
Americans' Creationist Views on Human Origins - evo_9
http://www.livescience.com/20981-god-created-humans-creationist-views.html
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mindstab
None of the charts make sense to me and the "percents" don't seem to add up in
either direction. I sadly can't get or trust any information from them

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Harkins
They sum to less than 100% because this chart leaves off the undecideds. For
more info, turn to Gallup itself: [http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-
creationism-intel...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-
intelligent-design.aspx)

They're a solid outfit with a great track record; these numbers are sadly
accurate.

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planetguy
I have difficulty believing these poll numbers. How can 46% of Americans be
full-on young-Earth creationists, when I've never met one? I think there must
be some flaw in the way they're asking the question, apart from the fact that
the phrasing of the question seems to presuppose the existence of a guy called
"God" (I would replace with "a god or gods").

What about missing poll options? Surely there must be some young-Earth
creationists out there who nonetheless believe the human race is over ten
thousand years old. In fact, there's a whole term for this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Earth_creationism>

I am fond of pointing out (as it annoys many people) that not only is
intelligent design _not_ incompatible with evolution, but also that
"intelligent design" is pretty much implied by the tenets of most monotheisms.
If you have an omnipotent god who sets the initial conditions of the big bang,
then he can hardly fail to know _perfectly well_ that the initial particle
trajectories he programs in will lead, inevitably, to the formation of Earth
and intelligent life thereon. Assuming that said deity had a choice in initial
conditions, the fact that he chose the initial conditions that he did must
mean that he designed everything in the universe, since from an omnipotent
being's point of view setting the initial conditions is _perfectly equivalent_
to setting everything up from scratch at T=1.37e10 years. (The alternative is
that you have a deity who can't predict the outcome of quantum events, but
what kind of crappy omniscience is that?)

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Harkins
The question has the wording it does because they've been keeping the same
text from a time when people did not mind this kind of language they way they
do now. If they changed it, they'd lose the ability to compare with the last
few decades of results.

As for your 'never met one', that's probably an anecdote about selection bias.
We does these surveys because asking, "Hey, does anybody know any young-earth
creationists? Like how many?" does not provide reliable data.

