I’ve been doing some research and just found this figure: only 22 percent of Canadians think God created human beings within the last 10,000 years or so. In the U.S. the number is roughly double that.
Similarly, I recently learned from appearing on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Lateline” program that just 20 percent of Australians are global warming deniers. They’re very worried about this fact down there, and they should be–but again, the percentage is much higher in the U.S. Pew puts it at 49 percent.
These cross-country comparisons certainly do support the notion that there is something about the U.S. populace that’s notably unscientific, especially given our state of technological and economic development.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I also pondered this peculiar US-specific fact in a past post
September 24th, 2009 at 11:10 am
One major problem seems to be that evolution and global warming are perceived as political issues in the U.S., when they are actually scientific issues. (Policies to deal with global warming may be political, but the fact that it’s happening and is likely anthropogenic is not.) I wonder if anyone here who is either Canadian or Australian can shed light on whether the issues are so politicized in their home countries? Or if more formal studies have been done on the matter?
September 24th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
How much activity is there in Canada or Australia by large corporations to confuse the respective populous with junk science and political pressure? It’s a demonstrably large consorted effort here. And it’s working fairly well I’d say.
September 24th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
And how much of that “technological progress” made in the US was made by individuals who had all their education in the US?
September 24th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Part of the problem is that questions of religion and economics have been tied in with nationalism in ways that they aren’t elsewhere, for various reasons. The signature move on the right is to keep that stoked… (This was one of the main points of Alex Carey’s *Taking the Risk Out of Democracy*–I think the book misses some important philosophical premises of his opposition, but it’s still interesting.)
September 24th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
It must be because Canadian scientists are better than their southern counterparts in accommodating their religious views within the context of a scientific education that relies on better outreach by Canadian scientists. You say it’s garbage? Exactly. The truth is that a larger segment of the Canadian populace is better educated, understands critical thinking, and has decided to dissociate themselves from religion. Their educators did not coddle religion, and their schools stressed science over educational background. What factors determine Canada’s greater embrace of rationalism? It must be similar factors found in Western Europe. The US and Australia are exceptions to religious views within Developed countries. To explain our increased religiosity, there are many theories. One correlates income disparity with religion (http://www.nyu.edu/clubs/jpia.club/PDF/Spring2008_Palani.pdf).
When all is said and done then, there’s no need to accommodate the religious views of the majority when they’re wrong. We must state the facts, and educate students in the sciences. A few loud new Atheists like myself cannot appreciably force some religious into the fold of religion, and away from critical thinking and reasoning. The best analogy to this is parenting. Accommodating a child’s misguided behavior is not the most advisable strategy. Sometimes, identifying the behavior directly and sternly is all that’s required. Other times, when even this isn’t enough, a disciplinary action such as reducing certain privelages is required. In neither of these instances will a child enjoy being scolded and/or disciplined. But yet, it’s instrumental in proper parental behavior. Leading through example of course is one of the best methods, but it doesn’t work for every child. Accommodationists assume that the kid-gloves they use to handle the religious will allow more to fall into the mold of critical thinking. Some of the well-indoctrinated will never come to appreciate reason and critical thinking. Regardless of how understanding you may seem to their misguided thinking, they will never come around. It’s the ones that require an abrupt wake-up call that need to be spoken to directly. Their fantasy worlds require more than just soft agreeableness to shatter.
September 24th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
I am going to suggest this alternative hypothesis proposed by Ken Miller in his “Only A Theory; Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul”. He’s especially impressed with the arguments made by his Brown University colleague, noted American Revolution (and early history of the USA) historian Gordon Wood, who has emphasized and documented the extraordinary radical nature of the American Revolution, of which one of its paramount legacies was a profound distrust by Americans by those in authority. It is this distrust – as exemplified, for example, in the recent “tea parties” – which Ken believes may be responsible for much of the hostility that Americans have shown toward accepting evolution as valid science, along with their devout religious beliefs.
September 25th, 2009 at 8:17 am
Helioprogenus,
The problem I have with your approach, and that of certain other Atheists, is that you make the assumption that religion’s ONLY purpose is to explain the natural world, and since science can do that far better then religion, once one accepts science, and somehow “begins” to think critically (since ALL scientists demonstrably think critically all the time), then no one has a need for religion anymore.
