Americans Stubbornly Refuse to Accept Evolution
A survey in 32 European countries, Japan and the U.S. reveals that only people in Turkey are less likely than Americans to accept the theory of evolution as a fact.
Religious fundamentalism, partisan politics and poor science education have contributed to Americans’ reluctance to accept evolution, according to John Miller of Michigan State University, who conducted the survey along with colleagues.
Miller found that the percentage of people in the U.S. who accept the idea of evolution has dropped from 45 in 1985 to 40 last year.
At the other end of the scale, more than 80 percent of those surveyed in Iceland say they believe that evolution is fact.
Yup, you read that right… A full 60% of America doesn’t accept evolution. If this poll doesn’t scare the hell out of you then you aren’t paying attention.
But zero, you say, evolution is just a theory! Yup, just like gravity and heliocentrism. A theory is just about as good as it gets. What about laws? Well, my simple-minded friend, laws get their name because of their simple mathematical formulation, while theories cover many diverse observations. In fact, several laws can be part of one big theory. So claiming to not believe in evolution because of it’s status as a “theory” is just plain stupid. Of course, very few people actually reject evolution because of its title, but they do use “just a theory” as an excuse.
(much) More on this later…
“More on this later”
Looking foreward to it
/me bookmarks
I, for one, do not “accept evolution” unequivocally. I do agree that species “evolve” and change with environment. On the other hand, there are a lot of problems when trying to explain the sum total of archaeological facts. For instance, the explosions of seriously different life forms after mass extinctions (from dinosaurs to mammals), and the clear fact that most species, instead of evolving, actually die off in light of changes to environment. But on the most important topic, the origins of man, the problems are even more complex. Firstly humans are so dominant on earth that it seems if humans have been around for several hundred thousands of years, then mankind should have covered the earth almost since the beginning. This may have been so if one factors in “anomolous” archaeological findings such as on this website: http://www.ancientx.com/nm/anmviewer.asp?a=75&z=1%22 .
Basically I think evolution fails to explain the complexity of species change, and completely disregards that some external influence (not “God”)is implied by the archeological records.
Obviously the Intelligent Design arguement derives from Biblical authority. I do think that, open-minded and “theory averse” rational would also strongly imply some intelligence that we are not currently acknowledging through the theory of evolution or intelligent design.
I doubt that we are even 10% knowledgeable of the origins of mankind no matter which side of this debate we accept. So I reject them both.