John Lynch seems to have about as little to say about this statistic as I do: 60% of adult, educated, normal Americans believe Genesis is literally true. Or, more accurately, 60% of Americans say they think Genesis is literally true.
There is a difference. There is an attitude that religious explanations must not be questioned that is common here: what we need to do, and what I think the “New Atheists” are most successfully doing, is waking people up to the idea that that is not true — you can argue with religious proclamations, and having a divinity degree does not make you smart, let alone infallible. In fact, theologians face an image problem if they keep throwing up these long-winded clueless twits to be chewed up by meanies like Dawkins and Hitchens.
Hmm. I seem to remember a statistic of 45-50% being published around the time of the Dover trial. I wonder if this new statistic reflects different wording of the question (or some other factors) or an actual change in beliefs. I really hope it’s the former.
I think you hit it on the head there, PZ. They don’t want to question the obviously impossible parts, because they fear where that will lead – questioning the whole stoopid book. So sure, unicorns, talking mules and walking snakes, it’s all good, or you go to hell. Mind power games.
Just the other day I was browsing through old polls on belief in creation and evolution, and the thing that struck me the most is the contradictory nature of a lot of the results. Lots of people believe plants and animals evolved but few believed that people evolved, etc. This made me suspect two things: 1. Most people just don’t care much about these questions, and don’t give them much thought, and 2. the results are highly dependent upon the wording of the questions.
The fine print in the Barne survey suggests that they asked whether God ‘created the universe in six days’. That in itself doesn’t seem inconsistent on the surface with the Big Bang. If they asked people if Eve came from Adam’s rib, they might get a really different opinion of Genesis.
There are four lights
There’s not much to say here. Either well over 50% of Americans have suddenly become Young Earth creationists, or this survey has not only been massaged, but given a happy ending.
It’s also interesting to note that the percentage of believers is significantly different for different Bible stories. This suggests to me that people are picking and choosing which stories they think are plausible: at the very least, it suggests that there are less fundamentalists in the poll respondents than a cursory glance at the results might indicate, and that some people are thinking critically about the reality of the accounts.
You can believe that Genesis is “literally true” and believe that Adam had either one, two or three wives.
re: There are 4 lights… Teach your grandmother to suck egggs. Can be good yes, but can be bad also. Consider your basic YEC or IDer. Rational people realize that the world is MUCH older that the 6,000 – 10,000 years that YEC’s cling too, but cling they do. IDers swear it’s all about the science – but they don’t do any science. IDers and YECs are seeing 4 lights, when there really are 5 lights. Most people call that crazy.
Within my circle of cronies we talk openly and often about the absurdity of religion. But those cronies will admit they rarely challenge anyone merely to avoid the conversation strain that would surely ensue. It’s usually not worth it.
The people who talk about the wisdom of crowds usually fail to understand that most crowds are actually mobs.
Given that so much evidence is against the hypothesis, why do so many of you cling to the idea that the majority of people can behave reasonably and govern responsibly?
Re: 4
If you have something to say, say it. I’m not clicking your link otherwise.
As to the main point, the alternatives given in the poll are
“literally true” and “not literally true but written to illustrate a point”. The latter option might as well be “fiction”.
The link at http://www.barna.org is idiotic:
‘Surprisingly, the most significant Bible story of all – “the story of Jesus Christ rising from the dead, after being crucified and buried” – was also the most widely embraced.’
Um, duh. Anybody who doesn’t take that statement to be “literally true” has no business calling himself a “Christian”. Is it really “surprising” that people who profess to be Christian will, when polled about their religious beliefs, continue to profess a belief in the literal truth of a statement that forms the core of Christian beliefs?
I don’t know how soft the support is for these questions, but I bet that if you didn’t mention the Bible at all and polled people a question along the lines of “Do you believe the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, as scientists currently claim?” that the “yes” answer would be well over 50%.
Most people are quite capable of holding contradictory statements in their treasure trove of statements that they take to be “literally true”.
Is that insipidity, or slagging? I’m not sure, but it’s off topic and you’re just trolling.
In either case, you’re tilting at windmills. Almost everyone here cringes when they hear any of the Republican nominees droning on about the evils of “unelected activist judges”. I don’t think any of the people here would advocate anything other than a kind of pluralism at worst or a republic dedicated to the protection of civil liberties at best, so kindly ram your trollshit up your nose.
considering how often i hear people say things like “I literally jumped out of my skin” or “I literally died laughing”, i suspect at least a large part of the problem is misunderstanding of the meaning of literal
RickD, #11, makes an excellent point. Most people see nothing wrong with having contradictory beliefs.
