Can you bear yet another poll today? The initial results of this one, before all of you readers get to work and use your magic clicky fingers, is mildly interesting. The readership of Christianity Today consists primarily of scientific illiterates and wishful dreamers, split between people who seriously believe the earth is 6000 years old, those who think the Bible is a science text and are willing to stretch a metaphor, and fuzzy thinkers who want a god to have guided natural processes.
I imagine the readership here can rock their little world.
What best describes your view of the origins of creation?
Young-earth creationism
29%
Old-earth creationism
28%
Theistic evolution
26%
Naturalistic evolution
4%
I don’t know
7%
None of the above
6%
— Frank Zappa
And they get to be oppressed by atheists. That’s always satisfying for dollar-store martyrs.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
“the origins of creation” – rather leading language in that question.
Oh, man! There’s no place to leave a comment after the poll. That was all the fun of the homeopathy one…
Note the wording of the question.I guess by creation they mean life on earth.Just cant help themselves,the sneaky little buggers.
naturalistic evolution seems to be making a comeback, up to 16%
Well, it’s a false question. Evolution doesn’t account for the origin of creation, and furthermore, they’re asking what accounts for the origin of creation: by definition, only the top two responses can actually account for creation.
If you ask me, the only respectable answer here is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
After you vote, clear your cookies (Ctrl-Shift-Del in Firefox) and you can vote again.
Stupid fundies…
Maybe a ‘What does that even mean? Please define your terms.’ response would be useful.
God these people are so stupid. Alot of dumb people out there-
hhttp://twoandahater.blogspot.com/search/label/Statistics
You can comment on the article that accompanies the poll.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/april/33.63.html
Will soon reach 100 votes per minute, I suppose.
“Origin of Creation” is indeed a poorly stated concept (or whatever it is).
My choice, had it been offered, would have been
Human Imagination
Naturalistic evolution now tied at 23% with YEC. Keep those vote comming! ;-)
Oh, man! There’s no place to leave a comment after the poll. That was all the fun of the homeopathy one…
You can comment on the article that accompanies the poll.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/april/33.63.html
They’ll never know why, though. If you’re a dogmatic naturalist, of course, you’d look at likely causes (post at Pharyngula) and the apparent effects–and come to the totally unwarranted conclusion that the post caused the change.
When you’re an open-minded anti-materialist, though, you know very well that it may be due to god, satan, evil spirits, ghosts, aliens, “the Designer” (who may not be jebus, after all), or a conspiracy of atheists. Materialists are just too narrow-minded to accept these possibilities.
True, those damn fools manage to make things work with their supposed “causes,” but look at all of the magical possibilities that they miss.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
At the time I looked, naturalistic evolution was only a little behind. If the poll was not already pharyngulated, that is an amazing result.
Over 100 votes per minute, I think.
Apparently Pharyngula now has a feature where if you forget to fill in the Name field, the server posts you as Anonymous after waiting several minutes and without returning a 500 error message to let you know that the comment will be delayed.
I voted “none of the above,” as evolution does not play any part in “creation.”
Oh. Comment 12 is me. I submitted without having filled in a name or e-mail address, tried to interrupt it, but the expected “Name and e-mail address are required” error message didn’t come. Instead, when I resubmitted with name and address, it gave me “too many comments recently”. Twice in a row.
Does the Pope shit in the Vatican?
I am continually amazed at the impact the readership here can have on a poll. By the time I get to them they are usually vastly different than when you post them up.
Reality is now up to 37% :) myth was down to 18%, 18% and 17% respectively
The correct answer is “None of the above”. I don’t know why it’s not doing better. Naturalistic evolution explains the diversity of life, but it can hardly be said to explain the origins of creation.
Well, we’re ahead, but this still doesn’t erase the insanity of the other results. Is it worse than we can imagine?
Whooaahh I had to do a double take on this one. I thought he meant today all of Christianity is full of fools. At first I didn’t know he was talking about the “Christianity Today” magazine. Christianity Today is full of fools, the magazine! That was trippy, dude.
Talk about loaded questions! Note that with “What best describes your view of the origins of creation?” even “naturalistic evolution” is placed at the service of creation and not of speciation. I voted “none of the above.”
Rev BDC: Anytime I see the fish sign I ask, “Oh, so you’re a fan of Neil Shubin too?”
To be fair, the readership over there is not going to understand nuances. Before the Pharyngularization, the most honest were the 7% or so that said ‘I don’t know’. Just go read the comments to the article. One said basically, day means 24 hours. You can’t engage them to understand that the original words, not written in English, are not so specific. A few others are trying to hold the line, realizing that if they write all the early books off to allegory, then the rest are at risk tot he same fate. Emotional dependency can be such an ugly thing to watch.
Accepting “creation” for the moment as an excessively poetic shorthand for “the natural world” or “the Cosmos”, the correct answer would be “None of the above”. Unlike Ben Stein, I do not expect evolution to explain gravity. However, the point of voting in these polls is not to provide a detailed, nuanced and scholarly exposition of science, but to screw with people and to show that online polls are statistically meaningless. Therefore, I’m perfectly happy to vote for “naturalistic evolution”.
Now, if the poll had Answer 4 or Answer 5 as options, I’d feel genuinely conflicted. . . .
This poll is probably doomed to disappear as naturalistic evolution is already at 50%.
“I don’t know” would probably be the most correct answer as no one has conclusively shown how we and our earth came ino existence.
Can anyone be gentle enough to explain me what is “naturalistic evolution”?
Its the evolution, scientific, proved evolution,plain and simple?
Not some kind “new-era-religious-ignorance” of thing?
Up to 50 percent now for the reality based community.
Naturalistic evolution is now @ 52% and climbing I presume. I might just have to go and vote again.
Fernando #32:
It means explained by natural causes, rejecting appeals to the supernatural. A good idea, IMO.
Sorry naturalistic evolution folks, but I have to vote “None of the above”, since my view of the origins of creation is that that scenario didn’t take place. While it may be amusing to jank their poll in favor of naturalistic evolution, it’s not intellectually honest.
Facebook has a bunch of polls that are all full of religious garbage
Evolution vrs creationism .. creationism is winning this one
http://apps.facebook.com/pollbvrqthjfoufymec/
and the does god exist one is slanted to god..
sad sad sad..
christian poll pwnd once again, 55% naturalistic evolution :D
Christianity Today Poll
What best describes your view of the origins of creation?
Young-earth creationism
12%
Old-earth creationism
12%
Theistic evolution
12%
Naturalistic evolution
56%
I don’t know
3%
None of the above
5%
Total Votes: 3496
Whoo Whoo Pharyngula rocks!
Pharyngulistically correct answer (naturalistic thingie)
was at 60% when I looked, before reading the thread.
Obviously, the thoughtful posters are correct about
the nuance, but to quote Putney Swope:
“We don’t want to rock the boat.
We want to sink the boat.”
What do you mean, and what has evolution got to do with how the Earth came into existence???
Hold it. Maybe the “origin of creation” idiom isn’t a mistake on the part of the pollsters, and they really meant to be asking how their putative creator God came into existence. And maybe, just maybe, the pre-Pharyngulistic (sp?) answers their readings provided reflect an awareness that the creationist explanation of intelligent life leads to a regress of creative deities. Nah.
Just go read the comments to the article. One said basically, day means 24 hours. You can’t engage them to understand that the original words, not written in English, are not so specific.
Yes, the Hebrew Yom can mean a literal, 24 hour day, or, figuratively age, as in the English “back in my day.”
But the poetic repetition in Genesis 1 of the phrase “There was morning and there was evening, the [x]th day” makes it pretty clear which meaning the author intended.
Not that any of this justifies treating it as a science text, but, once the YEC has committed to taking it as literally as possible, you can’t fault him or her for recognizing that the author of Gen. 1 conceived of creation as lasting for a literal 7 day week.
