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A large percentage of Americans are religious, and an overwhelming number of religious people identify as Christians, so that sort of finding is hardly a big surprise.
Gallup: More Than Half of Americans Reject Evolution, Back Bible
Editor and PublisherNEW YORK A Gallup report released today reveals that more than half of all Americans, rejecting evolution theory and scientific evidence, agree with the statement, "God created man exactly how Bible describes it."
Another 31% says that man did evolve, but "God guided." Only 12% back evolution and say "God had no part."
Gallup summarized it this way: "Surveys repeatedly show that a substantial portion of Americans do not believe that the theory of evolution best explains where life came from." They are "not so quick to agree with the preponderance of scientific evidence."
The report was written by the director of the The Gallup Poll, Frank Newport.
Breaking down the numbers, Gallup finds that Republican backing for what it calls "God created human beings in present form" stands at 57% with Democrats at 44%.
Kinda puts that Simpson's poll about First Amendment rights into prespective.
However, further digging shows some people may merely be confused about the terminology that is being used...
People PressMost Americans say they are familiar with creationism and evolution, but there is some confusion about the terms' meaning. In an August 2005 Gallup poll, 58% of the public said that creationism was definitely or probably true as an explanation for the origin and development of life, but 55% also said this about evolution. Since creationism and evolution are incompatible as explanations, some portion of the public is clearly confused about the meaning of the terms.
A 1999 Fox News poll of registered voters offered respondents the explicit option to say that both Darwin's theory of evolution and the biblical account of creation were true: 26% said both were. Similarly, Pew's July 2005 poll found that about nearly three-in-ten of those who oppose the teaching of creationism nonetheless personally accept creationist accounts of life's origins, and 14% of those who accept natural selection favor teaching creationism instead of evolution.
The term "intelligent design" is still unknown to much of the public. In the August 2005 Gallup survey, 52% said they were either "not too familiar" or "not at all familiar" with the phrase. By comparison, only 17% and 24% were not familiar with "evolution" and "creationism," respectively. Given the low level of public recognition of the term, "intelligent design" is rarely mentioned in polling on the origins of life.
A large percentage of Americans are religious, and an overwhelming number of religious people identify as Christians, so that sort of finding is hardly a big surprise.
equals "Voted for Bush."
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
-Abraham Lincoln-
I can see how they would be confused seeing as many of them probably believe in both... I would have given the first answer as well but that doesn't mean I don't believe in the evolution of man.
good luck with that! send us a postcard from the middle ages
Isn't america like 86% christian?
And don't alot of these christians equate bush and the current regime with "smarter than science" ?
Go figure.
more evolutionary bull and fairy tales from NYT. Not only does the NYT refuse to reject (human) evolution, the NYT now says (human) evolution is still occurring, even recently. They will burn in for their blasphemy
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March 7, 2006
Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story
By NICHOLAS WADE
Providing the strongest evidence yet that humans are still evolving, researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.
( what bull . God didn't create the universe until 6,000 years ago!! )
The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.
Many of these instances of selection may reflect the pressures that came to bear as people abandoned their hunting and gathering way of life for settlement and agriculture, a transition well under way in Europe and East Asia some 5,000 years ago.
Under natural selection, beneficial genes become more common in a population as their owners have more progeny.
Three populations were studied, Africans, East Asians and Europeans. In each, a mostly different set of genes had been favored by natural selection. The selected genes, which affect skin color, hair texture and bone structure, may underlie the present-day differences in racial appearance.
The study of selected genes may help reconstruct many crucial events in the human past. It may also help physical anthropologists explain why people over the world have such a variety of distinctive appearances, even though their genes are on the whole similar, said Dr. Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society.
The finding adds substantially to the evidence that human evolution did not grind to a halt in the distant past, as is tacitly assumed by many social scientists. Even evolutionary psychologists, who interpret human behavior in terms of what the brain evolved to do, hold that the work of natural selection in shaping the human mind was completed in the pre-agricultural past, more than 10,000 years ago.
"There is ample evidence that selection has been a major driving point in our evolution during the last 10,000 years, and there is no reason to suppose that it has stopped," said Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago who headed the study.
