This disparity between our two related and Anglophonic lands is even worse than I expected. U.S. and U.K. citizens were polled just last wee about how they think life on Earth began. The question and choices were virtually identical for the two countries.
First the good news:
YouGov poll on the origin of life taken in the U.K. (2003 adults), Nov. 12-13 of this year. Figures are percentages:
If you lump the third and fourth answers as “naturalistic origin,” then 59% of the respondents think life occurred as an outcome of the laws of chemistry and physics. And if you go to the page, you’ll see the results don’t vary much with age, gender, region, or political affiliation.
Before you look below, guess what the answer is for the U.S.
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Here’s the bad news, then: the YouGov poll from the U.S., taken Nov. 12-14:
Less than half of the respondents were naturalists: 25%, while 53% thought life was created by God (and by that I suspect direct intervention, not just that God made sure the right chemicals were there. That is more then threefold the number of Brits assuming God’s work (15%).
Breaking the U.S. data down by gender, age, and politics, we see that, as is often found, females are more religious than males, older people are more religious than younger (this reflects, I suspect, more a clinging to one’s upbringing than an age-related conversion), and the damn Republicans are goddier than the Democrats.
Republicans are the bane of science in the U.S.:
Now I haven’t looked at all the survey data (there are more questions on other stuff like the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe), but once again we see how hyperreligious the U.S. is, even compared to the U.K., where faith schools are rife. I don’t think Americans are dumber than the inhabitants of Great Britain; they’re just blinkered by faith.
h/t: Dom
Sub
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This is dispiriting.
There have been suggestions that British faith schools do an excellent job of inoculating kids against religion.
UK Catholic school certainly did the job for me. By about 12 I realised it was a pile of purulent pig puke.
Not meant to be an endorsement of faith schools!
😀
There seems to be less cognitive dissonance in GB than in the US.
Don’t be fooled by the ‘faith school’ malarkey. All 3 of my kids went to one and I know from experience that the school was rammed full of not just non-believers but plenty kids outright hostile to religion. In most cases the religious message sails straight over the kids heads. These schools get better exam results and generally provide a more disciplined environment, which is why parents are keen for their kids go to them. Religion has got little, if anything, to do with it.
What bothers me is not just the hyperreligious faith schools like the one I mentioned yesterday, but the very idea that the government would not only separate kids by religion, but SUPPORT religious instruction.
Yes, you’ve nailed it, Jerry.
Yes
The government suports and encourages religious schools and religious belief, it is not called the opiate of the masses for nothing.
Governemnts believe it is and that it works!
Until there’s a separation of the state from the state religion the UK is going to carry on supporting faith schools. However, it’s really is largely irrelevent – most church schools (well, the Christian ones, at least) are on a hiding to nothing and everyone knows that religion is not the main reason that many parents are desparate to get their kids into them.
But if we separated state and religion, how would we be able to get along without falling back on arguing antidisestablishmentarianistically about the matter? We’d be reduced to making floccinaucinihilipilification comments about ohhhh, football, or the weather?
I honestly don’t know how common faith schools are. They’re there, but since I haven’t needed to pay any attention to the education system for about 8 years now, and have even less interest in future involvement, I really don’t know. Of the four schools I can claim any knowledge of, only one is any sort of “faith school”, and that’s not one I ever foresee having any contact with, apart from chaining my bike to their railings. So that’s a first estimate of one in four schools, but on a very small sample. Not what I’d call “rife”.
I wonder, is it really largely irrelevant? I understand what you are saying, most people don’t take the religion part very seriously, and most of the schools do a good job of providing a good education.
But it still seems like something that needs to be addressed. There are plenty of bad rules / laws that are not paid much attention to by anybody at a particular time in their history, and thereby not typically a problem. But with the framework still in place things can change for the worse, fairly suddenly sometimes.
And it is a serious problem in some instances, like the one cited in the OP.
Yes, I agree, and I am vehemently opposed to faith schools, it’s one of those things that really makes me angry. But like Ian I suspect it doesn’t have that much of an affect for most children. In fact my daughter went to the local C of E primary school, purely on the basis that it’s a walking distance away and a good school. They did have regular assemblies where they banged on about Jesus and God but it didn’t affect her, possibly because I gave her the other point of view. She’s now at the local C of E high school and it’s hardly mentioned, although she does learn about religion (in fact her RE teacher is an atheist).
