A survey this week by Gallup on the eve of Charles Darwins' 200 birthday draws some interesting correlations between adult Americans education, religiosity and knowledge of Darwins' Theory.

Being raised as a Jehovah's Witness meant my knowledge of Darwin was absorbed through the filter of the Creation Book

So typically from a pollster point of view I would be a regular church attender with basic high scool education.

That gives me about a 1 in 5 chance of positively believing in evolution and about 50:50 chance of correctly associating Darwin with his Theory.

And sure enough whilst I was a Jehovahs Witness I didn't believe in evolution but thankfully was one in two that could correlate Darwin with evolutionary theory.

According to the pollsters the implications of all this are:

As Darwin is being lauded as one of the most important scientists in history on the 200th anniversary of his birth (on Feb. 12, 1809), it is perhaps dismaying to scientists who study and respect his work to see that well less than half of Americans today say they believe in the theory of evolution, and that just 55% can associate the man with his theory.

Naturally, some of this is because of educational differences. Americans who have lower levels of formal education are significantly less likely than others to be able to identity Darwin with his theory, and to have an opinion on it either way. Still, the evidence is clear that even to this day, Americans' religious beliefs are a significant predictor of their attitudes toward Darwin's theory. Those who attend church most often are the least likely to believe in evolution, and most likely to say they do not believe in it.

As long as religion and science attempt to answer the same questions from different viewpoints it seems there won't be broad based common ground.

My journey beyond the Watchtower Society does encompass a scientific approach to lifes questions - perhaps my indoctrination by a toxic religion is now being over-compensated with a hunger for scientific understanding.

I'm just glad to have more than a cursory glance into the window of evolution without a creationist filter. Removing this filter on life has been a key component in moving from Ctrl to Ctrl Alt Delete

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed