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Republicans and Dinosaurs: An Epidemic of Ignorance

by on Dec. 09, 2012, under Creationism, Dinosaurs and Humans, Evolution, Evolution and Theism, Politics, Republican Creationism

Over the past 30 years the Gallup organization has conducted 11 polls on the question of the origin and development of the human species. Over those eleven years the results have been remarkably consistent.

According to Gallup, 46% believe that God created humans in their present form; 32% believe that humans evolved, under the guidance of God; and 15% believe that human evolution took place absent any involvement by God.

When the question set was altered slightly, and the responses broken down by political party, the results were or as follows: 58% of Republicans polled believed God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. Before you blow up your self-esteem to the bursting point note that according to Gallup 41% of the Democrats and 39% of the independents polled held the same view.

In sum, 46% of Americans hold the Creationist view of human origins within the past 10,000 years.

Gallup comments:

Most Americans are not scientists, of course, and cannot be expected to understand all of the latest evidence and competing viewpoints on the development of the human species. Still, it would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution. Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief, at least as measured by this question wording, that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature.

Good Grief.

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2012 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Creationism, Dinosaurs and Humans, Evolution, Evolution and Theism, Politics, Republican Creationism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Matthew-Ribarich/100002115280798 Matthew Ribarich

    Epidemic of ignorance is the story of people voting for Obama. Largest debt ever, largest unemployment for the longest period of time.received 100% of the vote in what 43 precincts in PA. That is better then Putin or Castro! How about the precincts in Florida? 143% of the vote counted. Or how about the City in Maine that unfortunately never had a Black person living there, yet 100 Blacks showed up to vote? Did anyone tell these people the KKK was Democratic? Remember Sen Byrd??? And you are going to say anything about ignorance? Maybe that covers some Catholics, voting for a party that had to vote three times to put the word God back into the platform.

  • alohapuna

    Much of the deficit is related to the Bush tax cuts. And the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) was enacted when Bush was still in office.
    None of those accusations of voter fraud have been authenticated. Some of ithem can be traced to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Fox News, which is to truth what a boll weevil is to cotton. It was the Republican Party chairman in Maine who said that nobody knows any black people in those towns. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist.The votes were all validated. It shows how out of touch he is. The voter fraud was reported by Punditpress, which has no verifiable reputation but appears to be conservative.

    There is a lot on the internet that people post without verification. People read it and accept it as fact, then pass it on like the birthers and Obama being a Muslin.
    Half of those in a Pew poll believe incorrectly that the TARP started with Obama. So don’t believe everything you read.

  • alohapuna

    One more thing, the entire auto industry has added 160,000 jobs in the last two years.

  • tiponeill

    “Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief, at least as measured by this question wording, that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature.”

    It is worse than that, and is directly caused by religion. Once it is respectable to “believe” any form of nonsense if you call it religion, then there is nothing to prevent adherence to golden tablets and magic crackers from being perfectly legitimate “beliefs”. In the US we don’t hold “beliefs” to any standard of rationality or evidence. Thus the US is an anomaly among Western Democracies and in many respects resembles a third world nation.

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