Why is this falicious thinking? Because religions exist first and foremost to create and propogate moral structures within a society. Those structures in turn create communities of like minded people, who can, if they choose, work to a higher collective good using the moral tennants they have been taught. Seen in this context, the Creation story in the Christian Bible (which just hapens to be in the Jewish scriptre and the Koran as well) is as much an instruction to humanity to care for nature, as it is a “literal” explanation of how the world came to be.
Now, I’ll freely admit that my take on religion is NOT shared by all believers. I am also perfectly willing to admit that MANY horrible things have been done to humanity in the name of religion (including the continued persecution of Atheists). But I also argue that when people take a religious mantle to commit heinous acts of violence, they are apostate, and deserve the scorn and punishment that history heaps on them.
What does all this have to do with the topic at hand – simply this. While Candians and Australians may, indeed, be better educated in critical thinking methods (which seems like an assertion in search of evidence), that doesn’t necessarily correlate to a lack of religion, or a predisposition to atheism or agnisticism. Rather, I suspect it leads to a more open, more liberal interpretation of what religion is then you have presented here, and upon which you base your theory.
@John Kwok – I really like your Miller and Wood hypothesis. Is that actually written in Miller’s book? Clearly you are a “generalist” – which means you and I would probably get along famously over a pint!
September 25th, 2009 at 9:42 am
As a Canadian, I’m surprised it’s that high. I am often puzzled by the mind-set south of the boarder.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
“only 22 percent of Canadians think God created human beings within the last 10,000 years or so. In the U.S. the number is roughly double that.”
Googling ‘religiosity by country’…Gee, what could the difference be?
% Canadians who say religion is very important: 30
% Americans who say religion is very important: 59
Pretty much double also – who could see that coming! Unfortunately, Australia wasn’t in the group of countries looked at in that article…continuing to google…
Irreligion in Australia also seems pretty high, though my limited googling hasn’t found the exact same question to compare religiosity with the U.S.
“Although many Australians identify themselves as religious, the majority consider religion the least important aspect of their lives when compared with family, partners, work and career, leisure time and politics. This is reflected in Australia’s church attendance rates, which are among the lowest in the world and in continuing decline…
In a 2008 global Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Australians stated religion as having no importance…”
How very, very, very unsurprising.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Hi John
I think Miller’s explanation is interesting. However, ideally, a profound distrust of authority should also not lead to trusting scripture and pastors which are as much a source of authority as anyone else. It seems that people don’t trust one source of authority and instead have put their trust in another.
I think the reason why religion is trusted above science as a source of authority is partly because it also provides group cohesion which science, because of its emphasis on skepticism and free-thinking, usually avoids.
September 25th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
@ Philip H. -
Tes, Ken makes this an important argument of his in “Only A Theory” and I was amazed when I read it, but it made ample sense to me (In the interest of full disclosure, I took two history courses from Wood as an undergraduate; he was the most impressive history teacher I had in college.).
@ Sorbet -
I think Ken Miller’s argument – relying upon the extensive and impressive historical scholarship of Wood’s – is quite fascinating and sound. While you’ve made a good point too with regards to your assessment of religion, but try telling that to Jesuit brother – and noted planetary scientist – Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno. I heard him and Ken Miller emphasize that there is ample debate even within the Roman Catholic Church on important theological issues during the World Science Festival panel discussion on Science Faith Religion that was held here in New York City, late last spring.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:11 am
To Helioprogenus.
Your position seems to be if the ‘religious’ don’t think like you or agree with you then the proper response is to jam it down their throats. This also seems to be the view of Dawkins and other militant fundemental atheist.
Sounds nice and civilized to me.
I will stick with those folks who build hospitals, drill wells and build schools in the name of Christ any day.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Isn’t the climate change data point extremely inconvenient for the “religion explains everything” theory?
Creationism obviously has a religious component, but you have to tie yourself in knots to avoid the conclusion that opposition to doing anything about climate change is an ideological rather than religious phenomenon. Libertarians provide a rather obvious example.
If facts actually matter this should provide a clue that you can’t use a single factor to explain these phenomena, and they really are tied to the role of science in society.
September 29th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Marc,
Fascinating approach. The problem is, those in the fundamentalist Christian community who happen to deny climate change do so at their own moral peril. While Genesis is often read to say that man has dominion of the Animals and all the Earth, it can just as easily be read as directing believers to care for and nurture God’s creation. Destroying said creation by allowing global warming to continue unchecked would, therefore, make those persons apostate at best, and sinners at worst. And science need not be any part of that conversation (though science obviously has a great deal to add to the discussion).
