More than 30% of students in the UK believe in creationism and intelligent design
| August 15, 2006 | Posted by scordova under Intelligent Design |
In a survey last month, more than 12% questioned preferred creationism – the idea God created us within the past 10,000 years – to any other explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of intelligent design…This means more than 30% believe our origins have more to do with God than with Darwin – evolution theory rang true for only 56%.
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Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London…. has been talking about evolutionary biology in schools for 20 years. For the first 10 of those he was lucky to find one student in 1,000 expressing creationist beliefs. “Now in any school I go to I meet a student who says they are a creationist…”He blames the influence of Christian fundamentalists in America…
36 Responses to More than 30% of students in the UK believe in creationism and intelligent design
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I think it is a primitive notion based on old data that NS drives adaptive mutation. Why would anyone choose to still believe this when it’s based on the faulty Darwinian premise that the cell was a useless blob of protoplasm!? We have new data now. We know that the cell is a liliputian world of dizzying programming code and machinery beyond our wildest imaginations. It seems only logical to me to conclude that everything was pre-programmed and may or may not be taking cues from the environment.
“These are the core questions that ID asks.”
a) Yes.
b) (1) Although I am aware that in some cases environmental stresses can increase mutation rates in certain areas of the genome, this appears to be the exception as opposed to the rule. In the case of elements such have transposons which have nonrandom insertion I have seen no evidence that they are ‘directed’ by the cell, although I will listen to those talks when I have time.
c) Not at the moment. I would certainly like to here some hypothesis based on the opposite assumption.
d) Yes in the appropriate forums.
“I think it is a primitive notion based on old data that NS drives adaptive mutation. Why would anyone choose to still believe this when it’s based on the faulty Darwinian premise that the cell was a useless blob of protoplasm!?”
Im not really that famililar with the old data, so my opinion is based on current understanding of cell biology.
“Although I am aware that in some cases environmental stresses can increase mutation rates in certain areas of the genome, this appears to be the exception as opposed to the rule”
Question — is this the exception or the rule in beneficial mutations?
“Im not really that famililar with the old data, so my opinion is based on current understanding of cell biology.”
So what recent data leads you to favor the random mutation idea? I think that historically the “random mutation” idea was propped up by an understanding of Luria-Delbruck that was pre-genome. If there is data that supports random mutation being the primary generative engine of change, I’d be interested in hearing it.
Simply by your answer to #1 I have difficulty seeing how far you could be from ID simpliciter (since ID is primarily a theory of causation), though based on your answer to (b) you obviously have some reservations with regards to ID applied to biology.
“Simply by your answer to #1 I have difficulty seeing how far you could be from ID simpliciter”
I dont see what that has to do with evolution, other than that it might be possible to detect agency if it was involved.
“is this the exception or the rule in beneficial mutations?”
In the case if events like particular genes being mutated, it appears to be the exception from what I have read although the ideas of people such as Lynn Caporale are generally recognised by the scientific community and have been discussed in several books I have read recently. The idea that properties of genomes can facilitate variation has been covered in several popular books recently.
“I dont see what that has to do with evolution, other than that it might be possible to detect agency if it was involved.”
Not all of ID has to do with evolution. That’s why I said “ID simpliciter”. For example, here is an ID paper which has nothing at all to do with evolution. ID is primarily the analysis, scientifically, of agency, whether in evolution or just in daily life.
Likewise, Dembski’s book on The Design Inference has nothing to do with biology, and is simply about detecting instances of agency in the natural world. ID isn’t just about biology and evolution, it’s about causation and recognizing causal distinctions which materialists can’t grant (because if there were causal distinctions, they couldn’t be materialists anymore).
As you keep pointing out, many people in the scientific community agree generally with ID, but don’t want to. This is why when Caporale says something, people find it interesting, but when Behe says the same thing, people suspect a religious conspiracy to overthrow all of science. Take for instance, this quote from Caporale:
“A genome’s ability to grow and to explore new organizational structures would be severely constrained, if its options were limited to simple point mutation…most organisms tolerate only relatively low levels of point mutation in a generation. Instead they have evolved mechanisms that generate multiple sequence changes in a single step, allowing them to bypass unselected neutral, and negatively selected, sequences that may lie on point mutation pathways between the current sequence and a more optimal sequence. Indeed, where genomic sequences have been available to provide a window into the evolution of a new gene, the series of steps revealed has been complex.” [emphasis mine]
That is irreducible complexity right there. But it’s fine as long as you don’t take it as being evidence against materialism, because then you offend the materialistic dogmatists.
“it’s about causation and recognizing causal distinctions which materialists can’t grant (because if there were causal distinctions, they couldn’t be materialists anymore).”
This goes back to the argument between Ed Brayton and Paul Nelson anout what Keith Miller said. Assuming that the mind is a product of matter, the actions of intelligence can sometimes still be distinguishable from unintelligent natural forces. Im not sure what the problem is here.
“As you keep pointing out, many people in the scientific community agree generally with ID, but don’t want to.”
Based on the generally accepted definition of ID from this site, which is that intelligence is the best explanation for many biological systems, I cant see how I’ve said that.
“That is irreducible complexity right there. But it’s fine as long as you don’t take it as being evidence against materialism, because then you offend the materialistic dogmatists.”
What people have a problem with is when irreducible complexity is used to argue the system couldnt have evolved without intelligent input. No scientist for several decades I suspect has claimed that all these systems evolved solely through point mutations, and nothing in that paragraph you quoted is claiming intelligence is involved.