Yes, this is a recurring theme on this site, and my answer is “Somewhat, but not fully, for creationism won’t disappear in a big way until religion does.”
My answer is buttressed by a paper that I’d somehow overlooked (reference and free download below). The paper by Eric Plutzer and Michael Berkman is six years old, but I think is still useful given that more recent data gives figures similar to theirs. Their conclusion is simple:
“We show that U.S. public opinion is at odds with the curricula mandated by the nation’s state governments.”
Translation: State school standards usually mandate the teaching of evolution, but Americans resist it because many of them want creationism taught as well. And many Americans think that if you believe in God you can’t accept evolution.
I’ll be brief. First, the BioLogos survey I discussed the other day argues that perhaps the results of the 30-year series of Gallup polls on evolution is incorrect, or at least discrepant with the results of a study commissioned by BioLogos. The Plutzer and Berkman paper, however, shows that Americans’ answer to questions about the truth or falsity of evolution has remained consistent not only over time, but among samples taken from different organizations. There are lots of tables in the Plutzer and Berkman paper; here are but three. (I’m putting a “fold” here again as an experiment; let me know whether you like it or not)
The tables above and below show that about 45% of Americans are creationists when it comes to humans, a result consistent with the 30 years of data from Gallup, showing belief in straight Biblical creationism of humans between 40 and 47% (“God-guided evolution” is different, and has varied between 31% and 41%).
What causes this resistance to evolution? If you ask the National Center for Science Education (cf. Josh Rosenau) or BioLogos, they’ll tell you that it comes from a faulty understanding of religion: adherents of those faiths opposed to religion can, with a little sweet talking, be convinced that their faiths really can be comported with the modern theory of evolution. If you believe that, I have some real estate in Florida that I’ll sell you for a song.
Now, four more tables. As we continue to find these days, most people in older surveys respond that they really do know what the theory of evolution and the bogus hypothesis of creationism say:
Only about 15-24% of American are either “not too familiar” with either view, or are “not familiar at all” with either. That is, most people think they understand the theories.
Can this ignorance be cured with education about evidence? This table, showing American’s views about whether evolution is supported by evidence, suggests that there’s some possibility of improvement, but not a lot, since between 35% and 39% of Americans don’t think evolution is not supported with much evidence—a proportion much higher than those who aren’t familiar with evolution:
This suggests that many people who think they understand creationism and evolution don’t think that evolution is well supported by evidence. Further, Americans want creationism taught alongside evolution in the public schools (this is a result that obtains in the very latest polls as well). Read and weep:
In a misguided but truly American sense of fair play, respondents in these surveys, as well as in more recent surveys, overwhelmingly favor teaching evolution, creationism and intelligent design in schools. The proportion of people who want only evolution taught is about the same as the proportion of Americans who believe in purely naturalistic evolution not guided by God. And that proportion is very low. This is, of course, disheartening.
What would teaching all three “theories” of change and diversity do do? Take a gander at one final table, the most depressing of all—but one that accommodationists would be well to absorb:
Granted, these data are old, but again, they’ve remained pretty stable over time. Roughly a third of Americans don’t think it’s possible to believe in both God and evolution. How open do you think they are to the strategy of telling them that yes, it is possible to “believe” both—especially when you don’t really have a strategy for showing how it’s possible in cases where evolution conflicts with church dogma or the tenets of the believers’ ingroups?
Of course I favor telling Americans what evolution is and giving them the evidence for it. I do it all the time as I continue to lecture and talk on the radio about the evidence for evolution. But I’m also pretty sure that so long as the U.S. is the world’s most religious First World nation, the acceptance of our message will be blocked by faith.
___________
Plutzer, E. and M. Berkman. 2008. Evolution, creationism, and the teaching of human origins in schools. Public Opinion Quarterly 72:540-553.
The question about whether it is possible to believe in gods and also believe in evolution is, of course, flawed.
It is clearly possible to do so, as Francis Collins demonstrates. But it is not intellectually legitimate. So I don’t know how I would answer the question if I was asked.
The problem is with the word “possible.” Humans are remarkably and frustratingly capable of “believing” – indeed “knowing” – two and more mutually contradictory statements at once. So sure it’s “possible,” but to your point this does not measure the coherence or rationality of believing in more than one theory, and for many people it’s likely NOMA syndrome inarticulatly stated.
Exactly. That question is very poorly phrased.
If i was answering it i would feel I’d have to answer “yes” – clearly, it is possible. It’s not logical but that is not the question.
The desire for human exceptionalism is so captivating that reality requires a VIP pass.
“What causes this resistance to evolution? If you ask the National Center for Science Education (cf. Josh Rosenau) or BioLogos, they’ll tell you that it comes from a faulty understanding of religion: adherents of those faiths opposed to religion can, with a little sweet talking, be convinced that their faiths really can be comported with the modern theory of evolution.”
Ha! From my experience, I doubt that the average Southern Baptist, e.g., would agree that he has a faulty understanding. No other sect member has a higher regard for the rectitude of his religious opinions.
In my view, this resistance is born of hubris, and a great sense of self-regard and entitlement and, as Hitch was wont to say, solipsism. I also perceive it part and parcel of this great, ongoing, bloviating tsunami of “American Exceptionalism.”
Don’t like it. (The fold, that is.)
I can’t say it bothers me that much, but you asked us to let you know.
I really do not like the fold. I like being able to scroll down without having to navigate the mouse over to click to continue. Also, I like being able to see right away how long a given post is–do I have time right now to read it fully or not? I don’t like to have to click over to see that something is too long.
I’d say that the only time to use a ‘fold’ is to conceal something disturbing that you know some people will not want to see. I don’t recall any instances of this on this website.
I think the same way. The fold really disturbs the flow of my reading.
Agreed. Generally, I don’t like it.
I too prefer to scroll rather than click whether using laptop, mouse, iPad or phone. Which is more work for you?
Oh, and great posts on the polling.
I also do not like the fold.
I don’t like the fold because I generally read the posts from the email newsletter.
Without the fold i can just read all posts in full. Now i have to click to get taken to the website, it’s no biggie but it does take an extra 15 or so seconds per post.
I don’t have a fold, on this or the previous post. This may perhaps be connected to the way I access WEIT. I have the current post on a pinned tab in Google Chrome, and each morning I refresh that tab. I then click on the top right hand link to access the next post. I use this method to work my way through the day’s posts, until I come to one without a top right link. By the next morning I refresh the page, and start following the link again to each new post. Using this method, I see no fold, and can scroll straight done through the post and comments.
I hope this helps those of you who dislike the fold. Let me know if it works for you.
Pretty much what I do, except sometimes I’m away for a few days and wander through multiple days’ posts, not knowing where the action is. Probably in a different time zone in any case.
The old saying is “you can’t cure stupid”. My suggestion would be to give up. They will only come to the light when they see there is no light in what they believe – if that ever happens.
I don’t agree. Creationists in particular and theists in general are not “stupid.” On the contrary, the more intelligent they are the better the rationalizations.
The idea that atheists should simply give up trying to persuade our case because the Other Side is intractable is an accomodationist viewpoint — and one which the gnu atheists labor mightily to dispel. It doesn’t matter whether the Little People Argument (“They can’t handle the truth; They don’t care about the truth; you can’t reason someone out of something they didn’t reason themselves into”) is made with a benign smile or an angry sneer. The truth is that the “Other Side” is more like us than not and are products of a culture drenched not just in religion, but the values of the enlightenment. They’re in conflict not so much with us as with themselves.
And they’re more capable of considering alternatives when they’re treated with the respect we grant to adults. Or so it seems to me.
Theistic evolution is the compromise position of “look, there’s no way they will give up God so let’s concentrate on mitigating the sort of damage a faith-based approach to reality can cause.” There’s less spam in this one. It’s more unfalsifiable and yet still privileges faith over reason.
But where is it written in stone that people can’t change their minds about religion? Or the virtue of faith?
Oh, yeah — the Bible. The sensus divintatis. The heart knowledge of recognizing Spirit. Don’t trust those sources.
As someone who did change their mind, I agree.
Sastra — I was with you up to the “shared values of the Enlightenment” bit. The Protestants I grew up with were stuck in the wars of the Reformation. Enlightenment, not so much.
You might be right since I don’t know the Protestants you grew up with, but if they valued (or thought they valued) ideals like democracy, liberty, human rights, and getting together to argue and persuade — unlike those Bad Countries — then they absorbed aspects of the enlightenment. The belief that “our country was founded on Christian principles” entails that the values of the Enlightenment are so sincerely believed in that they want to co-opt them and claim the Bible was their source.
I also changed my mind (gradually). I dislike the denigrating generalization of “Little People.”
Would a History of Science class in grade school help (in the USA)? I don’t think many non-scientists here know what scientific method is, much less understand why scientists accept evolution. (I’m no scientist, and am learning lots on this site, thank you, Gerry.)
Should we change the question from “do you believe in evolution” to “do you see any logical reason for science to accept evolution?”
Oh, no! My friend is Gerry. But here I meant Jerry. Sincere apologies!
Hi Jerry, I prefer the “old way”, unless there’s something NSFW that needs to be “below fold” and needs a warning.
I’m only saying something about how you do things because you requested feedback.
I love your site!
I don’t know if the fold worked. I saw the whole article in my email.
Weird, that. I also got the email and it did have the fold in. Different email client (Gmail for Android tablet here)?
I’m running Android on the Galaxy Note 3. No fold in my email.
Woops, meant to also say I have Gmail too.
I’m using Mac OSX Yosemite with Chrome browser & Mac Mail. I also tried on my BlackBerry Browser & its mail with the same result.
Same for me, see my reply to #3.
Same here. If I did see the fold, I mostly wouldn’t like it. My DSL is way too slow sometimes.
The numbers are unlikely to change if the sole focus is on the education system (curriculum, teachers, improved access to university, etc.).
The problem is that so much of (especially American) society denigrates the value of facts in argument. Almost every movie and TV show promotes instinct and intuition of the hero over the research and thoroughness of the (nerdy, overcautious) voice of reason.
One learns in a number of venues. If you have a teacher saying one thing (and just one (or a few) at that), and parents, friends, pastors, politicians, and other authority figures all saying another, it’s not too surprising that the (subjective) consensus view wins out over the protestations of a lone scientist (a class of folk that should be treated with great suspicion anyway). Facts are just not given much weight when most people make up their minds.
Broad societal change will be required to significantly alter these statistics. The good news is that it seems to be happening. The frustrating news is that progress is very slow, and seems vulnerable to backsliding.
Leslie
PS – I am not a fan of the fold. I come to this site to read your comments, and prefer not having to click through to read your articles.
Sadly, the culture of “it’s cool to be stupid” has been around for a while, at least for my entire lifetime, and it’s not just in America but many Western nations. I’m not sure where it came from, but it’s a big problem as evidenced by some of the more intellectually challenged individuals in American politics.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen “it’s cool to be stupid.” Not exactly. It’s usually more like “It’s cool to trust your instincts” or “it’s cool to ignore that nerdy intellectual bs” or “it’s cool to be a real, genuine, salt o’ the earth kinda person without any of that high falutin’ nonsense you get after kindergarten.”
I’ve read that there was a big shift towards America anti-intellectualism in the early 19th century due to many factors, including two major ones: the rise of Romanticism coupled with the Second Great Religious Awakening — and the Plain Ol’ Common Sense politics of populist President Andrew Jackson and his don’t-trust-the-experts message. Iirc Susan Jacoby writes on this topic with her usual scholarship and clarity.
Yes, exactly, you summarize this very well.
At least with regard to most white Xian believers.
For the “urban” folks, it often really is: Not cool to get an education. Literally, I’ve heard it referred to as “being/acting white”.
There are of course a few-to-some who deny the “acting white” thing. My perception is that that attitude actually exists. (Re: the allegation that some Seattle Seahawk teammates believe that the quarterback was/is not acting “black enough.”) But I could be wrong, and am willing to be shown, and to acknowledge, the error of my ways.
To the extent that the “acting white” thang holds water, why not talk about “acting Asian,” inasmuch as Asians have a reputation for a monumental work ethic and great regard for intellectual curiosity and academic achievement, and for outdoing whites in these regards.
Or “acting Jewish”, if you’re going there.
I like the Freudian “change and diversity do do” 🙂
The “cool to be stupid” phenomenon I’ve witnessed is the type of thing that is heavily ingrained in culture and therefore almost imperceptible to those in said culture. It comes out in things like being teased as a kid for taking an intellectual curiosity in something. As a kid I played dumb because the worst thing to be found out as is someone who is smart, who reads beyond their level or considers things carefully. I played dumb like this until I went to university, being careful to select words that were simple, avoiding bigger words.
Even in university, people were teased for working hard. I remember a Greek professor of mine telling off the class for mocking someone for translating ahead beyond what was assigned (truth be told, I did the same thing, I just didn’t get caught for it). I enjoyed it when she lectured the class about it and I could tell she had experienced the same sort of ridicule (especially when she told us that she translated some Plato as a treat to herself once). Of course we all cringed at her for translating Plato as a treat. 🙂
Yeah, I get your point — but I think it’s more about being “normal” than being perceived as “stupid.” The kids in the class who lagged at the very end of the curve usually worried about the “r” label if it looked like they were trying and couldn’t.
I think an overlooked aspect of this is that too many people exposed to science end up feeling stupid because they can’t grasp much of it. Consequently they learn to disparage it as “not cool.”
If we could get a little bit of critical thinking training incorporated into nearly every class, not just the dreaded hour devoted to science and full of “technical things,” we might give more people a sense of being able to comprehend much more on their own, resulting in less defensive responses.
And I still think it’s a cultural phenomenon. Why are those that are naturally curious seen as different? Why do we ostracize those that like to learn? It’s not even about being smart, it’s about having a positive attitude toward learning.
I would encourage you to comment more! This was very insightful!
(I am also not a fold fan, for the same reasons Prof. Pedant outlined in the pain thread.)
Thumbs up on the fold – it’s a fairly standard pattern on blogs, and notablogs too.
As I mentioned in a different thread, while it requires an extra click to see the full article, it makes for an easier to peruse front page. Don’t listen to people who think better design equals fewer clicks. If that were true, the world wouldn’t need designers and I would be out of a job.
Also to consider: More clicks leads to more better search indexing leads to more readers. And smarter people (well, that’s the idea anyway).
And just as an aside – thank you for not having ads on this site! That’s so rare nowadays.
Just to note, in theory the fold necessitates an extra click, however, in order to read and make comments, a click is required with or without a fold.
Also, I like to use the last post / next post links at the top to navigate, which opens the full post plus comments – that’s the way to go for commentophiles.
I disagree on the fold–I don’t care for it. I would prefer the whole page just load, especially when reading the website on my Kindle (and I suspect other mobile device users would prefer not to hunt for tiny text to click).
But I’m with you on the value of no ads 🙂
“Can we cure creationism by teaching the facts?” Only when they are accepted as such. One tripartite model has creationists, non-creationists with the non-creationists divided into two camps, those who accept evolution as fact and those who do not know enough about it to hold a view.
In my experience, the uncommitted group includes many who accept, unthinkingly, the view of family and friends. These are the candidates for accepting evolution as fact with the proviso that it be presented as it is understood, without attacking creationism directly.
I like the fold idea.
-Tucks away contents so you can more easily browse from article to article.
-Nice that it also brings up the comment section, which is like clicking on ‘comments’ in the old setup.
Same here, happy with the fold.
Regarding the fold…
I don’t see it at all on my browser. (Safari, MacOS X Yosemite).
‘Taint no fold for me.
Yeah me neither but it worked on the pain post.
Indeed, my thought was “Fold? What fold? I don’t got not stinkin’ fold!” I use Firefox with Ubuntu Linux. Maybe it only works for (shudder) microsoft stuff.
I guess there has been too much faith vs. facts as opposed to facts vs. faith. I am sure your book will show that.
Reblogged this on hitchens67 Atheism WOW!! Campaign.
Jerry,
the persistence of the figures suggests that one is confronted with a deep-seated national myth. Rational argument against it is counterproductive, for it challenges identity.
Experience is the great corrosive of myths (wars e.g. have “marvelous” effects in this regard. After WWII there were practically no Nazis left anywhere). Unfortunately, I have no collective experience at hand that may help change peoples’ mind.
So one would have to take the anthropological-historical route and first try to understand the social function of the myth (foundation of the nation comes to mind). In a second step, one would have to test on small groups how to shift identities, ever slightly, in favor on evolution. Thirdly, replicating social mechanisms would need building to replicate the successful path.
My personal take is that this is the “wrong” moment: the nation is facing the closing of the “frontier myth” as it faces both environmental and international limits. Identity is under siege anyway.
I would not give up, but seek another route to the top of Mount Improbable.
If I were a creationist quote-miner, I might have picked this bit out:
And say, “see, Jerry Coyne doesn’t even know that one of the paper’s author’s is an adult! How can anyone take anything he says seriously?”
This is about the level they really seem to operate at.
Teaching will work if we reach kids. Just like the culture shift on gay marriage has already happened with the young ‘uns. They don’t understand why it is even a question.
Likewise, if we could somehow get solid information about reality into classrooms and/or popular knowledge, the battle will be over (like the fundies don’t know this).
Ha, nice honorific! The problem is that by the time kids are ready to learn evolution, they’ve already been indoctrinated into religion, so many are immunized against the facts. To those kids, teaching won’t work. I know because I’ve talked to public-school science teachers in the South.
Could we perhaps try teaching evolution earlier then? I’m not sure quite how effective it’d be, but my parents were at least able to explain the rudiments to five or six year old me so it might be an option.
My brother has often quoted Jesuits, who stated “Give me the child until he is seven, and I’ll give you the man.” They certainly understand the malleability of young minds. I think they also understand the value of fear.
No doubt the Jesuit maxim came from the likes of:
“Proverbs 22:6New King James Version (NKJV)
Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Yep, such is indoctrination; he will not think for himself.
Natalie Angier says she thinks US kids are taught the sciences backwards and unnecessarily separately: that is, we learn Biology > Chemistry > Physics, when the universe is constructed in the opposite order. It’s a compelling point, and you are right, kids are capable of absorbing all kinds of good stuff much earlier than they currently receive it. But to Jerry’s point, one could still teach evolution to younger kids and still get major pushback, especially from parents, as soon as human evolution gets mentioned due to prior conditioning.
My second grader is doing dinosaurs right now and just gave a presentation on T rex. As far as I can tell, evolution is not part of the lessons when it would be so easy to include. Also, for whatever reason, the material yadda yadda yadda’s over some potentially instructive points: for example, we read “noone knows why T rex had such tiny arms.” This is technically accurate, I guess, but it does a disservice to the student by leaving out: things that we can know based on mechanics, favored theories based on natural selection, and also the chance to develop reasoning skills by thinking through why an animal with a 5-foot-wide skull might not need long arms. My daughter did get those lessons from me (till her eyes glazed over), but I doubt many parents go beyond what’s on the handout.
I agree with Angier.
However, a couple of years ago, in a NY Times Science Tuesday opinion piece, she gratuitously “whaahed” about what to-the-effect she alleged to be the fatuity or undesirability of the “STEM” acronym, of course somehow managing to void suggesting an alternative.
“STEM” or of more recent provenance, “STEAM,” seems to work quite well.
There would certainly be no harm in schools mentioning birds at some stage in their dino studies. Even if it’s just saying that they are dinosaurs that changed over a very very very long time. Not worrying about how, so much as the fact that it did happen and you can see the results.
No need even to especially mention evolution.
In fact, given what teachers think about evolution, it’s probably better they don’t say anything too early… Christ, this is a big mess, isn’t it.
Even if they’re not (fully) indoctrinated, the pressure to conform and not make waves is quite heavy, from my own personal experience. One is motivated to keep ones head below the radar and avoid opprobrium and bide ones time until at age eighteen he can get the heck out of Dodge.
Re the fold:
Mostly it would make no difference to me, since I usually access a post by clicking on a link from the email notification, which gives the full version.
However, I’d consider a fold more normal, and if browsing the “front page” it allows one to see the range of recent posts more easily, so I’m in favour, but only with a mild preference.
I don’t like the fold. The reason is my reading is interrupted by having to press “here”. It spoils the flow. Plus when I want to read the next item I have to press “back”. In the old way you just scroll down.
I once had a colleague try to argue that creationism is just like common “math phobia” and so the most effective way to get rid of it is to focus on improving and strengthening our pedagogical methods. There are a plethora of problems with this, but it just shot back into mind when looking at that data asking “How informed would you say you are about the Theory of Evolution or Creationism?” I’m very willing to bet that the distribution of responses here would be the exact opposite if the question asked how informed people thought they were about general mathematics. People suffering from customary math phobia would overwhelmingly answer that they are not familiar or comfortable with the subject; they may hate it or misunderstand it, or just not know it, but they will also realize that they are not familiar with it. This is a vital difference between a passive, school-engrained ignorance of the facts and an active, willful ignorance of reality. There are no competing “theories” in mathematics that people need to believe to preserve their religious identity.
Oh, and I personally am not a fan of “the fold,” although I understand and appreciate the reasons for it.
I also think humans are not very good at estimating how much they really know, especially about subjects in which they have little investment. I once made a comment to a coworker about a reflex that served us well when we “lived in the trees,” and he asked me if I really believe all that stuff. I said yes, and that I’d been doing a lot of reading about evolution. He replied “Yeah, I’ve read all that, too, I just don’t buy it,” which I take as evidence he would rate his understanding higher than it really is. I suspect he is not so rare a case among believers.
“He replied “Yeah, I’ve read all that, too, I just don’t buy it . . . .”
Well, that says it all – the final, ultimate truth. Something is so, simply because someone says so.
I really really don’t like the fold. It interrupts your reading. I mean, here you’re reading and then all of a sudden: click here to read more… it just completely turns me off from reading any more.
I mean imagine reading a book where as soon something gets interesting or exciting says, hey turn to random page 237 to find out the exciting conclusion!
No thanks.
Sure, education can work. But, there are many factors. One major one that the TOE has to deal with is the “religion must be given utmost respect” meme that is so pervasive in our society. It is difficult to teach something when nearly any mention of it is considered to be offensively rude to a significant portion of the population.
If we assume that virtually all unbelievers accept human descent from animals, and that some 15% of Americans are unbelievers, it follows from the numbers that 1/3 of believers accept evolution. In other countries (eg the UK) that fraction, I suspect, is far higher. I infer that giving up on educating believers about evolution is unwarranted pessimism.
I have felt for some time that Rosenhouse has got it right; people cling to creationism because its denial opens up questions about life’s meaning that can otherwise, at least apparently, be avoided. Thus the task is to make people feel comfortable with evolution (and uncomfortable with creationism).
And teach it young. I do not know if your readers are aware of the excellent “Grandmother Fish”, due to appear early next year, aimed at pre-reading.
From Table 9:
“How Informed Would You Say You Are about the Theory of Creationism …”.
Notice that this question intentionally commits two glaringly obvious errors:
1. There is no “creationism theory” in the scientific sense of the word Theory, but this question just equated them.
2. There are hundreds of thousands of different creationisms, yet the question clearly implies that there is only one.
In short, the question is quite worthless as written since it is anything but unbiased.
Also, are these questions somehow more understandable if the first letter of most of the words in the questions are capitalized?
And are most people more likely to be compelled to answer the questions if they are formulated like “TV game show questions”? Why is it necessary to say the first word about “TV game shows”?
Because America?
The thing with the entrenched creationists is that you can’t reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
We do seem to be making good progress with the normals though so pats on the back all round I think.
I think the viable choices boil down to “teaching the facts” and “working to undermine religious belief” – ideally, both. Here is an option that is a sellout and total non-starter: teaching the facts while sanctioning the attachment to myths and magical thinking.
Regarding the question about the teaching of creationism in schools, the wording of the question itself is biased toward eliciting a “fair play” kind of response. If people were asked what material should be deleted from the science curriculum in order to make classroom time for teaching creationism, the answers might be more revealing.
I’m for folds so long as they have a “fold alert” that plays the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme song so that we are prepared for our reading adventure BELOW THE FOLD. (Cue 2001: A Space Odyssey theme song.)
IMO folds should be accessible by paid subscriptions only.
I vote for no more folds unless it’s for some specific reason.
But Prof., that’s just the surface. The hardest part for some people regarding accepting evolution is accepting the world as it is.
It’s harsh and tough. Who was that author who once said there’s a massacre happening behind every bush in the garden? Or something like that.
Accepting science for them means also accepting there’s no such thing as post-mortem justice. It means accepting a child may be born to hunger, poverty and misery in Africa, be sold into sexual slavery, contract AIDS and then die before the age of 18. True, but harsh and difficult to absorb for people indoctrinated into post-romantic, Hollywoodian moralistic fantasies.
In those cases science, particularly evolution, is the bursting of the bubble.
Humans seem to equate acceptance of a fact with liking or approving of it. Whether by nature or having been taught, we may think not accepting (or liking or approving of) a fact will make it not so. Unfortunately not accepting an unpleasant or horrible fact is the root of inaction and suffering. And a big part of the indoctrination you mention is the lesson that it is scary and nihilistic to accept the world as it is. It’s a remarkable self-sustaining machine, and those trapped in it don’t believe rational people can have rich, meaningful lives. They have no idea the joy that comes from knowing there is no spoon.
But are their lives not easier?
Not really, they have to assign guilt, blame, self-recrimination for every little bad thing.
Agree that Big Religion US style is going to hold up public take-up of evolution as scientific fact for as long as it continues to thrive. That style is not particularly apophatic. Theistic evolution is contra science too; God is scientifically superfluous; naturalistic evolution fully explains the facts. It is wrong for scientific organisations to point out that creationsim and intelligent design do not comport with scientfic understanding but fail to mention mention that TE doesn’t either.
Like the fold – particularly in the case of long and meaty articles.
I disagree that theistic models of evolution are necessarily contra science…
You don’t have to have some Deus-ex-machina intervening in evolution, any more than you need angels to push the planets around the sun!
In a Process Theology view for instance, creation is a continuing process and we are co-creators of the future. Evolution is the process that painfully builds greater complexity, awareness, agency and consciousness (aka God). As Dawkins says in TSG, “evolution has now handed us the keys”.
In this view, God is both the goal, and holistically embedded in the process – of which we are a part (as parts of the Whole). Whether we build heaven or hell for ourselves is increasingly up to us.
There is nothing in this view that contradicts science, indeed it compliments it.
I heard and read a lot of that stuff from Prof Charles Birch (coauthor of famous textbook with Andrew and Arthur), but I couldn’t see where ‘theology’ came into it except when he – superfluously – embraced a specifically Christian mythology and nomenclature. Trotting along a fine line between theism and deism takes you a long way from proportioning belief to evidence.
Excellent that you read Birch. I’m not really committed to any view (maybe strong agnostic), but I like Whiteheads process paradigm, and also as developed into a theology by Birch, Hartshorne, Griffin, Cobb and others.
In an interview he did in 2007 for ABC radio (available as a podcast) Birch explains more of his theology.
As I understand it, the Theology comes in as seeing evolution as a process of ‘becoming’, with emergence of greater creativity, agency and consciousness (God as imminent). This is where it differs from secular ‘evolution’. Also, PT has us as expressions of a universal consciousness (pan-experientialism), so sentience is sacred.
The function of Religion IMHO, is to give our finite lives a transcendent purpose (towards some summum bonum) and an ethic to live by. None of it is provable, more like poetry than science, but at best it is consistent with what we know (which is where creationism fails). I think PT does that.
The Big Religion TE player is the RC Church. Are they down with PT?
PT is more a theology (as I understand it), with no church, but it is on the liberal wing of religion – attracting Unitarians, Universalists, Quakers and the like.
I don’t think it attracts many RCs and Evangelicals which are both very conservative, and rather more authoritarian.
I’ll agree that if we keep the attributes of whatever deity created the Universe minimal enough, something like this is compatible. Supported by evidence? Absolutely not.
Let’s say some very intelligent being gained the technology to create and support its Universe, an engineer god of sorts. If we’re running in a Matrix-like world where the god wrote the code to run the Universe, it would be indistinguishable from what we see now. But, again, there’s no evidence to support this and proposing miraculous claims in this world leaves us right back where we started with naturalism. Either this engineer god wrote the code for the Universe and our physical laws are based on this, or he didn’t and the program is actually not running by any set of rules. Then there’s the problem of figuring out where this god came from for surely it isn’t a ground-of-being god, but for the sake of argument, this god is sufficiently powerful to look like a deity, unless of course there’s another more powerful engineer who made our god, and so on…
The god most religious people want to and do believe in who helps them find their lost car keys or makes an insurance claim go through is simply orders of magnitude away from any deity-like being that is even remotely plausible. We also get into the problem that no one (at least not in large numbers) actually preaches pure Process Theology. The Catholic Church insists, for example, on the insertion of souls as does every other mainstream sect of Christianity I know of. While Process Theology may be preached in some circles, you never have to wait long to get to the magical interventionist god.
