70 percent of scientists believe religion and science are sometimes in conflict

"They interviewed a scientifically selected sample of 275 participants, pulled from a survey of 2,198 tenured and tenure-track faculty in the natural and social sciences at 21 elite U.S. research universities. Only 15 percent of those surveyed said they view religion and science as always in conflict. Another 15 percent said the two are never in conflict, while 70 percent said they believe religion and science are only sometimes in conflict.

[...]

The study was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation with additional funding from Rice University.


[...]

Many of those surveyed cited issues in the public realm (teaching of creationism versus evolution, stem cell research) as reasons for believing there is conflict between the two. The study showed that these individuals generally have a particular kind of religion in mind (and religious people and institutions) when they say that religion and science are in conflict.

Other findings in the study:

    Scientists as a whole are substantially different from the American public in how they view teaching “intelligent design” in public schools. Nearly all of the scientists – religious and nonreligious alike – have a negative impression of the theory of intelligent design.

    Sixty-eight percent of scientists surveyed consider themselves spiritual to some degree.

    Scientists who view themselves as spiritual/religious are less likely to see religion and science in conflict."

Beliefnet, September 23, 2011

I've seen this survey cited in a number of places and nearly all of them has a headline indicating that science and religion are not in conflict, while the numbers clearly state that 70 per cent thinks religion and science are sometimes in conflict. Only 15 per cent thinks religion and science are never in conflict.

Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions

"Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions

[...]

Shared misconceptions:

Everything is an adaptation produced by natural selection

Natural selection is the only means of evolution

Natural selection leads to ever-greater complexity

Evolution produces creatures perfectly adapted to their environment

Evolution always promotes the survival of species

It doesn't matter if people do not understand evolution

"Survival of the fittest" justifies "everyone for themselves"

Evolution is limitlessly creative

Evolution cannot explain traits such as homosexuality

Creationism provides a coherent alternative to evolution

Creationist myths:

Evolution must be wrong because the Bible is inerrant

Accepting evolution undermines morality

Evolutionary theory leads to racism and genocide

Religion and evolution are incompatible

Half a wing is no use to anyone

Evolutionary science is not predictive

Evolution cannot be disproved so is not science

Evolution is just so unlikely to produce complex life forms

Evolution is an entirely random process

Mutations can only destroy information, not create it

Darwin is the ultimate authority on evolution

The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex

Yet more creationist misconceptions

Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics."

New Scientist, 16 April 2008

Have a look at the article to check out each myth!

Anglo-Saxon attitudes

The March 29th issue of The Economist had some interesting charts showing how Britons and Americans differ on several issues:

It's not surprising how many believes in God and Hell and attitudes to Atheist presidents, but I thought it was interesting to see the differences on Creationism and Intelligent Design in USA. That 20 per cent of Americans believe in Intelligent Design while 40 per cent of them believe in "The Bible" is in a sense good news, because it just shows that the problem is a lack of basic education. Intelligent Design is in many ways more insidious, while the bible version is much more primitive. I think good education stand a better chance with Creationism than with Intelligent Design, because ID is stupidity on a much more abstract level disguising itself as science. You also see that in Britain, there's slightly more people who believe in ID than Creationism.


As for values, the only place they seem to concur is about death penalty.



This chart is a bit difficult to read, but I think it's a summary of how they responded in the other charts after party lines. Notice how even English Conservatives are much more liberal with regards to religion and values than American democrats.

Faith school boom 'creates division'

"The rapid growth of faith-based schools under the previous federal government has threatened the social cohesion of the nation, according to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's most senior education adviser.

[...]

Professor McGaw's remarks reflect a profound shift in education in the past two decades, with more than 200,000 children — almost 40% of non-government school students — now attending a religious school outside the main Catholic, Anglican and Uniting systems.
The change has meant that, for instance, increasing numbers of children are taught creationism as part of their science classes."

