by hamilcarr 7 Replies latest jw friends
Here's an illuminating graph showing the acceptance of evolution in different industrialized societies, from a Science article by Miller, Scott and Okamoto (2006). As you can see, only Turkey has a lower acceptance than the US. The participants were asked to assess the following statement: "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals".
The article mentions two possible causes: religious fundamentalism (literalism) and politicized science. What do you think?
Science education in the US is a disgrace. The US is rapidly becoming a third world country in many ways. Look at the discussions of evolution we have here on JWD. A huge percentage of those who try to support creationism on here don't even understand the concept of a scientific theory,let alone the actual science of evolution, and that holds true with the population in general in the US. The level of ignorance about science among Americans is very, very sad.
Both Presidents Reagan and Bush W. have questioned evolution as "just a theory," and three of the Republican Presidential candidates said they didn't believe in evolution. If that's the quality of thinking and education among a nation's leaders, what can be expected among the citizenry?
Remember the Democrat candidates all going on television and fawning to the press about how important their relationship with god and Jesus was to them? Pathetic, but a non-believer would have a hell of a time getting elected to high office here.
Friends in Europe tell me that they never hear of religious fundamentalists being allowed to try and get intelligent design, creationism or some other non-scientific, religious propaganda on a school curriculum. It just doesn't happen. Enough of the population has enough scientific education and understanding to make evolution doubters very much fringe groups.
S4
Bingo! seeker
I haven't seen to many supporters of ID that are not Americans. It is a national disgrace that ID still flourishes here despite ample proof to the contrary.
Here in Ireland 95%+ of primary schools are run by the Catholic church. Yet we still have a much higher acceptance of evolution than the USA who's public schools are supposed to be separate from religion. What's going on? ARE the public schools teaching ID/creationism?
My comment is.
I see the powers that be tell us what to eat, think, how to dress, to work and pay taxes. What to buy, where to buy it.
Today they are telling us we evolved. And there is no God or creator.
Your evidence shows that most people are believing and behaving as they are instructed by the media.
Yesterday they told us there was a god and to go to church and believe and many of us did.
So I see people are sheep and they are hearded by shepards.
I see George Bush kept saying Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and most people believed him and reelected him and helped him to destroy America or at least make America what it is today.
Today the media wants us to believe in atheistic evolution and a global economy.
I dont think the media has our interest at heart.
If we did evolve and there is no god, then we are going by the law of survival of the fittest, and the fittest are those who have the gold and power and control the media. And the fittest have taken the wealth out of America and spread it around the world to benefit themselves, the fittest, the multinational corporationsl.
So if we evolved and there is no God and you want to keep surviving you have to become strong and if your an American prepare for the economic hard times the bush administration has cooked up for us starting with Daddy Bush through wild willy down to boy Bush with Nafta and sucking all the jobs and wealth out of this counrtry.
So if we evolved and you want to keep evolving eat the rich before they eat you. Like Aerosmith said.
Now I really can believe the statistic I came across the other day that stated there are over 3000 religious cults in the US alone. What a fertile place for superstitious nonsense when such a large percentage of the population thinks evolution is not a reality.
I notice Turkey comes bottom. There is an interesting discussion of the situation in Turkey with the teaching of creationism over evolution in the school system in this book:
I agree with above poster whatever people are taught as children they tend to believe a takes a lot for someone to turn from childhood teachings whatever they are, now that schools mostly teach evolution as fact then I can easily see a time when the graph is all blue, this is a very interesting graph thankyou poster :)