September 29th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
@ Philip
“Because religions exist first and foremost to create and propogate moral structures within a society. Those structures in turn create communities of like minded people, who can, if they choose, work to a higher collective good using the moral tennants they have been taught.”
That’s an assumption which you believe in, but only because you’ve chosen to accept that religious belief is somehow removed from natural processes. The fact is that morality is not housed within a framework of religion, but exists due to humans evolving into a complex social environment. Morality and ethics exists outside of religion and you don’t need religion to function as a society. Much of Western Europe does fine without having to inject ethics into religion. They work as a collective group, outside of religion. You don’t need religion to recognize that a society must take care of their weaker members. You don’t need religion to tell you that murdering someone in cold blood is wrong. There are many possible reasons as to why religious/spiritual belief is so pervasive, but to properly explain it within society, you need rigorous scientific tools. We must understand why people are prone to believing in the irrational. There are certainly factors like fear of the unknown, group acceptance, authority seeking, etc. There needn’t be a pervasive force(s) or a being that’s somehow involved in the process for the mass belief in religion. Just as prehistoric people, pervasively, believed the Earth was flat because of errors in perspective that’s common due to our limited geographic experience and composition of visual processing, similarly, people can believe in religion pervasively due to how our brains function internally and within a social environment. We are a product of nature, fully, and because you can’t accept the fact that there is nothing more than our atoms, you infuse irrational beliefs to explain the discomfort at facing a random and apathetic universe.
@Tim
“if the ‘religious’ don’t think like you or agree with you then the proper response is to jam it down their throats”
Yeah that’s exactly what I said. Did you draw that lame straw man out of the hat again? So all us radical atheists want to do is shove an argument down people’s throat? Our goal is to educate the population and allow them to think critically. Religion builds an artificial barrier towards critical thinking and actively penalizes questioning and the tendencies for curiosity of the processes within the universe. Because some religious organizations build schools and help the less fortunate doesn’t mean we should bend over backwards to treat religion with kids gloves. Don’t forget the other side of the coin is religious institutions training terrorists, or preaching hate, exclusiveness, racism, etc. Don’t illuminate some of the good that religion does by disregarding the terrible consequences when it gets things wrong.
Further, if your children believed in ogres under their beds, would your insistence that there is nothing under the bed be considered as “shoving it down their throat”? All we’re trying to do is educate the ignorant masses into understanding critical thinking, the scientific method, and perhaps something about the physical processes within the universe and especially biological systems. If you have the tools and means to think critically, yet refuse to discard them because of indoctrination and compartmentalization , then there’s no point in beating a dead issue. To those people, of which you may be included, I can only say stay out of the picture. You may have chosen a path that makes sense to you, but it’s not the rational path that helps one truly think critically. You want them to drink the diluted potion which you offer, as opposed to the real effective medicine? It may be that as effective as the medicine is, its taste is quite bitter, but diluting it and sweetening it as you hope to do helps neither the ignorant or the rational in educating them. You’re just an obtuse wall between reason and ignorance (this is my problem with accommodationists).
September 30th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
@Helioprogenus:
Speaking of a strawman the general swipe of religious terrorism, racism, etc. is a weak argument and depends on which religion you are talking about. One religious book says slay the infidel another religious book says love your neighbor.
Over the course of history more racism, hate and exclusiveness and might I add death has been at the hands of godless leaders.
Your “Stay out of the picture” comment suggest that free speech is for a select few. Sounds exclusive to me. I welcome any discussion, but evidently a rationalist doesn’t.
As far as rationality and education are concerned much of the foundation of modern science were established long before rational post-modernism. Linnaeus, Newton, Harvey, Mendel, Keppler, Galileo and many others should be admired as heroes who stood against ingnorance of the times because of the evidence that led to rational conclusions. Today the hero is the one who stands against exclusive attitude you display.
October 1st, 2009 at 6:13 pm
@ Tim
So by your definition, holocaust deniers are heroes because they stand against the exclusive attitude towards the holocaust that the majority displays? That’s a pathetic argument if I’ve heard one. I know, that’s not exactly what you’re attempting to say, but the point is that from our non-accommodationist perspective, it’s detrimental towards critical thinking to continuously display blind ignorance to the inner workings of the universe and then trying to use that softness to reason with the scientifically illiterate.
