According to survey, British Creationists are by and large irreligious

philologos

Interesting article by Andrew Brown here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/nov/25/religion-creationism

I'm just curious due to the attachment that many people in this forum have to the writings of Darwin, and what has become of his evolutionary biology how people might feel about this?

I had to admit, even I was surprised.

Turtwig

It is a little reassuring that it has nothing to do with religion.
As I've said numerous times before many people prefer to live their lives without really thinking deeply about anything. Although I find ignorance towards science depressing, I can't say that I'm surprised it's there.
Does the blame lie on scientists or does it lie in the education system?
I think it's the latter with the ridiculous learn by rote employed in most exams.
Definitely we need to be doing more to promote a public understanding of science because right now we have a culture of
"Oh that doesn't make sense to me, therefore it has to be wrong."

Sam Vimes

I don't think it's that suprising tbh. On both sides there are the proponents and the hard liners but in the middle there's a vast number of don't cares, who know only what they've seen on tv. All these people know is that there's a very vocal group who are opposed to "the mans" evolution and that wonderful logic that creationists rely on kicks in: "there's no smoke without fire".

Creationism can be very superficially convincing but only the truly deluded believer can look at it in any depth and not spot that the emperor has no clothes

2Scoops

According to survey, British creationists are by and large irreligious... and ignorant of science (you forgot that part).

AtomicHorror

Jakkass wrote: »

Interesting article by Andrew Brown here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/nov/25/religion-creationism

I'm just curious due to the attachment that many people in this forum have to the writings of Darwin, and what has become of his evolutionary biology how people might feel about this?

I had to admit, even I was surprised.

Rejection of evolution is not automatically Creationism and I wonder if the survey had the power to capture that distinction. I mean, creationists do mostly define their position in terms of negatives but not all evolution deniers are Creationists as we would normally mean it. The survey also seems to count moderates as "irreligious" because they're not evangelicals/fundies. I'm quite sure there's a decent proportion of moderate and lapsed faithful who just aren't aware that their church officially accepts evolution. After all, when does the topic ever get raised at mass/church/prayers etc? There are plenty of Catholics sceptical of evolution for that very reason.

bigeasyeah

Its an interesting article but that it points to a predominant ignorance is more worrying to me than any of the beliefs involved.

AtomicHorror

bigeasyeah wrote: »

Its an interesting article but that it points to a predominant ignorance is more worrying to me than any of the beliefs involved.

The decline in public engagement with the scientific community may be a major factor in this. Hard to take science seriously when you have the likes of the Daily Mail warping science into a kind of spurious, arbitrary art, laden down with impenetrable jargon that just happens to support whatever position they wanted to make in the first place. One week coffee is bad for you, next week you should have two cups a day. Always absolutes, never any critical analysis or attempt to really understand any of it.

People are increasingly dismissive of science. It's hard to understand and it appears from the outside to contradict itself constantly. And it says things that people don't want to hear. They want science to confirm their prejudices.

GLaDOS

Some people are idiots, regardles of their belief

Zombrex

This to me highlights the fallacy in the idea that Creationists (the religious ones) and others who promote pseudo-science are ultimately so small they are harmless.

They aren't particularly harmless because as a mass they create an anti-science atmosphere where it becomes social acceptable to be ridiculously ignorant of science and to embrace nonsense, sort of the way it was seen to be cool in secondary school to be really bad at maths but good at English.

Of course science education (in Britain and Ireland) must take some of the blame as well.

Turtwig

Wicknight wrote: »

This to me highlights the fallacy in the idea that Creationists (the religious ones) and others who promote pseudo-science are ultimately so small they are harmless.

They aren't particularly harmless because as a mass they create an anti-science atmosphere where it becomes social acceptable to be ridiculously ignorant of science and to embrace nonsense, sort of the way it was seen to be cool in secondary school to be really bad at maths but good at English.

+1
The anti vaccine movements is costing people their lives.
And if it continues the way it does, the anti-AGW movement will almost invariably cost people their lives.

Flamed Diving

... and once again the state of modern journalism makes me sigh...

Turtwig

Flamed Diving wrote: »

... and once again the state of modern journalism makes me sigh...

Oh yeah nothing says this better than the reporting being done on Global Warming.
It seems common practice to read someone else's article (or blog!) on a journal paper and then report your opinion of the scientific paper based on what you read in someone else's article - that makes my blood boil!!:mad:

Tabloids should be confined to showbiz and sports only.
Leave politics and science to the broadsheets, that would be one way to limit the damage.
Preferably, leave science to the science media.

Zillah

I'm surprised no one else picked up on this: "These results were obtained by a fairly sophisticated set of questions, designed to discover what people actually believed, rather than the labels they would attach to it."

So basically most of these people would probably say "Yes" to "Is evolution true?" or "No" to "Is the biblical account of creation literally true?"

So it turns out they might not understand the specific ramifications and mechanisms of evolution but that does not necessarily mean they are in any way opposed to it, rather that they are simply naive. Interpreting this as an opposition to science as opposed to a simple disinterest in science would be a little reactionary.

darjeeling

Jakkass wrote: »

According to survey, British Creationists are by and large irreligious

Even if you looked only at the headline of that blog about the original poll, I still can't see how you could turn it into this thread title.

