Comments on: The Evolution Polling Numbers Have Nudged A Little

By: Steve Greene

Steve Greene — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:27:52 +0000

Hi Chris – Just so you’re aware of this, that particular Gallup poll has always suffered from a critical ambiguity that renders its relevance specifically to young earth creationism to be impossible. It is because of the ambiguity of the wording that it is simply incorrect to state, “Technically speaking, this is young-Earth creationism.” Well, no, it *encompasses* young earth creationists, but it includes more than that. This is because it also encompasses “old earth creationists” (in former decades these were referred to by the term “progressive creationists”).

For ezample, Bernard Ramm (died in 1992 at the age of 76) was a Baptist theologian who was the author of the book *The Christian View of Science and Scripture*, published in 1954, was an old earth creationist (progressive creationist). He believed that humans were specially created by God within 10,000 years, but at the same time agreed with the geological age of the earth and was also a known critic of young earth creationism and “flood geology”. Hugh N. Ross and Gerald L. Schroeder (both physicists) are contemporary examples of old earth creationists.

You’re not the only one – I’ve been seeing other blog posts and media articles describing this 40% as referring to “strict creationism” or young earth creationism, but that is simply not correct because old earth creationists would give the same answer.

Now, I *suspect* that the small decrease in the percentage is mostly attributable to a decrease in young earth creationist rather than old earth creationists, but the Gallup poll information tell us nothing about it because when the poll questions were originally written they failed to distinguish between the two, and Gallup has intentionally retained the original wording over the decades so that the poll results could be reasonable compared over time. It’s just a shame that they didn’t do the wording properly to begin with to be able to distinguish between young earth creationists and old earth creationists.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 13:03:09 +0000

Evolution is a fact. The evidence in support is just too overwhelming for anyone aware of it to select option 3 of this survey.

I strongly urge anyone who adheres to option 3 to read some scientific books about the evidence for evolution and I guarantee you that you will be quite surprised at the vast number of logical reasons evolution has been accepted as strongly as it is.

By: RichNau

RichNau — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 01:14:54 +0000

Let’s deconstruct this a little.
This is a highly scientific country with almost everyone having easy access to the most advanced scientific thought if they so choose. Life is no longer a mystery, with DNA unraveled, life chemistry understood, artificial life created…
The creation story is not essential to belief systems. Science does not deny religion; but religion imperils itself and the intellectual integrity of its followers by denying science, which over time brings overwhelming evidence to make nonbelievers actors in a “the Emperor’s New Clothes” reenactment.
I tended to believe it was the fault of the scientific community being too esoteric and separate from mainstream thought. That our schools and media tend to educate on the trivial and give too little guidance to development of critical thinking and understanding scientific principals.
But perhaps it’s deeper than that. I would rather be lucky than good. Why shouldn’t I prefer a magical outcome in the face of an actuarial table? As an example, the time to cut carbon emissions to avoid global warming passed more than 100 years ago and the informed among us only debate reducing the rate of increase and the rest appear to be waiting for acidification to make the oceans uninhabitable by the current crew of species.
Having a belief is good, but proffering beliefs that can be proven wrong jeopardizes the long-term devotion of the flock as well as interfering with their education and ability to think.

By: News From Around The Blogosphere 12.22.10 « Skepacabra

News From Around The Blogosphere 12.22.10 « Skepacabra — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 06:29:55 +0000

[...] Gallop poll suggests America is gradually moving towards accepting evolution – When it comes to accepting evolution, America is somewhat of an embarrassment to the rest [...]

By: Quick Links | A Blog Around The Clock

Quick Links | A Blog Around The Clock — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:55:51 +0000

[...] The Evolution Polling Numbers Have *Nudged* A Little [...]

By: MT-LA

MT-LA — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 19:03:05 +0000

Seriously…three different graph lines, but all green? I know that this wasn’t Mr. Mooney’s choice, but it’s still irritating to try to discern. Even MS Excel would default to three distinct (ugly) colors.
[/gripe]

By: Chris Mooney

Chris Mooney — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:39:15 +0000

@1 sure. but these polling data are not a controlled experiment of that, obviously

@4 goes far beyond the scope of this post…i’m just saying it’s a very slight positive polling result in the context of past results.

@3 glenn…gotcha. it’s the young humans option, not the young earth option. point taken.

By: David W

David W — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:04:40 +0000

What does it mean though? Does this indicate “science literacy” or something else? Even lf it’s scilit, what does that mean given that there is no agreement in the scicomm community as to what that represents?

Frankly, the survey I interesting, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about how people think about reality, science or evidence.

By: Glenn Branch

Glenn Branch — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:44:44 +0000

“God created human beings pretty much in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so” isn’t definitely the young-earth creationist option, since, after all, it’s compatible with the scientifically ascertained age of the earth (at about 4.5 billion years). There are old-earth creationists who think that God created Adam and Eve about 50,000 years ago or so; although I don’t know of any actual data bearing on the point, I think that it’s quite plausible that they would favor the creationist option among Gallup’s three options if forced to choose.

By: Tweets that mention The Evolution Polling Numbers Have Nudged A Little | The Intersection | Discover Magazine -- Topsy.com

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:42:48 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bora Zivkovic. Bora Zivkovic said: The Evolution Polling Numbers Have *Nudged* A Little http://bit.ly/hrFreR [...]

Comments on: The Evolution Polling Numbers Have *Nudged* A Little