Religious groups' views about evolution
Source: Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007, released in 2008
For question wording, refer to the PDF of the full report
CLICK ON PICTURE TO ENLARGE
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The above graph appears on this webpage of the Pew.Forum.Org.
"Orthodox" is probably Orthodox Christian. There are different kinds of Orthodox Christian, e.g., Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox.
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The big surprise here is Muslims, because acceptance of evolution in predominantly Muslim countries is very low.[1] Islam is an enormously popular religion on a worldwide basis, yet is often ignored or downplayed in discussions of the evolution v. religion controversy.
The high percentage for Judaism -- 77 percent -- might be partially attributable to Jews' false fear that teaching criticisms of evolution in the public schools would threaten the separation of church and state. It would be nice to see the percentages for Jews broken down by branch -- Orthodox (maybe even an ultra-Orthodox category), Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist. Orthodox Jews -- especially the ultra-Orthodox -- tend to be more skeptical of Darwinism than other Jews are.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has several interesting articles about the evolution v. religion controversy. One of these articles, Religious Groups' Views on Evolution, is more even-handed than the comparable National Center for Science Education's article that is linked to by the UC Berkeley Understanding Evolution website's webpage that is the target of the Caldwell v. Caldwell lawsuit.
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Labels: Islam and evolution
posted by Larry Fafarman | 2/28/2009 03:42:00 AM
9 Comments:
"The high percentage for Judaism -- 77 percent ..."
This is because Jews tend to be reticent when it comes to instructing G-d how to go about His Business.
The question is poorly worded, as usual. Most people think that "evolution" is simply the view that humans descended from some ancient species of ape-like or monkey-like animal.
In that sense, I believe in "evolution." Yet I'm an intelligent design proponent, since I think that the evidence indicates that some sort of intelligence played a role in my descent from a "monkey," by designing many of the changes that brought about the transformation we are talking about.
The question is so worded that some or many intelligent design proponents might easily say that they believe in "evolution." Not all intelligent design advocates are creationists.
Oddly, some Darwinism-proponents, (who believe in descent by perfectly mindless, mechanical causes,) call me a "creationist!"
"Ma! Pa! Here comes a CREATIONIST! One of those guys who think that we descended form MONKEYS!"
Pollsters usually seem to be clueless about the fact that an intelligent design proponent can be either a creationist, or a non-creationist. Hence these polls are very hard to interpret.
Drat. I meant to write "descended from MONKEYS" not "descended form MONKEYS," in my previous comment.
But even when we don't make typos, Darwin-fans profess to be so dense that they can't understand anything that we intelligent design proponents say.
They should ask, "Is evolution by a perfectly mindless, mechanical, unintelligent process of competitive struggle, death, and slaughter, the best explanation of how human beings appeared?"
Then we'd find out how many Darwinist evolutionists there really are.
My bet is that there are damn few of them.
I meant to write "descended from MONKEYS" not "descended form MONKEYS," in my previous comment.
Doesn't matter. At least you got the "descended" part correct.
But even when we don't make typos, Darwin-fans profess to be so dense that they can't understand anything that we intelligent design proponents say.
Who said you were "intelligent"?
Very funny. NOT!
Who said that Darwinists can understand anything.
I parrot the words of that PZ,
Because...well, repeating is easy,
While thinking is hard!
So in PZ's regard,
Who cares if he's stupid and sleazy?
(Since Leaver is basically a parrot, I now feed him only birdseed and keep him in a very large bird cage. But give him credit. Although he doesn't understand logic, and thus can't think critically, he understands how to believe whatever the conventional "authorities" believe. -Jim Sherwood.)
The recent ComRes poll in Britain, which Larry quoted on Feb 03, used a fairly adequate definition of intelligent design: "Intelligent design is the idea that evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages." The definition thus allows for the possibility of descent of new species from old.
By that definition, 51% of Britons considered intelligent design to be definitely or probably true, while only 40% thought it definitely or probably false. So ID is making headway even in traditionally Darwin-worshipping Britain.
The research tables for the poll show that ID is even more popular among 18 to 24-year-olds: they embraced it by a 58% to 38% margin.
Meanwhile, young earth creationism, the Biblical-literalist view, was rejected by a margin of 60% to 32%.
So ID seems to be on the march: and Britons know the difference between ID and creationism.
Jim Sherwood said,
>>>>>>So ID seems to be on the march: and Britons know the difference between ID and creationism. <<<<<<
Yes -- that term "ID creationism" is such a big straw man. IMO it was that stupid ignoramus Judge "Jackass" Jones who helped popularize the term by claiming that ID cannot be separated from creationist roots.
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