Though true, that the foundations of modern science were built by those who maintained deistic tendencies, a lot of that had to do with the limits of scientific understanding. Once you understand the concepts of natural selection, and the physical forces that govern the universe, along with a healthy understanding of the scientific method, and skeptical thinking, your deistic beliefs leaves you 300 years in the past. Let’s not forget that we can’t view these early pioneers from our perspective, because they were products of their time. Their contributions helped our understanding and advancement, but their religious beliefs had little to do with reality.
The actual hero, at least from my perspective, is the person who continuously asks questions, doesn’t limit the universe to imaginary concepts, and grounds his thinking within what’s testable. Sure, we can all imagine what life would be like if there was a supreme deity, but that’s just fantasy.
Ultimately, there is a misunderstanding now that if you’re not agnostic, then you’re a closed-minded radical atheist. Apparently, the general belief is that atheists are extremists, and view the world from a limited perspective. Well, if by limited perspective, you mean the scope of reality, then yes, we do. We accept the universe for what it is, and try to discover the forces and rules that govern it. By dwelling in fantasy, we don’t help science progress. Those who have a special place in their hearts for fantasy shouldn’t dictate scientific education on the American populace. Sure, you can talk, and your mixed arguments and lousy rhetoric will keep us constantly amused and combative, but if the ultimate goal is educating the populace, of increasing scientific literacy and critical thinking, then no matter how you reason it, your approach is disingenuous at best. We’re not trying to strip religion and spirituality from scientific discourse because we’re bad people, or misanthropes—we’re doing it because those do not belong anywhere in a scientific argument. Now, if you’re speaking of philosophy, history, religion as a topic in and of itself, then that’s alright, but to include notions of fantasy and irrational frailties of the human mind into science is irresponsible and counter productive.
October 1st, 2009 at 11:05 pm
@Helioprogenus:
Certainly a well written response and I have some commentary and one question.
The scientific perspective according to you would exclude any and all supernatural explanations.
Even some ISSOL speakers have implied it would take a miracle (non deistic of course) for the unlikely generation of spontaneous life. Thus the whole of Darwinian evolution from that first unlikely miraculous life becomes a matter of philosphy (faith).
This matter of Darwinian faith is demonstrated in the untestable framework in which it exist. Imagine taking a dozen pages from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and trying to reproduce the entire 6 volume multi-thousand page work. Such is the evidence of a few pre-human bones that would fit in a relatively small box to reconstruct millions of years of history. Many if not all of the articles I read contain too many phrases like: could have, may have, it is thought, likely, widely held, etc. Science is precise and testable if not it is philosophy
If in the course of time some evidence would require a supernatural explanation, would you in the spirit of following the science where ever it leads consider such an explanation?
By the way I believe you have violated Godwin’s Law in your opening sentence therefore I withdraw from any further comment and leave you the last response.
October 2nd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
So by violating Godwin’s Law, suddenly, my whole argument is rendered invalid? Your problem is that you cannot defend your faith in any way. What you believe is just that, and there’s no amount of evidence to dissuade you of that because you can’t falsify your imaginary notions. I don’t purport to know the nuanced details of your particular brand of faith, but I do know that there are billions of people on this planet equally convinced that their faith, based on little reason and evidence, is the correct one. Some even go so far as to say all faith is based on the same spiritual godness or whatever it is that infuses the universe, but again, there is no evidence to support this. These are all just frailties of the human mind.
As far as Darwinian notions, there is no point in using faith in the same sentence. We’re viewing evolution through natural selection by evidence. Darwin just uncovered a natural process, just as Newton did for gravity. If his notions did not support the evidence, then we would discard them. But natural selection is by far the best theory we have to describe the diversity and complexity of life. Now when you go to pre-biotic chemistry and attempt to extrapolate the emergence of life, it’s irresponsible as a scientist to have a supernatural explanation. You’re short-changing yourself by giving in to easy temptation. The truth is that what was once basic chemistry eventually developed into a self-organized mechanism that we call life. How this happened is a scientific mystery, but one that garners a great deal of dedicated interest. We will uncover some of these mysteries, ask more questions, and come to further understand our universe. The problem occurs when you use faith to cloud your reasoning. Your faith tells you that there’s a possibility that a supernatural mechanism is involved in abiogenesis, and although it may provide you some comfort, it doesn’t help us understand anything. That’s just a failure of your faith to render a better grasp of the universe in which we live. If you want to look into the numerous theories as to the mechanism(s) responsible for abiogenesis, dedicate a few hours and read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life. Further, my personal favorite mechanism can be found in http://www.livescience.com/space/090903-am-zinc-life.html. Regardless, notice how none of these need a supernatural spark because that’s a cop-out. That’s one sure way to limit your perspective on the world. Well, I don’t have an explanation for why lightening strikes from above, so it must be the work of some deity. Yeah, that’s a great way to live your life. The problem is that people like you accept gravity as though it’s a given, but cannot truly embrace natural selection and naturalistic processes for abiogenesis because it runs counter to your faith. Ultimately, no amount of reasoning by me can dissuade you of that, and I accept it. However, back to my original point, I don’t like your faith-influenced notions of science clouding the minds of the scientifically illiterate.