Process Theology is exactly a “ground-of-being” God (to use Tillich’s phrase).
Your engineer god sounds like Nick Bostrum’s “simulation argument”. He reckons there is a high chance we all exist in a computer simulation.
Yes, as you point out, many churches still believe in immortal souls, life-after-death, Heaven & Hell, Deus ex-Machina: who pokes his fingers in and finds your car keys etc.
All very 19th century!
For me, that’s what put me off religion.
However, I still think religion has a function, to provide some sense of transcendent purpose – because life is short and often painful. “Ars longa, vita brevis”.
In “The Perennial Philosophy”, Aldous Huxley argues (with evidence), that all religions are founded on fleeting but universal human experiences of self transcendence, to experience something greater, more real, and possibly life changing. Have you read Sam Harris book “Waking Up”, where he finds something like that through mindfulness?
However, Huxley argues, all religions are also always heavily contaminated by superstition, tradition, dogma, misunderstandings etc.
So, getting rid of the wooey in religion does interest me. If we can get rid of God as a “super-being”, but instead have God as Being itself (the ground of all being), there is no actual “engineer” deity to be proved or disproved.
Instead, it is about changing our perspective on what exists already, to one that is holistic. More like poetry than science…
No I haven’t read Waking Up, but I plan to. I’ve seen more and more studies coming out that show demonstrable benefits from meditation. There’s no need to have any supernatural proposals to gain a feeling of transcendence. We are part of an enormous Universe, one that is very likely infinite.
My point with Tillich’s ground-of-being concept is that first, it’s not required for a feeling of transcendence. Second, it gets you precisely nowhere without adding all sorts of superstition on top of it, as you said. For the vast majority of religious believers, transcendence has the added attribute of including some sort of afterlife. A ground of being doesn’t get you there. You have to have more, a lot more. Perhaps for some, ground-of-being alone yields transcendence, but I don’t see how. The whole concept seems utterly incoherent. “The reason that anything exists at all” could very well just be that it does. Life, the Universe and everything simply exist. No need to add a layer on top of it and say it requires a timeless God, for the same could be proposed of the Universe. And there is certainly no need to conflate the above sense of the word reason with teleology or human ideas of purpose within our lives. This is a human construct, there doesn’t need to be an answer to this sort of why question any more than we need that sort of explanation for why the earth orbits the sun.
I do plan to get to Harris’ book soon, as a real transcendence is infinitely more valuable than transcendence gleaned from proposals that inevitably come packaged with various forms of woo attached.
As you describe it, PT sounds very like pantheism with added purpose – and there’s the rub. That addition takes it into the arena of intelligent design. Implicit rather than explicit ID. There are a few theistic/deistic modes that are not contra science, but any suggestion of invisible agency at work is a contradiction of the scientific understanding of evolution, which explains the facts marvellously well, without recourse to any hidden supramondane or intramondane intelligence/agency.
To believe, against the evidence as assessed by science, that a hidden mind is at work, from within or without, one must rely on pure faith. Pure faith is infinitely more likely to be pure fantasy than true. One can have pure faith in an infinity of non-evidenced but contradictory states of affairs.
So no. I don’t accept that PT as you describe it gets a pass from the scientific point of view. It directly contradicts the simple unadorned scientific understanding of the facts. There is no discernible goal involved in evolution. There is no scientific reason to suppose an indiscernible goal.
…more panentheism than pantheism. There may be many other realities of which we cannot conceive!
We agree that evolution is non-teleological. It has no goal. However, it does have a general direction – from simple to complex, and from that complexity comes greater awareness, agency, creativity and consciousness.
Culturally too, we continue to develop ever greater awareness and empathy. Stephen Pinker in “The Better Angels of our Nature” makes the case that over our history, we are getting consistently less violent.
You may see this as unimportant i.e. reality is like a machine, or you may see it as part of an inherent pattern of development – reality is like an unfolding organism.
The differences are not scientific, but metaphysical. Both mind and matter exist in our universe, it depends to which you give primacy.
Maybe our existence has an ultimate purpose, and maybe it doesn’t! The question is not a scientific one.
You say that Process Theology considers:
“Evolution is the process that painfully builds greater complexity, awareness, agency and consciousness (aka God).”
“In this view, God is both the goal, and holistically embedded in the process – of which we are a part (as parts of the Whole).”
You, however, agree that evolution is not teleological though it has a direction.
It has that direction because energy from the sun goes into life at the cost of entropy going out into the environment. We don’t see time running backwards.
I see living organisms as working machines. Science teaches me to see them that way.
I hope Pinker doesn’t live to see the war to end all wars on earth. We haven’t seen it yet, I don’t believe.
Sorry, that was horribly garbled. Increasing organic complexity over evolutionary time must conform with the laws of thermodynamics just as the lives of individual organisms must. Both evolution and individual organisms are governed by the laws of nature, including the laws of thermodynamics. That said, I believe there are some examples where species do go backwards in time, in the sense that having evolved to a certain point they then become less complex.
Based on the evidence, I cannot understand anyone rejecting evolution. However, I do not regard that the facts of the evolution of the species as evidence against the idea of a Higher Power. I base that on myriads of little events that reinforce that idea, too. Not miracles. Just being open to the idea, one finds them.
Little events? Do share!
Being “open to the idea” as you put it means you will find evidence even if it’s not really evidence. It’s called motivated reasoning and subjective confirmation and doesn’t just distort reasoning about religion.
Being genuinely ‘open’ to an idea entails that one is looking just as hard for reasons not to believe as for points in favor. Without “faith” (positive predisposition), the Higher Power hypothesis won’t hold up.
Synchronicity.
Which indicates what, exactly?
We all should do whatever we can to educate the people who reject evolution. There was just a disgusting opinion piece in the Omaha paper yesterday by this idiot saying they needed to teach creationism in all the public schools. I shot one back at them gently reminding them to a different direction. You have to do whatever you can but the education must start earlier to compete with religion.
I’d like to see a poll done asking specific questions to gauge people’s understanding of evolution. Self analysis seems very error prone, especially given the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Instead of asking how well people understand the theory, ask questuins such as, “Does the Second Law of Thermodynamics present a problem with the theory?” and “Evolution states that we came from monkeys but there are still monkeys because evolution is random and not all the monkeys change.” These sound idiotic, but I’d be willing to bet there’s a large number of Creationists who answered in the affirmative that they understand evolution well and would say both of those above statements are also true.
We have a problem getting people to know what evolution actually is and what the correct facts are. We have a secondary problem with religious people simply not caring to even try to understand the facts because they are too fearful to answer legitimate challenges to their worldview. As I said on the previous post, facts do persuade people and Creationists for the most part think they do have the facts right. I am highly skeptical that many people who actually understands evolution at a sufficiently detailed level are creationists. Sure, I’ve seen anecdotal cases, but the overwhelming majority of them are simply drowning in a sea of misinformation.
My two cents: I don’t like the extra navigation required by hiding half the post. I think the convention was originally adopted back before broadband, when content took a long time to load.
Reblogged this on Shashank Patel.
It saddens me to see this. I can see why we are falling behind the rest of the world in education. To dismiss science is to have your children dismiss it, which means we will have fewer scientists in the future. This is a bad thing for all of us.
Hey, I like your atavar.
Lol, its like I have seen it somewhere before!
It’s everywhere! It pretty much dominates the searches for “atheist symbol.”
Hey, it even pissed off Glen Beck. He said it looks just like the anarchist symbol.
One thing I’d say about the fold is that it may give you extra information on which posts your readers are actively reading. This goes in part to your observation the other day that the science posts receive fewer comments than the atheism posts. Under a ‘fold’ system, you’d be able to monitor the individual page hits, whereas currently these stats would be diluted by those who just read the post on the main page without clicking through.
Whether this provides you with benefits that exceed the ‘costs’ borne by your readers by having to click into the article to read it, I can’t say.
Personally, I prefer the status quo
If you argue that Evolution is NOT compatible with religion, you force people to choose between Science (only of academic interest to many), and their core cultural beliefs.
They will always go for the latter, as their lives, values, communities are built around it. You won’t change that by education alone!
Much as I hate “Group Selection” and MLS, I can see why E.O.& D.S. Wilson are trying to make Evolution religion friendly.
Never mind the truth, this is politics, eh?
LOL, something like that!
Truth and politics don’t mix.
I like the fold for long posts. Please keep it.
The idea that you can catch a person at around 15 years of age and give them a basic course in biology that includes a few hours of evolution and bring them around after spending the last 10 years getting the brain wash in church is just not reality.
Probably the first, second and last time they heard the word evolution was the church or parents telling them it was no damn good. Also, half the kids or more in the south don’t go to public school so you can count them out.
Adults need to be embarrassed with their lack of knowledge and understanding of evolution and the more the better. Dawkins and Harris get run over for this but mostly by the very liberal folks living in that other world out there.
The questions are vague and long. Depressing, still are the choices selected. Next time:
Is evolution a fact?
Do religious beliefs affect how people view the universe?
Maybe the lack of understanding of how religion deals with science comes from the erudite theologians. No mater what nonsense the theologians spout the lay are perfectly aware that there is a conflict between their faith and science. How can a Catholic accept the Nicene Creed and and also accept science. Accepting evidence for the natural world only when it doesn’t threaten your superstitions is not science.
If I was asked question 14, “Do you think schools should teach ONLY evolution…?”, I would be conflicted, because if the school offered a course on religion and science, Creationism would be an appropriate topic. Banning the topic of creationism in schools sounds like censorship, because it is censorship. That may have skewed some respondents’ answers.