August 19, 2006
Why doesn't America believe in evolution?
Jeff Hecht in New Scientist:
Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals: true or false? This simple question is splitting America apart, with a growing proportion thinking that we did not descend from an ancestral ape. A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact. [See here.]
Religious fundamentalism, bitter partisan politics and poor science education have all contributed to this denial of evolution in the US, says Jon Miller of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. "The US is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicised," he says. "Republicans have clearly adopted this as one of their wedge issues. In most of the world, this is a non-issue."
Miller's report makes for grim reading for adherents of evolutionary theory. Even though the average American has more years of education than when Miller began his surveys 20 years ago, the percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005 (Science, vol 313, p 765). That's despite a series of widely publicised advances in genetics, including genetic sequencing, which shows strong overlap of the human genome with those of chimpanzees and mice. "We don't seem to be going in the right direction," Miller says.
More here.
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Comments
America is embarrassing sometimes.
Posted by: beajerry | Aug 19, 2006 2:28:58 AM
Why doesn't America believe in evolution?
People don't do things that don't make sense. Generally, most of the time, they don't.
Believing nonsense makes sense sometimes. Hiding from the truth makes sense sometimes as well.
The academic template builds a schema where nonsense is always nonsense and never acceptable, where the truth, the right answer, is always the way forward - but in the real world it isn't always so.
One reason there's so much resistance to evolution may be because of what it implies about us, now.
That we're evolving - and not naturally, to naturally occurring pressures, but to our own increasingly artifical environment and by our own, often unintended, predation. We've shaken off the reins of natural selection's evolution, but that hasn't changed the fact of our evolving.
The tacit assumption, the common belief, is humanity's a thing, an unchanging constant - human. But evolutionary theory says all organisms are in constant shaping flux.
So we're evolving, and we're shaping our own evolutionary course.
Self-consiousness in that context is scary, and it turns a light on some frightening aspects of the social environment.
Much more comforting to stay in the dark.
Posted by: rollo | Aug 24, 2006 7:44:22 AM
Maybe Miller is being a little short sighted when he says we are moving in the wrong direction simply because Americans will not accept the theory of evolution as fact. Many people with the strongest opposition to the theory feel so because of their religion.
It is not that they are idiots, they choose to believe in a higher power, the story of creationism, and God. It is more to do with faith than reality. For many Christians, accepting the theory of evolution would throw Biblical teachings in the garbage can. Would you consider it politically correct to criticize people from other faiths for their beliefs? Most people would consider this disrespectful.
Would you really want to live in a non-spiritual nation? Nearly every society has it's norms and ethics, many are based on religious standards for behavior.
I would not want to live in a Godless America myself because many of the ideals set forth in our Constitution, justice system, and culture for how to treat others come from standards detailed in religious and Masonic teachings.
If you think American's are idiots, go live somewhere else. There is likely at least one Godless country where you need not be bothered by spiritual idiots.
We are evolving everyday as a nation. We have made leaps and bounds over our environmental limitations in the last century. Technology has had such a mass appeal that it seems almost like children born in the last two decades can operate a computer or play video games before they can even read. Other research has shown that new technologies are changing the way we process information in our own minds.
I think most Americans have come to accept this part of evolution, for instance, how about the eighty year old grandmother using a personal computer? In her youth, basic utilities were a luxury. If that is not our society evolving, I don't know what is.
I do not feel a strong religious conflict with the theory of evolution. I feel more conflict with closed minded people degrading the nation that I love by declaring us backward idiots. You may not like everything about America, but a true American will always have love for our nation and it's people.
Posted by: Amanda | Mar 29, 2011 10:44:03 AM
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