Note: while this is about the same poll that TMV founder Joe Gandleman writes about, it is quite a different analysis. Excelsior! – HW
All others pay cash.
I’m talking to YOU, GOPs.
Public’s Views on Human Evolution
Numbers / Pew Research Center’s Religion …:According to a new Pew Research Center analysis, six-in-ten Americans (60%) say that “humans and other living things have evolved over time,” while a third (33%) reject the idea of evolution, saying that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”
We DO live in a woefully uneducated country, filled with superstitious morons. Worse, we live with pussies like the Washington Post, who summarize this national shame idiotically, thusly: “Republicans growing more skeptical about evolution.“
QED: Rejecting a hundred years and more of established science because some moron who read the Scofield Reference Bible says so is NOT “skepticism.” It is flat out rejecton of fact and reason, and THAT ain’t “skepticism.” It is the OPPOSITE of “skepticism” to prefer a creation myth over established science, which, while never perfect, has a substantial base of EVIDENCE. No: It’s superstitious twaddle.
This is fake. I know because I did it.
Still, it reflects their creed accurately.
What’s disturbing is NOT that morons continue being morons, but that people who have no idea what “skeptic” means are attempting to “analyze” said morons.
At this point, the uneducated boob will make some “clever” remark about the Spaghetti Monster, or the Church of the Subgenius, or how atheists are superior or some other dilatory twaddle. Nope.
Pastafarians are not featherbedded deeply into the Justice Department, nor do they control the Supreme Court, nor have any representatives in Congress.
Take a look at this. As a White Mainline Protestant, I stand in good stead, with the smallest number believing in campfire stories. But look at the “evangelical” (e.g. “heretic”) so-called believers (almost all of which believe in the heresy of “Rapture” and “end times.”
The Great Disappointment was a major event in the history of the Millerite movement, Wikipedia begins. From that 1843 “End of the World” moment, the bent of American religious (“Christian” and “Evangelical”) thought has slowly shifted TOWARDS the foolhardy notion that Jesus will arrive at any moment, always buttressed by the notion that EVERY disaster, earthquake, bad President, hurricane, tornado, volcano, or computer glitch is a SUREFIRE SIGN OF THE END TIMES:
William Miller continued to wait for the second coming of Jesus Christ until his death in 1849.
Or, in other words, his need for the end of the world and Apocalypse destroyed his opportunity to live in the real world. His life was wasted — for no purpose.
Which, while they may NOT have refuted evolution, may well have PROVEN devolution.
Mark Mothersbaugh ought to be delighted. And win a Nobel Prize in science.
The point being: the reason why it’s a heresy and has been a heresy in Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant denominations for sixteen or so centuries is that Christianity ALREADY experienced one generation who spent its entire existence expecting Jesus to come back out of the clouds, etcetera (although the Revelation may well NOT have been written in the first hundred years of Christianity), and had understood the devastating consequences of BEING WRONG.
On the other hand, the notion has always been to live NOW, ready to go, but living life as if there IS a tomorrow. The Apocalypse has been a diversion from LIVING LIFE.
And, when applied to public policy, it becomes the apocryphal James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Ray-gun, supposedly saying, “Who cares if we cut down all the trees? Jesus is coming soon!”
The theologian would undoubtedly note that, rather than creating community, the church, the “bride of Christ,” end times heresy has the effect of destroying community and despoiling the Earth, which, to the End-timer, does not matter.
Ozymandias
To the End Timer, the “evangelical,” the Creationist, or its step-sister the “Intelligent Design” rationalizer — who pretends to be ‘scientific’ in pursuit of his “justificati0n of scripture” — global warming does not matter. Pollution does not matter. Species extinction does not matter.
As a matter of public policy, ROADS don’t matter. Bridges DO NOT MATTER. Dams don’t matter. Water treatment facilities don’t matter. New school buildings don’t matter, the only thing that matters is — as we have seen — that evolution either cannot be taught or must be called a “theory,” and “creationism” or (what it was created FOR) “intelligent design” must be presented as a competing “theory.”
(As though angelic levitation must be taught as a competing theory to gravitation.)
Blame the Scofield Reference Bible (1909) for being so cheap that every country preacher could afford a copy:
The Scofield Reference Bible is a widely circulated study Bible edited and annotated by the American Bible student Cyrus I. Scofield, that popularized dispensationalism at the beginning of the 20th century. […]The Scofield Bible had several innovative features. Most important, it printed what amounted to a commentary on the biblical text alongside the Bible instead of in a separate volume. It also contained a cross-referencing system that tied together related verses of Scripture and allowed a reader to follow biblical themes from one chapter and book to another. Finally, the 1917 edition also attempted to date events of the Bible. It was in the pages of the Scofield Reference Bible that many Christians first encountered Archbishop James Ussher’s calculation of the date of Creation as 4004 BC; and through discussion of Scofield’s notes, which advocated the “gap theory,” fundamentalists began a serious internal debate about the nature and chronology of creation.
The Scofield Bible was published only a few years before World War I destroyed the cultural optimism that had viewed the world as entering a new era of peace and prosperity; and the post-World War II era saw the creation in Israel of a homeland for the Jews. Thus, Scofield’s premilliennialism seemed almost prophetic. “At the popular level, especially, many people came to regard the dispensationalist scheme as completely vindicated.”[4] Sales of the Reference Bible exceeded two million copies by the end of World War II.[5]
The Scofield Reference Bible promoted dispensationalism, the belief that between creation and the final judgment there were seven distinct eras of God’s dealing with man and that these eras were a framework for synthesizing the message of the Bible.[6] It was largely through the influence of Scofield’s notes that dispensationalism grew in influence among fundamentalist Christians in the United States. Scofield’s notes on the Book of Revelation are a major source for the various timetables, judgments, and plagues elaborated by popular religious writers such as Hal Lindsey, Edgar C. Whisenant, and Tim LaHaye;[7] and in part because of the success of the Scofield Reference Bible, twentieth-century American fundamentalists placed greater stress on eschatological speculation. Opponents of biblical fundamentalism have criticized the Scofield Bible for its air of total authority in biblical interpretation, for what they consider its glossing over of biblical contradictions, and for its focus on eschatology.
And, sad to say, these morons who think that Evolution or Creation is a matter of belief (the former is science, the latter religious myth AND, most importantly, METAPHOR — everybody has their creation mythology. Every tribe that’s ever built a fire has a creation myth; greater book sales do not prove one myth superior to any other) are IN POLICY POSITIONS beginning, roughly WITH the election of Ronald Ray-gun.
AND the shocking deterioration of the national infrastructure begins at JUST ABOUT THE SAME TIME.
And note how the “anti-evolutionists” have stuck particularly into ONE political party. I think you can extrapolate the Venne Diagram™ overlap without another chart. It’s pretty plain.
Pew says this:
There are sizable differences among partisan groups in beliefs about evolution. Republicans are less inclined than either Democrats or political independents to say that humans have evolved over time. Roughly two-thirds of Democrats (67%) and independents (65%) say that humans have evolved over time, compared with less than half of Republicans (43%).
The size of the gap between partisan groups has grown since 2009. Republicans are less inclined today than they were in 2009 to say that humans have evolved over time (43% today vs. 54% in 2009), while opinion among both Democrats and independents has remained about the same.
I wish that there was a poll on the overlap between end timers and anti-evolution factions, but I doubt that there is much daylight between the two hand-in-hand beliefs.
Hilarious “creationist” novelty tchotchke
So, ask not for whom the toll is due. The toll is due for thee.
Courage.
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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.