Highlights from Gallup News:
-38% say God created man in present form, lowest in 35 years
-Same percentage say humans evolved, but God guided the process
-Less-educated Americans more likely to believe in creationism
Higher education levels are associated with less support for creationism and higher levels of belief in the evolutionary explanation for human origins.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx
It’s still possible to inherit the wind, though.
And yet they put all of the evidence for ID/creationism out on the web, available to all.
Oh, that could be the problem. Not for the true believers here, but for people who can still consider what the lack of evidence actually means.
Glen Davidson
I thought that this would be very exciting, a new poll showing further progress in addition to that we saw in the poll released last year.
But it actually is just that poll, released last May. I think they do this poll every few years so there may be a new one in a couple of years.
if america, and cAnada, are the most intelligent nations in human history THEN it would be that , on a curve, they would be the most likely to get origin conclusions right!
so it should be that creationism, in whole or part, is highest in North america.
40% is excellent in a society that doesn’t allow creationism equal time or publicity whatsoever. tHen remember theres heaps of immigration from non creationist countries over the last 40-20 years.
I think any GRASPING at movements in the numbers by evolutiondom is in vain.
what in the world would change in a year relative to large numbers of people?
Remember in america creationism ALSO follows identity.
its not accurate to just do a sweep of a population.
like in evolution doctrine it matters if a new/old population becomes a replacing population. i see the creationist pop as replacing the evo one. This because of how strong we are despite lack of resources. tHe evo one by this time should be 90% plus. We still would take them on and expect to prevail but its not 90%.
There is something wrong with the evolution side eh.
It’s a tad more sublte:
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/
Note, the young scientists have a higher belief in God than old scientists. That’s possibly because home school Christian kids don’t want to go into left-wing, SJW, marxist, post-modern Christ hating disciplines like gender studies, ethnic studies,etc. So they go into science instead. Who knows, that’s my guess. But the encouraging thing is next generation scientist are more theistic than atheistic.
Hard to know whether the difference in percentages of belief between age groups of scientists represents
1. A time trend toward more belief among young scientists, or
2. A change of people’s individual beliefs as they age, or
3. A greater likelihood that believers will cease being scientists as they age.
What a bullshit presentation of the statistics.
For one, they decided to lump the IDist position (that humans evolved but was guided by an inelligent designer) into the evolutionist camp. And yet later in the article they refer to IDists as creationists.
So I guess all the evolutionist here have to stop calling people who believe in ID creationists?
If they really wanted to state the facts honestly from the onset-they would say upfront that the data CLEARLY shows, MORE people believe in God designed life than don’t.
Sorry atheists, I hate to break it to you, you are still losing.
Seems Gallup has an agenda.
I think a more honest headline for the article would be MORE PEOPLE BELIEVE IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN THAN EVER BEFORE!
Agreed.
I looked around a little, and it seems that no one really knows. But I thought this would be interesting, if true:
Matthew C. Nisbet
I wouldn’t know, which is why I’m referring to it–it leaves me wondering. A lot of conjectures show up in the comments, and also someone saying that AAAS members aren’t necessarily scientists.
Anyway, it’s kind of an interesting inversion, since it’s thought that in the public people tend to become more religious as they age. Regardless, there doesn’t seem to be much belief in creationism among the religious scientists.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
They seperate belief in a God from belief in a higher power for fuckssakes. Believing in a God is not believing in a higher power?
The bottom line is EVEN AMONGST SCIENTISTS!, more people believe in a higher power than don’t.
More bad news for atheists, you can’t even get the scientists.
GlenDavidson,
Maybe they just looked at the evidence Glen.
I wonder if Tom knows his side is losing?
As far as I am aware the percentage of the population that is left-leaning and non-believers is larger among younger demographics in the US. Though I would not find it surprising if, among young theists, a greater proportion are theistic evolutionists rather than young Earth creationists.
Belief in God is a form of belief in a higher power, but there are some people who believe in a higher power who don’t believe in a God (that the higher power is a personal God). The venn-diagrams have overlap, but they are not the same thing. For example, there are people who have The Force from Star Wars as their religion. To them, the Force would qualify as a “higher power”. Silly, but so is all religion in my view. Nevertheless, they believe in it.
If you give people a choice of describing their beliefs as “in a higher power” or “in a God”, my guess is if you believe in a higher power that is a God, you’re either going to check God, or both.
