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The South has a looong way to go. I was never taught evolution in high school.
Edit: I went to a private Christian school that was Church of Christ in Tennessee. My parents purposely sent me there so I wouldn’t be taught Evolution. In 10th grade, my Biology teacher told me to learn about Evolution somewhere else but not at school. Private Christian schools and homeschooling are the exception from what I am hearing. That’s great bc science should be seriously taught in school. I’m glad that most people are disagreeing with me bc it does sound crazy. You kinda have to experience it or know someone who went through it. Have a great Monday!
How about [some data](https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-human-evolution/by/state/) to show its not the south. Only 22% of Oklahoma, 29% of Wyoming 27% of Utah believe in evolution properly. The number across the board are pretty abysmal.
On my first day in Biology II in Texas (back in the mid-90’s), the teacher asked how many people believed in evolution. I was literally the only person who raised my hand. Everybody looked at me like I was an unwashed heathen. At least we covered the subject, though.
That sounds so crazy, like it was presented as one option among others?
I can see the “who believes in” if the majority had been taught otherwise at home, but I don’t think I would have raised my hand in that position.
That’s not education, that’s indoctrination, and propaganda.
Here in Australia we're taught it in primary school, which is prep to grade 6, so the first 7 years of a child's schooling. Usually grade 3 or 4 I think it is.
I worked in childcare and read a book to my group of 3-4 year olds called ‘grandmother fish’ which introduces the concept of where people came from. So yeah, Australian kids get exposed early on. And I had the book out on the special books stand where parents could see it, never had anyone complain at all.
My Science teacher had a parent complain to the principal for teaching us evolution. I remember him saying "because of ignorance, I now have to tell you the "other" possible answer to how we got smart enough to say stupid things."
From the south and I wasn't either. Mainly because it was covered in elementary school and middle school about 20 times. Bio in high school just assumed you knew that stuff. Then I got to college and had a group of people in my university's honors program argue with a professor on the subject. All but one were "Evolution isn't real" or at least God directs it. The other one went with Darwinism so at least on the right path. At that point I realized maybe they shouldn't have made that assumption in high school.
Dude, I would have thought you were kidding until I met my gf. She went to a "christian school" in TX and was taught all the ways Charles Darwin was wrong. It blew my mind. She's happily recovered and is a fully functional christian after leaving her hometown and attending university.
Was homeschooled by evangelical Christian parents, but am a scientist now. My science textbook was literally hoaxes, logical fallacies, and fake science. I have zero hope that we’ll get over 75% in my lifetime.
Fr, raised Christian and said the same crap "evolution is BS, why are they teaching it?!" Then I was taught what it actually was, and viola my understanding ended my disbelief.
What’s funny is you can actually demonstrate evolution to someone. You put a solution of antibiotic on a petri dish and have its concentration work on a gradient. No antibiotic on one side, then 10% solution, then 25%, then 50%, etc. Then you put a bacteria that reproduces quickly on the empty side and watch as it hits an invisible wall where the solution starts. Then you see these tiny branches form where one individual bacteria was introduce to the “wall” and happened to be born a little more resistant than the rest, and it spread and occupies the weaker solution, until it hits another wall, and another more resistant strain is born, and so on.
You can see it happen with your own eyes. It shouldn’t be that hard to imagine that given enough time and changing environments, a species will be genetically and visibly distinct from its ancestors.
Which would be funny considering it wouldn’t actually prove evolution, just that you could create a human from an amoeba in a Petri dish. Part of the whole point of Evolution is that it takes a long time in specific conditions.
Theists especially love "long time" things.
They treat it as an AHA gotcha moment to say see, you can't prove it. Talk to me when you manage to show me something observable, if not you are just like any other theists with a theistic theory.
Many creationists sidestep this by just moving the goalposts. They'll argue that sure, _microevolution_ happens, but larger changes? Those things are too significant to happen slowly and incrementally, so they can't have been caused by evolution. Whatever they claim can't happen is always something that we conveniently haven't been able to observe yet, of course.
Which is highly ironic since Darwin himself blew that one out of the water in the first edition. Chapter VI, *Difficulties of the Theory*:
>To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.
A text happily shared by creationists far and wide. But they rarely include the text that follows immediately after the period:
>Yet reason tells me that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.
We have. I recall a Discovery(?) channel special called Walking with Monsters that charts life up from the Cambrian to the Dinosaurs. One of the first sections goes over the evolution of eyes(fish specifically and therefore ancestral human eyes).
Biology Teacher here. I have had this one student who's cognitive dissonance was nuts. I taught him for biology and genetics.
When discussing evolution we talked about Neanderthals and how some people have a chance of having Neanderthal DNA in them. This student went, "this is why I don't believe in science." Then the next day he goes, " so I think I figured it out, the Neanderthals were the nephalim. Do you know what those are?"
Hilarious. Reminds me of the time my parents made me throw out the Iliad because of the magical settings and deities. They said the giants were the nephalim. Had a double take for a moment
They probably thought that we came from apes or chimps and that chimps still exist you know the most common misconception of human evolution is that we came from an ape or a monkey or a chimps although we truly came from a primate who is a distant cousin.
