PULPIT: Darwinism still unconvincing to most Christians

[IndianaGreen]

PULPIT: Darwinism still unconvincing to most Christians

January 16, 2010 2:16 PM
MARK BARNA
THE GAZETTE

Charles Darwin can’t get any respect from most American Christians.

Last year, secular groups honored Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his “The Origin of Species”. His ideas on evolution and natural selection are the bedrock of modern biology. Darwinism is increasingly being viewed as fact rather than theory.

Yet most Christians aren’t impressed.

A 2009 Gallup Poll revealed that only 39 percent of Americans believe evolution is true. Natural selection — the idea that random mutations in species resulting in survival advantages are the engine of evolution — fares even worse. Only 14 percent buy it, according to Gallup. Gallup’s editor in chief Frank Newport says Christian beliefs are the main reason Americans remain skeptical of Darwinism.

Bryce Lee of Simla, a speck of a town 50 miles east of Colorado Springs, has taken his anti-Darwinism to seldom-reached heights. Four years ago, he started “The Non-Evolution Revolution” seminar at his CrossRoads Youth Center, a nonprofit ministry to children and teens. His next seminar is Feb. 7.

Lee believes the earth is about 7,000 years old, dinosaurs existed in the Garden of Eden, and the Genesis creation story is literally true.

http://www.gazette.com/articles/pulpit-92313-charles-unconvincing.html

[dalaigh lllama]

1. Just the idea that they present it as an option in a survey skews the answers

If they did a similar survey asking if people "believed" the sun rotated around the earth "like it says in the Bible," how many would say "yes"?

[stray cat]

2. And most Americans that think they support him could not tell you his basic thesis

[GMA]

3. Truly sad, and such things make it more difficult

for the many who see no conflict between faith and science.

[frebrd]

4. Those are the ones I can't understand.....

Surely it's painful straddling that line between reality and fantasy!

Edited for spelling.

:(

[DavidDvorkin]

5. I'm with you.

[GMA]

6. Of course you don't understand,

if you've never stood in that place where you can see it all fit together. I love the view.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Forty years ago, you would have gotten different results

I went through a high school where all but about 10% of the students attended some sort of church.

Yet evolution was completely non-controversial. The only person who objected was a Jehovah's Witness, and we all thought he was kind of crazy on the subject.

It was also non-controversial at my Lutheran college. I took a course Studies in Genesis for one of my religion requirements, and the professor was quite clear (with no objections from the students) that we were dealing with mythology.

It was the Reagan administration that began emboldening the fundamentalists to exhume such old controversies as evolution or school prayer, which everyone else assumed had been decided years ago. (Most Christian denominations have no trouble with evolution, and most parts of the country never had school prayer.)

Now that the fundamentalists appear to have veto power over what happens in schools (no Halloween celebrations, no sex education, no evolution), a huge segment of the past thirty years of American youth have grown up without a systematic exposure to evolution.

[TrogL]

8. define "Christian"

Most people calling themselves "Christian" have never read the Bible cover to cover, have no idea what a Concordance is, think the Bible was written in English, have never heard of Textus Receptus and probably couldn't quote the 10 commandments.

They do, think and say what their swarmy, fat, authoritarian preacher-man tells them to do.