Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “field2,” is from 13 years ago but is slightly rewritten. The Divine Duo discusses the age of the Earth, with Jesus maintaining that it’s older than the 6,000 years espoused by Mo.
The sick part is that a 2019 Gallup poll of Americans show that 40% of them agree with Jesus’s estimate. The line at the top shows the proportion of polled Americans who believe that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so. I gave these figures in one of muy Galápagos lectures, and people just couldn’t believe it.
On the other hand, the proportion of people who believe in purely naturalistic evolution has risen pretty steadily in the last two decades. But it’s still at only 22%: a bit more than one and five of our countrymen. In total, 73% of Americans believe that evolution involves some form of divine intervention or guidance.
Fun fact, Muhammad believed in a young earth.
The History of al-Tabari, Volume 1- General Introduction and from the Creation to the Flood (trans. Franz Rosenthal, State University of New York Press, Albany 1989), pp.
According to Ibn Humayd- Yahya b. Wadih- Yahya b. Ya’qub- Hammad- Sa’id b. Jubayr- Ibn Abbas: This world is one of the weeks of the other world- seven thousand years. Six thousand two hundred years have already passed. (The world) will surely experience hundreds of years, during which there will be no believer in the oneness of God there. Others said that the total extent of time is six thousand years. (pp. 172-173)
That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, given the time he lived and his apparent lack of education.
Enlarging upon Jerry’s point that “…73% of Americans believe that evolution involves some form of divine intervention or guidance,” I refer to Catholic teaching on these subjects. https://www.catholic.com/tract/adam-eve-and-evolution
Note this under the section headed Adam and Eve: Real People: “It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction.” In the paragraph following appears the main point that is really the cornerstone of Christianity: “…original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own.” So my question for those who believe this doctrine is this: When and where was Adam? For physical anthropology and biology show that there was not only one couple who were the ancestors of all humans.
Is it the divine duo discussing it? Or is it Jesus and the barmaid who are discussing it? The bubble arrows point down, not towards Mo. That does not mean Mo disagrees, just that he does not seem to be talking.
That statistic does say a lot about Americans, and not in a good way. Or if we didn’t have this proof, we have the popularity of Trump; different scenario, same problem: ignorance mixed with credulity.
I’d suspect that a Venn diagram of Trump supporters vs. YECs would only require one circle.
No doubt!
The concept of a billion years would be something like 100 years for most of these believers. The first flight happened last Tuesday. What is hard to believe is the stupidity. Trump knew all this bullshit worked before he tested any of it. He is better than Jesus or Mo.
Here is a textbook on astronomy that I happened on recently. Note the use of the word ‘creation’ in
I have no reason to think it is being used with a religious meaning, but what do people on WEIT think? I think it is just loose language.
Since the same book talks about the Big Bang as the beginning of the universe (see Chapter 1.9 for the timeline), I’m confident that “creation event” just refers to the Big Bang.
But you can bet that some religious (Biblical, Islamic, whatever) creationist somewhere is going to deliberately misinterpret that “creation” word.
Right. I realized that it refers to the Big Bang, but to refer to it as a creation event is a bit misleading given that the standard model of cosmology is a classical theory, and that we are approximating the state of the universe only as far as we can without a quantum theory of gravity. We don’t have the language to probe nature at that scale.
Just loose language. Creationists don’t own the creation word, although the probably would like to.
Years ago I was in a series of discussions with an ardent creationist student about evolution. He was rather typical with his goal-post moving, citation of boiler-plate creationist claims, and so on. But in my reply to something, I used the “c-word” about something entirely naturalistic and of course he gleefully pounced on that.
“Creation requires a creator.” This is why the word is so popular with theists.
However I respond with: “Creation requires a creative process”. There are many examples of non random, complex and creative processes in nature.
The belief that the Earth is only ten thousand years old, and that to say otherwise is offensive, is the basis of Simon Edge’s latest novella In the Beginning. (It’s a satire on the Maya Forstater employment tribunal cases in the UK, so spotting the real-life characters and events is an extra joy for those of us who followed them closely.)
Oops, meant to add that those statistics are truly frightening. In total, 73% of Americans believe that evolution involves some form of divine intervention or guidance.. Good grief!