Asks BioLogos’s Jim Stump at at Christian Today, sneering:
But after this initial good news, what strikes many people in the UK and elsewhere in the world is that there are still almost 40 per cent of Americans who are young earth creationists, holding beliefs that are contradicted by the overwhelming majority of scientists (in a separate poll from 2015, 99 per cent of those with a PhD in biology or medicine affirmed that humans evolved). And when restricted to Americans who attend church weekly, 65 per cent select the young earth creationist option. What accounts for this stunning disconnect between Americans’ religious convictions and what science has discovered about our origins?
The reasons are surely multifarious and complex. There is a fascinating study waiting to be done that digs deep into the reasons for how the young earth creationist rhetoric has been so successful over the past 50 years in America. My impression from the people I talk to is that at least the surface reason is that they fear accepting the science of evolution will mean losing confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture. But there must be more to it than that below the surface, where cultural assumptions and predispositions lie silently and unconfronted, but exerting enormous influence. It is certainly not only American Christians who are so concerned about the trustworthiness of Scripture. Why does that concern come out in this peculiar way in America?More.
Oh wait, a question I can easily answer without looking stuff up!: Could it have anything whatever to do with the general unbelievability of much that is classed as “science” today? Or with the war on intellectual freedom on campus?
Maybe most Americans accept their right to believe what makes sense to them instead of whatever government currently demands. Is that still even possible now in many places?
I am not a young earth creationist, but if I were, I certainly would not abandon that position to join the people who believe that our brains were shaped fitness, not for truth or that universities exist to indoctrinate students into a war on intellectual freedom and then unleash them on the world. Like what is happening now.
Hey, why believe us? Keep up to date with Retraction Watch and Campus Reform, to see what awaits us if we do not do something.
See also: Forrest Mims: Skepticism now gone from science
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How can we defend the right to think for ourselves? You need true grit and a thick skin