I just don’t think that religion is taken very seriously here in the UK at all.
I agree.
Of my 3 children, the religious stuff only made an impression on my eldest daughter but now, at the age of 20, she never mentions it. My son is openly hostile to religion but he, like his sisters, actually appreciates that to be able to argue and criticise it’s always better to do so from an informed perspective!
They always have in UK schools. As a teenager I was subjected to religious ceremonies from the moment I arrived at secondary school. My school was an ordinary, non-religious schhol.
You could be exempt if you had “another” religion (Jehovahs, Muslims etc.), but being an atheist was never considered a valid reason to be exempt from them.
I also recall a visit by the Gideons who handed out small copies of the NT (not much use to me!)
Things have changed a little (I think) but not because of pressure from secularism, but because of multiculturalism and the desire not to offend holders of non-Christian beliefs.
In Australia back when I went to school, there was no attempt to separate kids by religion. The school I went to was nominally protestant, but the kids who went there were from a wide variety of religious backgrounds.
I think that’s one of the reasons the religious instruction in the UK system tends towards the bland (rather than the fervent you see in US religious schools). These schools typically act like public schools in the US in that they serve a local community, regardless of who is in it. If you have big local Jewish community, you’ll get a lot of Jews going to the local religious school.
I think the reason for this is historical: unlike the US where we built the public school system from the ground up, the UK system was to take the pre-existing religious schools and incorporate them into the public system.
It’s more complex than that. Before the (approx) 1870 Acts requiring children under 11 (or was it 9) to attend school instead of go and work in the mines/ factories/ whatever, the main part of the school system consisted of schools run for-profit as fee-paying establishments, which weren’t particularly religious by the standards of the day, with a small contribution from the church-run “Sunday Schools”, where religious indoctrination was the order of the day.
After the partial banning of child labour and the enforcement by truancy officers of the obligation on parents to send their children for schooling during set hours, a variety of other schools sprang up, but extension of the Church schooling system was certainly one of the methods used. In many respects that didn’t change until the post-World War I period when an extension of school ages (IIRC to 14) and the extension of local authority powers probably led to piece meal take over of existing schools, both private and Church, by local authorities. If you’re looking for a simple one-line summary of the history of the system, “don’t” is probably the simplest advice ; like Topsy, it just growed.
Possibly parents support faith based schools because there is no other way to structure schools that are academically strong.
My daughter went to an excellent magnet school in the U.S., but it is an exception.
One seemingly trivial example of a magnet school’s style: Kids have to compete to get in, and once in, they can be removed to a regular public school if they don’t work, or if they cause trouble.
I spent several months there as a substitute. The difference in atmosphere is striking when kids think of their school as something like Hogwarts, a refuge and a privilege.
“Possibly parents support faith based schools because there is no other way to structure schools that are academically strong.”
By “academically strong,” do you mean highly-qualified teachers and/or highly-motivated students?
Or could it be that faith-based – and other(non-) religious private, and public “charter” – schools are sticklers for good student behavior and self-discipline, which seem to generally be precursors to “academically strong” student achievement, and will bid students goodbye if they don’t toe the mark?
“Kids have to compete to get in [magnet schools], and once in, they can be removed to a regular public school if they don’t work, or if they cause trouble.”
Public charter schools (I infer magnet schools also, and for sure private schools, eh?) are exempt from certain rules which regular public schools must follow. They can say Adios to non-working, trouble-making students, whereas regular public schools cannot. As a matter of principle and equity, why shouldn’t regular public schools be allowed to similarly say Adios to troublemakers? But the Powers-That-Be won’t allow it. It’s not fair to those students who do meet reasonable and appropriate standards of behavior.
Student misbehavior is not a carrot to prompt one to enter, or remain in, a full-time regular career in PUBLIC education, which is mainly why I have chosen to substitute teach full-time for over nine years K-12, including magnet schools (which from my experience can have student behavior problems rivalling those of regular schools) instead of seeking a full-time regular position.
And the reason for that is that such schools are allowed to select their intake, and are thus socially selective. It is very easy to have better exam results and discipline if you’re allowed to pick your kids. (Once corrected for intake these schools do not do any better.)
The rest of the state schools just get given their intake, with no control over it. The whole system is thus iniquitous, in that families that are religious or willing to pretend that they are religious get a far better choice of taxpayer-funded school. So of course they are popular with those who get to play the system.
My brother, much to my chagrin, happily indoctrinated his children into Christianity as a means to get them into a local faith school … which was the highest rated school in the region.
I think it’s a pretty poor show when you have to make your children religious for education’s sake.
I still remember one of the early Republican presidential candidates debates from last time where the eight candidates were asked if they “believed in” evolution. Only one, Jon Huntsman (the other Mormon), tentatively put his hand up while nervously looking along the line at the other candidates.
I also remember Rick Santorum talking about flickering lights during his wife’s difficult pregnancy was a sign from God not to have an abortion.
This result doesn’t surprise me. It does worry me, and it bodes ill for America. The pope came out yesterday condemning embryonic stem cell research too, a comment that will be embraced by those controlling where the money goes for scientific research.
I remember that debate moment. It was pretty funny to see that the candidates really hated to even address this question, knowing that if they answered one way they would look stupid, and the other way they would piss off their base.
I’d like to know why the people who think it was brought here by another civilization think that. I mean, life had to have arisen somewhere, right? It can’t be aliens all the way down for everyone. So if life can arise naturally, and there’s no evidence of aliens starting life billions of years ago, why would you think, “Yeah, I bet that’s it…”?
The experience I have had with Ancient Astronaut types is that they’re spiritual more than traditionally religious and still believe in the supernatural origins and/or existence of life (vitalism.) The enlightened aliens thus often work like angels or prophets of Spirituality. They care about us and come with a message: be more spiritual. We are not just matter.
Though I think there’s a fair fraction of people who believe aliens seeded life who don’t care about the metaphysics or ultimate source for life at all: they’re scientific and following the evidence despite the conspiracy. That, or they want science fiction to be true and figure it’s no dumber than religion and hey, wishful thinking is not just allowed there, it’s approved.
It’s an updated explanation – before we knew there were planets out there and before we knew how vast this universe is, there were gods and angels and such. Now that we know of planets, universe(s), galaxies, etc. we just go ahead and shift those same tendencies on to aliens.
Remember the Mormon spirit babies from the planet near Kolob, and the Scientology beliefs too – they will account for a big proportion of that number.
In the far future, Earth will swing close by the black hole at the centre of the galaxy and thus travel back in time. It will be this that then seeds the universe with life. 🙂
Having just been watching the “Interstellar” movie … I’m not in the least inclined to accept that. In this house, we FOLLOW the laws of conservation of momentum, thank you very much!
Actually, it looks as if the screenwriters actually listened to their scientific advisors – I saw “Kip Thorne” go past in the credits and had to think for a few milliseconds to place the name. There was still abundant claptrap, but it was all McGuffins to drive the plot, and the things that weren’t McGuffins did hang together in a tolerably acceptable approximation to GR (but no significant QM, apart from the obligatory scattering around of “quantum”).
Is that an endorsement of the movie?
Hadn’t heard of the flick until you posted about it. The search results make it seem like a typical space opera, which can often be fun….
b&
SFX are good. Story is … take a crane for suspending your disbelief. But I didn’t feel short-changed.
Better than “Prometheus” – which doesn’t say much.
I liked the movie too but the way Banner responded to the news about her dad was weird as was Murph holding a grudge for so long. I don’t think the Nolan’s get adult relationships with parents.
I did love the portrayal of young Murph though. She was originally written as a boy and they changed the sex without changing anything about the character. I think she is the best written girl character ever written for a movie. I also liked that the early deus ex machina was abandoned.
I’ll have to be on the lookout for it, then. Sounds like it’ll make for decent mental cotton candy….
b&
The “it was created by God” answer is possibly a bit of a cheat, since there are plenty of people who could and would say that the older alien civilization was created by God, the organic compounds on comets were created by God, and the suitable conditions on earth were created by God. Even expressing ignorance (‘I don’t know’) is an acknowledgment of God’s higher wisdom. So checking the first box gets you out of thinking about the question. Yeah, any of that. So “God.”
Americans may not just be more religious than the UK: they may also be lazier.
Of course, there is probably an underlying connection between the two qualities.
