I wish I’d had these data yesterday. I gave a creationist-bashing talk, and my introductory slides were intended to show the generally deplorable state of science education in this country. I used some national data, but what would have been more dramatic would have been to use something local and even more extreme. Walla Walla University, a Seventh Day Adventist college, did a survey of student views on origins. There is lots and lots of data in chart form on that page, and all of it is depressing and disgraceful.
Perhaps you wonder how many students think a magic man in the sky did it:
Or how many students stopped learning about science when they stopped watching the Flintstones:
Or whether these devout kids find the clergy sufficient, or have deluded themselves into believing their wacky ideas are supported by science?
I thought about raging about how WWU wasn’t doing their job as a university (but clearly, they’re doing great as a church), but then I was stopped short — what would a similar survey at other American colleges look like? What does the student body at my university think? I dread finding out.
But I want to find out. Hey, student freethought groups out there, here’s a project suggestion for you all: do a similar survey. Put together a questionnaire, table at your student union and gather respondents, and post the results somewhere. The reward is that you’ll almost certainly make your science professors cry.
Hmm, I didn’t know that the Earth was created in the Big Bang. Here I always thought it was formed, along with the rest of the solar system, out of a collapsing cloud of gas and dust.
Silly me.
But if you do make a survey, don’t ask if the Earth came into existence by means of the Big Bang. You know you have a bad survey when all the answers available to choose from are wrong. (Yes, I suppose you could say the Big Bang eventually resulted in the existence of the Earth, but it makes no sense to talk about the origin of the Earth directly in terms of an event that happened 9 billion years earlier.)
The survey is incomplete.
20% of the US population thinks the sun orbits the earth and can’t diagram the solar system. It’s 26% for the fundies. For the SDA’s who knows? Judging from their scientific knowledge, it could be higher.
And what about the Flat Earth? The biblical support for the Flat Earth is far greater than for evolution. Which isn’t mentioned at all in the bible.
20% seems to be the number for people who will believe anything, no matter how stupid and unfactual it is. UFO aliens with anal probes, Bigfoot, Elvis, fairies, ghosts, vampires, ghouls, elves, lepruchauns, you name it, people believe it.
At what point do they make the logical leap that nothing is backing these “declarations”, and that truth isn’t decided by whatever you feel like believing??
To answer the original question. For bible colleges like Walla Walla U. it is:
1. To carefully make sure the students don’t actually learn anything. Knowledge is the mortal enemy of religion. I’m sure the science departments at WWU are devoid of anything that has been learned in the last 200 years.
2. To make sure little Johnny and Suzy meet and marry another Seventh Day Adventist religious kook. This is important. If you were a brain dead ignorant religious fanatic, would you want your kids marrying a normal person. The risk is high here, they might actually escape their brainwashing and you would have to write them off as a loss to the cult.
Their worst nightmares would come true. Your grandkids would grow up educated and free.
Yep, I’ve observed that a lot and even call it my “20% Theory” (though I guess it’s more of a hypothesis ;p ). It’s also right around the lowest percentage that any nation has achieved in terms of evolution denialism (I believe Iceland is like 18% or 19%).
Recalling that we are after all just somewhat smarter hairless apes, we probably shouldn’t lose sleep over this. Once you’ve achieved the 20% goal, trying to push miseducation numbers lower than that is just not worth the effort.
Edith really summed up this type of crap. We should ever be vigilant against stupidity and always be willing to expose and destroy it.
If they were polling students at a Seventh Day Adventist college, then these results are not surprising. It was Seventh Day Adventists who rescued Young Earth Creationism from oblivion around the beginning of the twentieth century. It had almost died out by the time they brought it back.
It fits in well with the fact that the median IQ is 100, meaning half the population is below that.
There will always be 20% of the population that is at or below the 20% level on the IQ scale.
Or to put it more simply. 20% of the population is really, really dumb.
I could do that. Sounds like it’d be interesting, but also a little depressing. It also sounds like a lot of work and paper. Knowing my group, I’ll probably have to do the whole thing by myself (*sigh* but I love them anyway).