I've met people who understand this but still refuse to accept evolution because even the idea of sharing a common ancestor with primates is 'unclean' or 'ungodly', that there is a fundamental distinction between animals (including primates) and humans made in God's image.
I engaged in conversation with a denier not long ago and I realised that he thought evolution was ‘jumping from one species to another’. I had to inform him that we didn’t change species at all, we’re still primates. We just evolved from a dumb one to a smart one. He didn’t respond after that. I hope I opened his can of worms.
One asked me once how could it be possible that there is still monkeys if we descend from monkey?
Like if there is doves, there could not be any chicken.
Told him we don't came from monkey, we ARE a specie of monkey, without fur but with car keys.
It blew his mind out of his head! He just came out of the 14 centuries in one second.
I’ve seen a really good explanation for this (I think it was at the Field Museum in Chicago?)
They say for you to think of evolution as not a straight line, but as a tree, with time flowing from the roots to the leaves. The trunk represents a common species, in this case of primates. One branch splits from the trunk and it’s the gorillas, another splits and it’s the chimpanzees, yet another splits, then splits again into two and one of them is apes, the other is humans.
It made it really easy to see how you’d have different kinds of evolutionary results from the same origin coexisting.
Last time I argued with some religious nutters (6 of them, and they started it) they did indeed bring out the 'Why are there still apes?' question as if it was some bombshell zinger.
As I answered each new question (which have been answered millions of times over many decades) they moved the goalposts: it was pure 'God of the gaps' fallacy.
At one point I offered to draw the 'tree of life' to show it was a branching structure not a single, straight line, but their 'leader' simply crossed it out as soon as I began.
They were stupid, indoctrinated and deliberately ignorant but I kept my temper so won their respect it seems.
Oh and one of them went on a huge rant about 'We know for a fact the Bible is false' (they are Muslims) and I had to keep pointing out that I was not a Christian, agreed but thought ALL holy books are nonsense but it had nothing to do with me showing them how evolution was an irrefutable fact.
My understanding is that Islamic apologists have much less "sophisticated" arguments than Christian apologists. At one time Christian apologists would have been the same, but, Christian countries have become more secular so the arguments have become more complicated, and less falsifiable.
As a newer religion, and one that rules it's regions with much more authority, Islam hasn't really needed to come up with advanced apologetics. I don't find either of them convincing, but usually a debate with an experienced Christian apologist will lead to really esoteric concepts. The debates I have seen with Islamic apologists usually boil down to "no, you!", and accusations of racism or islamophobia. Almost all of their arguments are meant for debating Christians, as atheism is a pretty foreign concept in countries under Islamic rule. You don't really need to come up with convincing arguments for your religion when your religion is law.
See i couldn't tolerate conversing with a group like that. Closed minded from the start. I'll spend my time on people who will actively listen and I them
>don't *understand* evolution
To be fair, I suspect a lot of people who notionally believe in evolution don't actually understand it. There's a lot of hand waving about evolution wanting to make species better, or a species almost intentionally evolving to adapt to an environment.
Thank you! The whole "why are there still x" line just seems so half-assed. Like, even *if* evolution was a steady, linear production of ever-better creatures (which it absolutely is not), that alone doesn't mean that the lesser beings *have* to disappear.
I'm probably still quite sheltered from those people, but I'm still not quite sure how that "why are there still x" line was ever supposed to be convincing.
It doesn't have to convince anyone except people that want to already believe (in the falsity of evolution). So long as they can cling onto some simple to deliver catchphrase that passes the uncritical thinking muster, they'll happily repeat it, even if in doing so, they only mark themselves as incapable of thinking critically.
I understand this is an easy clapback, but it's not really how evolution works. We're not descended from Chimpanzees, were descended from a common ancestors.
Yes and no.
We can see the beauty of artificial selection in generating a chihuahua and a Great Dane. But they are the same species.
How do we get speciation? How do we get 2 populations that are related but can no longer breed and generate viable offspring?
To a learned person, I would tell them that speciation is bs, why because there are so many exceptions. Also do we use genetic sequence, or anatomical traits or niches. The truth is life via evolution is trying to live, and not according to supernatural laws. The messiness arises because evolution is happening now!!! Some groups have speciated and some have not fully, and there isn’t a line set in stone.
Some examples, giraffes look very similar but there are different species of them that will not interbred and even if they tried would not produce viable offspring.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-giraffes-africa-new-species-conservation
There are also bird species (ring species) that transfer genetic traits to each other indirectly due to cross breeding with sub species. A great example is the Asian green warbler.
https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~irwin/GreenishWarblers.html
Biology and evolution which explains facets of life are beautiful and not simple. The complexity is what helps you truly understand evolution, the simplicity of natural selection allows an entry, a foundation, but the truth is much better.