The Age, Australia, February 25, 2008

Lies, damn lies and 'counterknowledge'

"We do not normally think of creationism and maverick physics as conspiracy theories; but what they have in common with Loose Change is a methodology that marks them as counterknowledge. People who share a muddled, careless or deceitful attitude towards gathering evidence often find themselves drawn to each other's fantasies. If you believe one wrong or strange thing, you are more likely to believe another. Although this has been true for centuries, the invention of the internet has had a galvanising effect. A rumour about the Antichrist can leap from Goths in Sweden to Australian fascists in seconds. Minority groups are becoming more tolerant of each other's eccentric doctrines. Contacts between white and black racists are now flourishing; in particular, the growing anti-Semitism of black American Muslims has been a great ice-breaker on the neo-Nazi circuit."

Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph, 12/01/2008

I fear this book is getting more and more important every day. Conspiracy theories is clearly the new religion, even for non-religious people. It suits both theists, agnostics and atheists that have complete disregard for reason.While the rest of us go were evidence takes us, the conspiracy theorists use selected facts to build a case around their twisted worldview.
Atheists need to treat this like any other religion, even when it poses like critique of religion, like the hapless Zeitgeist movie. (Any person that actually suggests that Jesus was born 25th December, year 0 or that this is even so central to Christian beliefs that the position of stars that night are of importance - need to have his or her head examined.)

The Curiously Postmodern Modern Apologists

"Back in November, a debate with a Christian in another comment thread took a curious turn:

"But I have faith in the gospel and what it promises me, just like you have faith in your readings. Your suposed facts and my suposed facts, what makes mine so wrong and your so right. Are facts from the bible so different from the facts you read from magazines, books and websites....nope. It all boils down to faith. Until you can tell me that you were there from the beginning up until now, you dont really have facts of your own do you. Neither do I, I dont proclaim to like you do. Faith boys, we all have faith, faith in what is up to you. I think I will stick with the gospel on this one."

Although this Christian believer didn't notice, what he was actually advocating was postmodernism and relativism. Just like the strawman academics whom conservatives love to hate, he was effectively proclaiming that there's no objective truth and no way to decide between competing worldviews, so we might as well choose whichever one makes us feel best.

[...]

It's mind-blowingly ironic that creationists and other Christian apologists, who've gone on so many jeremiads about our society's drifting away from God's absolute truth, are now advocating a relativist view in which the evidence is insufficient to decide any question and what you believe is simply a matter of which arbitrary premises you start out with. Perhaps we should take it as a good sign, an indicator of retreat: instead of arguing that their position is proven and others are disproven, religious apologists nowadays are seemingly reduced to claiming that we can't know that their position is false. Or perhaps it's just that they've discovered the postmodernist position can be useful: it makes it possible for even the most uneducated apologist to raise an insurmountable defense against rational counterargument."

Daylight Atheism, Jan 9, 2008

Non-believers mushroom in Switzerland

"When it comes to the growth of secularism in Switzerland, the figures speak for themselves.
More than one in ten of the Swiss population – 810,000 people – claims "no religious affiliation", up almost 60 per cent on a decade earlier.

[...]

According to Bovay, religion is no longer being passed down from the parent to child as it was in the past, and children are being allowed to decide for themselves at an earlier age.

With more young people turning away from religion and older believers dying off, Bovay expects the number of non-affiliated to increase for the foreseeable future."

Swissinfo.ch, August 20, 2007

It's not all well, though, because creationists are popping up too:

"Creationism controversy evolves

A heated debate over the inclusion of creationism in a school science book highlights the success Swiss evangelicals are having sowing seeds of doubt about evolution.
The debate over the textbook raises questions about why increasing numbers of Swiss are willing to turn away from science and accept creationist views that God created the earth a few thousand years ago.

[...]

But the Swiss proponents of creationism are working on fertile ground. An international survey last year found that 30 per cent of the Swiss reject evolution, one of the highest rates in Europe."

Swissinfo.ch, November 28, 2007

Former Evangelical Minister Has a New Message: Jesus Hearts Darwin

"WN: Couldn't someone just as easily argue that we ought to obey our base instincts, since we evolved that way?

