Timothy Kershner quotes Alistair Noble’s letter to Stephen Law of the Centre for inquiry, at the ID Facebook page,
When Theos, the London-based public theology think tank, published ‘Rescuing Darwin’ in 2009 they presented a remarkable statistic. It was that two hundred years after Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809, ‘at least half’ of the British population is still sceptical about the theory of evolution.[1] This was consistent with a survey conducted for a BBC Horizon programme in 2006 which put the figure at 52%.
However, Theos was actually being a bit generous with its data. It was 63% of the population they found to be sceptical about Darwin’s theory of evolution. It does of course depend on the form of the question you ask. However, more embarrassingly, Theos found that some 51% of the population thought that some form of Intelligent Design (ID) was a credible explanation of origins.[2]
We noted this last summer, briefly.
That only 37% of the population in 2009 found evolution convincing led Theos to comment on this ‘sorry state of affairs’ and Richard Dawkins to speak of a ‘worrying level of scientific ignorance among Britons'[3]. Time, then, for the ideologues to redouble their efforts to ‘rescue Darwin’ and sort out the poor souls who just don’t get it. Mind you, with the universities and the media completely on board, you could be forgiven for wondering what else they might do. If that combination can’t get better commitment figures, what could?
Well, schools of course. Get them when they’re young – and the younger the better. If you give young children a brain-full of Darwinism in nursery and primary school before their critical faculties develop, and then reinforce the message throughout secondary and higher education, you are bound to improve on 37%. In this context, Philip Johnson’s dictum is worth remembering: ‘It takes years of evolutionary indoctrination to learn to ignore the evidence of intelligent design that is so apparent before our very eyes’.[4]” More.
We noted that, too.
Noble quotes Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse,:
Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion – a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint … the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. … Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.'[6]
You have to wonder if a Government, in the form of its Department for Education, should be using tax-payers’ money to indoctrinate their children in an atheistic and materialistic worldview of which less than half of the population approve. The line is, of course, that science is not democratic and facts transcend public opinion – except at elections! But this is not about scientific facts. It’s about a rather far-fetched ‘scientific’ proposition, namely that life emerged accidentally and developed randomly over billions of years.
But we know all that. Christian Darwinists know it too. So does the educrat and the science teachers’ lobby head.
What Darwin’s followers have is the power to enforce their beliefs, irrespective of their explanatory value, and have them called “science.” Increasingly, that is what matters.
By the way, if you go to Law’s page, note the comments below, that are mostly contentedly devoid of any understanding of the issues around the creation of information by Darwinian means.
It won’t do Britain any good to encourage that mindset. But are other mindsets still legal?
By the way, about life randomly originating, see: Maybe if we throw enough models at the origin of life… some of them will stick?
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