The real question is: when a situation arises where two contradictory beliefs have to be chosen between, which way will most people jump? Towards scientific understanding, or their religious doctrines?
I think most of our European posters would claim the former for their homelands, and they might be right. But I suspect they’d be wrong about the US.
Reminds me of a creationist i met once who tried to convince me that 50% of SCIENTISTS believed that the earth was 6000 years old. Either he was thinking of a poll that said approx. 50% of scientists said they were religious, or one that said 50% of the public was creationist, or maybe he was just lied to.
Did they mention what percentage of adult, educated Americans believe poll results to be literally true?
Given that so much evidence is against the hypothesis, why do so many of you cling to the idea that the majority of people can behave reasonably and govern responsibly?
Exactly, that’s why the US Constitution forms a republic, not a democracy. It is an attempt to assess the will of the people while avoiding the danger of “mob rule”; to protect the minority from the “tyranny of the majority”.
Yes, too many in the US have forgotten that and increasingly demand that whatever “the majority” wants should automatically be “law”.
I think skyotter is on to something. The question is always about ‘literally true’.
Try asking if it is factuallly true, point for point. That might get an honest answer.
But that’s the point – you can have neither of those systems when a majority of the population are ignorant fools.
The etymology of the word ‘idiot’ is instructive – it is derived from the ancient Greek word for a person who was not permitted to take part in public, political affairs. What happens to a society when the idiots aren’t excluded from wielding political power? We’re going to find out.
It was famously said that democracy isn’t two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner, but a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. You know perfectly well that most of the posters here advocate some form of egalitarian socalism politically, and these results (and similar others) have serious implications for that advocacy. If you put equal power in the hands of the wolves as the lambs, what do you imagine will happen?
Also, if you noticed, the great majority (75%) of those who accepted the Genesis story as “literally true” were not college graduate; Barna themselves pointed out the percentage “dropped” to only 38% of adults who were college graduates. (Still too high, but not the 60% touted)
I do. I’m sorry I jumped the gun and tried to pull some apple-polishing up there, I didn’t realize you were trying to have a civil conversation.
What happens to a society when the idiots aren’t excluded from wielding political power? We’re going to find out.
GOING to find out??
seems to me in a different thread, you made a decent case for the idea that we already have.
many times.
60% of adult, educated, normal Americans believe Genesis is literally true. Or, more accurately, 60% of Americans say they think Genesis is literally true.
Or 60% of the testees have no idea what “Genesis” is, or what “literally true” means.
As for the wisdom of crowds vs. mobs…
Yesterday afternoon, on the City College of San Francisco campus, I walked past a young black man soliciting signatures for some ballot initiative or other. He called on me to sign his petition. I didn’t tell him I’m not registered to vote in that county–instead I told him I don’t lend my signature to initiative petitions.
“Why not?”
I told him I consider it to be an abrogation of legislative responsibility to offload politically charged issues to voters instead of taking a stand on their own, and that they are frequently used to manipulate voter turnout, and that I’m opposed to majority rule. Apparently this was too much, and I was to listen and learn.
“If you won’t sign my petition, you’re just a hater. Look, initiatives are the future of Democracy. This isn’t the sixties anymore, man!” [ostensibly, because I’m over fifty with long white hair, he knows everything he needs to know about me].
I told him the initiative process is nothing new, having been a California institution for almost a hundred years, and then decided an example was necessary. “Look, the governor has at least twice vetoed bills sent by the legislature conferring rights for civil unions and gay marriage that he has vetoed, citing an initiative that brought out anti-gay voters to express their majority distaste for the gay. I told him this goes against every principle I admire in the US Constitution, as unpopular views and minority rights should be protected from majority rule; indeed, the enshrinement of civil rights for minority groups is something he should want to protect. I should have been prepared for his response.
“Gay isn’t a minority.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying gay people are in the mainstream?”
“Gay is a made up minority. It isn’t a real class of people, it’s just made up.”
“So, you’re saying “Gay” is an artificial social construct, like race, then?”
“You’re a hater! You should learn how to listen! Gay is just– wait a minute. Are you a Christian?”