Dowd: That's where it's important to understand the direction of evolution. When we look at the pre-human world, then at human cultural evolution, we see greater spheres of cooperation, of complexity and interdependence at an ever-wider scale. At first we cooperated with family and clan; then at the level of tribe; then, later on, at the level of the kingdom; and now, at a planetary level. Our list of enemies keeps shrinking, and the people for whom we have cooperation and compassion keeps expanding. Why don't we go act on base instincts? Because it goes counter to this trajectory.

[...]

Dowd: God didn't stop communicating truth vital to human well-being thousands of years ago, when people preserved insights on animal skins. God communicates through science. Facts are God's native tongue. Who of us would let a first-century dentist fix our children's teeth? Yet every day we let first-century theologians fill our children's brains."

Wired.com 12.05.07

The Revelation of Evolution!

Poll finds more Americans believe in devil than Darwin

"The poll of 2,455 U.S. adults from Nov 7 to 13 found that 82 percent of those surveyed believed in God, a figure unchanged since the question was asked in 2005.
It further found that 79 percent believed in miracles, 75 percent in heaven, while 72 percent believed that Jesus is God or the Son of God. Belief in hell and the devil was expressed by 62 percent.
Darwin's theory of evolution met a far more skeptical audience which might surprise some outsiders as the United States is renowned for its excellence in scientific research."

Reuters, Nov 29, 2007

One has to wonder for how long the excellence will last with generations of kids being dumbed down by religious stupidity.

The Law of Evolution

"This is the central argument of evolution deniers: Evolution is an unproven "theory." For science-savvy people, this is an incredibly annoying ploy. While it's true that scientists refer to evolution as a theory, in science the word theory means an explanation of how the world works that has stood up to repeated, rigorous testing. It's hardly a term of disparagement.

But for most people, theory means a haphazard guess you've pulled out of your, uh, hat. It's an insult, really, a glib way to dismiss a point of view: "Ah, well, that's just your theory." Scientists use theory in one specific way, the public another — and opponents of evolution have expertly exploited this disconnect.

[...]

What does she suggest? For truly solid-gold, well-established science, let's stop using the word theory entirely. Instead, let's revive much more venerable language and refer to such knowledge as "law." As with Newton's law of gravity, people intuitively understand that a law is a rule that holds true and must be obeyed. The word law conveys precisely the same sense of authority with the public as theory does with scientists, but without the linguistic baggage."

Clive Thompson, Wired.com 10.23.07

Can't believe this hasn't been done already.

European lawmakers condemn efforts to teach creationism

"The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe condemned efforts to teach creationism in schools Thursday in a vote that underlined concern about the rise of a new socially conservative agenda in several countries.
Members of the assembly, which monitors human rights, approved 48 to 25 a report that attacked advocates of creationism for seeking "to impose religious dogma" and to promote "a radical return to the past" at the expense of children's education."

International Herald Tribune, October 4, 2007

What they voted for.


Anyway, this is great news!

An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science

"Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. [...] We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as "one theory among others" is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. [...] We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge.

[...]

Signatures are current as of 5 September 2007
10,900 signatures collected to date"

Not bad.

Turkey bans Wordpress blogs over alleged libel

"Turkish internet users have been blocked from accessing sites on the Wordpress.com hosting service. A court in Istanbul ordered the website be blocked after lawyers complained that a number of blogs hosted by Wordpress were libellous of Islamic creationist author Adnan Oktar.

Turkish internet users attempting to access more than a million Wordpress sites are now redirected to a site that says in Turkish and English: "Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of TC Fatih 2 Civil Court of First Instance."

[...]

In response to a question on whether Wordpress should stop hosting the sites that allegedly libel Oktar, a blogger by the pen name of "savedbymcr" wrote: "My opinion is that if you give in to this it will only be the beginning. Everyone will start filing lawsuits and having blogs removed and sites shut down. Blogs are/were intended to be a place to speak your mind, not speak about what a government deems appropriate."