My roommate in college was a Seventh-Day Adventist. She was also a pre-med student. I once asked her what she thought about dinosaur bones, since wouldn’t they conflict with the idea of six-days of creation? She said that she thought that dinosaur bones were planted by satan to test her faith. I decided then never to see an S.D.A. doctor, I don’t trust someone to rationally diagnose me who has to jump through those irrational hoops.
I can’t get too worked up about the ignorance of students at Walla Walla “University”. According to US News and World Distort’s (admittedly very flawed) rankings:
“It is “selective” (my quotation marks), with an acceptance rate of 89.0 percent”
so from a pool of highly self selecting Seventh Day Adventist applicants (approx 16 Million adherents in the US as measured by baptisms) and I’m guessing virtually no competition from non SDAs, fully 9 out of 10 applicants get in.
This is an ignorance echo chamber not a University.
At least someone in Walla Walla is trying to be reasonable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CbmbdWK6338#!
“If you were a brain dead ignorant religious fanatic, would you want your kids marrying a normal person.”
this statement uses the word normal as if normal means healthy and not crazy or some variant of unhealthy or at least not totally ignorant about science.
As I look around most people do not understand very much of the scientific truth. In that way you could say the normal people do not “believe in science”.
normal suggest something of a more statistical relationship and has very little to do with healthy or ignorance or any other quality. It is something more along the lines of 9 out of 10 then a value of being correct.
as it is used it is just the wrong word normal does really not mean healthy.
sorry for sounding like a tone troll. It is a distinction that just bugs me to hell.
I am not very surprised about the results of the pooling ignorance is the “normal” state of people it seems. It takes some personal effort to over come it. Outside of their personal life and work few people are exposed to or interested in very much. Nothing that would take any effort certainly.
uncle frogy
@12 your numbers are off.
The SDA’s claim 16-17 million members. The vast majority are in the third world.
US membership is around 1 million and hasn’t moved much in decades. IIRC, they have had a problem with young people in the US drifting away for a long time.
Not wholly the case. Especially, the engineering department at least used to draw in a number of non-Adventists, and of course some non-Adventists are found throughout. Ex-Adventists, in particular, would constitute a significant minority.
Probably the student body is more Adventist than it used to be, though, because they’ve cracked down on evolution creeping into instruction, fired a few teachers, etc. I suspect that the numbers would have been less depressing when I went (as an ex-Adventist), in the ’90s.
The more I see this rot, the more I’m glad to have that religion behind me. You’re told that honesty is important, and then honesty in science isn’t even allowed. Fuck ’em.
Glen Davidson
It seems somewhat appropriate that the advertisement directly above this post is for getting an online degree at Liberty U.
Okay, here’s my quiz for the fundies so they can get butthurt too.
OPEN BOOK QUIZ
1. Jesus’ real name, according to scripture, is
a. Emmanuel
b. Jesus
c. Neither
2. How did Jesus get to Nazareth?
a. Bethlehem → Egypt → Nazareth
b. Bethlehem → Nazareth
c. Both a and b
d. He was actually born in Nazareth
3. How did the Apostle Judas die?
a. He hanged himself
b. He fell down and his guts burst out
c. Both a and b
d. Jesus killed him with the jawbone of an ass
4. How many times did the cock crow before Peter denied knowing Jesus?
a. one time
b. three times
c. it didn’t crow at all
d. both a and b
e. a and b and c
5. What was the first thing Jesus said when he was crucified?
a. Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do
b. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit
c. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?
d. Jesus said nothing while on the cross
e. Woman, behold thy son!
f. All of the above
g. None of the above
Man, this is fun!
Just make sure any origin surveys include a “Great Green Arkleseizure” option.
The dinosaur question is a bit misleading because it doesn’t specify “non-avian”.
20% seems to be the number for people who will believe anything, no matter how stupid and unfactual it is.
good point. This also suggests that anyone intending to design a survey should control for this issue as well.
call it: The gullibility index
Or to put it more simply. 20% of the population is really, really dumb.
remember though, that this was a poll of UNIVERSITY students, which should be selecting for a slightly higher average than the national average would be overall.
so, 20% is indeed something to be concerned about in this poll, and would be even more concerning for a real university.
short version:
gullibility /= stupidity
I’m not a zoologist and I don’t play one on television, but are birds considered dinosaurs? I thought that they were believed to be descended from dinosaurs and that all actual dinosaurs were now extinct. I would be happy to stand corrected. Is there an authority in the room?
straight from the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird#Dinosaurs_and_the_origin_of_birds
so, technically, they’re a subgroup, not a true member of, the groups including dinosaurs.
but generally speaking, if you look at a classification tree, yeah, you could legitimately call them “dinosaurs”.
