{"id":4887,"date":"2010-08-09T09:35:44","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T13:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=4887"},"modified":"2010-08-09T10:01:27","modified_gmt":"2010-08-09T14:01:27","slug":"not-news-many-americans-prefer-religious-to-scientific-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/08\/09\/not-news-many-americans-prefer-religious-to-scientific-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"Not news: many Americans prefer religious to scientific answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=faith-and-foolishness\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Scientific American<\/em><\/a> pretends to be surprised by these findings:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>When presented with the statement \u201chuman beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,\u201d just 45 percent of respondents indicated \u201ctrue.\u201d Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that \u201cthe universe began with a big explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Consider the results of a 2009 Pew Survey: 31 percent of U.S. adults believe \u201chumans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.\u201d (So much for dogs, horses or H1N1 flu.) The survey\u2019s most enlightening aspect was its categorization of responses by levels of religious activity, which suggests that the most devout are on average least willing to accept the evidence of reality. White evangelical Protestants have the highest denial rate (55 percent), closely followed by the group across all religions who attend services on average at least once a week (49 percent).<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo. To do so risks being branded as intolerant of religion. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>H\/T to <a href=\"http:\/\/belowthebeltway.com\/2010\/08\/09\/americans-prefer-fantasy-to-scientific-literacy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Mataconis<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientific American pretends to be surprised by these findings: When presented with the statement \u201chuman beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,\u201d just 45 percent of respondents indicated \u201ctrue.\u201d Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,13],"tags":[360,130,289],"class_list":["post-4887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-science","category-usa","tag-christianity","tag-evolution","tag-polls"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1gP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4887"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4890,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions\/4890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}