William Saletan takes a look at this chart and says creationism isn’t as bad as it could be; I look at it and see no good news, no consolation, at all.
If you look way down at the bottom of the chart, you can persuade yourself that creationism is really a fringe idea.
Ask whether humans have been around for only 10,000 years, and the hardcore—those who are absolutely or very certain on all five questions—shrinks to 7 percent.
Yes, we’re a creationist country. But apparently, we’re pretty creative about what that means.
Yes, let’s just ignore the top 9/10ths of the chart, and everything looks hunky-dory!
Unfortunately, there’s a problem: every single statement in that chart is wrong, absolutely and demonstrably, and the people have no valid evidence for any of them, or are even aware of the sectarian religious dogma that generates those positions; the idea that God or some other intelligent force was involved in the origin of humans
is no less wrong than humans came into existence in the last 10,000 years
. When over half the population believe that creationism and intelligent design ought to be taught in the public schools, we’re no longer dealing with a few freaks on the edge — that’s mainstream.
We wouldn’t announce that a crisis in math education has been averted if we’re able to walk kids through solving 2+2 correctly, but they’re still stumped by 3+3. But somehow we’re supposed to be reassured if the number of people who think Adam and Eve were real has dropped below 50%.
I’m not.
Why are the absolutely/very certain versions of the questions separate from (and beneath) the straight versions of the same questions? They sound as if they’re saying the same thing, to me — who would answer the second one negative and the first one positive?
The “straight version” is probably any amount of agreement greater than neutral.
@1 & 2:
I wondered the same thing. The discrepancy seems to be explained on page 60 of the report because they asked two different questions. The first, “Do you believe that Adam and Eve, the first humans according to the Bible, were real, historical people?” had three possible answers, Yes, No, and Not at all sure. The next question, “How certain are you about this?” used a five-point certainty scale, allowing for Absolutely certain, Very certain, Somewhat certain, Slightly certain, and Not at all certain. So I think some of the people who said yes were merely somewhat certain.
I assume you mean “who would answer the ‘absolute/very certain’ (second) question positively but answer the weaker first question negatively?” Two semi-glib answers:
(1)&nsbp;We’re dealing with people who are demostrating poor powers of reasoning; or (2) Someone who is “insulted” by the first question not being “absolutely/very certain”.
Slightly more seriously, the chart may not be showing the actual questions. For instance, there may only one question (not the two implied), and the possible answers are a scale of, say, 1-to-5: 1 is “Absolutely not”, “Very probably not”, “Maybe”, “Very certainly”, and 5 is “Absolutely certainly”. The first charted reply reflects answers of 2 and 3, and the second is 4 and 5. Under this guesspretation, the situation is then even worse, as the second answer is not a subset of the first.
Apologies for the poor proof-reading in me@4, I missed the Preview and hit Submit by mistake…
I wonder how many answers to the question about Adam and Eve were influenced by the concepts of Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. Like the God Particle these names just confuse people, who don’t realise that they don’t refer to the Biblical Adam and Eve. They should have named them Mitochondrial Jane and Y-chromosomal Dick instead.
What I find interesting about the chart are the number of questions focused on the evolution of humans. Would these people agree that cats and dogs and rats evolved from a common ancestor? Are they ‘okay’ with evolution as long as it doesn’t extend to people? I’m not sure if I find that encouraging or not, but it does suggest that a lot of the issues people have with evolution is because it knocks out our special place in the universe.
On timgueguen@6, To the extent either influences these nutters, the claim I usually run into is the Mitochondrial Eve is Mr Noah’s wife (or, at least once in a slightly more sophisticated form, female relatives / “survivors”), not the equally mythical eponymous lady in the garden.
timgueguen @6:
If only they’d stuck with the original ‘Goddamn particle’.
I’ve found quite a few people who believe in Adam and Eve because they feel that if Adam and Eve weren’t real, if they didn’t eat the apple, then there was no need for the salvation of Jesus. In order to believe that Jesus didn’t die in vain, they have to believe Adam and Eve are real.
By the way, the first person who explained that to me had a master’s degree in zoology. He felt Evolution was totally bogus. Scary. (Fortunately, he didn’t go into teaching).
