni.
Now, in his post #4, Mr. Bentley engages in a mocking of the two most important tenets of the Christian faith — The Crucifixion and the Resurrection. He tells us that it was some sort of “strange blood sacrifice” by a “guy named Jesus” who was naught but a knockoff of some ancient Egyptian deity, ergo non-existent. For calling out Mr. Bentley on his anti-Christian rants and insults, made in a Christian holy season no less and which are hardly called for at any time unless one enjoys that kind of incivility, Wolverine is asked if he is not being intolerant of the opinions of others and then told that Mr. Bentley was not being uncivil. I beg your pardon. I will maintain that Mr. Bentley seems to enjoy sticking a word shiv in the backs of those of religious faith — or he wouldn’t be doing it so much and in such a nasty way. And, whereas that Loudoun politician was lynched as an anti-semite for one lousy joke, Mr. Bentley seems to be defended here by some — not all.
I will state that Mr. Bentley is too much given to gratuitous insults against people of faith. There is no need for that. Imagine if Wolverine tried (which he wouldn’t) to post similar rants here against Jews or against the Muslim belief that Mohammed ascended to Paradise from the area of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Such posts would be removed faster than the popcorn disappears when the grandkids are visiting.
BTW, Moon, I did not criticize Downton Abbey, which I have seen a bit of on the web. In fact, you can go back to a post in that particular thread where I praised the show as being a means to help restore the old castle where it is filmed. The movie watching comment was just part of a jab at Mr. Bentley.
I promise you Wolverine, I am not running for office.
I’m pretty sure that if you or I posted screeds about the irrational beliefs of Muslims or of Orthodox Jews, the posts wouldn’t be removed. It seems like fair game; I don’t hate Christians, and don’t consider them better or worse than anyone else. I can only assume that it makes you angry to hear me speaking in this way because you have your own doubts as to whether God talks to you.
As to my content :
A. Is it not fair to call the “sacrifice of God’s only son”, to wipe clean the sins of mankind, a blood sacrifice? It culminates a long tradition – outlined at great length through the Old Testament – of sacrificing animals on alters to please God aka Jehovah.
B. The claim about Horus is probably overblown. I like others have probably been mislead by Bill Maher’s “Religilous” and by certain websites. At core of that argument is a book that a singular eccentric wrote a hundred years ago. Mind you, it does bear some mention that many elements of the Christian Bible are found within other religions, which predate it. That’s an argument against taking the Bible literally. But, it’s not accurate to say that the Jesus story is lifted from the Horus story; I withdraw that assertion. My apologies to you, to God, to Jesus, and also to the Holy Spirit.
Here, let’s see if this gets censored.
I think that belief in Islam is inane. The Koran can be interpreted a myriad of ways, like most of these mystical crap religions, but that one lends itself too easily to an angry insularity and aggression. It is perhaps no surprise that it flourished in the Middle East, where the culture (which predates Islam) is so particularly machismo. It lends itself to a desire to keep women submissive, to keep the outside world from coming in, and to yell and scream angrily. The combination of macho culture with Islam has been a disaster for the region. you’d have to be an abject idiot to believe that this is the one true religion when you see the idiocy and evil that Islam engenders and protects in the Middle East; you’d have to believe that God is an idiot or is evil.
I also think that Orthodox Judaism is ridiculous. Good grief, why in the world would anyone cling to such a ridiculous way of life? Who is it that needs to be told how to live, that needs to be given a set of laws and a claim that God passed these down, to live?
Generally, as with Christians, Orthodox Jews do good and bad things, and their belief that their faith has driven them to these positions and actions is self-delusion IMO. Maybe I should not begrudge them their faith. But when i see them undertaking massive ‘scholorship” interpreting old books written by men who thought that the earth was flat, and “divining God’s wisdom” through detailed study of these texts, I have to laugh – it’s no way for adults to behave, it’s just amazing.
