Over at the New York Times, Kenneth Chang reports on the growth of creationism in Islamic countries. Upshot: it’s getting worse, but there’s a big variance. Surprisingly, it looks as if Pakistan is more Darwin-friendly than the US:
In a survey of 2,527 Pakistani high school students conducted by the McGill researchers and their international collaborators, 28 percent of the students agreed with the creationist sentiment, “Evolution is not a well-accepted scientific fact.” More than 60 percent disagreed, and the rest were not sure. Eighty-six percent agreed with this statement: “Millions of fossils show that life has existed for billions of years and changed over time.”
I just do not understand how Pakistan is more accepting of evolution than the US. Do they not have a high percentage of ‘schools’ which are actually religion-only madrases?
Must be all those lemur fossils.
So, check to see how many children attend high school in Pakistan.
It appears that enrollment is somewhere around 50% but attendance seems to be around 30% of all children. Which leaves 50-70 percent that aren’t included in the survey and probably receiving religious faith based junk information.
I read a different article that pointed out an interesting silver lining to the rise of Creationism in Muslim countries: Up until very recently, there was nobody pushing Creationism because there wasn’t even a debate amongst the public in regards to evolution — they didn’t know what it was, didn’t know that Western science had pretty much proved it was true.
In a way, the increasing amount of Creationist polemics and apologetics is a symptom that the Creationist account is finally being questioned in Muslim countries.
Of course, as we’ve seen in the US, Creationists can be mighty effective, so even though it might signal that something positive happened recently, it still portends poorly for the future.
Yes, I was going to make the same point – a survey of high school students in Pakistan doesn’t mean what it would in the US (even with all our ‘homeschooling’). Thousands of madrasas, hundreds of thousands of no-school-at-all. Anyone in high school in Pakistan is already different from the population in general, as opposed to being a good sample of it.
Alas.
How fortunate that in the US people can avoid knowledge sufficiently to achieve a substandard understanding of science.
Whatever the selectivity involved in Pakistani high schools, one would, of course, wish that anyone in high school would learn the basics of science. Whether it’s the frequent censorship in the US, poor teaching, or closed minds, many manage either not to learn the science, or to decide that magic is better.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
The Statement is:
“Millions of fossils show that life has existed for billions of years and changed over time.”
I can easily see how people might agree with such a neutral (or neutered) statement.
A more pertinent question would be to see if they would then concede that based on this statement, Allah / God does have any role to play in creating life or sustaining it.
This is where the fabric develops a tear and starts to shred.
Along the same lines, here’s a story about how the fight against Islamic Fundamentalism is going in Egypt and Jordan.
I have been living in the Middle East since 2004. During that time, I have been to almost every country (except Iran and Saudi Arabia).
My work allows me the opportunity to speak with a wide variety of people (all ages, education levels, and religious predilections). Since evolution is one of my favorite subjects, I frequently talk about it.
I can say unequivocally that only a tiny minority of people that I have been in contact with have a positive opinion of evolution. And, it’s an equally tiny minority who even understand the most basic components of it.
In my experience, the level of knowledge and acceptance of evolution is smaller here than any other part of the planet I have ever been to.
Haz U bean ta da Unitd Stats? I can see Russia from my home! 😉
There’s an even longer article about the topic in The Boston Globe:
http://tinyurl.com/ylgh2n8
The article also mentions the relatively liberal stance on evolutionary theory in, of all places, Iran. The irony is that the clerical establishment there is less hostile toward evolutionary biology and science in general than many American religious leaders. Iran even has a state-sponsored stem-cell research program.