I wouldn’t though. The distinctions are large enough in my opinion to keep them in their own group.
Aves (birds) are technically part of Dinosauria in exactly the same fashion that Chiroptera (bats) are part of Mammalia.
And modern birds are distinct from the average persons view of dinosaurs only because they are not aware of a) what Mesozoic birds are like and b) what the great diversity of maniraptorans other than birds are like.
For more details, see this and this.
Right, then. I stand corrected. Thank you Icthyic and Thomas Holtz for the clarification. Now I think I’ll go home and cook up some dinosaur cacciatore (Gallus gallus domesticus) for supper.
Evidently, one thing the Christian colleges aren’t good for is basketball:
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Walla-Walla / Portland State Univeristy [sic]:
47-102
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Walla-Walla / Montana Tech, Butte, MT
46-95
Darn it! Losing to those secular bastards by over 50 points each match!
But hey! They squeezed on by New hope Christian College! We know who war more pious and abstinent leading up to that game!
Friday, January 6, 2012
Walla-Walla / New Hope Christian College
101-87
I am a student of the sciences at Walla Walla University, and I have a number of things to say.
1. The first graph (how the earth came into existence) is improperly scaled. They only had 640-odd responses, and the axes indicate something closer to 800.
2. Someone commented that we probably don’t teach anything newer than 200 years old. I can’t speak for anything other than my department of physics, but we keep as up to date as possible. In class today we covered one topic published 3 weeks ago. I have friends in the biology department and they seem to be doing relatively current stuff.
3. No one has yet lost their job over this, but I may be speaking too soon. Apparently the General Conference (the highest power in the Adventist Church, for the uninitiated), has been in communication with the school over this issue. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
4. When I arrived at the school a few years ago, I was definitely Adventist. Now, as a result of my education (and also my friends), I am agnostic trending toward atheist. Yes, there are a lot of very religious people here. Yes, I used to be one of them. Now, I think I know the majority of my fellow skeptics here. We exist underground and the group is slowly growing. There is still hope for the people here trapped in religion. If I broke free, others can, too.
I also attend WWU as an Electrical Engineering major. When I first came here I had my doubts about religion, but I had professors that encouraged careful thought and analysis, which helped set me on the path to becoming the atheist I am today.
I don’t want to support the school whole-heartedly, there are many policies and practices that hurt my brain, but most of those try to regulate student life outside of the classroom, not student learning within it. This may change soon, unfortunately, if there is too much of a backlash from the issue of our student newspaper that PZ got the data from. While I look at that data and want to cry at the misinformation, the school administrators and the General Conference look at these numbers and only see the loss of faith of the minority.
La Sierra U., an SDA university, fired their biology department a short while ago.
They said it was for being caught drinking beer but two of those fired weren’t even there watching the same basketball game.
Good luck to the biology department at WWU but christofascists like to fire people. Why not, if you can’t fire evolutionists, what’s the use in being a wild eyed religious fanatic.
something interesting to note: many of the officials and members of the Seventh-Day Adventist church are angry at this school because the results show that “so many” believe in other than a “literal 6-day creation”. they’re upset because the school must be undermining religion by encouraging students to think! (since if the school were “truly” Adventist then 100% of the survey would show belief in young-earth creationism)
oh, and most of the biology professors there do actually teach straight evolution, even though they’ll offer the qualifier on the first day of class, something like “whether you believe it or not, this is what you have to know to be a scientist…”
what people who’ve never been part of this denomination may not know is that there is a big difference between what the SDA scientists teach/think/believe and what the mainstream student body (or mainstream church) believes. also between what the scientist can admit to believing and what they actually think.
I recently criticized my university (I’m an undergraduate) in a survey they were doing about the state of the student body. I said we would do well to take more pains to reprimand the creationists that come here and spew misinformation freely, or to educate the students that these views are factually inaccurate. I said I didn’t like coddling idiots, and was offended these people were trying to make me look like I graduated from a mental clinic.
