Poll finds more Americans believe in devil than Darwin

[Danascot]

Sad ...


More Americans believe in a literal hell and the devil than Darwin's theory of evolution, according to a new Harris poll released on Thursday.

It is the latest survey to highlight America's deep level of religiosity, a cultural trait that sets it apart from much of the developed world.

It also helps explain many of its political battles which Europeans find bewildering, such as efforts to have "Intelligent Design" theory -- which holds life is too complex to have evolved by chance -- taught in schools alongside evolution.

The poll of 2,455 U.S. adults from Nov 7 to 13 found that 82 percent of those surveyed believed in God, a figure unchanged since the question was asked in 2005.

It further found that 79 percent believed in miracles, 75 percent in heaven, while 72 percent believed that Jesus is God or the Son of God. Belief in hell and the devil was expressed by 62 percent.

Darwin's theory of evolution met a far more skeptical audience which might surprise some outsiders as the United States is renowned for its excellence in scientific research.

Only 42 percent of those surveyed said they believed in Darwin's theory which largely informs how biology and related sciences are approached. While often referred to as evolution it is in fact the 19th century British intellectual's theory of "natural selection."



http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN2922875820071129

[tridim]

1. I bet at least half those respondents don't even know who Darwin is. nt

[Cooley Hurd]

4. Yes they do - Endora's son-in-law!

[sueh]

12. Ironic. I saw "Dawrin" on TCM last night in "Inherit The Wind".

[Cooley Hurd]

18. We did too - I love tht movie!

:thumbsup:

[TomInTib]

10. And I will bet that you are right.

I think that Darwin has been slowly eliminated from curriculae since the early Reagan years.

My sons were born in '80 and '82 and I do not recall any Darwinism teaching going on in their schooling.

But then again, I don't recall much of the 80s at all.

[warren pease]

21. That's just about the time...

...the fundies began to succeed in getting their "stealth" candidates elected to school boards all over the country. I was in the Santa Cruz mountains in the early '80s and this was a huge emerging problem in that area as well.

You'd have these perfectly polite, seemingly enlightened, well-spoken people come to the door vowing to do everything they could to increase budgets, hire more teachers at better wages, decrease class sizes, provide first-rate text books and so on. Then, if they got elected, they'd immediately turn into Elmer Gantry, slobbering about prayer in the classroom and displaying the 10 commandments and, above all, selling creationism alongside natural selection as equally valid hypotheses.

So by the time your kids got to high school, they were dealing with a curriculum promoting a world view largely shaped by religiously insane wingnut fundies.

This country is suffering mightily from their influence as it slips ever closer toward the middle ages in political discourse and social mores, even as the bankrupt public school system churns out an unending supply of ignorant, uninformed, undereducated kids susceptible to the arguments of demagogues, addicted to Xboxes, consumerism and celebrity worship, and seemingly lacking in anything approaching critical thinking skills. There are many very notable exceptions to this pop culture icon, but I'm afraid that's the more common outcome that these meddling bastards have created.

Thanks, fundies. We could have been contenduhs, but instead we lead the world in religiosity and militarism while bringing up the rear in just about everything useful in the modern world -- notably alternative energy R&D, molecular biology, immunology, ecology, habitat management, promoting biodiversity, and so on down the list.

We do a brisk trade in toxic Chinese landfill items, though, so I guess we're still Number One at something.


wp

[TomInTib]

22. Damned well said, wp.

There will be books written and courses taught for years regarding the fundie's hijacking of our culture.

Right.

[tridim]

24. Wow, that's nuts! I was born in '70 and we actually had an Evolution/creation..

debate in 8th grade biology.

It was one fundy kid against the rest of the class, she was completely outmatched and beaten badly. I almost felt bad for her because she broke down and cried several times during the debate.

Today she'd probably sue the school district.

[warren pease]

26. "Today she'd probably sue the school district."

Today she probably RUNS the school district.

wp

[ileus]

31. And....they shop at Wal-Mart

[tularetom]

2. We are so fucked nt

[SyntaxError]

3. Darwin was the devil...

My pastor tolds me so.

:sarcasm:

[NanceGreggs]

5. It's just that more Americans have seen the devil ...

... up close and personal, since he's been occupying the White House.

[niyad]

6. they took the poll at new life church? or just in kansas?

[yardwork]

7. I wonder what's in the water here in the U.S.

[The_Casual_Observer]

8. Reminds me of when Howard Stern asks people on the street

who the first president was & none of them know, or can't find the United States on a world map.

[madokie]

9. hell thats easy its the dick that bringing the devil out in everyone

[Disturbed]

11. I wonder what's in the water here in the U.S.

The Govt. adds Flavor Aid to the water. It destroys brain cells.

[madokie]

16. I don't know for sure but I have word its...

shhhhh FLUORIDE :scared:

[Taverner]

13. We're doomed

But then again, I knew that for a while...

[fascisthunter]

14. That's What Ignorance Does

lacking knowledge is a void that can easily be replaced by pure nonsense or just plain belief. There is nothing rational nor spiritual about ignorance.

[glowing]

15. How could you not, he's sitting in the White House as we speak.

[Telly Savalas]

17. Brodeur is one of the best goalies the game has ever seen.

Darwin in contrast was vulnerable in the five-hole and was miserable defending penalty shots.

