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December 14, 2008
Ghosts and UFOs and Witches, Oh My!
And many other unjustified beliefs are extremly popular. Some are more popular than an extremely well justified belief.
If you've ever wondered why unjustified beliefs are problematic, check out this Harris Interactive Poll.
Normally, I would have had more to say about this poll, but Shirley and I are off to lunch and then to a lecture by Janna Levin at the Skeptics Society meeting.
I do have time for this worry. The poll asked about "Darwin’s theory of evolution." I'd be surprised if anyone believes in Darwin’s theory of evolution exactly as Darwin articulated it. While continuing to substantiate the core of Darwin's findings, science has added to Darwin’s theory and modified it several ways. But then, a subset of those polled, about 29% of them, believed that "The Old Testament" was the word of God but that the Torah wasn't. If this represents the level of knowledge of a significant portion of our population, and it does, I doubt that subtleties about the current state of biological science would have mattered all that much. Given everything else in the poll, I guess I should be happy that participants believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution by a plurality (47% to the 40% who believed in creationism). But I find little confront in any of this poll.
Via N. T. Wrong? and Steph, a commenter there
Posted by Duane Smith at December 14, 2008 10:03 AM | Read more on Religion |
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