Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Apparently No Selective Pressure for Intelligence

So here's an interesting CBS News poll showing how America views "evolution" and "creationism" and how that compares to their political actions (i.e., their 2004 Presidential voting):

Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution
Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided the process. Just 13 percent say that God was not involved. But most would not substitute the teaching of creationism for the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Now, first of all, educated people know the difference between "evolution" and "natural selection" and these pepole also understand how to contrast "natural selection" with "intelligent design/creationism." Note that some really educated people know all of this AND the difference between "intelligent design" and simple "creationism."

You see, among religious and scientific scholars, evolution is uncontested. No one says that evolution isn't happening. If you're feeling the urge to say, "But Ted...," here, then I urge you to actually go out and do some reading (like a BOOK, not just an article), becuase you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

The real debate has to do with "natural selection" as a source of diversity (keep in mind that Darwin's book, which only said "evolution" ONCE in all its pages, was called On the Origin of Species; it was about SPECIATION) versus other sources of diversity, like things related to some sort of divine intervention.

These are delicate topics that most of the public does not truly understand. If we let the public guide these sorts of policy issues, we'd have to let them guide lots of other things that they know nothing about. This would mean the end of civilization.

If you don't know, don't raise an opinion. You're just messing our lives up. Your kids pay the price. And God hates you for it.

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