Dr. Pritchard and his colleagues, Benjamin Voight, Sridhar Kudaravalli and Xiaoquan Wen, report their findings in today's issue of PLOS-Biology.
Their data is based on DNA changes in three populations gathered by the HapMap project, which built on the decoding of the human genome in 2003. The data, though collected to help identify variant genes that contribute to disease, also give evidence of evolutionary change.
The fingerprints of natural selection in DNA are hard to recognize. Just a handful of recently selected genes have previously been identified, like those that confer resistance to malaria or the ability to digest lactose in adulthood, an adaptation common in Northern Europeans whose ancestors thrived on cattle milk.
But the authors of the HapMap study released last October found many other regions where selection seemed to have occurred, as did an analysis published in December by Robert K. Moysis of the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. Pritchard's scan of the human genome differs from the previous two because he has developed a statistical test to identify just genes that have started to spread through populations in recent millennia and have not yet become universal, as many advantageous genes eventually do.
The selected genes he has detected fall into a handful of functional categories, as might be expected if people were adapting to specific changes in their environment. Some are genes involved in digesting particular foods like the lactose-digesting gene common in Europeans. Some are genes that mediate taste and smell as well as detoxify plant poisons, perhaps signaling a shift in diet from wild foods to domesticated plants and animals.
Dr. Pritchard estimates that the average point at which the selected genes started to become more common under the pressure of natural selection is 10,800 years ago in the African population and 6,600 years ago in the Asian and European populations.
Dr. Richard G. Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford, said that it was hard to correlate the specific gene changes in the three populations with events in the archaeological record, but that the timing and nature of the changes in the East Asians and Europeans seemed compatible with the shift to agriculture. Rice farming became widespread in China 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, and agriculture reached Europe from the Near East around the same time.
Skeletons similar in form to modern Chinese are hard to find before that period, Dr. Klein said, and there are few European skeletons older than 10,000 years that look like modern Europeans.
That suggests that a change in bone structure occurred in the two populations, perhaps in connection with the shift to agriculture. Dr. Pritchard's team found that several genes associated with embryonic development of the bones had been under selection in East Asians and Europeans, and these could be another sign of the forager-to-farmer transition, Dr. Klein said.
Dr. Wells, of the National Geographic Society, said Dr. Pritchard's results were fascinating and would help anthropologists explain the immense diversity of human populations even though their genes are generally similar. The relative handful of selected genes that Dr. Pritchard's study has pinpointed may hold the answer, he said, adding, "Each gene has a story of some pressure we adapted to."
Dr. Wells is gathering DNA from across the globe to map in finer detail the genetic variation brought to light by the HapMap project.
Dr. Pritchard's list of selected genes also includes five that affect skin color. The selected versions of the genes occur solely in Europeans and are presumably responsible for pale skin. Anthropologists have generally assumed that the first modern humans to arrive in Europe some 45,000 years ago had the dark skin of their African origins, but soon acquired the paler skin needed to admit sunlight for vitamin D synthesis.
The finding of five skin genes selected 6,600 years ago could imply that Europeans acquired their pale skin much more recently. Or, the selected genes may have been a reinforcement of a process established earlier, Dr. Pritchard said.
The five genes show no sign of selective pressure in East Asians.
Because Chinese and Japanese are also pale, Dr. Pritchard said, evolution must have accomplished the same goal in those populations by working through different genes or by changing the same genes — but many thousands of years before, so that the signal of selection is no longer visible to the new test.
Dr. Pritchard also detected selection at work in brain genes, including a group known as microcephaly genes because, when disrupted, they cause people to be born with unusually small brains.
( microcephaly seems to be prevalent in the Bible beltPerhaps listening to money-grubbing Bible-thumping preachers, especially on TV, is an environmental pressure that causes genetic evolution towards smaller and stupider brains. )
Dr. Bruce Lahn, also of the University of Chicago, theorizes that successive changes in the microcephaly genes may have enabled the brain to enlarge in primate evolution, a process that may have continued in the recent human past.
Last September, Dr. Lahn reported that one microcephaly gene had recently changed in Europeans and another in Europeans and Asians. He predicted that other brain genes would be found to have changed in other populations.
