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Evolution beliefs still lag in Britain

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Timothy Kershner quotes Alistair Noble’s letter to Stephen Law of the Centre for inquiry, at the ID Facebook page,

When Theos, the London-based public theology think tank, published ‘Rescuing Darwin’ in 2009 they presented a remarkable statistic. It was that two hundred years after Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809, ‘at least half’ of the British population is still sceptical about the theory of evolution.[1] This was consistent with a survey conducted for a BBC Horizon programme in 2006 which put the figure at 52%.

However, Theos was actually being a bit generous with its data. It was 63% of the population they found to be sceptical about Darwin’s theory of evolution. It does of course depend on the form of the question you ask. However, more embarrassingly, Theos found that some 51% of the population thought that some form of Intelligent Design (ID) was a credible explanation of origins.[2]

We noted this last summer, briefly.

That only 37% of the population in 2009 found evolution convincing led Theos to comment on this ‘sorry state of affairs’ and Richard Dawkins to speak of a ‘worrying level of scientific ignorance among Britons'[3]. Time, then, for the ideologues to redouble their efforts to ‘rescue Darwin’ and sort out the poor souls who just don’t get it. Mind you, with the universities and the media completely on board, you could be forgiven for wondering what else they might do. If that combination can’t get better commitment figures, what could?

Well, schools of course. Get them when they’re young – and the younger the better. If you give young children a brain-full of Darwinism in nursery and primary school before their critical faculties develop, and then reinforce the message throughout secondary and higher education, you are bound to improve on 37%. In this context, Philip Johnson’s dictum is worth remembering: ‘It takes years of evolutionary indoctrination to learn to ignore the evidence of intelligent design that is so apparent before our very eyes’.[4]” More.

We noted that, too.

Noble quotes Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse,:

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion – a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint … the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. … Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.'[6]

You have to wonder if a Government, in the form of its Department for Education, should be using tax-payers’ money to indoctrinate their children in an atheistic and materialistic worldview of which less than half of the population approve. The line is, of course, that science is not democratic and facts transcend public opinion – except at elections! But this is not about scientific facts. It’s about a rather far-fetched ‘scientific’ proposition, namely that life emerged accidentally and developed randomly over billions of years.

But we know all that. Christian Darwinists know it too. So does the educrat and the science teachers’ lobby head.

What Darwin’s followers have is the power to enforce their beliefs, irrespective of their explanatory value, and have them called “science.” Increasingly, that is what matters.

By the way, if you go to Law’s page, note the comments below, that are mostly contentedly devoid of any understanding of the issues around the creation of information by Darwinian means.

It won’t do Britain any good to encourage that mindset. But are other mindsets still legal?

By the way, about life randomly originating, see: Maybe if we throw enough models at the origin of life… some of them will stick?

