Comments on Majority of Americans Don't Believe In No Stinkin' Evolution

This is probably because, for these people, evolution hasn't really happened yet. You can't actually expect me to believe that Brownback is any kind of advanced form of life...

Holy shit! I love Jesus with the dinosaurs! Where did you get it? Where can I get a full sized copy?

just a couple days ago they said that most americans believe in both:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070608/lf_afp/usevolutionreligion_070608143946

I read all about the creationism museum on the web and had gotten over the bat-shit craziness of it. I read all about the cavechildren playing by the dinosaurs and the other animtronics, but then I heard a report on one of the news channels. It described all of this and then almost as an afterthought added,

"and dinosaurs were among the animals on Noah's Arc."

The straightforwardness of it just hit me and I lost it. I must have laughed to the point of tears for a good 4 minutes. I'm still not sure why, but it was the funniest fucking thing I had heard in at least two weeks.

Who Knew? Fundies do have a sense of humor.

P.S. Who saw the preview for Evan Almighty and realized that God is going to drown the entire world exept Steve Carel, Lauren Graham, their sons, and whatever girls they can round up for their sons to marry? Man, Morgan Freeman is a bastard. Sounds like good family fun to me!

Well, there were the nutjobs that voted in 2004, so I guess the statistic may be right ...

I wonder if these people also do not believe in gravity.

Newtonian theory of universal gravitation is to gravity as natural selection is to evolution.

Have these simpletons not fucked with fruit flies in a biology class and seen evolution first-hand? Do they not realize that a the at one time inescapable fear of the bird flu implies evolution?

i think "um" is on it. you can believe in both.

On the other hand, my unevolved typing skills does give one pause.

Just more proof that the majority of Americans are fucking idiots. My family is anyway...

Fucking morons. Not surprising though, which is sad.

When can I awake from this horrible nightmare where no one in American knows anything about science, or even understands the most simple premise??

Also, I bet if you asked the same people why the sky is blue they would give a wrong answer or wouldn't even begin to know. How can we expect people to understand theory when they can't even understand fact?

Jesus is the same size as a brontosaurus? Where did the Romans find a crucifix large enough for him?

@10: That last question of yours really sums it up. And I'll bet a lot of those people couldn't tell you the difference between a theory and a fact. The next time I meet a creationist, I think I'll run the "why is the sky blue?" question by them and see what happens.

I would say "God help us" but, being essentially an atheist, I guess I'll have to come up with something else.

Can't everyone just agree we don't know how the f*ck we got here. This is a battle that will never be won.

Check out the Creation Museum's commercial. Very pretty.

http://www.creationmuseum.org/

So about half of Americans who answer their land-line when a stranger calls and asks them to take a survey believe in Noah's Ark.

Ever wonder why telemarketing scams work? Now you know.

@13:

No, because for the most part we do. Just like mjp@6 says. We understand gravity. We see it in practice every fucking day. Its still a THEORY. Most science is a theory. You can believe that some "god" (maybe Zeus?) made evolution, but evolution is basically proven by multiple findings (bones, species, etc). As humans, we always strive for the what explains our surroundings. That is the basis of science, so of course we will always debate it. I hope that we do. But we have to debate with facts, not feeling. We have to debate with principles that can be reviewed and tested, not what someone tells you. Let the debates keep going! That IS science!

Case in point: global warming. It is happening. Almost all scientists agree that it is due to human causes. They have taken that premise: "Why is the earth getting warmer" and then found a logical and peer-reviewed answer: "Humans are increasing CO2, etc".

Maybe they are wrong. But right now, that is the best explanation for the problem at hand. Until someone can come up with a better explanation, then that is what we have. If you disagree, then you spend 10 years studying the earth and tell me if you get a different answer. Ditto for evolution.

My only solace is that it took a few hundred years for people to believe that the earth was round, and that we weren't the center of the universe.

For anyone interested go to skeptic.com and search: "How to debate a creationist". Its super handy.

Carl Sagan, RIP. I am so sorry we are failing you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson totally rules, if you haven't seen "Origins" series on PBS, it's good stuff.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/

I love how they insist that some parts of the bible are fact and others are just "figuratively speaking" (no one really wants us to stone anyone for where two different kinds of cloth).

Pick and choose, pick and choose, and if something doesn't fit, make shit up!

I grew up with this. I have NO idea how I'm not more screwed up than I am.

Wait, wait, wait...we're all missing the big picture here: Jesus is riding side-saddle! What would Sam Brownback say about that?!

how the fuck did Gallup phrase this one?

cuz 37% of DEMOCRATS said they didn't "believe" in evolution.

is this really the only america i can live in?

I belief dinosawers rilly tramped on earthe. This creeatsionism, maybee somthing to it, I dont know. But Joseph read that cat desended from dinosawers. I teech klass called Self-defence klass for cat. It nise. I trie bringe out cat' innur dinosawer, cat move to top the animel kingdum. If you evr move to Stuttgart, plaese konsider enrol your cat in Joseph' klass.

maxsolomon @ 20:

Hate to make you feel worse, but go read it again...that was 37% of independents that don't believe in evolution. For Democrats, it's 40%.