Agreed, I noted how Sal smoothly went from discussing creationism to discussing religious belief among scientists. However, I doubt that a future generation of theistic scientists makes any difference for profoundly anti-scientific ideas like (ID-) creationism. During my career as a biologist, I have had many religious colleagues. All good people, most of them outstanding scientists, but none of them even remotely creationist. It is not the atheism that is the main problem for creationism, it is the science.
Darn. I didn’t realise it was a competition. Should I go out and start proselytizing?
I guess you didn’t see the title of the Op then, let me help you out:
“Finally some good news…”
Yes, and the good news is that the proportion of people who believe in creationism is falling, and acceptance of evolution is on the rise.
We already knew that the majority of people (in the US at least) are religious theists. That wouldn’t be news (whether good or bad).
Another way of saying the same thing is, the more educated people become in the sciences, the more likely they are to become atheists. Of course, this has been a well-known phenomenon now for like a century at least, so that in and of itself wouldn’t be news.
My apologies Joe
You are correct. This is old news. The item popped up on one of the newsfeeds I subscribe to, and I neglected to check the date.
At least extrapolation would indicate positive trajectories.
Better homeschool them or they start shit like this:
We persecute and persecute, and what happens? More young religious scientists.
You’d almost think we were more interested in good science than in theology.
Glen Davidson
Wasn’t that what Friends was all about? Warning us about paleontologists and paleontology?
Paleontology. Not even once.
Only if you can’t read.
Or if positive to you means becoming more religious.
It would be interesting to know what the % of those Who don’t believe either are actually believers in sheer dumb luck, panspermia etc.
Are there details like that available?
Belief in God does not preclude acceptance of either of those things, only belief in certain versions of God does.
Finally some good news: U.S. Belief in Creationist Views at New Low
I guess the funding for the research of OOL and evolution, such as sexual interactions of turtles and so on is no longer needed…
I hope Donald Trump and his advisory panel are aware of this situation and will delegate all the money towards where it is needed the most: 47+ million Americans being on social assistance…
The materialistic propaganda finally accomplished its goal!
Hallelujah!!!
But that just isn’t what the data bears out.
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
This decline reminds me of the many examples of the falls of “great societies” … Similar sentiments were observed in Germany before the II WW…
“When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything…”
Yes, a decline in belief in superstition signals the fall of civilization.
It’s not like the rise of the Nazis meant a decline in science trust and an increase in the acceptance of superstitious nonsense, did it? The censorship of “Darwinismus” put the icing on the Nazi anti-science cake.
Surprise, J-Mac understands history about as well as he does science.
Glen Davidson
Funny thing, 94% of German before WW2 Identified as Christians as opposed to 70% today. Maybe electing a narcissistic, hate mongering leader had more to do with it.
I’d be interested to know more about the 18-34 age group, especially the lower end. Who are these 18-year-old scientists? How can you tell if an 18-year-old is a scientist? If there are lots of undergraduates in that population, then there’s an obvious explanation: college education tends to reduce religiosity, even in home-schooled fundamentalists.
So you want to site a different report, asking Americans SPECIFICALLY about Christianity, to counter other studies that show people becoming MORE religious not less?
And you wonder why I don’t take your interpretations about the evidence for evolution seriously?
Maybe its only scientists who are becoming more religious. Because they look at the data.
I think this raises a good point, but then fails to follow up. The whole point of Intelligent Design was to do an end-run around legal restrictions on proselytizing mostly in public schools, but in some ways to extract explicit Christianism in public life. It attempts to accomplish this by being non-aligned with any particular mainstream Christian group — that is, (as per court rulings) no mention of gods or bibles or specific religious figures.
So ID is carefully ambiguous. If you believe your god poofed all life into existence recently, ID supports you. If you believe it took 4 billion years of divinely guided evolution to produce you, ID ALSO supports you. ID basically claims there IS a designer, but takes great pains NOT to specify who it is, what it did, how it did it, when it did it, or basically anything that can be tested.
As such, ID is a meaningless phrase, because it can be stretched to mean so many things, which can be mutually exclusive. If we don’t get distracted by it, then we’re looking at three very distinct and non-overlapping camps:
1) The Christian god poofed all live into existence recently (creationism)
2) Some higher power influenced evolution (maybe continuously, maybe only once or only a few times). This is in general the religious but non-creationist camp.