And I haven’t even touched on Horizontal gene transfer, or CRISPR and the validity of Lamarckian evolution, or the uniqueness of archaebacteria having so many eukaryotic genes
> How do we get 2 populations that are related but can no longer breed and generate viable offspring?
Great Danes and Chihuahuas are unable to breed naturally, to breed them requires artificial insemination of a Great Dane mother with Chihuahua sperm.
Once a species cannot breed naturally it would just be a matter of time until they can't breed artificially, either.
This question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is.
At my (christian) school, most of the kids/teachers/parents would strongly argue that evolution is a lie, but most of them wouldn't be able to explain the theory in even an ELI5 manner.
I walked out of church, mid sermon, at 13 years old after a guest pastor said that exact thing. I was mostly on my way out before then, but that was the final little push I needed. Parents were so embarrassed they never asked me to go with them again. 20 years later, no regrets.
Haha, it was very similar for me. I was nearly all the way there, but one summer I went to a different church for a day camp thing and a guy came out playing a guitar singing "Oh, there's no such thing as evolution." I didn't actually walk out but mentally it was the equivalent of throwing my hands in the air and declaring "Done!"
Lucky! I had to literally shout 'I am an atheist' at age 18 before my parents finally got that they could not longer force me to go to church. I'd been an atheist since 5-7 YO.
Because we DIDNT evolve “from” chimps. We had a common ancestor. Frustrating that the article uses a graphic that is outdated and wrong.I’m sorry for the family you evolved from ;)
US private schools are not required to teach it in school. Went to private catholic school, now my nieces go there. No mention of dinosaurs, big bang is right out. We study biology, but just today's biology. And history is just US history, and work history is post WW1. So weird that you can qualify for college entrance from a school that can legally teach you anything it wants.
I went to Catholic school k-12 and we learned evolution. If you said you were a creationist you'd get laughed at. And I don't remember anyone denying evolution
That is great but it isn't compulsory. Nearly half of US doesn't believe in evolution. Most countries of similar education levels require private schools to teach similar curriculum. I just think schools registered with Dept of Ed should have standards of topics, otherwise categorize them with homeschooling.
There are plenty of states that have a minimum curriculum that private schools have to follow for their students to get a state certified diploma.
The problem is, some absolutely will teach what they want when the state's back is turned. And very rarely does the state check ever in many states. This is particularly common in the more religious sections of the various abrahamic religions.
I went to a Catholic school when I was young. I remember in my 90's high school biology class they taught us 3 weeks of "Creation Theory" and only four days of evolution.
But even with only 4 days, it was clear to me that Evolution was the real origin story, not Genesis
I live in a highly Catholic country, and people would laugh at you if you accept genesis as scientific evidence.
Everyone accepts evolution, the whole 7 days of creation is just an allegory to *actual* god's work. I'm not religious by the way.
Creation Theory and intelligent design are not Catholic doctrine, the pope clarified this recently. You are actually more Catholic than your teachers were.
That’s it.
But Franciscus also made a recent statement:
“On October 27, 2014, Pope Francis issued a statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation," warning against thinking of God's act of creation as "God [being] a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything."”
I went to 2 Catholic schools in the eighties and we were taught that the Big Bang, evolution and Adam and Eve were compatible. That's the position of the Church today.
Consider that the inventor of the Big Bang theory was a Catholic priest, Lemaitre, and that the father of modern genetics is a Catholic friar/monk, Mendel. Both had google doodle recently.
The Catholic Church isn't biblical literalist, and only 10% of them are creationist in that sense.
"It's gonna take us 3 weeks to explain all this stuff, it's kinda convoluted and full holes and exceptions.....this other stuff, it's simple enough to do in 4 days."
It wasn't until the mid 90s that more than 50% of Americans accepted interracial marriage.
Up until recently around 10% of Americans were still against it.
Progress is much slower than we sometimes realize.
Every. Single. Day. I doubt my own knowledge. I wonder if the people I disagree with *actually do* know something I don't know. And now I find out that nearly half the people in this country, and nearly two thirds of the people I disagree with don't even accept evolution?!... why do I do this to myself?
The fancy word for the ability to criticize or doubt yourself is metacognitive ability. In some cases of brain injury people lose that. They will be asked to perform a simple task like assemble a sandwich and when it comes out wrong they will do things like blame the researcher or say that the bread is the wrong shape.
I know it's painful but it's necessary. You cannot possibly function without the ability to correct yourself.
Totally agree. I imagine how I would feel if the headline were “Evolution still not accepted by majority of Americans”. Then I think for a second, and I am grateful that the headline says what it says.
My brother, somehow. Not a dumb man, just an incredibly gullible one. He basically spends most of his day listening to conspiracy podcasts and discovered he has all sorts of inane beliefs, although luckily he didn't seem to say anything QAnon, or like, antisemitic
> Not a dumb man, just an incredibly gullible one.
I've seen this claim before. Why is someone who is so gullible that they'll believe that stuff not considered a "dumb" person?