I would categorize the “brought here by an older alien civilization” question as neither for or against a magical explanation for the origin of life, it just reformulates the question with respect to that “older alien civilization”.
That being said, I suspect that most of those who did answer yes to that question are new age woo meisters, Scientologists or UFO cranks.
George Carlin reminded us to consider just how stupid was the average American and that therefore half of all Americans were even more stupid than that.
Half of the population is of below-average intelligent, but on the bright side, half the population is above-average, so …
You’re talking about the median, not the mean (average).
Speaking of which, I wonder how the median IQ of Americans compares to the mean?
For (non-uniform, unimodal) distributions, mean >= median >= mode. (The equal options are for symmetrical distributions. Whether IQ is genuinely normally distributed … no, of course it couldn’t be … I’ll start again. Whether IQ is unimodal, it is certainly not a uniform distribution, so it should follow that relationship.
And how such explanation greatly improves the joke.
I may be having a “sense of humour failure” (not unknown) or lost the thread (tiny screen phone), but I think that I answered a technical question.
Sorry, joke missed.
It depends who you ask. 70% of Americans say that they are of above average intelligence.
About 80% of them are right. (Did I do the math right?)
Er…your math is completely off.
Assume the most generous distribution: that every American who actually is of above-average intelligence responded correctly. That mean that, absolute best, 5/7 = 71.4% of them are correct. (Imagine 100 people in a room, ranked left to right from most to least intelligent. 70% say they’re above average. Count 70 people from the left, and you’ve included all 50 above-average people plus 20 below-average people.)
And Dunning-Kruger actually goes both ways…the intelligent are more likely to underestimate their ranking. There’s going to be a disproportionate number of people with IQs in the hundred-teens who estimate that they’re about average. In reality, I’d guess that probably a bare majority of those 70% properly assessed their own intelligence.
b&
I was (quietly) assuming that the above average folk answered correctly. I offered an estimate, which (given the assumption) isn’t that off, but “completely” off? In my mind, “completely” suggests an order of magnitude, not an difference of less than 10% on an estimate. But, as they say, “whatever”.
I wonder what the latest survey(s) say about how Amuricuns evaluate their own “exceptionalism.”
The 2008 PEW survey has a fairly in-depth coverage of how people change affiliation by age. See pages 22-35. The results are somewhat complex and no clear picture emerges.
But interestingly on your specific point, Jerry, the percent of people who convert between affiliations is nearly identical across age groups. Between 40-45% of each age group surveyed (18-29, 30-39, 40-49 etc.) switched religions. The difference is, about 75% of the young person switches are radical changes (example, Baptist to Buddhist), while only about 50% of the older person switches are radical. The other switches in both groups stay within the original religion’s broad tradition (example: Baptist to Methodist).
So no, older people are not more likely to cling to their birth sect. They switch sects just as much as young people do. But yes, older people are more likely to cling to their birth religious tradition. They make a radical switch in only about half the numbers that the young people do.
And who’s to say that the younger radical switchers won’t switch back to their tradition as they age.
The results are even worse if you do the same type of analysis but include the “I don’t know” responses. 81% of Brits gave a naturalistic answer or were intellectually honest enough to admit they didn’t know. Only 41% of Americans gave a naturalistic or intellectually honest response.
It almost feels, at times, like we are an adolescent society when compared to Britain.
Would you say that an adolescent, whether individual or society, all too easily fancies itself “exceptional”?
If the sun otherwise still never set on The United Kingdom/British Empire, would one see Brits manifesting an Americanesque “Exceptionalism”?
Actually, the Sun has yet to set on the British Empire:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/
b&
Yes and I doubt it. The concept of “American Exceptionalism” is very much the kind of thing I was thinking of when I wrote that comment.
I see this as a reason to be optimistic and believe the percentage will continue to drop.
The comet idea is itself dependent on the conditions on Earth being favorable. The same sampling of comets bombarded our own Moon, after all.
And, depending on how you want to define, “comet,” in terms of the newborn solar system, the line gets fuzzier still. The comets are leftovers from the same accretion disc that the planets themselves formed from. You could reasonably suggest that the whole planet was “brought here by comets.” It’s a familiar and ancient question: if you place grains of sand one by one on a clean table, at what point do you have a pile of sand? What do you call the grains a short distance away from the pile?