“Hells, no.”
“Well, there you go then. That explains everything.”
We’d both concluded there was no reason to bother with any further attempt at communication, and as I left, I was exhorted to learn how to listen to people, that maybe I’d learn something.
If anything, I think it’s the moderates and liberals who are most protective of religion as a sacred area which should admit no arguments or disagreements. You can argue within a tradition, of course — but not from outside of it. One of the major reasons Fundamentalists rile them up so much is that moderates think it is “extreme” of them to think — and say — that there is only one “truth,” they have it, and others are wrong.
No, no, no. That is not how religion works. There are many truths, everyone has a valuable part of any common truth, and something can be true for one person and not for another. There’s truth as in fact, and then there’s “truth” as in “fact for me.” Religion steers them into that second routine. Watch their reaction when another Christian calls Islam or Wicca or any other spiritual belief a “false religion.” They think it not just rude, but shallow. Such statements don’t show a nuanced enough appreciation of the religious understanding of “true.”
And the same thing that pisses them off about Fundies pisses them off about atheists. I suspect the problem with polls like this isn’t just difficulty understanding the meaning of the first part of the phrase “literally true.”
#23, I agree completely–I already posted my comment on Stranger Fruit, but expanded on it here:
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2007/10/just-like-it-says-in-genesis.html
I was exhorted to learn how to listen to people, that maybe I’d learn something.
LOL
well, technically he was right, since you learned something from listening to him as much as you did. Probably not what he intended to teach, though.
Moreover, the young man continues to teach his “lesson”, as you posted his responses here.
judging by the responses to the governor’s own initiatives (for those unaware, the term “down in flames” doesn’t even do justice to how badly they lost), I’d say most Californians are pretty fed up with special interests and others trying to bypass their elected representatives with the initiative process.
this isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic, after all.
If anything, I think it’s the moderates and liberals who are most protective of religion as a sacred area which should admit no arguments or disagreements.
you know, that’s actually a good point that rarely gets raised as we look at the ridiculousness of the rethuglicans.
there’s plenty of woo on the left, that consumers and purveyors of said woo feel they need to be egalitarian about. Can’t attack the religion and still defend the woo.
so, yeah, you’re absolutely right that there is nearly as much tolerance on the left of religious belief as there is on the right.
the difference is, that on the left they usually DO speak out about using religious beliefs (even woo) as informing political action and legislation.
one battle at a time, I guess.
Regarding comment #11 and subsequent remarks, My father is an Anglican minister. Both he and my mother have undergraduate degrees. I would categorize them both as adult, educated and “normal” (depending on what one means by that). They both believe the genesis story to be literally true. They also both accept, as far as I know, that the earth is billions of years old and that evolution probably occurred and continues to occur (for all animals except humans of course). I personally that think their views are contradictory, but they seem quite capable of holding them and probably think very little about the contradiction.
A second point I wanted to make is that education is not a silver bullet vaccination against superstitious or inconsistent belief. Every living member of my family from my grandparents on down to my cousins, siblings, their spouses and myself are college educated. Most have master’s degrees. Many have doctorates. Several are or were teachers or university professors at mainstream public state universities. All, as in every single one except me, amounting to more than 20 people are Christian. At least half are evangelical. I’d venture to say many or most of them would say genesis is “literally true”. Probably none of them could tell you a single thing about evolutionary theory apart from “evolution says we descended from apes” or something they read in a Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell or Phillip E. Johnson book. I personally know what I know about evolutionary theory (which is admittedly little) only from personal study. I made it through 12 years of public school 4 years as an undergrad and 2 years of grad school without ever hearing the word “evolution” in the classroom and without ever taking a single class in the biological sciences.
“and what I think the “New Atheists” are most successfully doing,…”
well, that’s a statement that would be worth verifying. If the New Atheist movements wants to be succesful over the next comming decades in reducing drastically this depressing statistic, I would suggest that it starts first by analysing the reasons for, what I suspect, is a huge disparity between the US and secular Europe, this is also what I guess Caledonian was getting at. BTW never wondered why so many vocal new atheists are british.
I don’t have any stats to compare with the Barna group for Europe, but let me illustrate my point with another very interesting stat that makes the point :
(from nationmaster.com, don’t have church attendance for protestants)
Catholics US : 63 mill.
of which regularly attend church : 44%
Catholics France : 45 mill.
of which regularly attend church : 21%
You see the huge difference, more than double the brainwashing in the US! And we are talking of two countries that have similar income and educational levels, and believe me, 40 years ago, France was a much more practicing country.
Now, the hypothesis that I am making is that church attendance goes hand in hand with brainwashing and can explain very well such huge % of people who simply, are confused about the truth.
I’m skeptical that 60% of adult americans knows what “literally” literally means.
So, over half of us believe the story of Noah’s Flood to be literally true?
I don’t buy it.
Two questions to stump ’em:
“Where’d the water come from?”
“Where’d it go?”
To validate the poll referred to here, I think you also need to put in some really basic science questions.
“Do you think there was an ice age?”
“Were there ever saber-tooth tigers or wooly mammoths?”
“How old is the world?”
“Fred Phelps — real, or spoof?” (okay, maybe not this one)
I think you’d start to get some real contradictions in the answers, and that’s the entire point: To invalidate the results. If 60% believe the story of Adam and Eve, then how could there possibly have been an ice age (given that the Bible documents everything between October 23, 4004 BC and a couple hundred years after Christ died)?
Catholics US : 63 mill.
of which regularly attend church : 44%
Catholics France : 45 mill.
of which regularly attend church : 21%
You see the huge difference, more than double the brainwashing in the US! And we are talking of two countries that have similar income and educational levels,
number of people in the US:
over 250 million
number of people in France:
70 million
what you basically just said is that well over half of France is Catholic.
is that right?
correction:
change over 250 million in the US to around 300 million.
(250 was from 1990 census)
What’s really important is if they’re talking about Genesis before or after Peter Gabriel left.
As a born and bred Englishman I have long been bemused by the extreme religiousness of some in the USA. My first awareness was with the TV evangelicals. Such begging programmes would not be permitted here, and we laugh in disbelief at the ‘dig down deep’ philosophy of the TV ministers.
Being or not being a Christian is no big deal here. No Christian would ever dare to mention the Bible as a literal scientific document. Such a person would never be taken seriously again.
The church tends to play a pastoral role. They get out into the community and do the kind of good deeds that Christians claim they do. A vicar or priest will visit the sick in hospital, the elderly at home and arrange for the disadvantaged to find homes or food.
There is so little pressure that even the most strictly religious families will see their children walk away from the church as soon as they are old enough to think. And that they do is not a big deal. It is the norm.
Not sure what the figures are but I am think that the population percentage who go to church regularly is in single figures. The only time most people go into a church is when they have a wedding or a funeral to attend.
You will find that the vehement European atheists do not get much of an audience in Europe like they do in the USA because few actually care or need to care about being an organised atheist. Apatheist is probably a more appropriate term because there is no real Theist nutcases to oppose. Religious debate tends to occur on a civilised level, the same as any philosophical discussion. There is no need to try and offend those who actually do try to do good in the community rather than ask for large sums of money.
That we might get a creationist museum built in Europe at a cost of millions just does not seem possible. Creationism does not exist in Europe.
Why it should exist in the USA is a phenomenon that I cannot begin to understand never mind explain. The fact that you guys have to spend so much energy countering literal theism is a great waste of your resources. I just wish I had some idea of how to help.
you have to look at % church attendance. “Catholics” means people who say they are Catholics, but not necessarily practice catholicism. For example, years ago, I crossed on a form that I was a catholic, because I was raised that way, but haven’t attended church service for more than 20 years and I am really an atheist. Religions are very quick in “absorbing” people.
It’s like the stat that 90% over of people claim they are Christians in the US.
What I am saying is that someone who goes to church every sunday will continue believing in the stories of the bible, it’s just life-long brainwashing.
So, I wanted to compare two populations, people who claim to be catholic in the US and in France. A catholic in France is much less likely to believe in a litteral acount of the bible, because he’s much less likely to continue going to church all his life. Not in the US. And I find that surprising. It also explains to me whay we have so much difficulties to understand, from France, what is happening in the US with your Dino museums, mega churches, creationist stupidities, etc… In France, religion has become a very loose term, and has lost a lot of influence.
We are a truly secular country, not the US. And I guess that’s what you guys have to study, why ?
and of course, can’t agree more with what Robert just said about the Uk. And it’s the same in Germany (Merkel, the chancelor, is a theoretical physicist, just imagine when she meets Bush !).
I really think the best advice that you guys in the USA can get if you want to change things is to study why is there such a difference today between the US and Europe (ok, apart from Italy and Poland, but they got the Vatican and an ex beloved pope so that explains things for these two countries).
That difference, I am quite sure, was much smaller at the end of the WWII. Why ? What caused this sudden revival of the churches in the US, against a trend which was gradually declining ? Could it have to do with American Exceptionalism, the permanent endoctrination of the fact that America was a nation blessed by God, with a “mission” to spread freedom and democracy around the world ? I suppose their is a link. There must be an explanation. The phenomena is to obvious to go unnoticed to those who know well both cultures and their evolution over the last decades.
I’m with Churchill on that one: democracy is the best of all bad forms of government, and there aren’t any good ones.
I’m also with Sagan: like science, democracy allows us to get rid of our mistakes without violence.
Of course it does. It just happens to be a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy. In Switzerland, many laws must pass a referendum: that’s a feature of direct democracy.
The presence of a constitution does not negate a democracy. The constitution can after all be altered by the majority — it just has to be a bigger one than just 50 %.
“Republic” merely means “not monarchy”. Even though, etymologically, it should mean “democracy” because it means “public affair” as opposed to “private affair”.
I thought it meant “private man” and then “someone who isn’t interested in politics (and therefore stupid)”?
See, that’s unique about the USA. Elsewhere you don’t take biology classes, you have biology lessons throughout most of public school.
I once read that half of all Americans claim they go to church every Sunday — and only a quarter of them actually does it. Europeans don’t feel a need to be hypocritical in this matter.
Miracle and miracle, respectively. :-| You won’t make any true believer give up so fast.
Of course — nominally. In fact, I’m surprised it isn’t more.
There are tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people in Europe who never go to church (or perhaps at Christmas and Easter for the sake of a family member) but haven’t officially left their church.
I’m with Churchill on that one: democracy is the best of all bad forms of government, and there aren’t any good ones.
I’m also with Sagan: like science, democracy allows us to get rid of our mistakes without violence.
Of course it does. It just happens to be a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy. In Switzerland, many laws must pass a referendum: that’s a feature of direct democracy.
The presence of a constitution does not negate a democracy. The constitution can after all be altered by the majority — it just has to be a bigger one than just 50 %.
“Republic” merely means “not monarchy”. Even though, etymologically, it should mean “democracy” because it means “public affair” as opposed to “private affair”.
I thought it meant “private man” and then “someone who isn’t interested in politics (and therefore stupid)”?
See, that’s unique about the USA. Elsewhere you don’t take biology classes, you have biology lessons throughout most of public school.
I once read that half of all Americans claim they go to church every Sunday — and only a quarter of them actually does it. Europeans don’t feel a need to be hypocritical in this matter.
Miracle and miracle, respectively. :-| You won’t make any true believer give up so fast.
Of course — nominally. In fact, I’m surprised it isn’t more.
There are tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people in Europe who never go to church (or perhaps at Christmas and Easter for the sake of a family member) but haven’t officially left their church.
And, importantly, this is not a matter of intimidation by evilutionists. To the contrary. As some bishop said in the late 19th century, in the context of evolution: “The Bible teaches the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.” People believe that to use the Bible as a science textbook is a naive mistake, an error, a heresy. (Sure, that latter word isn’t used, it’s too impolite, but…)
(Except in Jehovah’s Witnesses and in the Dutch Bible Belt.)
She’s also the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. But I think that would make it more, not less, difficult for the two to find common ground.
It’s not that bad even in Poland. Italy? In Italy you have communists running around in (comparatively) huge numbers!
In Poland, like in Ireland and Lithuania, Catholicism is part of the national identity. That doesn’t do it much good in the long term.
And, importantly, this is not a matter of intimidation by evilutionists. To the contrary. As some bishop said in the late 19th century, in the context of evolution: “The Bible teaches the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.” People believe that to use the Bible as a science textbook is a naive mistake, an error, a heresy. (Sure, that latter word isn’t used, it’s too impolite, but…)
(Except in Jehovah’s Witnesses and in the Dutch Bible Belt.)
She’s also the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. But I think that would make it more, not less, difficult for the two to find common ground.
It’s not that bad even in Poland. Italy? In Italy you have communists running around in (comparatively) huge numbers!
In Poland, like in Ireland and Lithuania, Catholicism is part of the national identity. That doesn’t do it much good in the long term.
The ancient Greeks didn’t think highly of technical skills and tradespeople. The tension in their society between valuing and eschewing tekhnologia doesn’t exist in ours.
Well, perhaps not yours. But the US doesn’t value either applied or theoretical knowledge very much any longer.
In Switzerland, many laws must pass a referendum: that’s a feature of direct democracy.
uh, we have that here, too.
it differs in usage between different states, and is often controlled through the initiative process.
unfortunately, the initiative process is often usurped by special interest groups.
you have special interest groups, no?
But I think that would make it more, not less, difficult for the two to find common ground.
nah, Bush will just “look into her eyes” and see the truth of the matter… just like he did with Putin.
then claim there was mutual understanding and agreement, regardless of the content of any actual discussion, if any.
There are tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people in Europe who never go to church (or perhaps at Christmas and Easter for the sake of a family member) but haven’t officially left their church.
wait, what were you saying about hypocrisy again?
ah:
Europeans don’t feel a need to be hypocritical in this matter.
I must be missing something.
I’m sure a little back rub would break the ice.
Don’t forget that many, many people seem to think “literally” means the exact opposite of what it really does, mostly from watching terrible sports announcers. “Joe blow is literally on fire out there today” is a pretty common type of commentary (I have yet to delight in seeing a player actually burst into flames, racing aside). So perhaps a large number of people have confused the defintion of literally. Along the lines of : the bible is a book. Books are sometimes called literature. Therefore, the bible is “literally” true, if not, you know, really actually true. It’s not a far fetched mistake to make…
“what we need to do, and what I think the “New Atheists” are most successfully doing, is waking people up to the idea that that is not true — you can argue with religious proclamations, and having a divinity degree does not make you smart, let alone infallible”
I completely agree. Dawkins often gets hit with the point that he is not addressing the situation in the right way. Even people on “our side” will criticize him for his in your face approach. But I think this approach is necessary if your goal is to make people realize that religion is, in fact, not immune to criticism. And this is probably one of the most important steps in changing the zeitgeist.
I think it IS a problem with the word “literally.”
http://literally.barelyfitz.com/
Quoted from the Barna webpage (emphasis mine):
“This report is based upon a nationwide telephone survey conducted by The Barna Group in August 2007 among a random sample of 1000 adults, age 18 and older. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample is ±3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Statistical weighting was used to calibrate the sample to known population percentages in relation to demographic variables”
So does this mean that if 80% of the population is reported as Christian (by some source or another) that the respondant who identified themselves as Christian were scaled to be counted as 80% of the result?
They don’t want to question the obviously impossible parts, because they fear where that will lead –
Like to fierce arguments every thanksgiving and christmas.
I hypothesize: religion is what “polite” society “believes”- if ‘believing’ translates into a commitment to public affirmation of the authority of, well, whatever authorities their brand of religion holds. Perhaps the KJV, perhaps the pope, maybe some other book or guy in a pointy hat. The commitment includes affirmation of the truth of supplied orthodoxy.
It comes from being socialized from an early age to think that only these commitments are acceptable, and especially to think that no commitment to some deity is far worse than heretical commitments. Even latter day converts had these seeds sown, either in their own home or in society.
No chain of argument is ever presented, because it is superfluous to the aims of the “belief”, which is maintenance of a social order.
It isn’t the kind of belief we talk about when we talk about apportioning credence to whatever has the best evidence. It’s an affirmation of fealty to a social order, like a loyalty oath to a king.
So when we contradict a YEC, they see it as a threat to a social order. They neither comprehend nor care about the epistemological underpinnings of belief, because it’s not what they mean. Consequently, they see nothing wrong with distortion of the facts, because it is really just a power struggle over what discourse is acceptable in public, not a debate about truth.
Or maybe not. Social forces seem to me to be huge, though, and maintaining status in one’s group is very often going to trump accepting the logic of someone who is definitionaly out of your group. Which is probably why even the most eloquent new Atheist is likely to only snipe out the weak and poorly committed from the fold, and leave the edifice untouched.
I’m all for contending against the faith. But I think that it is, to some extent, pissing up a rope, unless you get to the basic elements of critical thought. Otherwise you’ll forever talk past them. Contradiction is meaningless to someone who hasn’t first accepted logic.
Hm… except for the parties, no, hardly. I hear lobbying is starting in the European Parliament, but it’s more difficult in most EU countries than in the USA because members of parliament, or at least most of them, are not elected directly. Instead, you vote for a party. This means that MPs don’t have a constituency that can threaten not to reelect them. I’m not saying this only has advantages, but it clearly makes lobbying much more difficult.
Sorry. You are of course right.
In fact, yes. Going to church is the first, not the last, thing you stop doing when your faith starts to fade. I did that because it was simply boring (practically the same every week, with the ever same rituals expressing the ever same things), long before my faith was gone (which happened slowly, Darwin-style). And people who don’t go to church are not ashamed to say so. No matter how much they believe.
How much it is that individual people believe, on the other hand, is difficult to figure out. After all, you can’t simply ask people for their deeply personal beliefs, and unless asked, hardly anyone will let you notice. However, I get the impression that most people still don’t leave the church if their Catholicism has bleached to the point where they just believe in a deistic god plus some vague afterlife plus God’s vague and ineffable love. After all, people — regular churchgoers included — already don’t expect each other to believe in things like papal infallibility or the pope being elected by the Holy Spirit or the evilness of contraception or the necessity for having only celibate men as priests (and even lower ranks in the church hierarchy), and expect each other to treat claims of (even Biblical) miracles with agnostic skepticism and general disinterest.
On the other hand, you get people who find problems with organized religion, but not with religion in general, leave the church, and go on to live a more religious (or “spiritual”) life than the average regular churchgoer.
Hm… except for the parties, no, hardly. I hear lobbying is starting in the European Parliament, but it’s more difficult in most EU countries than in the USA because members of parliament, or at least most of them, are not elected directly. Instead, you vote for a party. This means that MPs don’t have a constituency that can threaten not to reelect them. I’m not saying this only has advantages, but it clearly makes lobbying much more difficult.
Sorry. You are of course right.
In fact, yes. Going to church is the first, not the last, thing you stop doing when your faith starts to fade. I did that because it was simply boring (practically the same every week, with the ever same rituals expressing the ever same things), long before my faith was gone (which happened slowly, Darwin-style). And people who don’t go to church are not ashamed to say so. No matter how much they believe.
How much it is that individual people believe, on the other hand, is difficult to figure out. After all, you can’t simply ask people for their deeply personal beliefs, and unless asked, hardly anyone will let you notice. However, I get the impression that most people still don’t leave the church if their Catholicism has bleached to the point where they just believe in a deistic god plus some vague afterlife plus God’s vague and ineffable love. After all, people — regular churchgoers included — already don’t expect each other to believe in things like papal infallibility or the pope being elected by the Holy Spirit or the evilness of contraception or the necessity for having only celibate men as priests (and even lower ranks in the church hierarchy), and expect each other to treat claims of (even Biblical) miracles with agnostic skepticism and general disinterest.
On the other hand, you get people who find problems with organized religion, but not with religion in general, leave the church, and go on to live a more religious (or “spiritual”) life than the average regular churchgoer.
Here’s the one that gets me from the survey – including the story of David and Goliath at all, and the fact that it got similar results as Genesis. I mean, it’s the only story that didn’t require miraculoug divine intervention and seems like it could have actually happened – a shepherd, who has hours and hours to practice with a sling, and kills an opposing soldier. A bit of a lucky shot, maybe, but lucky shots do tend to happen from time to time. Certainly, it’s more believable than the rest of the stories they included.
I also agree entirely with RickD’s comment #11 about “surprisingly.” The resurrection was the last shred of belief I held onto before leaving Christianity altogether. It didn’t seem like there was much point to calling myself a Christian if I didn’t accept at least that.
but it’s more difficult in most EU countries than in the USA because members of parliament, or at least most of them, are not elected directly. Instead, you vote for a party.
ah, yeah, actually I hadn’t considered before how that might put a damper on special interests.
interesting.
still, while harder to have special interests influence specific politicians, surely they still have influence within the referendum process itself?
Here (in California), provided you have enough cash to buy enough influence, you can get just about any crazy-ass measure put on the ballot (even a governor recall election), and often buy enough advertising to give it a good chance of passage.
interestingly, when tried from the top down angle (as the current governor tried himself), it rarely seems to work.
so much irony, so little time…