My family totally believe in Adam and Eve – they are in the absolutely certain category. And my sister saw the Christmas star stop over her house one December 25th. WTF?
brucegee1962:
Why? The only reason I can think of is to make it seem like less of a problem than it is. Yes, you should add those together. Being less than “absolutely certain” or “very certain” about it doesn’t mean they don’t have that belief. They’re more certain of that than the alternatives. Also, note that they already weeded out the people in the muddled middle who are “not at all sure”, so you only give that estimate if you’re actually willing to give a straightforward answer. Believe it or not, you don’t need “absolute certainty” to actually believe shit. People do it all of the time. Eppur si muove and all that.
Tim @ #6, I like the moniker you’ve suggested. Thanks.
These statistics are depressing. How can such stupidity be so rampant in the USA? (Rhetorical question – unless anyone has a well-reasoned answer.)
Sorry, what I meant to say there was that all of the sub-groups (in terms of certainty) should be added together, without the extra qualifier tacked on as if that makes it a separate category. Obviously. Not that you should add the numbers on the chart to get the real total, because that would be silly.
Right now I’m having an argument with Eric MacDonald at Butterflies & Wheels. He’s of the opinion that:
I think the chart shows that he’s wrong.
Al Dente:
That’s taken way out of context:
He’s concerned with reality, not simply with the shit assorted people believe about it. You will not determine that with a (pointless) poll. I think that’s right. If I came up with a genuinely good reason for believing in a god, which would have to be better than any theist (not just a majority) has come up with so far (because those are all shit), then I’m going to believe that. If you’re only interested at sneering at other people for being ignorant, dishonest bullshitters (which they often are), you might think it’s okay to take the lazy approach to “fighting” them like Dawkins and many others do. But that certainly doesn’t make it the best approach.
On the bright side, 32% do not believe that god was involved in creating humans. That’s not such a small minority.
@ #15
“He’s concerned with reality”
That doesn’t sound like reality at all. What the majority of people believe, and in the U.S. it’s obvious what that is, is what affects the reality of our everyday world, . These beliefs affect the reality of our laws, our education, our children, and every other facet of our society. Why you think it’s “lazy” to fight against this reality is beyond me.
I believe that’s the standard line given by all professional creationist groups (at least of the YEC variety). The literal Adam and Eve must have existed otherwise original sin didn’t exist, and without that, the rest of Christian theology goes kaput. Needless to say, that’s not persuasive to anyone who isn’t already a believer.
consciousness razor@15,
No, Al Dente’s comment is not taking Eric MacDonald out of context: it is MacDonald who takes Al Dente (and in a sense, Dawkins) out of context. This is from MacDonald’s comment on Butterflies and Wheels:
The inner quote is from Al Dente. Macdonald’s derision concerning the fixation on the actual beliefs of the majority of theists ignores what both Al Dente and (In TGD) Dawkins make plain: that they are concerned with the effects of religion-as-actually-practised on culture and society, far more than with philosophical arguments for the existence of some sort of god (however far removed from the gods most believers actually believe in). In that context – the one MacDonald ignores – a focus on what most believers believe is essential.
It goes way beyond them. If you look at the work of the supposedly scientifically sophisticated Christians at BiolLogos, for example, you’ll find them still heming and hawing in embarrassed fashion about the issue.
Further to my #20, BioLogos is currently running a series by a biologist who tries to reconcile human genetics with a historical Adam and Eve. It is to laugh.
Nick Gotts @19
Thank you for explaining my argument better than I did.
I wonder how many people believe the Bible is an actual historical record. Even people who don’t believe it’s the word of god seem to accept it, or parts of it, as valid history.
Al Dente@22,
Well thanks! But I thought you were quite clear @B&W.
FIFY.
Robro @ 23
exactly long ago I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile things in the bible as being actual events like the parting of the red sea before I realized that the Egyptians did not record any of the colossal events in Exodus in their history.
silencing questioning of the bible has been working pretty well it seems at least of keeping the public ignorant but not so good at proving any of it. Why else are they still looking for the boat on the mountain?
uncle frogy
How many of them are “not at all sure?”
I wouldn’t take those findings too seriously. That colorful graph (people need the colors to differentiate the percentages and not simply the the numbers themselves?) is confirmation bias, pure and simple; there was no apparent attempt to present even a single question contrary to the creationist/fundamentalist stance.
I had the same reaction when I saw the graph… like, 56% believe Adam & Eve were REAL people? WTF!?
So much for humility in religion.
– bwuh – I’m actually surprised they haven’t adopted the Catholic solution and fall over themselves talking about how sophisticated it is.
I have no idea what your point is. If you asked the same questions over here, the percentages for each of them would be much lower; many Europeans didn’t know there were any creationists left in the world before the topic came up in Bush the Lesser’s election campaign in 2000.
unclefrogy @#26 — And from what I’ve read, the flood and the Exodus are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s not a story in the Bible that can’t be questioned when scrutinized. The same appears to be the case for the Koran and other Islamic religious writings.
You know, it’s hard to figure that out. It seems like they don’t really care, at least not when it comes to this report. It’s more about “constructing a creationist” out of the data, looking at the influences that affect such beliefs, and so on. That raw data about individual answers isn’t presented in a straightforward way, or at least I haven’t found it in the report or anywhere else. An example from the commentary:
Of course, 9+39=48 and 48>32. If this were according to the “most generous definitions,” I would think that someone either believes a god is involved or does not. So it’s hard for me to tell what’s going on here. They’re saying that only 53% are goddists of some flavor, so the remaining 15% (to get to the 68% represented in the graph) is presumably not in the “atheistic evolutionist” group, but somewhere in the 39% who are in some way “unsure or holding uncommon views.” But check how it gets asked:
The 15% isn’t in the group which is “not at all sure” in the first question; they had to be people who answer “yes”, and then gave a relatively lower degree of certainty in the second question. But they’re apparently still more sure of their yes answer than the no answer. So maybe somebody believes a god is involved (thus doesn’t answer “not at all sure”), then estimates their certainty at 50%+1 or something like that, so they’re “not at all certain.” That seems like a coherent possibility at least. But they put so much emphasis on the top two grades of certainty (absolute/very) elsewhere that they might be leaving out anything except those here, despite calling it “generous”…. I just don’t fucking know.
Well, for what it’s worth it’s hard for me to imagine anyone believing in god and *not* believing it was responsible for evolution (and every other aspect of the world). Otherwise what’s the point of believing in god.
Still, I’m a bit chagrined that fewer than 32% don’t believe in god.
Well, it’s not that hard to understand how people believe in gods like Zeus, Ganesha, Quetzalcoatl, Anubis, Tefnut, etc. There are also deistic gods to consider, as well as more theistic ones which intervene but in a way that isn’t so focused on our local situation on Earth or concerned (much) with people or life or your genitalia or whatever.
Frankly, I have a hard time imagining what the point is of creationists trying to “disprove” evolution at all. If it were wrong, it simply does not follow that there’s a god or any other supernatural thing. You get that, right? Maybe there is some kind of a point to it (they hate being related to slime molds or material objects or whatever), but we could still at least turn it around to ask what the point is of believing in that sort of god. Maybe they don’t all believe in this sort of thing because it makes them feel special or like everything revolves around us or because somebody cares about what happens on this planet. Maybe they just have the superstition (for whatever reason) that there’s something else “out there” that isn’t physical stuff.
@ #30:
There’s no way any statistician (aside from Ken Ham, if he is one) could call that a balanced set of questions. Confirmation bias was the goal from step one.
This entire survey is bullshit.
1. It was paid for by an organisation that sees itself as a force for religious apologetics and has dived right into the creationist end of the pool over the last few years.
2. The methodology is appalling. The completion rate was only 60% (not the response rate — this is the number of people who started the survey and didn’t abandon it midway) and they’ve included responses from anyone who answered more than one third of the survey. One third!
3. The agenda of the survey is on full display when the executive summary says: “If poor science education is to blame, then why do Americans score near the top in international comparisons of science?” which is complete bullshit: Americans routinely score way below average in the OECD for science literacy. Here is the latest PISA data (warning: large pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf )
And the reference they used to support their contention that US science literacy is at the top? It was a paper from Jon D. Miller (yes, he of the AAAS and frequent collaborator with Eugenie Scott, so I doubt he would find much to agree with) which finds that almost all the benefits in science education in the US are in college graduates because even humanities students have to take science subjects in the US.