Also, Richard Dawkins has repeatedly addressed the alien civilization question. It’s unnecessary, unlikely in the most extreme, and unevidenced…but, even were it so, we could still reasonably expect those aliens themselves to have evolved by Darwinian processes before (and after) they built their spaceships. All it does is move the location of abiogenesis to a different star system. (And it presupposes that our own system is incapable of abiogenesis but that other one is, a presupposition that just barely clears the bar of coherency before going splat on the merits.)
b&
So, it’s comets all the way down … ?
Not quite…protoplanetary discs are themselves the ashes of supernovae….
b&
It’s supernovae all the way down.
…until you get to nucleosynthesis….
b&
Shhh, or I’ll start thinking about S- and R- processes. I havne’t felt the need to think about those for … nearly long enough.
Fortunately for you, I wasn’t referring to stellar nucleosynthesis, but rather Big Bang nucleosynthesis — the period that dominated the first dozen or so seconds after the singularity / whatever-the-hell-it-was.
You can go ahead and to continue to forget anything you ever didn’t want to know about fusion and fission and nuclear power plants and bombs and that natural pile in Africa and radioisotope decay and the Sun and…
…TMI? (Multiple expansions will work in this context….)
b&
Oh! Klo!
The mine has been closed fro over a decade now. Nothing left to see on the surface. Plus it’s only a couple of hundred miles from the last DRC Ebola outbreak. I decided to not make the effort to visit.
That’s the other half of the Ebola outbreak…the economies of these West African countries must be even more in the shitter than before because of everybody staying away in droves….
b&
Not everyone is staying away in droves. My colleagues are next door, and will be picking up scheduled supplies next door before (scheduled ) departure. Non – trivial risk is not news.
Though, to be honest, I’d take 3rd thoughts before going in there. Maybe even 4th thoughts. The big question is – do I have the skills needed?
Personally…I’m certain I have neither the skills to do anything productive there nor the skills to keep from getting ill, myself….
b&
I find the demographic trend very encouraging. There are two components of belief a poll like this can’t break out: 1) how certain are people in their beliefs and how tightly they cling to them; and 2) how open are the believers in each group to them idea that religious notions have no place in public education. My sense is that each group is more polarized than the last, and that the incidence of NOMA-ism also increases inversely with age. Hence the growth in compatibalism as churches endeavor to remain “relevant” in the modern world. These kids today!
A point in time is not a demographic trend. Another explanation might be that younger people are more into experimentation or rebellion, but they gradually mellow as they age.
“If you lump the third and fourth answers as “naturalistic origin,”
I don’t think you’re breaking your data down correctly. I think answers 2-5 are all naturalistic explanations for the beginning of life on earth. Given, from what I’ve read (and I am no expert), the opinion of experts tends to lean toward 3 or 4, I think 2 is still a naturalistic explanation (although the level of evidence to convince me would be much greater than for 3 or 4).
But how could you not count 5? I think for any naturalist worth his/her salt – since there is no expert consensus – 5 is the only answer for a (non-expert) naturalist.
I agree – I think 2 is naturalistic too, though it isn’t spelled out.
When you spell it out the second answer re aliens could go either way (see my comment under #7.) My own experience with believers involves supernaturalism, but that’s anecdotal. Still, it’s obviously not obviously naturalistic.
Now that definitely could be.
I don’t know enough about the proponents of ET based life to know if their perception of it is supernatural based. I looked at from my own perspective. Which is basically; I don’t have any reason (based on the elemental breakdown of the observable universe) to categorically deny the alien hypothesis, however I know the earth and comets contain the organic compounds necessary for life. However, the vastness of the universe and the fact that we have no tangible evidence of the planet ever being in contact with an alien being (we have strong evidence for organic molecules on earth and on comets) makes it much less probable to me, but not impossible.
The fact that a portion of the “alien source of life” population believe that the aliens are supernatural is new to me.
Thank you for the insight,
JH
As a partial explanation for how and why so many UFO proponents mix their hypothesis up with Spirituality, consider one of the factors necessarily involved in space aliens visiting Earth: an odd and statistically quite unexpected focus on humanity.
