In a recent Public Policy Polling poll, 62% of Republicans either outright rejected the theory of evolution or expressed doubt about it. The number isn’t stable; it is growing. So, as with the rather sudden turn against the theory of climate change, what is the actual mechanism that drives this kind of change? And can it be used for good?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Social networks with non-committal people drives this expansion as does the legitimation of a minority opinion as if it were a majority opinion by the Wall Street media. What else is growing is sentiment to formally make the US a “Christian nation”.
Charter schools and book publishers associated with them and with fundamentalist universities see a huge market in anti-Darwin textbooks as they drive public schools out of business. Just as the fossil fuel companies saw the retention of ever-higher profits under peak oil shortages and defeating environmental regulations in the climate change debate.
What changed the climate change debate was when Republicans decided that cap-and-trade was not a way to make money but a “socialist intervention”.
If you’ve got a few billions to shop among “opinion leaders” and social networks, I’m sure there is a way to move public opinion toward good.
They might reject the theory of evolution (an abstraction) but they will certainly want to avoid viral and bacterial resistence and take advantage of any substantial gene therapy advances.
It is the communications structure by which they buy a he said/she said argument that becomes a matter of personal “belief” and frame the question as “Do you believe in…?” with the implication that the jury is still out and no one knows. Because no one knows it is better to do nothing (climate change) or offer other theories (such as Biblical creationism).
It is kind of frightening when you see level-headed people that you know suddenly glaze over with these positions. And defend themselves with “Well, it’s all beyond me on this science stuff…”
Next opinion polls:
Do you believe in atoms?
Do you believe that nothing can travel faster than light?
Do you believe the sky is a crystal sphere and stars are God’s light shining through?
Religion. Truly the opiate of the masses and they have been mainlining AND snorting.
I understand the sentiment, but I really think fundy Xtianity is not behind this.
Oh, they’d LIKE to be, but really? No one outside the choir pays any attention to Ham, Family Council and the rest of the clowns.
I’m not sure what is causing this, but its NOT Xianity.
At this point, it is just a marker, one of many, that conservatives have adopted to demonstrate their identity. They have taken on a mindset that if “liberals” believe something they must believe the opposite.
It goes like this:
liberals believe in evolution -> they don’t
liberals believe in global warming -> they don’t
liberals pass Romneycare (!) -> then they can’t like it any more
The Romneycare thing really made it crystal clear.
Its all tribal.
Unfortunately with the type of propaganda program that these people us on their children. There is little hope of change on anything unless at a very early age these children are taught facts. That will never be accomplished for the parents will drive their propaganda into them. Only way would be to remove the children from the danger and I for one do not support that option.
That’s why the push for home schooling.
And H1B visas to import all those secularists, Buddhists, and Hindus that didn’t let their religions interfere with their science education.
No, those are to get cheap indentured labor. There are plenty of unemployed engineers in this country.
That’s a side benefit for some STEM worker employees. However, the US biotech/pharma industry Indian and asian employees are hired for their scientific skills and are well paid.
You may well be right about that. My own observations/experience are in the software engineering/electrical engineering fields. Mechanical engineers began falling way behind in pay (hence demand) in the ’80s. The biological sciences have never been big in the USA (Duh! What this thread is about is evidence of that!)
Back where I come from (the 20th century) children never believed anything their parents taught them, even when it was actually right, at least for the crucial teen years, so I’m just going to be optimistic on this one and hope this kind of ignorance is not an inherited trait.
Are you saying that right now there are kids reading The Origin of Species and Principia Mathematica in their beds by the light of flashlights as a guilty pleasure?
Believe it or not, YES.
I sent my nephew in Kansas a copy of Origin of Species cleverly disguised as a 19 century copy of the Bible.
My sister loved it … the bible. My nephew has read it cover to cover … Origin of Species. If I remember correctly, it spanned Ecclesiastes – Malachi (nobody reads those anyway).
The mechanism is the political messaging/beliefs as ethnicity.
‘Conservative’ has become an ethnic identity more than a political affiliation. The way we think of ethnicity is becoming outmoded. It’s beyond race and religion, and increasingly creedal; I have Jewish Palin-fan wingnut family member, and he’s the same ‘tribe’ as a conservative Christian, as are guys like Jindal or Thomas, despite the lack of a racial ‘match.’
I imagine that it can absolutely be used for good. But I’ve got no clue how to get from here to there.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
Steggles, you nailed it.
is more public, and as a result more important.
Social Networks are creating the political equivalence of high-school cliques, with an ever expanding list of requirements to sit at the cool kids table.
This is true, I think, for everyone. How many people have hetro-genious views on political issues? If I am a liberal I have to believe the Anwar should be protected, that the Pipeline is a bad idea, etc. Even if I know little about these issues.
The more public alternative identities become, the more of a threat my own identity appears to be under
I believe this question is processed in the republican mind as a proxy for a combination of other questions, and it’s those that are actually being answered:
Whether this mechanism can be used for “good” depends your utility function, I suppose. But, as I prefer a world in which people choose their opinions thoughtfully rather than as a team sport, I couldn’t call it “good” even if it ended up benefiting my side politically.
I think it’s a subcategory of suspension of disbelief, similar to when one views a film. People align with a political party and then tend to slowly come into alignment with the full corpus of its beliefs (formal planks in its platform as well as those intrinsic). This is a measure of the shifting platform of the Republican party, which has gone further and further in the direction of the crazy. I’d be surprised if that many people truly question evolution.
For those with a fundamentalist, narrow understanding of religion, this is why conversion is so highly emphasized. If you’re going to stand against the general consensus of that which is rational, one needs allies. Otherwise, you’re all alone in your delusion — the definition of insanity.
Good questions.
In the US it is correlated with religion — acceptance of evolution:
Jehovah’s Witnesses: 8%
Mormons: 22%
Evangelical Protestant: 23%
Hist Black Protestant: 39%
Muslim: 45%
Mainline Protestant: 51%
Also correlated with political affiliation, but this is a bit trickier because when the question is broken down into “young earth creation,” “god-driven evolution,” or evolution through natural processes, only 17% of Democrats, 19% Independents and 4% of Republicans accept evolution. Thus, overall, USians are scientifically illiterate.
“In God We Trust” — it says so right on our money. And we’re not honest enough to admit that the only thing we really worship is the money.
And that reversal in what during the space race was increasing interest in science came when the culture started labeling people with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics interests as “nerds” or “geeks“. The first application of “geek” (from a carny act) to STEM people is cited as 1983. That is consistent with my memory. And for reference, Revenge of the Nerds came out in 1984 (how appropriate).
So from the 1950s to 1980s, science-math sorts went from being ridiculed as “Einsteins” to being ridiculed as being “nerds” and “geeks”. And parents sending their kids off to college went from anxieties over grades to anxieties about them “losing their religion”.
Popular culture never quite took to the Enlightenment project anyway. While public education looked to be a way off the farm and to the excitement of the cities to some, others would rather stay at home, thank you very much. Various liberal rural development programs (from the New Deal onward) kept shoving education institutions and programs into rural communities, but that just embarrassed people even more about their lack of learning. A lot of rural people do not see the point of education as a mind-opener. Besides, the nature of science is changes as understanding improves–sometime dramatic changes. Why learn something you’re going to have to unlearn?
There’s not that default cultural backdrop for learning outside of the progressive values of public schools.
And Darwin’s been a tough sell ever since the Princeton Theological School professors hopped on it in the 1800s. The Anglican folks in the UK weren’t too hot on the ideas either. In both cases, it was elite and refined racism that was objectionable as much as anything. The notion of evolution of all humans “out of Africa” is a hard sell to white supremacists who had framed Africans as primitive, backward, and savage. It’s an equally hard sell to their descendants. And the Princeton theological arguments gave the perfect cover for rejection. And those are the arguments that more folksied up are the ones used by fundamentalists today. Check Huckabee’s rhetoric against 19th century Presbyterian rhetoric. He didn’t think through these arguments; he was schooled in them in seminary. And most likely in a doctrinal form of teaching instead of a historical history of ideas form of teaching.
I myself dislike evolution but I’m too fundamentally honest to do anything but support it as it far and away best fits the facts. Its not a hard concept to grasp the basics of.
I’m interested: what is there about evolution to ‘dislike’? Even though it ‘far and away best fits the facts.’ Do you like the fact that the earth revolves around the sun?
So why is it not enough for someone to accept the accuracy of evolution and support the teaching of the science?
It detracts from human specialness IMO.
is a violent process, and in the end a depressing one. It is brutality through and through.
I am not sure why I should be happy with this, though it is clearly the truth.
Your statement confuses me. Is it the implication of human evolution that you find discomfiting; that you are a primate who shares a common ancestor with chimnpanzees? If that is what “far and away best fits the facts”, why should that be something to be disliked? Is it simply because of the conflict with most of the American cultural religious traditions?
Because I like the idea of human specialness and originating from random chances that happened to be effective in passing on genes is not very cool or exciting.
Okay, thanks. The odd thing for me is the fact we humans are here at all, the result of millions or billions of years of evolution on a remote speck of rock in the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is spinning in the massive expanse of an incomprehensibly large universe, is the very thing that, to me, gives humanity its specialness. How much more special can one feel than to be so fortunate to exist at all in such a place?
I guess we all just have different ways of obtaining our own personal perspectives.
Just hydrogen atoms that made good.
What you describe makes me feel even more insignificant. I think it also ties in to my position as a human supremicist.
The practical result is that I want to throw huge resources into combatting climate change and space so we can survive long enough to escape this warming rock and have more time to do things that make us less significant even if only a little.
