Evolution is a signal for real Republican populism

By Razib Khan | August 19, 2011 9:53 am

New York Magazine has a rundown of the attitudes of some of the G.O.P. candidates for the nomination in regards to evolution. Remember, this is an issue which is split down the middle in the American populace, but elites have a strong skew toward accepting evolution. This is probably why despite a majority Creationist primary electorate in 2008 the majority of Republican candidates still agreed with the evolutionary position. In 2012 it looks like the Creationism or semi-Creationist contingent is going to get larger.

In the General Social Survey they asked in the late 2000s whether respondents accepted that “humans developed from animals.” The response was dichotomous. Here are some results for various population groups:

	Accepts human development from animals
Democrat	59
Independent	53
Republican	42
Liberal	69
Moderate	52
Conservative	39
White	54
Black	35
Hispanic	52
No high school diploma	42
High school diploma	46
Junior college	53
Bachelor	63
Graduate	72
New England	81
Mid Atlantic	60
Great Lakes	52
Upper Midwest	54
South Atlantic	46
East South Central	29
Southwest	38
Mountain	53
Pacific	64
Protestant	35
Catholic	65
Jewish	79
No religion	79
Age 18-34	58
Age 36-64	51
Age 65-*	43

CATEGORIZED UNDER: Politics

MORE ABOUT: Evolution, Politics

Darkseid

wow, i’d have to say then that the stereotypes i have about those groups aren’t really stereotypes. they’re basically just facts.
dave chamberlin

I really want to be an optimist, really I do, but the sorry truth is the world is packed with delusional fools. Give the average a choice and they choose magic that makes them feel better over logic, I mean WTF.
Clark

Which of the candidates other than Romney and Huntsman expressed belief in evolution? (I know both of them have – Romney did it in one of the main debates last time around)
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp Razib Khan

to my surprise, gingrich has in 2006 (to discover). though he mouths a lot of implicit ID points too. romney and huntsman have been pretty full-throated and unequivocal, just short of scientific materialist evolution.
Darkseid

I’ve started calling religious people “illiterate.” technically, they are scientifically illiterate, correct? I’m hoping to make it uncool to be anti-science.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp Razib Khan

#5, so are you saying gcochran is illiterate? just sayin’
Nick

I think Razib has mentioned before that most people really don’t think too much about this stuff and take their cues from others. A couple of examples from my own experience:

* I recently had an email exchange with an intelligent, well-educated conservative friend of mine and I mentioned in passing I wasn’t too pleased with Rick Perry’s appointing creationists to the Texas school board. He replied with something along the lines of “Well, I don’t have a problem with evolution, but I don’t see any problem with teaching both sides.” Like many people, the guy’s got kids, a career, no background in science, doesn’t read Discover blogs, etc and isn’t about to invest the considerable time and effort needed to form a coherent, rational view of what to think about all this.
* My dad is a scientist, and a very good one at that. He’s also a staunch conservative. Around the time “Expelled” came out, he made some comment expressing possible interest in it. I informed him what a loan of b.s. it was of course, and he came around, but the point is that biology may as well be a foreign country to him. Now, if Ben Stein had been saying that, say, covalent bonding is a myth and only Nazis believed in covalent bonding, my dad would have instantly dismissed him as a crank. But biology? Meh–he’ll go with the flow on that one.

Some people are open to reason on this, especially if they haven’t thought about it much. As for the rest, I don’t know.
Clark

Romney and Huntsman are Mormon though so that makes sense. There actually are a lot of pro-evolution Catholic theologians so that’s not too surprising about Gingrich given he converted to Catholicism. I’d say I’m surprised he kept the position this time around given the (surprising to me) rise of social conservatism as so significant. However he’s run a pretty astoundingly incompetent campaign so I’m not that surprised. Still it’s nice that some of the non-Mormon Republicans are embracing evolution. Especially given the place of Gingrich in populist conservative thought. Wish we had more people embracing science publicly.

I do wonder how we can get these signals (evolution and global warming) changed in the party. I know that as signals they don’t matter too much. (And evolution is primarily an issue at the state level) Personally I blame Al Gore for a lot of this. Before Gore did his campaign to raise awareness of global warming it wasn’t nearly the signal it is today. (And ironically Rick Perry at the time was Gore’s state campaign director in Texas as I recall)
Darkseid

what?? Greg is religious? wow, i knew he was kind of “fringe” so i guess i shouldn’t be surprised but that is still quite surprising. anyway, yes, he is technically illiterate in my book then. too bad – no exceptions for the religious since it makes no sense.
Justin Giancola

I could be wrong but I think Razib was implying that gcochran is scientifically illiterate; if he is the person I’m thinking of with the humans came from america stuff.
Sandgroper

No, Greg ridiculed that theory.
dave chamberlin

You’re thinking of the one, the only, German Drivel, Justin. Well maybe I misspelled his last name.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp Razib Khan

#9, yeah, greg is methodist. i would personally warn you against platonism doesn’t seem fruitful in finding new ideas. a significant minority of regular readers are after all theists even on this weblog.
Daniel J. Andrews

I’ve started calling religious people “illiterate.” technically, they are scientifically illiterate, correct?

No. Not correct. You’re conflating two different things and assuming a religious belief of some type is equivalent to scientific illiteracy. It does seem rather strange to call people like Newton and Dobzhansky scientifically illiterate as well as modern day folks like Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller. There may be other things you may wish to label* them with, but scientifically illiterate is not right.

*Labeling others can lead to problems in that it leads to lazy thinking–rather than take each case individually, just slap a label on them and you don’t need to do much more thinking about it. Respectfully, I believe this is what you’ve done here by labeling them scientifically illiterate.
Darkseid

Ok, thanks dad.