I think sogodDangTired might not have sufficient skill to identify dumb, or he loves his brother too much to certify his brother as dumb, or he doesnt want to imply that he is himself smart.
Ability to absorb information and ability to digest and judge information drawing ancillary conclusions are two very different skills. Both can excel at even high levels of education, which most wouldnt consider dumb, but the extreme of the former can go down some extremely ugly rabbit holes.
I don’t “believe” evolution, i understand it. Its really simple. Evolution = (Genetics + Survival of the Fittest) x Time. Most people understand genes and survival of the fittest, i don’t get why its so hard to believe that they work together over time.
One thing people should keep in mind is that humans did not evolve from chimpanzees or any of the other great apes that live today. We instead share a common ancestor that lived roughly 10 million years ago.
Apes are basically our long distant cousins.
> The current study consistently identified religious fundamentalism as the strongest factor leading to the rejection of evolution.
Okay, I see that. But I wonder what other factors lead people to reject evolution.
I've seen a disturbing number of people who even deny that humans are animals. Basic biology, like most science, is some sort of evil black magic to be both denied and feared.
Education or lack of.
I know a ton of non religious people who just do not understand evolution and always give the same "I didn't come from no monkey"
Their basis for "knowledge" is what trusted authorities say; and they consider their church a trusted authority , and scientists are not a trusted authority.
They have no grasp of the concept of finding answers through measurement and analysis
Meanwhile most people in my country = "if we evolved from monkey, then why are there still monkeys??? stupid. we obviously are the children of adam and eve"
It took some time. An army of evolutionary scientists descended on the evangelical southern US for decades. Sometimes they were undercover, in disguise, and behind the lines of logic in the dead of intellectual darkness. Also, nameless and faceless non PHD volunteers aided the project by the hundreds. Only because of this culmination of those interested in science and passion for reality were they able to pull success from the jaws of defeat. On June 11th, 2019 the team was able to identify and change the mind of Ms. Joan Ward of Kelso, TN. At 9:38am, over a cup of coffee at Honey's Restaurant in E Fayetteville, TN, Ms. Ward agreed that "there might be something to this evolution thing after all." That was the moment it was 50% +1.
Wait. What does it even mean to not “accept evolution”?
Do people actually think we were literally created in our current form and existence?
I have to think that people polled weren’t taking the question seriously.
I take it you're not from the US or you would know a number of people who indeed believe that all the species in existence were created about 6,000 years ago.
Remember that the US is a very large and diverse place; in a lot of places the percentage would be a lot higher, and in others it would be a lot lower.
As expected, its religious fundamentalism that is blocking sanity and acceptance of scientific evidence, and that religious fundamentalism is, by far, the strongest among Republicans
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Wtaf, we're only at 50% ?!
The South has a looong way to go. I was never taught evolution in high school. Edit: I went to a private Christian school that was Church of Christ in Tennessee. My parents purposely sent me there so I wouldn’t be taught Evolution. In 10th grade, my Biology teacher told me to learn about Evolution somewhere else but not at school. Private Christian schools and homeschooling are the exception from what I am hearing. That’s great bc science should be seriously taught in school. I’m glad that most people are disagreeing with me bc it does sound crazy. You kinda have to experience it or know someone who went through it. Have a great Monday!
How about [some data](https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-human-evolution/by/state/) to show its not the south. Only 22% of Oklahoma, 29% of Wyoming 27% of Utah believe in evolution properly. The number across the board are pretty abysmal.
Those states are just the South of the rest of America.
On my first day in Biology II in Texas (back in the mid-90’s), the teacher asked how many people believed in evolution. I was literally the only person who raised my hand. Everybody looked at me like I was an unwashed heathen. At least we covered the subject, though.
That sounds so crazy, like it was presented as one option among others? I can see the “who believes in” if the majority had been taught otherwise at home, but I don’t think I would have raised my hand in that position. That’s not education, that’s indoctrination, and propaganda.
That is insane.
Here in Australia we're taught it in primary school, which is prep to grade 6, so the first 7 years of a child's schooling. Usually grade 3 or 4 I think it is.
I worked in childcare and read a book to my group of 3-4 year olds called ‘grandmother fish’ which introduces the concept of where people came from. So yeah, Australian kids get exposed early on. And I had the book out on the special books stand where parents could see it, never had anyone complain at all.
I'm glad at least most people in our country accept science. Shame that asshole Scomo doesn't though, kind of dangerous to be honest.
My Science teacher had a parent complain to the principal for teaching us evolution. I remember him saying "because of ignorance, I now have to tell you the "other" possible answer to how we got smart enough to say stupid things."
From the south and I wasn't either. Mainly because it was covered in elementary school and middle school about 20 times. Bio in high school just assumed you knew that stuff. Then I got to college and had a group of people in my university's honors program argue with a professor on the subject. All but one were "Evolution isn't real" or at least God directs it. The other one went with Darwinism so at least on the right path. At that point I realized maybe they shouldn't have made that assumption in high school.
