Let’s switch topics for a while and talk EVOLUTION and the state of the American mind about that subject.
This month is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin so the media is taking the opportunity to see where we and the world stand on the THEORY OF EVOLUTION. I have blogged extensively in the past, in the defense of evolution but today I will simply say that evolution is a fact that is proven on a daily basis and to somehow not treat it as a scientific fact is just plain stupid and a denial of reality.
I was pleased to read today that many churches here in Michigan were planning on celebrating Darwin and his scientific work by sermonizing on the way religion and science (evolution) can harmoniously coexist in our lives. Many of these clergymen want to defuse the belief that religious people are dumb, ignorant and hostile to science.
Obviously there is a way to work evolution into your belief system but that would entail treating the Bible as a story and not scientific fact; some religions can do that and others obviously cannot. There are also people that just cannot wrap their minds around a concept like evolution and for those there just isn’t any hope.
The statistics on the belief in evolution in 2009 is a little disheartening. In the U.S. the percentage of people believing evolution to be a scientific fact actually went down from 45% to 40% in the last 20 years and that is just hard to fathom.
62% of Americans actually believe that humans were created by god just as we are now with no evolutionary development. That fact is downright scary since physical evidence exists that humankind evolved over millions of years. Just today I was reading about DNA found from Neanderthal remains will help us know more about this “different” race of humans? These guys lived just 30,000 years ago and we have proof!
The U.S. ranked next to last (Turkey was last) in percentage of people NOT believing in evolution; how embarrassing is that!
It is interesting to also see which religions accept evolution and which do not. It is interesting to see that JEWS (77%) accept evolution and it is their Bible that is the biggest obstacle to belief in science. Buddhist (81%), Hindus (80%) and Catholics (58%) also accept evolution but not all of their members do. I believe that these religions just don’t make a big deal out of it and allow members to believe what they want to.
The real dumb-as-dirt religious people are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and Evangelical Christians and I guess they make up the bulk of the American population.
I guess the only reason for us being so far behind other nations in accepting scientific facts as facts is due to our educational system; schools are just not allowed to teach scientific facts as they are in other countries. This is due to societal pressures in local communities that cannot be overcome. Wanting our government to step in is a joke when we see what Bush did with religion and state.
We cannot force people to become enlightened so we must just keep plugging along hopefully making a difference in the small part of society that we can influence; our kids being the biggest part.
This month is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin so the media is taking the opportunity to see where we and the world stand on the THEORY OF EVOLUTION. I have blogged extensively in the past, in the defense of evolution but today I will simply say that evolution is a fact that is proven on a daily basis and to somehow not treat it as a scientific fact is just plain stupid and a denial of reality.
I was pleased to read today that many churches here in Michigan were planning on celebrating Darwin and his scientific work by sermonizing on the way religion and science (evolution) can harmoniously coexist in our lives. Many of these clergymen want to defuse the belief that religious people are dumb, ignorant and hostile to science.
Obviously there is a way to work evolution into your belief system but that would entail treating the Bible as a story and not scientific fact; some religions can do that and others obviously cannot. There are also people that just cannot wrap their minds around a concept like evolution and for those there just isn’t any hope.
The statistics on the belief in evolution in 2009 is a little disheartening. In the U.S. the percentage of people believing evolution to be a scientific fact actually went down from 45% to 40% in the last 20 years and that is just hard to fathom.
62% of Americans actually believe that humans were created by god just as we are now with no evolutionary development. That fact is downright scary since physical evidence exists that humankind evolved over millions of years. Just today I was reading about DNA found from Neanderthal remains will help us know more about this “different” race of humans? These guys lived just 30,000 years ago and we have proof!
The U.S. ranked next to last (Turkey was last) in percentage of people NOT believing in evolution; how embarrassing is that!
It is interesting to also see which religions accept evolution and which do not. It is interesting to see that JEWS (77%) accept evolution and it is their Bible that is the biggest obstacle to belief in science. Buddhist (81%), Hindus (80%) and Catholics (58%) also accept evolution but not all of their members do. I believe that these religions just don’t make a big deal out of it and allow members to believe what they want to.
The real dumb-as-dirt religious people are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and Evangelical Christians and I guess they make up the bulk of the American population.
I guess the only reason for us being so far behind other nations in accepting scientific facts as facts is due to our educational system; schools are just not allowed to teach scientific facts as they are in other countries. This is due to societal pressures in local communities that cannot be overcome. Wanting our government to step in is a joke when we see what Bush did with religion and state.
We cannot force people to become enlightened so we must just keep plugging along hopefully making a difference in the small part of society that we can influence; our kids being the biggest part.
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