Faith fails to protect idiot from snake bites.
- Thread starter Siro
- Start date
Oh, and this is interesting.
It's all in how you phrase the question. For example, I wouldn't answer "yes" to that particular phrasing myself, even though I'm a scientist and (to a large extent) a believer in evolution.
The percentage of people who actually have some philosophical objection to the phrasing is probably very small.
JimLes
Well-Known Member
This. Considering the charged political climate over this issue, any question about evolution is clear enough.
Not to forget that denying even the most obvious of facts becomes more and more common the more religious you become. Some people still hold to the view that the universe is a few thousand years old. Like I've said many times, the idiocy faith seems to induce in people has no limits.
The Black Swordsman
Well-Known Member
One of my favorite people is Jon Stewart and he said something similar to what I am about to write:
Humans are the only animal (at least that we know of) that knows that our life here on earth is limited. Religion brings much comfort to many peoples lives. Unfortunatly things that bring comfort can often cause some people to do bad things as well. For example I am sure that many of you nonbelievers think that weed is something that also brings comfort and is a positive thing to many people's lives however some people do bad things with it (either under its influence or not see Mexican drug cartel problems). Osama Bin Laden caused 3,000 deaths before he died, however Pol Pot caused 2 million.
And yes SiroMar I did take someone elses idea and post it. I am not naïve enough to think that I know everything so I look at what others say, reflect, ponder, and see if it makes sense. You should try it some time.
Humans are the only animal (at least that we know of) that knows that our life here on earth is limited. Religion brings much comfort to many peoples lives. Unfortunatly things that bring comfort can often cause some people to do bad things as well. For example I am sure that many of you nonbelievers think that weed is something that also brings comfort and is a positive thing to many people's lives however some people do bad things with it (either under its influence or not see Mexican drug cartel problems). Osama Bin Laden caused 3,000 deaths before he died, however Pol Pot caused 2 million.
And yes SiroMar I did take someone elses idea and post it. I am not naïve enough to think that I know everything so I look at what others say, reflect, ponder, and see if it makes sense. You should try it some time.
It would be naive to think someone of your capacity can ponder anything, I agree. And I love those loosely tied collection of cliches about comfort, weed, and Pol Pot. That is exactly what I've come to expect from you.
The Black Swordsman
Well-Known Member
Good, I expect you to disagree with a rational mind like mine. An irrational mind cannot make sense of something rational. A pig will trample over a pearl.
Right right, the pig line again. Nice one.
The Black Swordsman
Well-Known Member
This is the first time in my life I have ever used that pig line. See people like you gotta make **** up to not get embarassed :/. It's ok, I don't know how it feels but I am sure you are used to it.
I'm not talking about philosophical objections. I'm just talking about how the question is phrased. For example, if you change it from "best explanation" to something like "Do you agree with the explanation that...", the reaction to people would be very different.
As an example, from the Pew Forum's own more in-depth analysis of this survey, the opinions of Catholic vs. Mormon respondents are nearly the same:
https://www.pewforum.org/Science-and-Bioethics/Religious-Groups-Views-on-Evolution.aspx
In other words, a substantial number of people in each church share my own personal belief, which is that God created human life but may well have used evolutionary processes to do so. And yet due to the way people interpreted the specific question, the Catholic response was 58% yes and the Mormon response was 22% yes. If two such similar beliefs show up so far apart in the spectrum, then a simple "yes/no" answer to this type of question is meaningless. Phrasing the question a slightly different way would undoubtedly have resulted in a very different set of percentages.
Are you sure? It looks to me like it was compiled as a direct result of the responses from the Pew Forum survey.
Are there any surveys that show that Mormons don't believe evolution happened? Are there even any surveys which have asked Mormons if they believe one way or the other whether or not evolution happened?
You went to BYU, right? You should know that evolution is taught in Bio 100, a required class for all students (unless a more advanced Bio class is taken). That's not to say that ALL of the students taking the class believe what they are learning is a valid scientific principle, but I'd wager that most of them do by the end of the semester.
pickledXgrandma
Well-Known Member
It wasnt very "in-depth"....
But it was *more* in-depth now, wasn't it?
Are we looking at the thing you quoted? It just says that the official policy of the church does not necessarily contradict belief in evolution. That has nothing to do with general belief among the faithful. And for BYU, of course they teach evolution in Biology. It is a respectable school that teaches real science.
I thought they removed the venom glands to the snakes they used?
Well more props to them.
Well more props to them.
The Black Swordsman
Well-Known Member
Atheists act like you can't live life without knowing about evolution. I bet you 99.9% of atheists (and of followers of any religion for that matter) cannot recite einsteins equations for an expanding universe by memory... So what. Evolution is important for many branches of biology but it would be harder the argue that investing time learning about evolution would benefit everyday people more then something perhaps like learning a new language, learning how computer programs work, etc etc. This is coming from someone with a bachelors in biology and did undergraduate evolution research (legume phylogeny).
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The Thriller
Well-Known Member
An honest question here, but does anyone know WHEN BYU started to include evolution in their biology? Was this at the same time most (western) universities started teaching it? Was it about at the same time most private/religious institutions started to include it?
I think a fair question could be the ages of those questioned. If you were to ask many older BYU grads about evolution (who may not have taken courses on evolution), they might give you a different answer than those who just barely graduated and took a course (which as Colton pointed out, is required for all students).
I know for me that my knowledge on evolution would be a lot more limited than what it already is had I never taken the required Biology classes that I did.
I think a fair question could be the ages of those questioned. If you were to ask many older BYU grads about evolution (who may not have taken courses on evolution), they might give you a different answer than those who just barely graduated and took a course (which as Colton pointed out, is required for all students).
I know for me that my knowledge on evolution would be a lot more limited than what it already is had I never taken the required Biology classes that I did.