But let's backtrack for a moment:

Poll figures:
Around 50% don't accept evolution, of whom:
Around 10% favour creationism
Around 12% favour intelligent design

Blog figure:
Combined Muslim and evangelical population of UK is around 5%

Blog claim:
This suggests that belief in creationism or ID has nothing much to do with religion.

I don't see how this is justified. There are lots of religious believers who don't identify as either Muslim or evangelical. Why, then, does Brown say they aren't rejecting evolution on religious grounds?

And why does your thread title go even further and bizarrely claim - with nothing to back it up - that creationists are irreligious?

I've been saving this up for an occasion like this:

:pac:

Rb

2Scoops wrote: »

According to survey, British creationists are by and large irreligious... and ignorant of science (you forgot that part).

Indeed, and one could follow on and investigate how many of the same people had religion present in their lives during their upbringing. They may be "irreligious" now, but had they been brought up with the stories of Creation and "God" and are, as it said, ignorant of science, then obviously they're going to go with what they "know", or more specifically, reject what they don't know.

Linoge

Rb wrote: »

Indeed, and one could follow on and investigate how many of the same people had religion present in their lives during their upbringing. They may be "irreligious" now, but had they been brought up with the stories of Creation and "God" and are, as it said, ignorant of science, then obviously they're going to go with what they "know", or more specially, reject what they don't know.

I was just going to make the same point. To believe the religous views on creationism and intelligent design and to then claim that you are irreligous is a quite ridiculous. Thank God I'm an atheist.

Turtwig

Linoge wrote: »

Thank God I'm an atheist.

Amen:).

Galvasean

No offense Jakkass, but you really made a tabloid esque hash of the thread title.

Stercus Accidit

How could one not believe in god and believe god made all the species on earth?

If you believe a god made all the species, you are a theist.

Maybe its the long days work and mucho coffee, but this isn't making sense.

darjeeling

I've just had a quick look into the original THEOS survey called 'Faith and Darwin' (link). [FYI, THEOS is a moderate religious think tank supported by the present Archbishop of Canterbury and the former Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, and has undertaken work funded by the Templeton Foundation].

The one thing you can say is that a lot of people were confused about evolution - probably not helped by the survey. Many probably lacked a basic understanding of Darwinian biology. After all, only 54% knew Darwin wrote 'The Origin', while 12% thought he published the theory of relativity, and one percent even thought he wrote 'The Naked Chef'.

THEOS survey wrote:

37% of respondents agree that Darwinian evolution is a theory so well established it is beyond reasonable doubt. 36% state that the theory is still waiting to be proved or disproved. Nearly a fifth (19%) believing it has little or no supporting evidence.

People were asked to choose between four possible positions regarding human origins:
Young Earth Creationism (YEC),
Intelligent Design (ID),
Theistic Evolution (TE)
Atheistic Evolution (AE).

17% chose the YEC position as most likely, 11% chose ID, 28% chose TE and 37% chose AE.

I don't find it helpful to tack 'theistic' or 'atheistic' onto a scientific theory like evolution. That aside, though, 65% of people thought evolution (with or without God) the most likely explanation for human origins. Encouraging, I suppose. And yet only about one third of people thought evolution beyond reasonable doubt. How does that work?

THEOS survey wrote:

Opinion was often confused and contradictory, however.

Understatement!

THEOS survey wrote:

For example:
17% of the sample think YEC the most likely explanation for the origins of human life. However, asked a follow-up question, 32% stated that it is either definitely or probably true.

11% say ID is the most likely explanation, yet 51% say it is either definitely or probably true.

Overall, the percentage of people who think that one or other theory is probably or definitely true is 32% (YEC) + 51% (ID) + 44% (TE) + 34% (AE) = 168% of people! People apparently said that theistic / atheistic evolution was the most likely explanation for human origins, then immediately afterwards said they thought evolution was probably or definitely not true.

To try to make some sense out of things, THEOS identified people who at least gave consistent responses to questions about evolution and clustered them into 4 categories: YECs, IDs, TEs and AEs. Looking at these categories, we can see that a belief in creationism is clearly associated with religion:

THEOS survey wrote:

YECs are more likely to align themselves with a religion than the population as a whole (92% compared with 72%).

89% of people who believe that God created the universe at some point in the last 10,000 years also believe that there is a heaven and 84% believe that humans have souls.

Only 3% of YECs think that God is only 'an invention of human minds and has nothing to do with the creation of the universe'

So, where are the irreligious creationists of the thread title? The survey says they all but don't exist.

ID supporters are also a pretty religious bunch:

THEOS survey wrote:

21% of IDs are people of other religions (than Christianity), in contrast to 12% of the
sample as a whole. They are slightly less likely to be self-defined Christians than the
whole sample (57% against 60%), and less likely to have no religion (21% against 28%).

Oh, and finally, the survey showed that YECs were on average less educated than the general population, and more likely to believe in astrology.

Long post - sorry. It was the quoting wot did it.