39% of Britons believe in Creationism
Britons unconvinced on evolution, says the BBC, based on a survey of Britons with regards to Evolution.
(via.)
Over 2000 participants took part in the survey, and were asked what best described their view of the origin and development of life:
- 22% chose creationism;
- 17% opted for intelligent design;
- 48% selected evolution theory;
- and the rest did not know.
Intelligent Design is just another attempt by the US Fundamentalists to force Creationism, and hence their fundamentalist agenda into public schools.
It has nothing to do with a basically theistic, but also scientific view of the universe. i.e., that some sort of Supreme Being created the universe and it runs on observed and testable scientific principles.
Science tells you How The Universe Works; religion tells you Why The Universe Is, (according to your flavour of religion and need or desire to be so told, of course).
The fact that it's becoming a mainstream belief in Britain is worrying. Religous fundamentalism is an evil thing. A requirement to believe that sheperds 3,000+ years ago could write a detailed scientific account of the formation of the world is clearly nonsense. To insist that people must believe it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is a sure sign of fanaticism. To insist that it should be taught in lieu of actual science is a major step towards schools which don't actually teach but merely indoctrinate their 'students' (or victims) with propaganda.
It also has another impact: teaching kids the 'scientific method', i.e. that a theory can be tested with an experiment and verified, is clearly dangerous to a fundamentalist regime. The notion that everyone can test out the theories for themselves and prove that they work removes power from the pulpit and gives it back to the people. After all, I don't need to believe or trust in a science teacher about gravity; I can test it for myself with a stopwatch, a stepladder and a stone in a simple experiment. Even though I may be critical of the teachers lessons, I can easily prove or dispove them for myself.
Suppose, for example, that a travelling Science Teacher comes to my town and insists that the acceleration due to gravity is 5 metres per second per second. I can take a stop watch, a stepladder and a stone and disprove his claims in, oh about enough time for a rock to accelerate at 9.81 metres per second per second and for me to calculate that rate.
To insist that I shouldn't be allowed to question the roving Science Teacher is to deny the scientific method. To deny the Scientific Method is to deny personal choice while insisting that taught beliefs are inherently correct and must be followed without reflection. Fanaticism, in other words.
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While I agree with you that Intelligent Design is being used by Creationists to push their own religious agenda, it is not the same thing as Creationism. Both David Brin (http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/01/supporters-of-science-must-adapt.html) and Orson Scott Card (http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/story.html?id=1142) have written interesting pieces on this topic recently.
The reason religious nutcases can get so many people to support their unfounded ideas is that science is not taught properly in schools. How many people (even university graduates) can explain clearly what scientific method is? Yet this should be a basic building block of learning, right behind literacy and numeracy (which should include basic statistics - how was that survey sample selected?) Couple those tools with curiousity and a healthy dose of scepticism, and children will teach themselves everything else they need to know.
Rod, I do agree with your point about poor science teaching, but I'm not so sure that there's much of a division between Creationism and ID. The following Wikipedia Article:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
show that the majority backers of the 'theory' are Creationists:
Phillip E. Johnson, considered the father of the intelligent design movement, stated that the goal of intelligent design is to cast creationism as a scientific concept.[26] All leading intelligent design proponents are fellows or staff of the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture.[27] Nearly all intelligent design concepts and the associated movement are the products of Discovery Institute which guides the movement in follows its wedge strategy while conducting its adjunct Teach the Controversy campaign.
Also, the David Brin article you quoted actually seems more of a call to explain the science more correctly, and not to claim that ID is a valid 'theory'
(the second part of the article is: here )