After being on the cross for three days, Jesus and Fred Flintstone took stegasorous airlines to America where they met Ann Marg-rock and partied with the lamanites, which really pissed off the Nephites. It didn't help that Moroni had chosen that weekend to give everyone opposable thumbs and get rid of their tails.

So you can see why I don't believe in evolution.

So, how come nobody's asked the obvious question:

"If dinosaurs were on Noah's ark, where are they now?" I mean, all the other creatures seemed to have done okay, but them dinosaurs, what - they just up and died as soon as the ole' arky-arky hit dry land after 40 days?

Oh, and when a pair of T-Rex's are stuck on a boat for 40 days and they get really, REALLY hungry - what do you feed them?

"Jesus is the same size as a brontosaurus? Where did the Romans find a crucifix large enough for him?"

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, 10 foot tall weighs a fucking ton.

I think that anyone who believes that we can understand the origin of life by reading the inane ramblings of ancient sheep herders is by definition a fucking moron. As a consequence they should be forced to follow every stupid rule and believe every nonsensical thing in the Bible. From how to breed goats to what kind of cloth to wear. From what menstruating woman can and cannot do, to who has to wear hats in church. Though this might require the mouth breathers actually read the damn book, and only about half of them can probably actually do that.

Just looked at the original Gallup article. Two things stood out:

* "Although many scientists accept evolution as the best theoretical explanation for diversity in forms of life on Earth..." Wait -- "many scientists"? MANY scientists??!!! My guess is upwards of 99% of all scientists are pretty convinced that evolution is reality. So why "many"?

* Although the poll indicated that "two-thirds" [66%] of Americans "say the theory of creationism is definitely or probably true," it also said 53% believed that evolution was probably or definitely true. Fuzzy math? Gallup explains the discrepancy by saying, "The data indicate some seeming confusion on the part of Americans on this issue. About a quarter of Americans say they believe both in evolution's explanation that humans evolved over millions of years and in the creationist explanation that humans were created as is about 10,000 years ago." My hunch is that it means that a lot of people believe in evolution, but also want to leave room for some kind of divine guidance. I can live with that.

But what about the other two fifths of Americans who believe in some fantasy entirely unsupported by facts?

I guess it means, no matter what, Repugs are pretty much guaranteed 40% of the national vote.

Can't we just let those people secede & form their own county or something & leave the rest of us reality-based folks to pull the rest our country out of the evolutionary dead end it's stumbled into in recent years?

oops...
county s/b country

"Oh, and when a pair of T-Rex's are stuck on a boat for 40 days and they get really, REALLY hungry - what do you feed them?"

Unicorns.

catalina:

Okay, I'll give you that one, but what happens when you run out of griffins, jackalopes, basilisks, and the like?

@ 19

He has to! He's basically wearing a dress! So riding any other way just wouldn't be ladylike.

Comte: I would say that T-rexes probably don't need to eat that often, considering they're reptiles, but that's a bit sciencey.

I thought Jesus said, "All children come sit on my lap." Not "All alligators come sit on my lap while I ride a dino."

many creations believe that the flood was caused when a layer of the atmosphere rained onto the earth. the removal of this layer caused the global temperature to change. the dinosaurs on the ark died shortly after that, as the climate was no longer tolerable for them. that's what i was taught in sunday school growing up, at least.

also, mixing fabrics is OT... jesus sets you free from the law... the law is just to illustrate your sinfulness.

silly sloggers.

Okaaaay Infrequent, but then how come ONLY the dinosaurs died out, and not any of the other reptiles?

I agree with Dougsf,

Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote an awesome chapter about why creationism is totally retarded in his book Death by Black Hole.

Thanks for the Neil DeGrasse Tyson link, he's rad, and he sums creationism up pretty well in DBBH.

For the record I want to make a Jesus riding a Dinosaur t-shirt.

OK, anyone who "doesn't believe" in evolution (personally, I don't believe in gravity, I think the earth just really sucks) is not allowed to take any antibiotics developed after the first generation. Since there is no evolution, there is no need for the newer antibiotics; since bacteria do not evolve drug resistance, they are all just as susceptible to penicillin and tetracycline as they were when the drugs were first developed.

Then again, something like 76% of Americans will tell you they believe in angels. ANGELS. Literal angels. And the fucking front page of the fucking Seattle P.I. today is devoted to people who believe in time travel. I shit you not.

I give up. The human race is much too unevolved to possibly survive.

The Ancient Greeks using simple observations and mathematics not only deduced that the Earth was round but also calculated its size with remarkable accuracy.

You can take a wild guess at what was the driving force for the rather less accurate notion that the Earth is flat....

@COMTE, well, dinosaurs are actually more closely related to birds than to reptiles. so your question is a little un-scientific. but i'm glad you didn't ask where all the water went. you do know it didn't rain before the flood, right?