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No those 41% are the people who continue to blame Bush for everything wrong on the planet, think he was Hitler, actually caused New Orleans to be flooded and conspired with <anyone> to bring down the World Trade Center, think Obama truly deserved a Nobel and is actually qualified to do more than ask "do you want fries with that?"
And the other 59% actually fall for stories like this and think that many people really believe the earth is only a few thousand years old. Have you ever actually met someone like that? I haven't, even my ultra conservative, baptist, highly rural in-laws don't.
They go beyond observable phenomena and instead operate in the realm of faith when they claim that species "evolve" over long periods of time.
We've observed speciation in real time. We also have tons of evidence of species evolving over time. You've proven you have no clue what you're talking about. Give it up.
...and 41% of Democrats also believe in young earth creationism and that's downright embrarrassing!
This figure can surely be attributed to democratic voting minorities. A large percentage of blacks, hispanics, and even asians to a lesser extent are devoutly religious in their personal lives. Of course, we all know that their religious convictions don't follow them into the voting booth like they do with conservatives.
Harrier, it's usually best to keep quiet in situations like this because you look like a hopelessly foolish moron when you make these statements. It's clear as day you don't know the difference between evolution and adaptation or, for that matter, anything about a topic you so vociferously argue against. It's as though you have this mental picture of what evolution should be and you argue against that rather than arguing against what it actually is.
Evolution is, plainly put, a variation in the frequency of gene expression in a given population. It's obvious you know little about gene expression, population dynamics, or the like but basically what that means is that species adapt to their environment by variations in their gene expression, i.e. - evolution. The pressures applied to a population are typically ecological in nature (availability of food sources, types of food, climate, topography, etc...) and natural selection is the mechanism by which mutations are selected positively or negatively.
Does it really matter which theory a person believes? Why get emotional about something that is just a theory? As long as it is just a theory, one would think that more than one can be taught and let the children decide which they want to believe. That would be the intelligent way to solve the problem. Liberals just cannot see all sides of almost any question. Intelligent people don't insist theirs is the only answer.
Intelligent people don't insist theirs is the only answer when a question has multiple answers, but when the question is 2 + 2, the answer is 4...and there are no other correct answers.
Unfortunately, religion is one of those things that is "sectioned off" in the brain and protected from all logical analysis or contradictory information. This is how the brain protects itself from "cognitive dissonance," or the discomfort that should be caused when we have two beliefs that are mutually exclusive. It is also how seemingly intelligent people can still believe in religion. It is similar to being in love, and not being able to hear or process any bad information about the person you are in love with. If you fall out of love (or even after you've known the person for many years), you will be able to see the faults and failings of the loved one, and may ask yourself "Why didn't I realize he/she was an alcoholic (or a drug addict, or irresponsible, or unmotivated) before when all the signs were there?" The fact is, your brain sectioned off the belief that "My loved one is perfect!" and the information you knew that contradicted this was ignored as if it had never been heard--in one ear and out the other.
Similarly, it is virtually impossible to logically change the views of someone who believes that Creationism is true while evolution is not--whatever information you present is never actually "heard" or considered by the religious person. I think this quantitatively differs from those holding scientific viewpoints, in that as more information comes to light, scientific knowledge will adjust to accommodate it. I am happy to review new information from the scientific community, and adjust my views accordingly. That does not happen with religious views. New information and facts are dismissed out of hand before the brain is allowed to think about them.
It is unfortunate that religion is so pervasive in America, because religion relies heavily on getting religious views implanted early and hard. The natural brain's ability to section off the religious views and never subject them to logical analysis or evidence does the rest. The good news for science is that after time, as the evidence piles up on the side of scientific explanations, and particularly if religion consistently fails to provide the promised solace or supernatural help, some people will find themselves not believing in religion anymore--just like some people fall out of the initial infatuation stage of love. But many will never be able to abandon the comfort of thinking that they and their loved ones will never really die, and this is powerful hold--especially for those whose minds are not very logical in the first place.
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