…readers…
Wow. I completely forgot to put blockquote tags around the first paragraph. :-o
…And it’s dead, with Naturalistic Evolution at 62%.
At least we can give them credit for leaving up the results after they lost handily to Naturalistic Evolution at 62%.
They wouldn’t let me get up onto the voting place. Presumably the site has been thorougly Pharynglated! I feel seriously disappointd.
I wonder if the godmonkeys at Christianity Today know what hit ’em. They must be wondering what seemingly supernatural power caused this blasphemy. Could it be a great, thundering, eternal gawd in the sky, or a crafty, squid-smitten primate in Minnesota? Let’s hope they put their best minds on it right away.
They wouldn’t let me onto the voting-place! Presumably the site has been thoroughly Pharyngulated!
I think I’ve been on twice.Blame the computer. Sorry!
Annnnnnd the poll is down, replaced by a new “poll of the day”.
I wonder if they always cycle to a new poll so quickly on that site, or perhaps they noticed which way the winds were blowing…
The poll now looks like a post- autopsy corpse and the cause of death is easily seen.
Actually, now that I think of it, we CAN argue that Naturalistic Evolution is the origins of creation(ism). Without naturialist evolution, we wouldn’t have humans, and humans created Creationism. Qes erat deductum, the origins of creation are found in Naturalistic Evolution.
And of course they prove themselves to be cowards. How long did it take them to turn tail and flee from reality? Three hours? Less? Such amazing, unshakable faith, that crumbles to dust at the slightest wisp of truth.
Wow, they shut that sucker down quickly! I’d love to be a fly on the wall, er altar, at that office. I wonder what idiotic explanations they’re positing as to “what went wrong” with their poll. More online polls, PZ. This is great fun.
My goodness, that one dissapeared fast!
For all you anti woo folk, the one on vaccinations still needs attention.
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/#
Thank you kindly
If you click on the article that accompanies the poll, you find that the author is Marcus Ross, assistant professor of geology at Liberty “University.” This is the same Marcus Ross that stirred up so much controversy when the University of Rhode Island granted him a Ph.D., even though he was an avowed young-earth creationist. Basically what they said was “we had to give him the degree, since he’d fulfilled the requirements,” even though he admitted he was going to use their degree to try to promote creationism.
Never–never–will I so much as write a letter of recommendation for an admitted creationist, let alone sign my name to their dissertation. It’d be like allowing a person to graduate from med school who freely admits that the only reason he’s there is to learn how to torture effectively (sad that that particular analogy sprang immediately to mind). I’ll never again take seriously anyone who tells me they graduated from URI.
But Ross has done so much good work since getting that accolade…
I’ll never again take seriously anyone who tells me they graduated from URI.
Guess you’d better add Berkeley to your list, since they gave Johnathan Wells a doctorate. Just sayin’, you might be painting with too broad a brush.
And also consider the can of worms opened by the idea that a university should be in the business of assessing a potential degree holder’s motive for receiving a given degree. Indeed, “he filled the requirements” is all you can say.
Awarding tenure, on the other hand… (thinking Behe.)
what is the difference between old and young earth creationist? I have never heard that term before.
age of the earth
Young earthers think the earth is 6000k or so years old
Old earth think its much older but still created in the same manor.
Quwiggle, here is one overview:
http://ncseweb.org/creationism/general/creationism-past-present
Must be fun trying to rationalize this away….
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17060-first-dino-blood-extracted-from-ancient-bone.html
just a thought. couldn’t the result of this poll, used down the road go something like this:
“According to a recent poll on a Christian website, the majority of believers (more than 50%) seem to support evolution, and may only have a disagreement with the way religion has been treated throughout this heated debate.”
I’m just wondering about the spin factor. I like crashing the polls myself.
@64: and yet another case of journalists writing whatever. I’m sitting here with the paper in front of me right now. Unless I’m reading it wrong, they didn’t find actual blood.
I thought that was old news, or is this a difference dino bone? (I only skimmed the first paragraph of the article)
If I’m not mistaken, David’s mentioned the study before in Pharyngula based on an abstract, but this bone is different than the T. rex material that Schweitzer has reported on in the past.
Interestingly, the material reported on in today’s Science is also more than 10 million years older than the T. rex material. Ten million additional years of diagensis acting on the fossils and failing to destroy all molecular material. Cool stuff.
Must be fun trying to rationalize this away….
Meaning what? That it supports a young Earth? No, no rationalization needed. It certainly challenges certain ideas about what structures can and cannot fossilize. But it’s also extremely exciting, in that molecular evidence can now potentially be added to the data that can be brought to bear on understanding the evolution of extinct species.
But the general principle should be made clear: one data point, even if it directly contradicts a robust scientific conclusion supported by multiple, independent lines of evidence (such as the great age of the Earth, and which this one does not anyway), is much more likely to be integrated with the theory than to overturn it. You may comfort yourself by calling this process of integrating new and unexpected facts “rationalization,” but the difference is, it isn’t a function of individual psychology, but of empirical testing and debate about the interpretation among scientists in the field. A transparent and intersubjective process, and a good faith attempt to make sense of a messy and often surprising world, unlike rationalization.
very
What best describes your view of the origins of creation?
None of the above 6%
See, evolution is kinda like Pokemon. Just slap a thunderstone on that biatch and BAM!! New species.
The poll is now closed.. Looks like my help wasn’t required!
Young-earth creationism 10%
Old-earth creationism 10%
Theistic evolution 10%
Naturalistic evolution 62%
I don’t know 3%
None of the above 4%
Total Votes: 4153
What best describes your view of the origins of creation?
Naturalistic evolution 62%
The time-worn response to this would be, “evolution does not explain the “creation” of anything but new species.”
@60–I don’t know the details of Wells’ degree, but I know that Ross’ major professor knew of his plans before he signed off on the dissertation. A Ph.D. is not like a driving test, where you fulfill minimum requirements and take a multiple-choice test and you’re good to go. For example, a portion of my doctoral defense consisted of my committee members grilling me over my opinions on scientific ethics–what would I do if I found a colleague faking data, are there circumstances under which I’d supress my own data, that sort of thing. It had nothing to do with the science of my dissertation. The deal is, your committee members can pretty much refuse to approve your Ph.D. for any reason they desire. Maybe that’s not how it should be, but that’s the way it is. Had I been on Ross’ committee, he wouldn’t have gotten my signature.
Sorry to miss this poll before it closed.
Naturalistic evolution? Since when did scientific facts need any adjectives?
The 4% for evolution before PZ’s minions voted proves beyond any doubt Christians are the most stupid people in human history.
Zombie Rev. BigDumbChimp @ #62:
Ah, this must be what Jesus meant in John 14:2: “In my Father’s house are many rooms”.
The poll has been changed but the results for the previous poll are being published: 62% for naturalistic evolution. Give credit where it’s due. Nobody is hiding the results.
Give credit for Christians not censoring their own poll? I guess for a Christian that’s an accomplishment.
Someone left comments about pharyngula after the Christianity Today poll. Apparently they’re on to us.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/comments/allreviews.html?id=82673
This is one of the comments left regarding the poll on Christianity Today (apparently Pharyngula is “anti-family” as well as being generally disgusting). Spelling errors are in the original:
The reason that evolution won the poll was becuase of the Christianophobes at pharyngula, a far left anti-Christian, anti-family atheist website had a hand in it. TheThe owner of the blog often tries to skew polls and mkae Christians look bad or ignorant. He is very intolerant becuase when Christians challenge his minions on his own site theyr are often banned. Yep, that’s liberal tolerance for you! Take a look at thier disgusting site and evil plans: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/christianity_today_is_ full_of.php
I don’t think this guy likes us.
now that’s funny.
PZ what do the little squidlings say about your anti-familyness?
Ooh, ‘Tis, maybe we get some fresh trolls that aren’t from the bargain bin.
Actually, Nerd, the post may not attract anyone. The URL is bad.