Dr. Pritchard's test did not detect a signal of selection in Dr. Lahn's two genes, but that may just reflect limitations of the test, he and Dr. Lahn said. Dr. Pritchard found one microcephaly gene that had been selected for in Africans and another in Europeans and East Asians. Another brain gene, SNTG1, was under heavy selection in all three populations.
"It seems like a really interesting gene, given our results, but there doesn't seem to be that much known about exactly what it's doing to the brain," Dr. Pritchard said.
Dr. Wells said that it was not surprising the brain had continued to evolve along with other types of genes, but that nothing could be inferred about the nature of the selective pressure until the function of the selected genes was understood.
The four populations analyzed in the HapMap project are the Yoruba of Nigeria, Han Chinese from Beijing, Japanese from Tokyo and a French collection of Utah families of European descent. The populations are assumed to be typical of sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Europe, but the representation, though presumably good enough for medical studies, may not be exact.
Dr. Pritchard's test for selection rests on the fact that an advantageous mutation is inherited along with its gene and a large block of DNA in which the gene sits. If the improved gene spreads quickly, the DNA region that includes it will become less diverse across a population because so many people now carry the same sequence of DNA units at that location.
Dr. Pritchard's test measures the difference in DNA diversity between those who carry a new gene and those who do not, and a significantly lesser diversity is taken as a sign of selection. The difference disappears when the improved gene has swept through the entire population, as eventually happens, so the test picks up only new gene variants on their way to becoming universal.
The selected genes turned out to be quite different from one racial group to another. Dr. Pritchard's test identified 206 regions of the genome that are under selection in the Yorubans, 185 regions in East Asians and 188 in Europeans. The few overlaps between races concern genes that could have been spread by migration or else be instances of independent evolution, Dr. Pritchard said.
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
"an overwhelming number of religious people identify as Christians,"
Being Christian doesn't require being stupid and anti-science.
The US Christians who have added creationism/ID as a being central to Christianity are
an erroneous fringe group who are refusing to seek God via intellectual/scientific enquriy, probably because the preachers who are fomenting creationism/ID are ignorant, uneducated sons-of- es with a non-Christian agenda.
oh Dan, quit getting your panties in a knot. So what? Besides, you know very well these polls deliberately distort the results by the way the questions are phrased. I was raised Catholic, consider myself a Christian, believe in God on most days (but do not attend church and have not read the entire bible...just passages.) But I also took a minor in Anthropology and love to read and hear anything new about evolution. So I am a pro-evolution Christian...and I'm not the only one. Get over it.
You're right, there are about 5 of you. Gallup missed them all, apparently.
Amen. That's where I stand, too. Just because the Bible tells us the cake was made by God, doesn't mean we know what God was cooking with.
Yeah right Manny. And there are only about 5 Catholics on birth control! the rest of us are using the rythm method or abstaining altogether!! Get real. There are PLENTY of Catholics who accept evolution. In fact, most Catholics I know believe in evolution, but we are on the "cafeteria plan" if you know what I mean. We believe in some of the bible but not all. Not all Christians take the bible entirely literally. Of course, this would not go down well with Joachim or his fundamentalist friends, but to act like there are not a bazillion of us out here is just stupid. Sorry.
Looks like there's 3 of them posting in this thread alone... Three out of five? Small world...
sarcasm??
From Manny? Perish the thought...
You really got to work on your political takes. How do you respond to 'get over it'?
Oh man, the Argentinians are laughing at us.good luck with that! send us a postcard from the middle ages
Well, there are also plenty of Catholics who accept that the Virgin Mary is in their burnt grilled cheese sandwich or the tortilla they just ate so I gotta take it for what its worth.
I think Travis is one of the five, too, so 80% of all realistic catholics are on Spurstalk.
Not this again....
sigh...
Man... I wish some of you all had actually taken advanced genetics courses instead of coming on like everything you read from a scientist is the undebatable and undeniable 'truth'...
Of course I don't actually know who has and who hasn't taken such a course... but frankly, I'm getting tired of all the 'poser' crap... and all the 'piggy-back' hate towards Christians such as myself.... you know who you are.