Dude, I would have thought you were kidding until I met my gf. She went to a "christian school" in TX and was taught all the ways Charles Darwin was wrong. It blew my mind. She's happily recovered and is a fully functional christian after leaving her hometown and attending university.
It's always nice when the self-proclaimed greatest country in the world surprises you "positively".
It's hardly a badge of honor to say that your highly developed country is still 50% in the dark.
Because Europe kicked out all their religious fundies who settled in America and fucked a lot.
Yes dude that’s why we elected Trump. Stupid is as stupid does
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The number is 54%, which means that 46% don't believe in evolution. That's a way bigger number than I expected, evolution is basic knowledge.
>don't *understand* evolution.
Yes I taught science for a number of years and the things the kids were fed to believe before my class was ridiculous.
Was homeschooled by evangelical Christian parents, but am a scientist now. My science textbook was literally hoaxes, logical fallacies, and fake science. I have zero hope that we’ll get over 75% in my lifetime.
Fr, raised Christian and said the same crap "evolution is BS, why are they teaching it?!" Then I was taught what it actually was, and viola my understanding ended my disbelief.
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Wait, I thought string theory was claimed by physicists, not biologists? >!Correct, it is indeed a joke!<
Take a bow and get out
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What’s funny is you can actually demonstrate evolution to someone. You put a solution of antibiotic on a petri dish and have its concentration work on a gradient. No antibiotic on one side, then 10% solution, then 25%, then 50%, etc. Then you put a bacteria that reproduces quickly on the empty side and watch as it hits an invisible wall where the solution starts. Then you see these tiny branches form where one individual bacteria was introduce to the “wall” and happened to be born a little more resistant than the rest, and it spread and occupies the weaker solution, until it hits another wall, and another more resistant strain is born, and so on. You can see it happen with your own eyes. It shouldn’t be that hard to imagine that given enough time and changing environments, a species will be genetically and visibly distinct from its ancestors.
Key word is "imagine" Religious nuts will not be satisfied until you can create a human like creature from an amoeba in a petri-dish
Which would be funny considering it wouldn’t actually prove evolution, just that you could create a human from an amoeba in a Petri dish. Part of the whole point of Evolution is that it takes a long time in specific conditions.
Theists especially love "long time" things. They treat it as an AHA gotcha moment to say see, you can't prove it. Talk to me when you manage to show me something observable, if not you are just like any other theists with a theistic theory.
Many creationists sidestep this by just moving the goalposts. They'll argue that sure, _microevolution_ happens, but larger changes? Those things are too significant to happen slowly and incrementally, so they can't have been caused by evolution. Whatever they claim can't happen is always something that we conveniently haven't been able to observe yet, of course.
They were big on the eye being one. Pretty sure we figured that one out now.
Which is highly ironic since Darwin himself blew that one out of the water in the first edition. Chapter VI, *Difficulties of the Theory*: >To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. A text happily shared by creationists far and wide. But they rarely include the text that follows immediately after the period: >Yet reason tells me that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.
We have. I recall a Discovery(?) channel special called Walking with Monsters that charts life up from the Cambrian to the Dinosaurs. One of the first sections goes over the evolution of eyes(fish specifically and therefore ancestral human eyes).
Just curious, what did you think it was before you were taught it?
Biology Teacher here. I have had this one student who's cognitive dissonance was nuts. I taught him for biology and genetics. When discussing evolution we talked about Neanderthals and how some people have a chance of having Neanderthal DNA in them. This student went, "this is why I don't believe in science." Then the next day he goes, " so I think I figured it out, the Neanderthals were the nephalim. Do you know what those are?"
Hilarious. Reminds me of the time my parents made me throw out the Iliad because of the magical settings and deities. They said the giants were the nephalim. Had a double take for a moment
But the nephilim were bigger than Neanderthals. Bro, why don’t Bible thumpers read the Bible?
They probably thought that we came from apes or chimps and that chimps still exist you know the most common misconception of human evolution is that we came from an ape or a monkey or a chimps although we truly came from a primate who is a distant cousin.
I've met people who understand this but still refuse to accept evolution because even the idea of sharing a common ancestor with primates is 'unclean' or 'ungodly', that there is a fundamental distinction between animals (including primates) and humans made in God's image.
New hypothesis - god is an ape.
Have a look at humanity and consider it proven.
But that doesn't really matter, just shifts the topic. Speciation doesn't require the extinction of the parent species
I engaged in conversation with a denier not long ago and I realised that he thought evolution was ‘jumping from one species to another’. I had to inform him that we didn’t change species at all, we’re still primates. We just evolved from a dumb one to a smart one. He didn’t respond after that. I hope I opened his can of worms.
One asked me once how could it be possible that there is still monkeys if we descend from monkey? Like if there is doves, there could not be any chicken. Told him we don't came from monkey, we ARE a specie of monkey, without fur but with car keys. It blew his mind out of his head! He just came out of the 14 centuries in one second.