We have “evil plans” too. Somebody needs to tell me what these are. Or maybe I’m just supposed to invent them?
#35
Posted by: Geek
It means explained by natural causes, rejecting appeals to the supernatural. A good idea, IMO.
Thank you by the answer Geek.
The term naturalistic seems to me a bit unecessary when we talk about evolution. :P
I’m sorry, Lynna, but the evil plans are classified INCREDIBLY SECRET – BURN BEFORE READING!. Otherwise we’d tell you what they are
I’m not the one you need to worry about, Patricia and Janine are probably primed for fresh meat…
TheThe owner of the blog often tries to skew polls and mkae Christians look bad or ignorant.
Christians are doing an excellent job of making themselves look like retards without any help from anyone else.
Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not worried about you.
Them I’d be worried about.
More Christian idiocy: God creates disabled people to bring glory to himself: http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1769_god_is_purposeful_in_creating_all_people/
Wise man…
Are sluts needed?
Sorry – was loading the truck for Market. I’ll catch up. :)
I’m torn. On the one hand I kinda feel like I should be able to apply for, and get accepted into, an MDiv program even though I don’t believe–you know, so as to be able to study theology, as an academic subject, if I so damn please. On the other hand, I completely agree with Archaeopteryx in #74.
*shrug*
“He is very intolerant becuase when Christians challenge his minions on his own site theyr are often banned. Yep, that’s liberal tolerance for you!”
Here’s another idiot christian who hasn’t (can’t?) figure out that not all christians are conservative republicans, and that not all atheists are far-left commie libruls.
The teeny tiny world of the fucktard.
Reading these screeds is like taking the lid off the pot and getting a great big nauseating whiff of the rancid stew boiling inside that is 10 days beyond it’s sell-by date.
Thankfully, it also smells like the dead past.
Poll’s closed lol
If only this were true, that way we wouldn’t have had to put up with the inanity that is facilis or Silver Fox for months!
PZ doesn’t ban christian trolls straight out of the gate you moron.
He let’s us play with them.
We like christian trolls
.
Speaking of, Silver Fox had a homework assignment on the Christian Nation post that he’s totally failed.
It’s been a while.
Anti-family? LOL. Who’s going to inform The Trophy Wife and triumvirate of heck-spawn?
The truth is, it takes A LOT of hard work to get banned here. But since when did facts ever get in the way of the claims made on an anti-liberal, anti-rational, anti-freedom, anti-cephalopods, anti-harlot, anti-lesbian, anti-bacon website like CT?
‘Tis Himself has the secret evil plans, but he refuses to reveal them. Sounds like him.
@62 The Zombie Rev wrote:
You meant to write either “6000” or “6K”, not 6000k, no?
What does it mean when it says ‘origins of creation?’. is it origin of life or origin of universe itself? Well in that case ‘I don’t know’ would be the correct answer wouldn’t it. And NO am not saying ‘i dont know’ so it could be a supernatural explanation. The question is a hopeless one and the answers reflect the poor understanding of these bible lovers in science in general.
But i dont think naturalistic evolution would be a correct answer on the origins question.
…anti-family?
Them is fighting words! Slanderous! If anything this site is pro-family, reality based…living family life without superstitions or sky-fairy worship. No human sacrifices needed either; just some lab rats and tigerfish.
Not exactly. It (or at least the quoted version above) just has a bad line break. I’d like to think a few of the readers could figure that out, and I presume any who can and do, and who then leave a comment here, might not be a reject from Trools-R-Uzz. Fresh
meatbacon!First, I need to see your membership card from the Evil League of Evil.
“Anti-family”.
Dude, I’m not sure that means what they think it means.
Aw, shucks, I missed it. Final count was 62% natural selection.
the question was, “What best describes your view of the origins of creation? I, perhaps erroniously assumed that it meant the formation of the universe so I selected the last alternative, ‘none of the above’, because it wasn’t any kind of creation but it wasn’t evolution either. It was in its simplest form, “Matter, Time and Gravity”.