Hard News: Kids these days
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The only issue I have is with the words "...only 33%...". Only one in three 18-25 year old people accept the scientific fact of evolution!?! That's not an "only" statement, that's a "sadly" statement.
Similar story for interracial dating, among other things. America is a different country alright.
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Umm, isn't it two in three believe in evolution, wheras only one in three believe in creationism?
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Only one in three 18-25 year old people accept the scientific fact of evolution!?!
I thought the figures were the exact opposite - only 1 in 3 don't accept evolution. It would be interesting to know how this compares with other countries.
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I thought the figures were the exact opposite - only 1 in 3 don't accept evolution. It would be interesting to know how this compares with other countries.
Indeed. I misread the original comment. That's still a hell of a lot of people not believing in science.
I like the way Pew always phrases that question: all plants and animals exist now in the form they have always been vs they have evolved over time. Takes all the crap out and offers a simple proposition.
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From New Scientist in August last year:
A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact ... even though the average American has more years of education than when Miller began his surveys 20 years ago, the percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005.
Quite scary, really.
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I was born a generation too early. Or maybe two.
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The Pew question is carefully worded but maybe it skirts around one important controversial aspect of evolution - descent from a common ancestor. I could see a lot of people accept that plants and animals have evolved but not go along with being related to chimps.
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Maybe the Pew question skirts round the common ancestor because many people don't understand the concept.
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merc,
For certain Christian sects (ahem, careful wording), the Chimp as anscestor thing is The Biggie., perhaps it is still a Chain of Being thing. However the all born from incest thing is covered by the All Born In Sin thing (or just don't go there mmmkay), however Eve, being constructed from Adams rib, had no belly button, and Jesus was immaculately conceived, Mary being impregnated through the ear by the Numenosum.
As for the Chimp, the hoary old 2 million year old progenitor perhaps of we, The Shaved Apes...animals have No Soul, so therefore don't qualify, for anything, except exploitation for food perhaps as The Big Guy put them ALL there for US to use as we please.
Godit? -
I thought the figures were the exact opposite - only 1 in 3 don't accept evolution. It would be interesting to know how this compares with other countries.
Exactly 100% of Hadyn is embarassed at getting his stats backwards. RB got my sentence right for me:
only 1 in 3 don't accept evolution
And I don't believe we came from chimps because no species that's living now was descended from any other species that is living now (he says hoping that he can at least get something right today)
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Demographically I'm at the cut-off point between Gen X & Gen Y, but I'm not one to be pigeon-holed into either. Technically I'm a member of Gen 8-Bit.
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It was Mary who was immaculately conceived, so that she could be born without Sin.
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__Nothing wrong with social networking mind you, but just because it is done instantly via bandwidth,doesn't make it any more valid or useful than any other generations'. Unless it is used for generating real social change and political momentum to solve some of the mounting problems Nexters will need to address, it is just another cocktail party on steroids.__
Myspace is a lot of fun. There is nothing wrong with that, nor with cocktail parties. Lighten up, as we X-ers used to say.
Agreed. I wasn't big on changing the world in my early 20s. Changing my perception of it, more like.
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And I don't believe we came from chimps because no species that's living now was descended from any other species that is living now (he says hoping that he can at least get something right today)
Is that, like, irony? American's don't get that either.
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No evolution but living to connect... how do these kids explain their increasingly flexible prehensile thumbs after a hard day & night on the keyboard / console / sms?? The boomers' digits are positively rigid in comparison.
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Just posting to see if that ole gravatar has turned up... but it's kinda hard to generalise about Americans. Read the New Yorker for an irony mine.
But they're off on a weird weird trip with christianity: marrying it to capitalism to a large degree, with mega-churches and massively wealthy tele-evangelists. But there's no checks and balances- they pays no taxes and you can't be charged with false advertising for claims about the here-after, or about anything supernatural: "you worked hard and you pryed long and you didn't get rich? seems god has something else in mind fo' you, brother- ".
So it's a small thing, but movement towards believing in evolution AND a whole 20% of atheists- and these are probably not the dumbest young americans! is a promising trend. -
Just posting to see if that ole gravatar has turned up
ditto1
as for kids closer to home - sue bradford's bill is in the home straight with a narrow lead, lets hope it over the line, next year everybody will wonder what the fuss was about
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OMG, I misused an apostrophe. Myspace is corrupting me.
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merc,
Really, Mary was immaculately conceived? I know She was assumpted by Papal Bull in 1955, just for some female representation in your trinity, BUT Mary had a belly button!
So many Mary's, wasn't Mary also The Mother Of God?
Descent from chimps, don't we share alot of DNA but we Homo Sapiens are from another branch of ape-like things. Didn't some branches like Australiopithecus die out and the question is whether branches left themselves in the record or simply died out, like Neanderthals. Interesting to consider if they co-existed with Cro-magnons...
Wasn't the DNA record traced back to the first Mother, Lucy? -
how do these kids explain their increasingly flexible prehensile thumbs
Dude, Lamarckism is so 19th century.
And moving on, we get a distorted picture of the religiosity of Americans. The truly wingnut evangelicals are a minority of American Christians. And right now a major split is developing in that camp, as the newer, younger leaders are embracing conservation and global warming as important issues and *gasp* concern for the poor. The Kansas school board that tried to get "Intelligent Design" on the syllabus was voted off. I think the fundy grip on the US is weakening, and maybe it was never as strong as its enemies or its advocates claimed.
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Have you ever seen Mary's belly button? Renaissance painting is rather modest about the subject. In any case, after the immaculate conception, she would have grown in St Anne's womb just like any other foetus, with an umbilical cord. Jesus had a belly button as well: you can see it in all those crucifixion paintings.
The Immaculate Conception was conceived to get around a theological problem. If Christ's mother was an ordinary human, He would have inherited Original Sin. So the theologians said that Mary was conceived in heaven and so was without Sin. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception was instituted by Sixtus IV in 1476 but believing in it was optional until 1854.
As for those chimps, we share a common ancestor with them.
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Maybe the Pew question skirts round the common ancestor because many people don't understand the concept.
I think them that take issue with evolution the most strongly are very aware of this detail. The Pew question is well worded but I wonder if the pro-evolution percentage might have been a bit down if it had been put differently.
And I don't believe we came from chimps because no species that's living now was descended from any other species that is living now (he says hoping that he can at least get something right today)
All true, except for bacteria maybe - they’re still keeping on but I don't know if there's still the same species as back in the Precambrian.
I'm not that worried by the Pew statistics. The one area that would be of concern is the influence on science education and there the religiously motivated opponents of evolution have had few successes and lots of failures - most notably in Texas recently where a Bush appointed judge found against the creationists.
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Quite straightforwardly, we aren't desecended from chimpanzees. We share a common ancestor, from about 6 million years ago.
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merc,
Thanks Paul, very helpful.
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It was Mary who was immaculately conceived, so that she could be born without Sin.
Years ago, I corrected some guy in a newsgroup who was getting the immaculate conception and the virgin birth confused. He called me a pedant.
Well, I'm not even Catholic and I know what the immaculate conception is. But it surprises me the number of people who attempt to attack Christianity by saying stuff like "Jesus was immaculately conceived?!! As if!!!!"
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