Don’t turn my degree into toilet paper, administration!
Well, I’ll ask the crowd at Wassamatta U. But I truly fear the results. Do you think it’s worse in “Red” States than “Blue”.
Having been raised SDA, it gets worse– Walla Walla is widely considered one of the most “liberal” SDA universities– La Sierra and Loma Linda being the two others. Had this survey been taken at Southern Adventist where I spent two repressive years, it would have been worse.
Having said that, a fair share of those I met there are now atheists like me.
I am a student at an Adventist college in California. I’d like to make a few observations…
1) These results should be viewed with the knowledge that the vast majority of students at Walla Walla University and other Adventist colleges come through the Adventist “education” system. To put this in perspective, at the two Adventist high schools I attended, I was the only student I knew who questioned young earth creationism to any degree.
2) Considering that an overwhelming majority of incoming students at Adventist colleges are already brainwashed to a large degree against mainstream science, the science faculty at our schools face the daunting task of undoing the works of 12 years of so-called “education.” Speaking to some of the faculty at my school, its a wonder they don’t give up in frustration seeing the impossible task they face.
3) I know for a fact that four years of college DOES in fact make students more likely to believe in mainstream science. You see this play-out regularly when you compare the views of seniors and freshmen in college. If you were to do a survey seeing the change in views each year of college, you would see a significant shift towards mainstream science. In fact, when this survey was done at WWU, I know on background that the newspaper wanted to split responses up by class year, but the administration did not want to provide proof that the university was making students more likely to accept mainstream science.
Thomas Holtz @ # 26:
Thank you for those two links. I have bookmarked them, and shall read them at leisure. Wonderful Web pages with wonderful information.
Again, thank you–for such an informative and elegantly succinct post.
(PZ, this is one of the reasons your blog is irresistible–these driveby lasers of intellect from an exceptional body of readers. Mental yumminess.)
#32 beemack
Forget science. From what I have experienced, there is a big difference between the theology of most churches and what their mainstream members believe. IOW, most people don’t have a clue about their church stands on issues like abortion, birth control, marriage & divorce, suicide, “just” wars, charity, taxation, homosexuality, etc. The members pick up their theology from the media who only present the views of right-wing fundy wackos (Falwell, Robertson, Donohue, Focus on the Family, etc). When did these losers get to speak for all xtiandom?
I used to be a seventh day adventist, so glad I am out of that delusion. The odd thing is that many “sevvies” actually know much of the science that the earth is old etc, that there really is evidence for Evolutioj etc, but they just can’t beleive it. Their entire worldview, their raïson d’etré is based on a literal six day creation. Once you realise the literal Adam and eve, garden, snake , fall story is factually incorrect, mere myth the whole house of cards collapses. ie, Jesus, if he ever existed , could not “redeem” a non exisiten fall etc
!ove your work PZ, keep plugging away, some will see their fairy story is not literally true, most won’t :(
I’ve done a survey of freshmen and sophomores at the college where I teach (public community college; no church affliation). It makes the WWU look good, unfortunately. Not one believer in Intelligent Design; about half and half young earth creationists; 3% accepted evolution, and a handful accepted God-Guided evolution. I’m swimming upstream in my biology classes, but if I can spawn a few thoughts in their heads, maybe someday one of them will give birth to a new idea (though it might be an old idea to the rest of us).
In case you’re interested, I’m not in the Bible Belt, but I am in the bulge over the Bible belt (the upper great plains).
It might be worth considering who (the school) administered the test. The kids were probably more likely to answer what they thought they were supposed to say.
Good grief, iknklast! What state, if I may ask?
#39 peterveitch wrote:
That’s a good point, and it’s one thing that ought to be kept in mind while considering these results. The college does teach evolution–in fact, a friend of mine who attended WWU eventually became a staunch atheist, thanks specifically to a WWU biology class which caused him to reconsider his beliefs–, and I think pretty respectably so. (That’s just an impression I get: I don’t have any first-hand experience there.) The problem is that the student body won’t necessarily take to heart the scientific information being conveyed to it. Many of them were raised in insular Adventist environments, and it can take a lot to overcome messages they’ve been hearing their entire lives; double-think, denial, and mental compartmentalization may result instead.