About your untestable framework argument, you mention that science is precise and testable, but your scope of understanding is limited. Forensics is a science, and you can be as precise as you want with your methods, but the fact is you’re there after an incident. If you don’t observe a crime, then you’re basically gathering the evidence for a crime. You’re using precise tools to gather that evidence, and rigorous methods of analysis to determine the nature of the crime and even perhaps find the perpetrator who committed it. If you have enough experience looking at crime scenes and gathering evidence, then you are doing science. Similarly, paleontologists, like detectives at crime scene, are looking at evidence after the fact. They can’t just pretend that there’s a supernatural explanation for it. They use all the scientific tools and methods at their disposal, gather the evidence and make a judgment based on that. Just as the latest news about Ardipithecus Ramidus has emerged, the details of how closely they’re related to the last common ancestor between chimps and humans is readily available for anyone to read. It took 15 years of work for the results to have appeared in Nature, and just as it sometimes takes decades for some investigations, similarly it may take a while to investigate discrete elements of species’ evolution. You’re right about one thing. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire cannot be reproduced with just a few pages, but we can get a general idea of Rome’s evolution through just archaeology alone. We can investigate the changes to the outline of Rome, the population increase and decreases, the monuments that were built, and even the daily lives of the romans. We may not know the day-to-day details, just as we’ll never know what a certain Ardipithecus Ramidus was thinking before he was killed, we can still investigate how he may have died, or at least his environment and his bones for the details connecting it to other hominids. The fact that we know any details of the Indus Valley Civilzation, considering the lack of oral or literary history is a result of meticulous archaeology. You can read S.P. Gupta’s “The Indus-Saraswati Civilization: Origins, Problems and Issues”, and it’s no Gibbons, but it’s still a book that’s largely based on post facto investigation of a previous civilization. Unlike Roman History, of which we have many attested records that can be corroborated with archaeological evidence, the Indus Valley is pretty much all archaeological. Surely, there is much open to interpretation, but that’s because there’s not much corroborative data. With natural selection, not only do we have paleontology, but we have the molecular data that corroborates the fossil record. It’s much more descriptive than Gibbon’s volume (the genetic data is a volume in itself).
I find myself seeing accommodationists of two camps. There are those that accept the scientific merits and achievements of that last few hundred years, yet because they themselves hold onto some notions of faith, or the possibility that there’s some supernatural element in the universe, they regard atheism as severe and they see the need to direct science towards the illiterate softly. The second camp, although atheist, believes that being too direct and upfront may turn away the ignorant, so it’s better to soften the science and allow some area for the faith of those whom they wish to convert. Basically, it’s the agnostic subtype of accommodationist vs the atheist one. Either way, though both purport to support science and scientific literacy, their methods are detrimental towards developing critical thinking. That’s what this argument is about. Leaving everything else aside, it’s a fight towards those who wish to soften science and mold it so it fits into the false notions of believers.
As a final point, I do see two camps of non-accommodationists as well. There are those that are direct and confrontational (often labeled as polemics), such as Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and Craig Venter and those that are equally enthusiastic about educating the public, but tend to be more reserved critically, such as Phil Plait (although if you’re an anti-vaccination advocate, watch out) and Neil deGrasse Tyson. These latter non-accommodationists should be a template for those atheist accommodationists who feel that direct confrontation is off-putting. As for the agnostic accommodationists, well, not much can be said, other than you can’t expect to use your faulty reasoning towards expanding scientific understanding within the general population without criticism from us.