[Toasterlad]

30. Now THAT...Was Funny.

[dysfunctional press]

19. deep level of religiosity = deep level of utter stupidity.

the world would be a whole lot better off if the adults would stop believing in fairy-tales, and concentrate more about the here-and-now of our shared home planet, than worrying about a make-believe land where wishes come true and everyone gets a pony when they die.

religion is the bane of intelligent civilization.

[theoldman]

20. This poll is nothing new.

It was probably worse 50 years ago. Our religious beliefs are the reason that so many foreigners are getting advance degrees in science.

[RaleighNCDUer]

25. No, it was NOT worse 50 years ago.

In the 40s and 50s and 60s Darwin and evolution were taught as fact, not opinion, and accepted nationwide. Even in enclaves like Tennessee, where the original "monkey trial" took place, it was taught and accepted except by a small minority of 'holy rollers', who were generally just tolerated by the majority of Baptists and Methodists. Fundamentalist preaching was largely confined to rural traveling tent shows. There were no superchurches, and the huge congregation urban/suburban churches were very mainstream.

The fundamentalist movement has grown a hundredfold since then, created and nurtured by conmen and grafters moving from the tentshow into the TV studio. It's no surprise, since they were invented by the tent-show hucksters, that so many of the televangelist superchurches have been fraught with corruption and greed and scandal. But THAT is where is came from.

Crooks and con men, scamming old folks for their pension checks on TV.

Religion in America today is a criminal enterprise.

[warren pease]

23. Anybody know what the corresponding numbers are for the EU, or where to find them? n/t

[Smith_3]

28. I don't know but having lived in Germany for a long time my feeling is that even among uneducated...

... people around europe are more keen to accept "naturalist" explanations of where they came from. Even if they don't know details about darwinian evolution.

[warren pease]

29. Yeah, last stats I've seen on religiosity in the EU...

...showed belief in gawd -- at least the gawd of organized religions -- at around 20 percent and declining each decade. And this considering strong Catholic countries like France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.

What seems to be a critical difference between us and them is they're taught by their educational systems to be skeptical of institutions -- governmental, corporate, doctrinal -- while we're taught that US institutions are just as wonderful as everything else in the greatest and most wonderfulest country in the whole wide world, selected by gawd to carry the torch of freedom, always acting out of benevolence and altruism and based exclusively on christian ideals and blah, blah, blah...

It's all bullshit, of course. American institutions are just like institutions anywhere else: they exist primarily to maintain and/or increase their power over the poor bastards who do their dirty work for them.

As to our inherent wonderfulness, the American creation myth conveniently omits discussion of genocide perpetrated on native americans from the late 1400s to the first part of the 20th century; the role of slavery in building the country and of racism in supplying a constant stream of despised groups that previous waves of immigrants can blame for their problems; the hundreds of instances in which the US has malevolently meddled to destabilize or destroy democratic nationalist movements around the world and replaced their leaders with corporatist lackey thugs who will bow and scrape before the great white fathers on Wall Street.

And my personal favorite, the persistent lie that the US is based on christianity when in fact most of the framers and smart guys of the day were deists, and deism is the application of the scientific rationalism of The Enlightenment to methodically examine the tenets of organized religion. Very un-christian, and particularly un-fundie, since deism replaces an unquestioning, mindless belief system with an organized, scientific inquiry into the nature of gawd as perceived through reason and personal experience.

But I digress...

Anyone who can point me toward a source for poll results on European religiosity over, say, the past 50 years earns my undying gratitude, a free two-minute consultation with an actual practicing Kucinich activist, my used (make that dead) microwave, a sliver of the true cross -- or choose from among hundreds of other great prizes. Remember, you can't win if you don't enter.


wp

[LeftishBrit]

32. In the UK, secularism predominates

According to the latest survey results (2005), 50% say they believe in some sort of God, but for most this appears very vague. 66% do not have any connection to any religion or church; only 18% are practicing members of any religion; and only 6 to 10% attend church weekly. Only 17% say that religion is one of the most significant features in their lives; 33% say that they are religious; and 33% that religion is 'important'.

As regards evolution: only one poll has been carried out that I know of, by Mori for Horizon in 2006, and it gave surprising results; only 56% supported evolution, with the rest supporting ID or creationism or not knowing. Not everyone accepts the reliability of the poll; and it goes against my experience, though admittedly I work in a university science department so my experience may be slightly biased! But I have rarely met anyone who didn't believe in evolution.

[warren pease]

33. Thanks a lot for the stats...

Weird about that 56 percent supporting natural selection. I guess that's the problem when anti-secular demagogues succeed in presenting science as just another belief system, equally valid as organized religion.

Which is pretty sad because the scientific world makes religion look like a C movie by any measurement you could choose. Millions more wonders and mysteries await the theoretical physicist, for example, than lie between the covers of a quaint old book of folk legends and fables and tribal superstitions.

Again, thanks for the info. Do you happen to have a link to the survey you quoted from?


Best,

wp

[Raine]

27. I can't doubt the devil exists

when I see chimp and dead-eye dick...pure evil. :evilfrown: