An analysis/rant on the subject of “intelligent” design and why it makes me want to scream

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From February this year: “Americans lag only Turkey in discrediting evolution.”A leading American scientist claims that European science understanding is more evolved than the United States, where only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, just half the 80 percent rate of several European nations.” (more…)

ABC News has an interesting article up about Bush’s decision Wednesday to veto the latest stem cell bill. As ABC points out, Bush may believe that using stem cells for scientific research is immoral, the far majority (68%) of Americans disagree. Moreover, 60% “favor loosening the current restrictions on federal funding for this research, as the legislation Bush has rejected would have done.”

As should be expected, Republicans and Democrats disagree quite strongly with each other on this issue. Only 49% of Republicans “support stem cell research overall,” compared to 80% of Democrats. Now the reason that I believe that Hillary Clinton should make stem cell research an important theme of her campaign: 70% of independents favor such research. If Hillary wants to win the Presidential elections, she needs to win over Independent voters.

Also of interest:

Perhaps surprisingly, religious belief creates somewhat less of a split: Even among evangelical white Protestants, 57 percent support stem cell research, as do three-quarters of nonevangelical Protestants and Catholics alike. And 51 percent of evangelical white Protestants support federal funding for this research, with 45 percent opposed.

Yesterday, I pointed out that I believe that Hillary Clinton should go after Bush aggressively on this issue - at least, that is, from a political point of view. Looking at these numbers, however, makes me think that - perhaps - Hillary would be wise to moderate her tone a bit. If she continues to attack Bush for being anti-science, and if she continues to link stem cell research with, say, evolution, creationism, etc., she might lose support from the above mentioned groups.

This is a follow-up post on yesterday’s post. Back in August 06, Ron published this post at his blog Liberal Values:

A survey published in Science finds that the United States ranks 33 out of 34 countries studied on acceptance of evolution. At least we beat Turkey.

The results:

Fascinating.

As Ron points out, this is probably due to the fact that America counts quite some fundamentalist Christians (who interprete the Bible as literally as possible). In most other ‘Christian’ countries - or at least most Western countries - there are virtually no fundamentalists left. Most Christians in Europe - for instance - do not interprete the Bible literally anymore.

In America, however, the literal interpreters form quite a significant part of the population.

According to a gallup poll, the majority of Republicans does not believe the theory of evolution to be true. Quite remarkable, one could say, is that “even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant minority who doubt that evolution adequately explains where humans came from.”

Funny enough, “about a quarter of Americans say they believe both in evolution’s explanation that humans evolved over millions of years and in the creationist explanation that humans were created as is about 10,000 years ago.”

Some results:
Now thinking about how human beings came to exist on Earth, do you, personally, believe in evolution, or not?
Yes: 49%
No: 48%

Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years
Definitely true: 39%
Probably true: 27%
Probably false: 16%
Definitely false: 15%

Furthermore, 38% said that they believed that “beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,” against 43% of Americans who said to believe that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so].”

Furthermore, 30% of Republicans believe in evolution, against 68% who believe that God created mankind in his its present shape. Those numbers are 61% and 37% for Independents respectively; and 57% and 40% for Democrats.

I have to admit that I find the results of this poll to be utterly amazing. In Europe, especially in the Netherlands - I am quite sure - the far majority of people have accepted evolution as the explanation of how mankind came into existence. Of course, there are Christians like me who believe that God guided the process, but most Dutch Christians do - as far as I know - believe that mankind evolved.

This means, of course, that it does not hurt Republican candidates one bit when they say that they do not believe in evolution. It might hurt them with Independents, sure, but if they want to appeal to ‘the base’ it is probably best for them to say that they believe that God created mankind 10,000 years ago and that the theory of evolution is false.

Fascinating (and to me quite shocking).

I love it!

How much money and glitz does it take to institutionalize a scientific lie? In the case of the Creation Museum, about $27 million worth.

The reason for this museum is quite simple: The historical record in Genesis must literally be true. Since this is incompatible with essentially all of modern scientific knowledge, therefore modern scientific knowledge must be incorrect.

But if you want to renounce modern science as flawed, then an intellectually honest approach would be to also renounce technologies such as airplanes, cars and even radios that work using precisely the same scientific principles that tell us the earth is well over 6,000 years old.

But that’s not the approach the Creation Museum takes. It renounces knowledge, but has spent lavishly on creating the illusion of science.

So, they’ve created a museum that appears scientific, but that simply lies about the science instead.

The Creation Museum uses dazzling and expensive animatronic displays made possible by hard-won advances in science to suggest the viability of a literal interpretation of Genesis.

That includes a six-day creation of the Earth, a 6,000-year-old universe, and a world where dinosaurs and humans happily roamed together. All of these are inconsistent with everything science tells us about the natural world.

Can you imagine that? T-Rex and your ancestor drinking a cup of tea together, your ancestor eating a squirl, the Big T eating your cows? Your ancestor secretly stealing an egg of a T-Rex, taking it home, feeding the little T-Rex and raising it to protect the family (much like we do with dogs nowadays)?

T-Rex: man’s best friend.