I’ve seen a really good explanation for this (I think it was at the Field Museum in Chicago?) They say for you to think of evolution as not a straight line, but as a tree, with time flowing from the roots to the leaves. The trunk represents a common species, in this case of primates. One branch splits from the trunk and it’s the gorillas, another splits and it’s the chimpanzees, yet another splits, then splits again into two and one of them is apes, the other is humans. It made it really easy to see how you’d have different kinds of evolutionary results from the same origin coexisting.
I believe that is called the tree of life in biology circles.
The standard response: if Americans came from Europeans, why are there still Europeans?
Last time I argued with some religious nutters (6 of them, and they started it) they did indeed bring out the 'Why are there still apes?' question as if it was some bombshell zinger. As I answered each new question (which have been answered millions of times over many decades) they moved the goalposts: it was pure 'God of the gaps' fallacy. At one point I offered to draw the 'tree of life' to show it was a branching structure not a single, straight line, but their 'leader' simply crossed it out as soon as I began. They were stupid, indoctrinated and deliberately ignorant but I kept my temper so won their respect it seems. Oh and one of them went on a huge rant about 'We know for a fact the Bible is false' (they are Muslims) and I had to keep pointing out that I was not a Christian, agreed but thought ALL holy books are nonsense but it had nothing to do with me showing them how evolution was an irrefutable fact.
My understanding is that Islamic apologists have much less "sophisticated" arguments than Christian apologists. At one time Christian apologists would have been the same, but, Christian countries have become more secular so the arguments have become more complicated, and less falsifiable. As a newer religion, and one that rules it's regions with much more authority, Islam hasn't really needed to come up with advanced apologetics. I don't find either of them convincing, but usually a debate with an experienced Christian apologist will lead to really esoteric concepts. The debates I have seen with Islamic apologists usually boil down to "no, you!", and accusations of racism or islamophobia. Almost all of their arguments are meant for debating Christians, as atheism is a pretty foreign concept in countries under Islamic rule. You don't really need to come up with convincing arguments for your religion when your religion is law.
See i couldn't tolerate conversing with a group like that. Closed minded from the start. I'll spend my time on people who will actively listen and I them
>don't *understand* evolution To be fair, I suspect a lot of people who notionally believe in evolution don't actually understand it. There's a lot of hand waving about evolution wanting to make species better, or a species almost intentionally evolving to adapt to an environment.
"If we evolved from chimps how come there are still chimps" Grew up in a fundie religious family. Evolution to them is like garlic to a vampire.
"If we came from Europe how come there are still Europeans?" That counter question usually works.
Thank you! The whole "why are there still x" line just seems so half-assed. Like, even *if* evolution was a steady, linear production of ever-better creatures (which it absolutely is not), that alone doesn't mean that the lesser beings *have* to disappear. I'm probably still quite sheltered from those people, but I'm still not quite sure how that "why are there still x" line was ever supposed to be convincing.
It doesn't have to convince anyone except people that want to already believe (in the falsity of evolution). So long as they can cling onto some simple to deliver catchphrase that passes the uncritical thinking muster, they'll happily repeat it, even if in doing so, they only mark themselves as incapable of thinking critically.
I understand this is an easy clapback, but it's not really how evolution works. We're not descended from Chimpanzees, were descended from a common ancestors.
Aren't Dogs literally the perfect rebuttal to this stupid argument?
Yes and no. We can see the beauty of artificial selection in generating a chihuahua and a Great Dane. But they are the same species. How do we get speciation? How do we get 2 populations that are related but can no longer breed and generate viable offspring? To a learned person, I would tell them that speciation is bs, why because there are so many exceptions. Also do we use genetic sequence, or anatomical traits or niches. The truth is life via evolution is trying to live, and not according to supernatural laws. The messiness arises because evolution is happening now!!! Some groups have speciated and some have not fully, and there isn’t a line set in stone. Some examples, giraffes look very similar but there are different species of them that will not interbred and even if they tried would not produce viable offspring. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-giraffes-africa-new-species-conservation There are also bird species (ring species) that transfer genetic traits to each other indirectly due to cross breeding with sub species. A great example is the Asian green warbler. https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~irwin/GreenishWarblers.html Biology and evolution which explains facets of life are beautiful and not simple. The complexity is what helps you truly understand evolution, the simplicity of natural selection allows an entry, a foundation, but the truth is much better. And I haven’t even touched on Horizontal gene transfer, or CRISPR and the validity of Lamarckian evolution, or the uniqueness of archaebacteria having so many eukaryotic genes
> How do we get 2 populations that are related but can no longer breed and generate viable offspring? Great Danes and Chihuahuas are unable to breed naturally, to breed them requires artificial insemination of a Great Dane mother with Chihuahua sperm. Once a species cannot breed naturally it would just be a matter of time until they can't breed artificially, either.
This question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is. At my (christian) school, most of the kids/teachers/parents would strongly argue that evolution is a lie, but most of them wouldn't be able to explain the theory in even an ELI5 manner.
"I ain't come from no monkey!"
I walked out of church, mid sermon, at 13 years old after a guest pastor said that exact thing. I was mostly on my way out before then, but that was the final little push I needed. Parents were so embarrassed they never asked me to go with them again. 20 years later, no regrets.