I blew the joke three posts up. The apology should have been to Matthew, to Mark, to Luke, and of course to John.
Too much moral outrage is suspicious or a sign of insecurity.
Questioning faith is part of examining your faith which we are directed to do. Not rubber stamp it – hint when you see “devout” it means public pantomime and rote allegiance to medieval rules. I don’t think its necessary to ridicule other beliefs. The only time I thinks it’s okay is when it’s being rammed down your throat.
I have to say I don’t recall so much misuse and misinterpretation of the Bible. I don’t think God intended it to be used as a threat, a message of anger or hate. I really thought He wanted us to learn how to mange our own lives and to love one another. Particularly the latter – look for the best. The joke about Catholics is that we don’t know/read the Bible. Theologians study and teach it. I’m see the wisdom in that.
@Wolverine
My brother criticized Downton Abbey and like drama sequels. I know you did not do it. I am sure you are astute enough to know that the women here on this blog would have your hide nailed to that wall you mentioned many years ago.
I don’t think Rick attacks Christianty. I think he goes on diatribes against religion in general. Therefore, I think there is a difference. Back to my premise that perhaps he feels like he is being atteacked with some of the Christian or Jewish rhetoric here that is faith based.
I would feel different if he singled out a particular religion to go to town on. As a matter of fact, I have heard you a time or two on the subject of some Muslims.
The difference in Rick and the Loudoun County politician is that Rick is not representing a political party nor is he running for office. I think that same guy, Whitbeck, who is considering a run for the 10th congressional district, also defended his “joke” which simply was inappropriate.
Was it anti semitic? Soft maybe. I believe the punchline of the “joke” existed because of the idea that Jews would always send you a bill for something. I am not sure that is the message a politician wants to send. Can we just all agree that it was an incredibly stupid joke to tell?
There is just no comparison between him and Rick. If Rick had told that joke pitting a Jew against a Christian I would have, at a minimum, given his a stern look.
I was one of the people who criticized John Whitbeck. I thought he used very poor judgement regarding the ‘joke.’ He continued to defend his own actions also. How do you know it was a one and only instance?
@Rick Bentley
A. Abraham leaps off the page at me. That is a particularly horrible section of the bible and it scared the B-Jesus out of me as a kid and didn’t make me have real good feelings about God. Why would God ask a parent to kill his child? All the Abrahamic religions should hide that particular story from children.
@Rick Bentley
I can’t censor it. I would be happier if you had laid a few disclaimers. Not every practitioner of Islam fits that description.
I try to not make fun of anyone’s religion, at least out loud. What happens in my head …well…never mind. the snake handlers get it.
@Lyssa
I try to temper my public statements about religion I think is ridiculous. Yes, I do think many religions are ridiculous or perhaps I should say, the practitioners of many religions are ridiculous.
Operative word, think.
Notice I haven’t said which ones. I also think that some of the more ridiculous religions have some parts that seem to make a lot of sense. I won’t call them out….and I am sure they could care less about my opinion.
We all try. Most religions have several common threads. I think it boils down to manners.
Yea, back to manners.
“Back to my premise that perhaps he feels like he is being atteacked with some of the Christian or Jewish rhetoric here that is faith based.”
Not so much … I felt that way back in the 1980’s though, when the President of the US (Reagan) was on the podium claiming that believers loved their country more than those who didn’t. (He claimed that during a “National Faith Week” or some such thing). Reagan was expert at keeping 60% of people on his side by turning them against the other 40%.
To the extent that I perceive good in encouraging believers to question their faith, I would say it’s because I do think that faith is inherently bad and rots your brain at some point. I do not perceive value in it. I believe that we should work to be rational people. Certainly we could all agree that there’s a point where faith is bad? Such as if God tells you to kill your child? We probably all agree that Scientology is a terrible thing. those inside it justify it by claiming that it helps people to manage their lives. I say SCREW IT; they could be helped without paying an organization tens of thousands of dollars to learn a story about Xenu trapping energies on earth or whatever the core story is.
“Why would God ask a parent to kill his child?”
That happens, to this day. Non-believers would call it schizophrenic delusion.
Yea, but those who practice infanticide, even claiming that God speaks to them, usually rot out their days in prison rather than get turned into a hero.
I think I am kinder to people of faith than you are. I haven’t had bad personal experiences either. That might make me kinder.
Moon, why is it that you feel it necessary to constantly defend Rick and his rants, oops, meaningful dialogues? He is a big boy, let him stand on his own.
And why is it that people should not be upset by his anti-religion rants, Oh crap I did it again, “meaningful dialogues”? His remarks are offensive, I would suggest even to those who are not deeply religious. His broad brush of hate speech is just that, hate speech.
If I had to pick a stance on religion, I might go along with Thomas Jefferson who thought Jesus was a good person but thought the whole thing of miracles as junk, thus he cut all of that sort of “stuff” out of his Bible. Or Mahatma Ghandi’s comment about how he liked Christ but he did not like Christians.
I have tried to have a discussion about how certain Jewish dietary restrictions came about but it always stops at, “God passed these laws down to us.” My claim, people somewhere in antiquity discovered that certain things about meat, fish, milk just weren’t good for you. The whole thing is lost in the sands of time and so the idea that these laws were handed down by God came about as a way to explain the unexplainable.
Will and Ariel Durant wrote extensively about religion and I might have to give Rick credit that much of what we do/think in Christianity (and perhaps all other religions) is a collection of ideas over several millennia. Rocks, trees, animals, mountains, eggs, etc. have been worshiped at some point in time. We know that the Christmas tree came from earlier times as did the Easter Egg, Halloween, even the Holy Trinity (to solve a problem of poly-theism). These things were swept into Christianity and other religions to make them more palatable.
To say that faith rots your brain, is a cop out as far as I am concerned. Many people, who have little else, need faith just to face everyday life. Maybe Rick doesn’t need faith in anything but himself, but even that is faith is something.
I said that faith rots your brain “at some point” – what I meant was that there is some degree of throwing yourself into faith that you lose intelligence. Such as if you believe God is telling you to murder your children. I assume that we all agree there’s a line of intensirty and devotion somewhere where faith becomes a bad thing.
And you and I would draw that line in different places.
All I know is that my fundamentalist Christian school taught me evolution.
And if it’s ok with the Catholic Church……
@Cargosquid
The schools in my small Southern town taught evolution as well. The school board, parents, ministers, teachers, and business people would have had it no other way. However, now any person running for political office there, particularly as a Republican, will distance himself from the science, dumb down his answers to any pressing questions, and make education sound as though it’s a obstacle to be overcome. He’ll run away from that PhD, LLD, MEd , and his credentials as starter of an international business. Yeehaw! He’s just a salt-of-the-6000-year-old-earth good ole boy now.
Censored is on to something. When Censored and I were growing up, people weren’t anti-science. It was the age of Sputnik and people just accepted more science than they do today…I mean people who would brand themselves as conservative..back in those days.
In my small midwestern town, in 1977 when my 6th grade science teacher was supposed to teach it, he announced to us that he wasn’t going to and told us that “If you want to believe that you came from a monkey you can, but I’m not going to teach it”.
I came to understand it later – by high school I suppose – but know firsthand that children’s ability to understand the world around them is sometimes inhibited to idiots.
I know someone who is a Jehovah’s Witness who claims that Evolutionism is a religion. I said that it is not a religion, it is science. When I asked if they thought the world was only 6,000+ years old, the answer was more than a little equivocal. In my Bible thumping home town in the Bible Belt, evolution was taught but notCreationism. Of course this was in the 30s and 40s.
So did you ask them where the Evolution Church was located? A religion? How weird.
Isn’t it Bill O’Reilly who says Christianity is a philosophy not a religion.