(Untitled)

[kateorman]

By now you may've seen the Pew Forum's graph showing the proportion of people in the US of different religious beliefs who accept evolution, but for me more interesting is their overview of different religion's official stances on evolutionVery many Christian denominations see no contradiction between God's role as the creator of the universe and

Comments

[strangedave]

The idea that evolution is intrinsically opposed to religion seems to mostly be a Baptist thing. The lack of any hierarchy of authority, by which sensible theology can be applied to quell the charismatic and enthusiastic but stupid, is an intrinsic aspect of Baptist belief that seems to lead it into trouble.

[kateorman]

OTOH, the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons are strongly hierarchical...

[jvowles]

It's more startling to me that so many people who otherwise seem sensible reject it -- even 19% of buddhists.

[kateorman]

I was curious about the exact question, so I grabbed the original survey from the Pew site - here's a screencap of the evolution bit:

[pbristow]

The question, of course, is sloppily phrased in a way that leads people who see evolution as *part* of the explanation (which of course is all it was ever meant to be! And no, I'm not talking about "God had a hand it in too"; I mean that the theory of evolution addresses *only* the diversification of biological species, not the origins of life itself, nor the origins of DNA and the genetic code, nor the origins of sentience or morality or spirituality or haiku or sudoku...) and are precise in their answers to say "no". Of course a simple "no" isn't offered as a legitimate answer, except in the form of "completely disagree", which is likely to be read (incorrectly) as "these folks don't believe in evolution!". So folks like me, in order to indicate the nearest approximation to what we actually think, have a choice of "Mostly agree", "mostly disagree", or "don't know/refused", depending on our best guess as to how the interpreter of the data is going to construe each of those answers... =:o\

[kateorman]

If a survey asked me "Do you believe in God?", I'd be so stuck on the words "believe" and "God" that I'd have to answer "don't know".

I gotta tell you, though, evolution by natural selection gives us some big clues about abiogenesis, intelligence, and morality. (Although I'd like to see a little less hot air from the evolutionary psychologists and a little more evidence.)