I also support much more humane and sustainable practices to the environment in general since being superior gives us the obligation to do so even aside self interest. Its like mistreating a pet. There’s no excuse for that even if you didnt want it in the first place.
I think it is reasonable to consider human-kind as special, while also recognizing our complete insignificance in the larger scheme of the universe. If that makes one feel depressed, there is really not much that can done. To me, the fleeting nature of our existence just amplifies the importance of doing as much as is possible to insure the perpetuation of this place and its inhabitants. Unfortunately, in many people this attitude of humility has been replaced with the most destructive form of hubris. It is this dangerous kind of arrogance which can lead to extinction. That fact is what should put fear in all of us.
I don’t think that the Chinese and others are any less interested in money. Except they don’t do the god thing which, in fact, is a feature of the three hallucinatory religions that arose in the Middle East. A hobby horse of mine is that the mania can be accounted for by realizing how quickly people begin to have delusions in the desert—hallucinations which are corroborated and supported in places like Kansas. You can’t make this shit up, as they say. The god thing has become very disturbing in the US. I wonder if the USAians will ever begin to realize how caught they are in their sentimental religiosity and how it works against the interests? Good, be flabbergasted by my intolerance! ‘In God We Trust’ is also written above the podium of the House speakers, if I’m not mistaken (the Senate too, maybe, or the reverse). The official motto of the US used to be Ex pluribus unum. Oh well, we know how that has worked out.
At a national cultural character level, I’d say that the Chinese “love” money more than USians. They save more and have a longer history of attraction to gambling. (Macao is the major reason why Sheldon Adelson became so wealthy so quickly.) Capitalism is a far better fit to the Chinese character than it is to the cultural/sociological US mash-up. Pure capitalism is also dangerous and unstable for the well-being of a large population.
Japan, OTOH, is more naturally socialistic. Thus, Japan has been able to thrive economically with a heavier dose of capitalism. One reason why their seemingly free market health care system operates so efficiently and at such a low percentage of GDP (less than half that of the US).
Money for USians is all about consumption. The more conspicuous the better. The socialism of the New Deal was probably a bit too weak to tamp down our non-constructive economic impulses, but strong enough that we thrived economically when the economic guts of it were in force. Too little socialism — and surprise, surprise — the economy quits working well for most USians. If not for the large, consumption, socialized economic sector, US MIC and domestic “security,” it would be working even less well.
It’s religion. Until we are willing to wage a war against the religious, and socially stigmatize it just like other issues (a cross should be as bad as a white hood) we can’t deal with the right.
That means going after the moderates first. Because just as moderate Republicans only serve to give cover to the extremists, moderate Christians only serve to give cover to the crazies.
Unless we start cleaning house, from our own side of the isle first with a loud “religion is not compatible with science, reality, equality, and liberalism. And support of religion is support of hatred and bigotry” this fight won’t end.
I’m surprised at the level of intolerance. Consider all the amazing people of faith who have done so much to advance the human condition. There’s MLK, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi just to name two of the most obvious.
and Torquemada, Pat Robertson, Bob Jones, …
Besides, Mahatma Ghandi definitely had feet of clay. Perhaps a great leader, but seriously flawed as a human being.
Besides that, there is not ONE war since 600AD that has not been fought “in God’s Name”. Not one.
In Europe, Christianity has been the primary prop of the reigning elite. ALL reigning elites. Even Napoleon.
Current reigning elites in Central Asia and the Mideast are using the church, the mosque and the synagogue to beat into submission any aspect of free thought.
Nah, religion is the bad guy. Just not the driving bad guy in the US.
It is all about a belief system, which by any analysis must turn to faith and those that share that faith for answers rather than independent reason.
Reason is suspect; it goes against the fabric of beliefs that hold the tribe together. So when a stranger walks through the door of the belief system offering up reasoned arguments it’s all the more important for the tribe to caste the ideas out.
Unless, of course the stranger brings trinkets or powerful magic. But reason will lose every time. These folks need sparkles.
The only way to use it against them is to carpet bag their identities/tribe identification.
Otherwise you’re an outsider and anything you say is instantly wrong, regardless of reason, evidence, or proof.
The actual mechanism is emotional manipulation on a massive scale. Aristotle recognized its danger and wanted to outlaw it but realized man would have nothing to talk about if that was the case.
I wonder what the percentages are among Democrats.
In the early part of the 20th Century, the Bible-thumpers were on the side of the progressives.
That changed as the progressive agenda started to include and even prioritize anti-clerical, anti-Christian items from legalizing porn, contraception, easy divorce, abortion, homosexuality, and fornication to attacking and de-legitimating Christian sexual morality itself.
The Republicans saw an opportunity to pick up a lot of heartland votes by welcoming “values voters,” thus encouraging the growth of a Christian right that did not previously exist.
Interesting to see how many such voters actually remain in the Democratic fold.