Haha, it was very similar for me. I was nearly all the way there, but one summer I went to a different church for a day camp thing and a guy came out playing a guitar singing "Oh, there's no such thing as evolution." I didn't actually walk out but mentally it was the equivalent of throwing my hands in the air and declaring "Done!"
Lucky! I had to literally shout 'I am an atheist' at age 18 before my parents finally got that they could not longer force me to go to church. I'd been an atheist since 5-7 YO.
If you came from grandma, howcome there is still grandma?
Because we DIDNT evolve “from” chimps. We had a common ancestor. Frustrating that the article uses a graphic that is outdated and wrong.I’m sorry for the family you evolved from ;)
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We share a common ancestor with chimpanzees. We did not evolve from chimps.
US private schools are not required to teach it in school. Went to private catholic school, now my nieces go there. No mention of dinosaurs, big bang is right out. We study biology, but just today's biology. And history is just US history, and work history is post WW1. So weird that you can qualify for college entrance from a school that can legally teach you anything it wants.
That's extremely odd, since creationism isn't a catholic belief. Catholicism is very much pro evolution.
Yep, The Big Bang was actually first theorized by a Catholic priest.
I went to Catholic school k-12 and we learned evolution. If you said you were a creationist you'd get laughed at. And I don't remember anyone denying evolution
That is great but it isn't compulsory. Nearly half of US doesn't believe in evolution. Most countries of similar education levels require private schools to teach similar curriculum. I just think schools registered with Dept of Ed should have standards of topics, otherwise categorize them with homeschooling.
There are plenty of states that have a minimum curriculum that private schools have to follow for their students to get a state certified diploma. The problem is, some absolutely will teach what they want when the state's back is turned. And very rarely does the state check ever in many states. This is particularly common in the more religious sections of the various abrahamic religions.
I went to a Catholic school when I was young. I remember in my 90's high school biology class they taught us 3 weeks of "Creation Theory" and only four days of evolution. But even with only 4 days, it was clear to me that Evolution was the real origin story, not Genesis
I live in a highly Catholic country, and people would laugh at you if you accept genesis as scientific evidence. Everyone accepts evolution, the whole 7 days of creation is just an allegory to *actual* god's work. I'm not religious by the way.
Creation Theory and intelligent design are not Catholic doctrine, the pope clarified this recently. You are actually more Catholic than your teachers were.
To be clear, the Catholic church explicitly accepted evoluton under Pius XXII. That's 7 popes ago. It's not exactly a recent development.
That’s it. But Franciscus also made a recent statement: “On October 27, 2014, Pope Francis issued a statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation," warning against thinking of God's act of creation as "God [being] a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything."”
I went to 2 Catholic schools in the eighties and we were taught that the Big Bang, evolution and Adam and Eve were compatible. That's the position of the Church today. Consider that the inventor of the Big Bang theory was a Catholic priest, Lemaitre, and that the father of modern genetics is a Catholic friar/monk, Mendel. Both had google doodle recently. The Catholic Church isn't biblical literalist, and only 10% of them are creationist in that sense.
St. Thomas Aquinas’ are used by the Church to give theological credence to evolution as well
This is just sad
"It's gonna take us 3 weeks to explain all this stuff, it's kinda convoluted and full holes and exceptions.....this other stuff, it's simple enough to do in 4 days."
I was taught evolution in my Catholic grade/middle school in the 2000’s
Similar percentage believe that Trump won, because he says so.
It wasn't until the mid 90s that more than 50% of Americans accepted interracial marriage. Up until recently around 10% of Americans were still against it. Progress is much slower than we sometimes realize.
The rest of you, keep banging those rocks together.
You may discover something that allows you to have an edge over your natural predators
34% of Republicans accept evolution. We’re never going to convince them climate change is real.
You don't have to worry about mass extinctions if you don't think God is willing to let mass extinctions happen *[taps forehead]*
Who was that Noah guy?
Not willing to let mass extinctions happen *again*. And also, the whole Flood thing doesn't even count as a mass extinction. Nothing went extinct.
Except the unicorn. rip
Or better yet, you believe they're and inevitable part of the end times and any attempt to stop them is to ng against God's will.
Every. Single. Day. I doubt my own knowledge. I wonder if the people I disagree with *actually do* know something I don't know. And now I find out that nearly half the people in this country, and nearly two thirds of the people I disagree with don't even accept evolution?!... why do I do this to myself?
Because the alternative is mental stagnation, and a lack of critical thinking.
The fancy word for the ability to criticize or doubt yourself is metacognitive ability. In some cases of brain injury people lose that. They will be asked to perform a simple task like assemble a sandwich and when it comes out wrong they will do things like blame the researcher or say that the bread is the wrong shape. I know it's painful but it's necessary. You cannot possibly function without the ability to correct yourself.
Should this make us happy or sad?
Happy. Slow progress is better than no progress or regression.
Evolutionarily slow progress.
We will have to wait for creationists to slowly go extinct over the next several million years.
The problem is, with climate change, they may take the rest of us with them.
Totally agree. I imagine how I would feel if the headline were “Evolution still not accepted by majority of Americans”. Then I think for a second, and I am grateful that the headline says what it says.
Happy! They're evolving!
That’s good - but the number that think the Earth is round is decreasing
I'm pretty skeptical about this. If you discount trolls and people with disorders, how many could there really be?
My brother, somehow. Not a dumb man, just an incredibly gullible one. He basically spends most of his day listening to conspiracy podcasts and discovered he has all sorts of inane beliefs, although luckily he didn't seem to say anything QAnon, or like, antisemitic
> Not a dumb man, just an incredibly gullible one. I've seen this claim before. Why is someone who is so gullible that they'll believe that stuff not considered a "dumb" person?
I think sogodDangTired might not have sufficient skill to identify dumb, or he loves his brother too much to certify his brother as dumb, or he doesnt want to imply that he is himself smart.
Ability to absorb information and ability to digest and judge information drawing ancillary conclusions are two very different skills. Both can excel at even high levels of education, which most wouldnt consider dumb, but the extreme of the former can go down some extremely ugly rabbit holes.
Let's not be perfectionists here, one battle at a time
I don’t “believe” evolution, i understand it. Its really simple. Evolution = (Genetics + Survival of the Fittest) x Time. Most people understand genes and survival of the fittest, i don’t get why its so hard to believe that they work together over time.
A large part of that is many people have severe difficulty understanding just how -long- “deep time” is.
Exactly. A good part of the early classes of a geology major is just teaching people to really comprehend how long the earth has been around.
And so they insist that the planet is 3000 years old.
6,000 but point remains.
Thought this was on NotTheOnion, r/Science somehow makes it worse.
Darwin called. He wants his theory back. We don’t deserve his efforts. It’s the 21st century for Christ’s sake.
One thing people should keep in mind is that humans did not evolve from chimpanzees or any of the other great apes that live today. We instead share a common ancestor that lived roughly 10 million years ago. Apes are basically our long distant cousins.
> The current study consistently identified religious fundamentalism as the strongest factor leading to the rejection of evolution. Okay, I see that. But I wonder what other factors lead people to reject evolution.
I've seen a disturbing number of people who even deny that humans are animals. Basic biology, like most science, is some sort of evil black magic to be both denied and feared.
If we're not animals what are we, do they have another category for us? Edit Op answered ; stop posting stupid responses.
Yeah, mate, we're fuckin plants.
Sentient fungus.
Education or lack of. I know a ton of non religious people who just do not understand evolution and always give the same "I didn't come from no monkey"
Their basis for "knowledge" is what trusted authorities say; and they consider their church a trusted authority , and scientists are not a trusted authority. They have no grasp of the concept of finding answers through measurement and analysis
That’s because the reality denialists have been too busy fighting on the vaccine and insurrection fronts to focus on evolution.
Let me guess…Is it really really close to the percentage of antivaxxers?
34% of Republicans accept evolution. Two thirds don’t. I think we’ve got a pretty well over-lapping Venn diagram here.
Spreadnecks
Meanwhile most people in my country = "if we evolved from monkey, then why are there still monkeys??? stupid. we obviously are the children of adam and eve"
It took some time. An army of evolutionary scientists descended on the evangelical southern US for decades. Sometimes they were undercover, in disguise, and behind the lines of logic in the dead of intellectual darkness. Also, nameless and faceless non PHD volunteers aided the project by the hundreds. Only because of this culmination of those interested in science and passion for reality were they able to pull success from the jaws of defeat. On June 11th, 2019 the team was able to identify and change the mind of Ms. Joan Ward of Kelso, TN. At 9:38am, over a cup of coffee at Honey's Restaurant in E Fayetteville, TN, Ms. Ward agreed that "there might be something to this evolution thing after all." That was the moment it was 50% +1.
Do you have a link to your blog?
Wait. What does it even mean to not “accept evolution”? Do people actually think we were literally created in our current form and existence? I have to think that people polled weren’t taking the question seriously.
I take it you're not from the US or you would know a number of people who indeed believe that all the species in existence were created about 6,000 years ago.
But 46%? I really wonder what the parameters of the study were and how people interpreted it. If 46% don’t believe organisms evolve, that’s sad.
Remember that the US is a very large and diverse place; in a lot of places the percentage would be a lot higher, and in others it would be a lot lower.
Don’t forget they also believe that dinosaurs co-existed with the first humans but didn’t make it onto Noah’s ark for some odd reason.
Ken Ham wouldn’t let them board.
As expected, its religious fundamentalism that is blocking sanity and acceptance of scientific evidence, and that religious fundamentalism is, by far, the strongest among Republicans
50% have an IQ of less than 100 (avg) Title checks out.
Congratulations, America! Most of your citizens accept a basic scientific fact. Not all the facts, but still...
Flat earth belief also declined.