It’s particularly galling to see this pro-ignorance statement in the summary to their own study that even if you take it as an accurate survey, shows understanding of science in the US is at appallingly low levels. How can 56% of a scientifically literate population believe that Adam and Eve were real people? How can 19% percent of a scientifically literate population believe that only creationism should be taught in schools? It makes no sense except as part of the apologetics. “Being a creationist does not mean being scientifically illiterate.” That’s the line BioLogos is trying to push.
The silver lining is that this is about Americans. The rest of us can continue to feel superior … until they run the poll in our countries.
WhiteHatLurker
ohyes
I’m totes safe!
rlly
safe
Yeah, but Zeus, Ganesha, Quetzalcoatl, Anubis, Tefnut etc. exist in a framework that involves creation they themselves or their predecessors were involved in. The whole point of gods is that there’s an inside track on how the universe works and the gods are intrinsically wound up in it.
I’m not sure what this means. If one supreme deity exists, so it does anything and everything, then you might claim it’s in some kind of a framework too. (I’m not sure why, but you could claim it.) So I don’t see how that would be a distinguishing feature of these deities who aren’t omni-everything and aren’t doing it all by themselves.
I guess you can insist that they have to do something in the world, at least if they’re going to be noticeable to anyone, although that’s not necessary if they’re just going to be. But from there, it can go lots of places. They don’t need to be “responsible for evolution (and every other aspect of the world).” There’s plenty of stuff gods might not be responsible for, which is just what a “theistic evolutionist” would claim: nature does this and that, while gods do some of the other stuff. A believer has to admit that not everything is reducible to physics, but they don’t need to claim a god does it all (i.e., that nothing is reducible to physics). There’s no reason why it would need to be all or nothing, and it wouldn’t be “pointless” if it were somewhere in between.
@Nick Gotts, #21:
Now you’ve done it. I’ve visited the BioLogos website (first time in my life) and found this series of articles on Evolution and Original Sin.
That was not nice to read.
“framework to involves creation” means simply that although Zeus did not create the world or people other supernatural forces in his mythos did.
Yes, it’s hypothetically possible to have a mythology where gods exist but they had nothing to do with human origins but I find it very difficult to imagine anyone believing in this.
F.O. (#29): I had the same reaction when I saw the graph… like, 56% believe Adam & Eve were REAL people? WTF!?
I presume the percentage of smart-asses thinking something like, “Yes, I’m certain Adam Sandler and Eve Arden are/were real people” is miniscule. So yes, this number is disturbing.
What #36 says. Plus how can the world be created in 6 DAYS when the very definition of a “day” isn’t available until the fourth day? Circular stupidity?
I have had real-live “meat space” discussions with YECers. And I point out that science says that the bible is wrong 10 words in (the “earth” was not created “in the beginning” as claimed). And those that I’ve discussed this with actually “get” that science does not agree with their religion. But they choose to believe in the religion anyway.
So in the end, it doesn’t matter. Because the argument isn’t about whether the earth is 10,000 or 10 million or 10 billion years old.
Fundamentally, the argument is about the after-death experience. It has nothing to do with biblical inerrancy and everything to do with their fear of being left off the guest list in the after-death.
Until you start addressing the real issues and not the red herrings, you’re never going to get anywhere.
@caseloweraz #43: The chart is a simplification of the results; the actual survey method (full report here) addresses the possibility of pedants (like me!) taking the quiz; NONE of those are people thinking they could be asking about some random people named Adam or Eve.
The Stupid It Burns!
I wonder if its too late to move back to Canada?
well, that goes right along with thinking that the Jesus of the gospels was as he was written there, and not an amalgamation of people’s ideas for a necessary political tool for the time, which is much more likely.
the real jesus, if there ever was one, did not walk on water, did not do miracles, did not rise from the dead, was not born of a virgin.
yes, I’m afraid it is. The stupid has gotten a good grip there as well.