Given the virtually unimaginable vastness of space, the incomprehensible time limits involved, the unknowable technical, physical, and financial problems dealing with space travel between galaxies — gosh, it just so happens that it turns out that Advanced Higher Beings are anxiously watching … us. Yes, human beings are just so all-fired significant and a topic of such deep and all-encompassing concern everywhere and anywhere that those little problems of space and time and feasibility are just swept away into minor quibbles. They come for our benefit because we need help. Just like Mommy and Daddy did when we were in the play pen.
Supernatural views of the cosmos are almost always human-centric. They’re deeply connected to the existence, trials, and tribulations of people. So in some sense it tends to work the other way. Find a ‘theory’ or belief which privileges human beings as cosmically significant and expect the supernatural to be wound into it — if they can (and you know they always can.)
OK, I think I’ve got it. They are very similar, but do these alien believers think that the alien culture is coming to us based on some supernatural calling?
I’m sorry to take up your time, but I honestly have never met a true ancient alien believer. I mean I know the show is on TV (I now lament the end of the History Channel), but I have really never met one.
What I’m taking away from this is that believers in ancient alien contact frequently coincide that with the supernatural? I never connected the two.
Yes, the spiritually advanced aliens more or less stand in the role of angels — though “God” is usually less traditional and more like a Universal Mind or the Force of Love or something of that ilk.
Since you’re interested in the topic I would highly recommend Susan Clancy’s Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped By Aliens.
My father was a member of Ancient Astronauts back in the 70’s and I have friends today who attend pro-UFO conferences (or at least conventions which throw aliens into the big messy batch of woo.)But some of my information comes from there.
It’s a very fun read. From the review: “Being abducted,” writes Clancy, “may be a baptism in the new religion of this millennium.”
Thanks Sastra!
I’ll download the book.
I disagree.
The chances are very good that the survey-taker knows what #s 1-4 refer to. They understand the possibilities the survey is giving them. Thus, option #5 does not represent someone saying “I don’t know what it could have been,” but rather someone saying “I think all of the above options are roughly equiprobable – I can’t pick between them.” I think any ‘naturalist worth his/her salt’ would be able to pick between them.
Another way to put it is this: I don’t think we need to impute some deep, Hume-like skepticism of induction or empirical certainty to the people who answered ‘no idea.’ That seems a bit of a stretch. Ignorance, laziness (as in: they don’t want to think about the question for even a few seconds), or a desire not to put down what they think are all much more likely reasons.
Well, Eric, I disagree,
And I’m going to put you to the test:
“I think any ‘naturalist worth his/her salt’ would be able to pick between them.”
Which one of the 5 do you pick, and why? On what evidence do you base your assertion on given that experts in the field disagree?
Oh, and by the way, it wasn’t a Hume based skepticism my reply came from, but a Russell based one (which I have empirically tested).
Agreed. Unless 5 says explicitly:
No idea, but it not God.
Then that choice remains explicitly a non-naturalistic one.
I disagree also. This question didn’t come out of a vacuum. Someone who was concentrating on the obvious connection to the recent events involving a comet might reasonably ignore the ‘silly’ answers in the beginning and assume that the question was really “do you think life started with organic compounds brought from a comet … or did it begin on earth?” It would then involve two naturalistic possibilities which are still controversial. So #5 is naturalism.
Of course, we can’t rule out that some responders intended it your way. Just like the second answer then, it’s ambiguous.
#2 and #5 are ambiguous at best.
It’s not as if the poll is asking people for their hand in marriage. #3 and #4 are quite reasonable guess at, even if not fully agreed upon, they are the only unambiguous responses.
#1 could be ambiguous too, depending on what one means by God…some Deist who thinks:
It was created by God = It was created by the Universe. Where God=Universe, i.e., this person believes that the totality of the physical universe is God.
I’d be willing to bet that the “No idea” group in the UK has far more people who would add the caveat that it was some combination of Physics and Chemistry, and not anything supernatural. More people in the U.S. would be willing to go for some kind of caveat indicating that God did it somehow but they don’t know how. Think the “spiritual but not religious” crowd.
I don’t think choosing “no idea” implies that that you think all the other choices are equiprobable.
I think “god” is light years more improbable than any of the other choices, but I still, in fact, have no idea how it happened.
You’ll notice the question does not ask “which of these do you think is most probable?”