I am not a 'fundie', nor a Republican, nor 100% pro-Bush (where he can make no wrong whatsoever). I am a GOD fearing Christian. If you can't accept that, tough. I personally don't go knocking on your door to shove my Bible down your throat. Where is the tolerance token you all hold in such high regard when discussing subjects such as abortion or sexuality??? Oh, I see... only you all are allowed to use it cause it doesn't apply to Christians. How convenient.
Though I respect people's right to formulate their own opinions, it really rattles my nerves to constantly read that I can't be a scientist and a 'Bible-believing' Christian. I don't expect you all to reconcile the concepts as a form of acceptance, but that stance is rather absurd... as if you all were the gauges by which my scientific credentials were validated.
Nicholas Wade's article is fundamentally flawed in that he assumes 'his' definition of a species is the reference for do enting genetic deviations that give rise to genetic speciation. His conclusion therefore, "Humans are still evolving" is only correct within the parameters of his definition. But that exclusive framework is not set in stone and is the subject of much debate. For example, no where in that article does he show how new genetic material is being created. Can such an experiment even be set up? Where would we find complete 'pools' of 6000 yr-old, and 3000 yr-old DNA genomes to use as reference. Sure... there are some samples... but not entire genomes, and certainly not enough of them to form a representative data 'point'. Most people don't realize that all human genes already exist in the 'global' population. They are simply 're-mixed' to create the different phenotypes of 'localized' populations we tend to classify as 'races'. That's all that's really going on. If not, go back and look at the 'amzing twins' example... The parents' stored genetic material gave rise to the phenotypic manifestation of their daughter, even if she 'looked' nothing like them...
Anyway, this discussion goes on... people will dissect my post. They will focus on a sentence and 'ignore' the concept. To tell you all the truth, I no longer have the patience to put up with such uncivilized debates. Some here present valid arguments and interesting perspectives (such as Extra Stout, FromWayDowntown, etc...) but others here are too inflammatory and insulting to take seriously (boutons, MaNuMaNiA, Oh Gee!, CBF, elpimpo4cc etc...). 'Cause in their eyes, no matter what I say... their hate toward my position is already set.
Last edited by hegamboa; 03-09-2006 at 11:46 AM.
Well taken how you're name has a sort of ring like genital warts or anal cysts, no one gives a damn to remember it correctly....too gruesome.
Poor Christians. Someone should pass a law protecting them. Then we can move torwards protecting anglo men and perhaps we could actualy get the media to cover crime against white women.
You have to admit Christians take more than their share of insults on this board. Why are Christians such fair game? Shall we do a thread on Islam or is everyone too pc to admit that those Muslims are scaring you less right now? Anyone care to take a few swipes at them? I'm pretty sure they don't teach evolution in their schools...along with many other subjects.Poor Christians. Someone should pass a law protecting them. Then we can move torwards protecting anglo men and perhaps we could actualy get the media to cover crime against white women.
(And in some Islamic countries the girls are lucky to be taught anything at all.)
And how about those Budhists? (sp?) I actually admire the Dalai Lama myself, but I'll bet if I do some research, I can find some serious bull and hypocrisy in their religion. But I won't bother, because there are not enough Budhists in this forum to insult, so I won't get much of a return on my investment of time. The Hindus (and I work with a lot of them) would also make an excellent target if you want to mock someone's beliefs. I work with a lot of Hindus, so I know. It is a culture and religion that could use some serious ridiculing. But I won't do it, because they are nice people and they don't deserve it. Just as most Christians don't deserve all the stones some of you throw at them.
Yes, Christian do get kicked around way too much around here. But at least none of you are being threatened with a beheading because of it. (Anyone see all the protests signs in London saying "behead all those who insult Islam"?
and perhaps we could actualy get the media to cover crime against white women.
actually, we should just have a seperate news channel covering missing and/or killed attractive white, affluent women from "good" families. Dan Abrams could anchor, that's all he covers most of the time anyway.
no Nbadan, while I appreciate your attempt at creating controversy, I do; its not the "Argentinians" who are laughing at "you", its "ME" laughing at the mofo's taking the bible literally!Oh man, the Argentinians are laughing at us.
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