3) Life evolved entirely through natural processes, without any in-principle-unobservable outside influence. This is the non religious view.
Bottom line: The statistics themselves are meaningful and not bullshit. The attempt to impose ID where it doesn’t fit, in an attempt to discredit valid trends, IS bullshit.
That was my thought also. People are raised to be religious, so come to university with a religious upbringing at 18, after which it starts to significantly drop off with education.
Maybe more women are becoming scientists.
It’s not just about christianity phoodoo. And yes, the data shows that the percentage of americans who are religious is decreasing.
What other studies are those? It isn’t the one in the OP. So how is that the impression you got from it?
Let me just note the irony here that you are telling that to me, when it is you who have completely failed to understand what the study referred to in the OP says.
Where do you get this “scientists are becoming more religious” crap, phoodoo?
Did you just confabulate this crap? Please show me the data where this trend is manifest.
First of all, when people become scientists, their religiosity significantly drops off compared to the general population:
@phoodoo
And this is borne out by the data here, where we can see that younger scientists are more religious than older scientists. As in, the trend is going down the older they get (and hence the further they get in their scientific education and work).
Flint,
This would support a claim that Michael Behe is not a creationist. It would also support that Ken Miller is not a creationist. We need to have a agreed upon definition of creationist as Larry Moran calls both Mike and Ken creationists even though Mike is in the second buck and Ken is in the third.
Data from Larson and Witham’s 1998 survey of the best scientists in America, members of the National Academy of Sciences:
FWIW, regarding young scientists and belief, when I teach ID and creation to college level students, I find it easier to reach those who are science majors. I don’t recall I ever had a gender studies, ethnic studies, SJW Marxist post-modern transgender activist coming to my talks to actually learn about creation and ID.
In constrast, after a prayer meeting I talked with a Christian Darwinist biology-pre med sophomore for an hour. I asked him if the professors explained the process of the prokaryote/eukaryote transitions, histone acetal transferases, spliceosomes, heart anatomy, etc. I asked him if the professors ever gave explanations for the evolutionary claims (from a mechanical standpoint, not phylogenetic assertions that are pretended as real explanations, but are just mere assertions). He said, “no.” So I tried to get him thinking how one creature could evolve a fundamental system without dying in the process — like say evolving an insulin-regulated metabolism.
I didn’t talk about the theology or Bible or literal interpretation hardly. I found out a few weeks later that he was a became creationist after that one conversation.
I doubt I’ll ever get much traction with men-hating feminist SJW gender studies students. Go science!
stcordova,
Wow, if true, you managed to bring someone to your level of plodding ignorance and false dilemmas.
You must be proud. Seriously.
Glen Davidson
I wonder why Tom thinks fewer people believing in creationism is a good thing?
I can answer for myself (I agree with Tom). I think it is a good thing when the number of people who believe demonstrable falsehoods, is in decline.
Such a cute story.
This is either your fantasy (shades of Big Daddy?) or child abuse. Either way, reprehensible behavior. In what context do you teach ID and creationism to college level students?
Church basements tend to attract believers.
Who wants a world full of gullible people? They tend to believe in things like objective morality and flying priests.
1. How does the poll indicate that the number of people who believe demonstrable falsehoods is in decline?
2. Even if we assume arguendo that this is the case (pending your response), why would that be a good thing?
Yes, I regard this as being closest to the reality. Behe is not a YOUNG EARTH creationist, but he clearly believes that his god diddles with biology. I interpret Larry Moran as dividing everyone into two categories – those who believe in a god who DOES anything (which is any known god), those who do not. And Moran regards the first group as creationists.
I think things are more nuanced than this. Maybe I need another category:
1) life poofed recently (YE) creationists.
2) life poofed once long ago (OE) creationists.
3) life evolved under the management of a higher power religious believers
4) life evolved with the assistance of ANY imaginary outside agency (atheists)
In this taxonomy, Moran regards 1-3 as being all creationists. Behe falls into #2, Ken Miller into #3. I read phoodoo as agreeing with Moran, except phoodoo lumps 1-3 together as being religious, and doesn’t seem inclined to distinguish among different beliefs. To phoodoo (as I interpret him), there’s no real difference between a devout born-again Jesus freak and a person who thinks life might have a purpose. In his view, there are “the religious” (which includes agnostics), and there are strong atheists, and every is one or the other.