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December 28, 2004America is fundamentally conservative at its coreEVOLUTION/CREATIONISM: "We just asked this two weeks ago, on one's belief when it comes to evolution versus creationism. A three-part question that's been asked off-and-on in slightly different formats by Gallup over the last couple of decades, that asked respondents whether they believed that man was created . . . as we sometimes put it, in a time frame on it in the last 10,000 years, created by God in current form. That there was a process of evolution that was guided by God, or if there was a process of evolution for which God had nothing to do with it. Those are the three themes that are sort of developed by public opinion pollsters when they ask about this. America on this question is fundamentally conservative. 55% say that God created humans in their present form. The Gallup question which adds on within the last 10,000 years, gets a slightly lower number, but it is very close to half. Just under half. This is something that both majorities of Republicans and Democrats believe, and independents, they believe, it too. This is something for which education and religion matters: 75% of weekly church-goers, versus 35% of those who never attend, say that God created man as humans as they are now. Education matters as well. But, perhaps not so much as you would think, because well over one-third of college graduates are also strict creationists. And even 32% who have post graduate training. So this is a very intense belief among Americans." Can we imagine a society in which creationists and evolutionmists respect and tolerate each other's views? How will these divergent views react to the natural disaster that has just killed an estimated 140,000 - 150,000 people, many of them children? How will our actions in response to this challenge reflect our core values? How will this compare and contrast with our experiements in Iraq? Will we finally learn the lessons in MacNamarra's 1966 speech "Security in the Modern World"? Source: The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News Number 162: December 28, 2004 Survey Results: American Views on Science Issues Posted by Jock Gill at December 28, 2004 10:23 AM | TrackBack |