Finally, There Are More Young Americans Who ‘Believe’ in Evolution Than Creationism
Some encouraging news. It has become a pronounced trend for talk show hosts and other right wing authorities to fall over each other trying to deny that this is an issue at all. This only demonstrates that their superstition-mongering and pandering have been called out and they have no other answer than to deny that this elephant in their conservative living room even exists.
This idiocy does exist only because it is profitable. Besides the swarms of drunken con-artists who travel around the fundy church speaker circuit fleecing the rubes, creationism is a big part of the rationale for the home schooling industry. It is easy and cheap, and therefore profitable, to write a creationist textbook. Any semi-literate rube who can assemble the appropriate combination of gibberish can do it.
Beyond that, creationism is a linchpin of the antiscience movement and industry in general, providing a crucial semblance of spiritual and institutional authority that makes believers susceptible to the whole vast range of antiscience profiteering.
There’s been a long-standing divide between Americans who believe in evolution, and those who think God created humans just as they are. But a recent poll has shown that 51 percent of American adults under the age of 30 now claim to believe purely in secular evolution, which means evolution independent of any divine power – a jump from 40 percent back in 2009, when the research began.
The survey was conducted by the Pew Research Centre back in July, and overall, the results were incredibly positive. Even though just over half the young people said that they believed solely in evolution as a result of natural selection, 73 percent said they expressed some sort of belief in evolution – which is 12 percent more than six years ago – as Rachel E. Gross reports for Slate.
The research showed that around 65 percent of all adults in the US believed that humans have evolved, which sounds like incredible news, but only 35 percent thought it was due to causes independent of a higher power. And another 31 percent said they believed that humans have always existed in their current form since the beginning of time.
Still, the increase in Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 believing in secular evolution is incredibly promising, and it shows that some of the legal battles to get evolution represented in textbooks around the country have made a difference. ‘
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Up until 2005, ‘intelligent design’ – a form of creationism – was taught in classrooms across the country. And it was only in September this year that teachers in Alabamba (sic) public schools were required to teach their students evolution. Even now, their science textbooks have to have a sticker on the font saying that evolution is a “controversial theory”.
More: Finally, There Are More Young Americans Who ‘Believe’ in Evolution Than Creationism - ScienceAlert
“Alabamba?” I rather like it though.