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Comments
tjguy @ 2
I truly am sorry to hear about your sister’s death. Death is the result of the entrance of sin into this world according to the Bible. It was not part of God’s original plan for mankind. It is called “the last enemy” in the Bible and one day it will be forever vanquished. There are many occasions in the Bible when God does NOT deliver His people. Sometimes He even allows his own prophets to be killed. I cannot explain why God does what He does, allows what He does, or doesn’t do something that we want Him to do. I do know that His job, according to the Bible, is not just to cater to our demands and make us happy, much as we might wish for that kind of a God. However, He does love us. He did enter into our suffering by personally experiencing death Himself on our behalf. He has made it possible for us to overcome death and have eternal life. I hope you will not reject God simply because He didn’t do something you wanted Him to do, or something that you thought He should do. God is God and we are His creation. That hierarchy is important to keep in mind.
I appreciate the kind thoughts but that was not my sister in that story. It was a tragic case I read about a couple of years ago. To my mind, it was just one more example of an unanswered prayer from people on whom you would have thought a kindly God would have taken pity. You are right, of course, in that there may exist a God who has good reasons for not intervening where we think He ought. I lean towards the alternative explanation that there is silence because there is no one there. I think we would both like me to be wrong but, as yet, I have seen nothing that makes me think I am.Seversky
November 19, 2014
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I think that if the Brit public got a good hearing on the creationist subject from iD and YEC the numbers would change, double digit, to the good guys side. the isssue for creationism is always getting a attentive audience. not the merits. Otherwise people just accept whatever the establishment says. always do.Robert Byers
November 16, 2014
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Seversky, there is no reason to doubt the "quote" as it is based on 2 very well documented polls. http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2014/03/email-from-centre-for-intelligent-design.html Your readiness to call Denyse a liar says more about you and your own world view than it does about anything else.Paleysghost
November 15, 2014
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Seversky, you may find this interesting: Unbelievable? Scientific evidence versus religious belief – Jonathan McLatchie & Elliot George debate - Saturday 15th November 2014 http://cdnbakmi.kaltura.com/p/618072/sp/61807200/serveFlavor/entryId/1_2cvyzc5o/v/1/flavorId/1_3gyyzncv/name/a.mp3bornagain77
November 15, 2014
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Seversky, I can understand why you decided that God doesn’t exist, but I think you are making a category mistake. Science does have great explanatory power in the here and now – things you mentioned – diabetes, computers, rocket probe, etc. But that kind of science is very different from evolution. The other kind – experimental science we might say – deals with the here and now. Everything can be tested, observed, repeated, and truly confirmed. Hypotheses can be tested. However, when it comes to evolution, we are dealing with history – or historical science. Here we cannot test our hypotheses using the scientific method. This is why the textbooks on evolution are always changing. So much guesswork – educated guesswork for sure – but still guesswork is involved. For instance, can scientists tell us how life evolved? Can they back up their explanation with experimental evidence? Can they demonstrate that sexual reproduction can actually evolve like they say from asexual organisms? What experiments show this is truly possible and actually did happen? I could go on, but you get the point. History cannot be repeated, tested, or observed outside of the snapshots we get from fossils, archeology, etc. I truly am sorry to hear about your sister’s death. Death is the result of the entrance of sin into this world according to the Bible. It was not part of God’s original plan for mankind. It is called “the last enemy” in the Bible and one day it will be forever vanquished. There are many occasions in the Bible when God does NOT deliver His people. Sometimes He even allows his own prophets to be killed. I cannot explain why God does what He does, allows what He does, or doesn’t do something that we want Him to do. I do know that His job, according to the Bible, is not just to cater to our demands and make us happy, much as we might wish for that kind of a God. However, He does love us. He did enter into our suffering by personally experiencing death Himself on our behalf. He has made it possible for us to overcome death and have eternal life. I hope you will not reject God simply because He didn't do something you wanted Him to do, or something that you thought He should do. God is God and we are His creation. That hierarchy is important to keep in mind. Blessings!tjguy
November 15, 2014
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To the person who has only a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To the person who believes only in their religion, a scientific explanation must also be religious because to admit otherwise is to concede there are other, possibly better ways of explaining reality, which, from their perspective, cannot be. Like Ruse, I was raised a Christian. I accepted the existence of God as I accepted the existence of electricity or gravity, without question. Over time, I became interested in science, in its power to explain how things happened rather than just being content with knowing who created it by means unknown. I became impressed with its power to explain how my diabetes worked, to design the computer that sits on the table in front of me and to place a robot probe on a comet in interplanetary space. Against that I remembered the family that stood offering fervent but futile prayers for the survival of their daughter and sister as she died of diabetic complications on the living-room floor in front of them. Science could have saved her. Their God didn't. I don't know the context of the quote from Michael Ruse but I think he is wrong. Yes, there are scientists who overstate - in my view - the confidence they have in their theories but their exaggeration does not mean we should have no confidence in the theories at all. That should be based on how well they survive being tested not on how well they survive being debated. That seems to be how most scientists see it. If that is what Ruse means by a religion then he his notion is very different from mine. On The Origin Of Species is not a Bible. Darwin's writing is not gospel. His theory has been modified and developed and subsumed into a much broader explanation over time and that development continues to this day as new data is acquired. In how many of the world's great religions does that happen? Any teacher of science who tells his or her students that theories like evolution show that God does not exist, that science entails agnosticism or atheism, has failed in their duty to teach only the science. They are as guilty of violating their code of ethics as those teachers who openly teach Christian creationism in the science classroom. We have evidence from at least one survey that there are science teachers effectively proselytizing Christianity with impunity. What equivalent evidence do we have for science teachers promoting atheism? Government should not be in the business of promoting a particular faith or atheism or agnosticism in the science classroom or any other classroom. My understanding, for what it's worth, is that most science teachers would like to be left alone to teach the science as it is currently understood - nothing more nothing less. They would much prefer to leave religious instruction to the parents or the Church. I wonder how many of those homeschooling children in science hold themselves to a similar standard.Seversky
November 15, 2014
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