This could touch on a delicate area and I can understand if it isn’t answered but the figure that leapt out of me when looking at the US figures was the astonishingly low naturalistic figures (14%) for the US Black population. Can anyone shed any light on that?
It’s an interesting result, for sure. Some of it can be explained by the generally higher religiosity of black Americans, but it doesn’t seem like it could explain the magnitude of the difference.
Some might also be explained by the lower N value. Only 118 respondents identified as black, which is a fairly small sample size from which to extrapolate to a population. Especially when you see that over a third of the total responses were from the south. It is possible that the southern blacks were overly represented in the poll.
willful ignorance is the most despicable.
Did anyone happen to watch the AlJazeera TV “Holy Money” about Vatican & global money = power? No surprise but horrible & scary….all that money (there is LOTS) lining pockets and mind-shaping the young….
On the education or Religious education business, it may be that too much emphasis is given to this. Many in Britain seem to say the kids don’t pay much attention to it.
The big religion influence may still come from home, the parents and their forcing the little ones into church early on when it does the real job on them.
I never had any religion at school or at home really so never had to give it up. The strange thing in this study seems to be that both in England and America the likely chance of life elsewhere in the Universe is about equal. One would think it would be higher in the U.K. After all, God is only interested in planet earth.
You only discuss the results for two countries (US and UK). Was the poll conducted in other countries as well? If so, where can I find them?
Friggin’ women! What’s wrong with them? 😉
Oh brother. Not surprising, but sad.
It is also telling that Americans had a higher belief in the “alien did it” scenario (we love Woo), and less Americans had “no idea.” Of course the high percentage of the “God did it” answer probably accounts for the surety of Americans. But “no idea” is still more hopeful than daddy above did it.
Reblogged this on Congratulations, you are a Science Nerd and commented:
Dumb and Dumber is the hottest movie in the U.S right now and we can see why. U.S citizens believe God over the truth that chemicals on comets created life on earth while the U.K took the comet route. Dumb and Dumber . Thank you Farrelly Brothers for the Three Stooges also.
Reblogged this on Atheist Catalyst and commented:
It’s going to be fascinating as the populous moves from an ignorant mass, to a decently educated mass. We are seeing more and more people join the internet and learn that while there are still lunatics with the means to write blogs, most people are seeing how real facts about our universe are more beneficial. I dare say Religious beliefs will ultimately become unprofitable to the extent that the Religious will become a minority of our species.
I understand that Religion can be found in all areas – that it seems to be a useful tool, even among atheist groups, and even finds it’s manifestation in cults, clubs, gangs, families, cultures, corporate structures, nationalism, sports fandom, Arts critiiques and other areas where people begin to agree on a manufactured Dogma that really has no unique value in the world. For example, the debate between Star Wars and Star Trek has markings of a Religion. It’s not, but one could envision a time when people identify with more esoteric aspects of the two movies and declare their view is, ultimately, superior in some way.
I believe there are camps within the scientific community that exhibit the same debates. There is a famous counter-point to my larger point regarding the Mayan Language (Read: “Breaking the Mayan Code”).
My point is that science is a tour deforce of human achievement, and it’s astounding that we are landing dishwashers on comets.
Comets used to be “Signs from God”, and a man might have killed over it’s appearance, or not. Theists would have us revel in this emotive property, as if we have never experienced powerful emotions in other ways. To them, they’d have the world believe there is some secret truth… stay long enough in the Church and they’ll teach you all about it…once they get a steady investment from you.
But, people have to make a buck somehow.
The scientists who landed the Philae on Comet 67P didn’t need an ounce of Faith to do what they did. Yet, that little piece of metal and silicon landed within feet of where they wanted it.
Tiger Woods dreams of this kind of accuracy.
Scientists are winning the battle of FACTS, and more and more people are being raised on those facts, the “Truth” be damned.
(“Truth” meaning the Christian version of reality which is, in fact, false.)
What I found curious is the 4-5% of both who think life was ‘seeded’ by aliens. That is a cop-out as it does not explain where those ‘aliens’ originated. I think I realized that when I was 14 or so & von Daniken was popular. I confess I read three of those books including ‘Was god an astronaut’, but I felt it did not really answer anything – just put the idea in another Russian doll.
🐾