The sites that Oktar's lawyers wanted removed were written by Edip Yuksel and his supporters. Yuksel is described as an Islamic reformist who is based in the United States and who has frequently criticised Oktar.

Oktar himself is an Islamist who under the name Harun Yahya has written and distributed many books supporting creationist theories. His latest book, The Atlas of Creation, has been distributed unsolicited to schools across Turkey, the US and Europe."

Mail & Guardian, 20 August 2007

This is appalling, And this happens in a country that wants to be an EU member.

On a different note, as most of you probably are aware of: the only redeeming thing about this "Atlas" is all the nice photos. The book is 788 pages fat, weighs 6 kilos, and has pictures all over the place. Apparently, very good photos. Professional photos. And, as a Norwegian receiver/reviewer pointed out: uncredited photos. Copyrighted photos. "Thousands", apparently.
I assume that a good deal of professional photographers have had their photos stolen for this purpose, and I am sure that they want money for them. He's not anonymous, as he's been to court, so there's an address to send the bill to. If some kind receiver want to scan or photos of the pages, and post them on the net, then it will be a small problem to find the photographers. A lawsuit may be the likely result, if they're eager enough.

If these photos are stolen, btw. then Sharia has the answer.

The Rise of Islamic Creationism

"Overall, this means that creationism is likely to remain strong in Muslim populations. The prospects for a western-style accommodation between science and religion, where each has their separate sphere, are doubtful. Culturally and politically, conservative interpretations of Islam are very strong, and conservative Muslims see little reason to back off from the ideal of religion regulating all aspects of life."

Tanis Erdis, International Humanist and Ethical Union, 7 August, 2007

This would mean that pushing Atheism is a better choice than waiting endlessly for them to moderate themselves. It's not like we have the whole medieval age to wait for them to enter this century.

So Much for Another Stereotype

"According to this survey, 59 percent of the 1,088 Canadians surveyed think the evolutionary model is the right one, 22 percent think the creation model is right and 19 percent said they are not sure.

[...]

The perplexing part comes when one looks at a provincial breakdown of the numbers. Particularly striking are the Ontario and Québec numbers. Ontario pretty much reflects the national average in percentages of its population who are believers (84 percent) while this survey indicates that 51 percent of Ontarions think evolution is the correct answer.

In Québec, the percentage of believers is much higher (94.7 percent), but the percentage of Québécois who opt for evolution is 71 percent, the highest in Canada. The numbers for British Columbia make more sense because 65 percent of its surveyed citizens agree with evolution and 21 percent with creation and British Columbia also has the second-highest percentage of non-believers (35.9 percent) in the country."

HumanistNetworkNews.org, July 3, 2007

Why Are Atheist Books Best Sellers?

"First and most significant is the amount of evil coming from within Islam. Whether Islamists (or jihadists, Islamo-Fascists or whatever else Muslims who slaughter innocents in the name of Islam are called) represent a small sliver of Muslims or considerably more than that, they have brought religious faith into terrible disrepute.
How could they not? The one recognized genocide in the world today is being carried out by religious Muslims in Sudan; liberty is exceedingly rare in any of the dozens of nations with Muslim majorities; treatment of women is frequently awful; and tolerance of people with different religious beliefs is largely nonexistent when Muslims dominate a society.
If the same were true of vegetarians -- if mass murder and violent intolerance were carried out by vegetarians -- there would be a backlash against vegetarianism even among people who previously had no strong feelings about the doctrine."

realclearpolitics.com July 10, 2007

That's all very well, but here's an interesting part regarding the very "unfortunate" secularisation of Europe.

"I have taught college students and have found that their ignorance not only of the Bible but of the most elementary religious arguments and concepts -- such as the truism that if there is no God, morality is subjective -- is total."

Morality is subjective. Heard it all before, yet monkeys help eachother. Now watch this:

"Indeed it is virtually impossible to distinguish between a liberal Christian or Jew and a liberal secularist. Neither holds any text to be divine, both get their values from their hearts and minds, and they come to identical conclusions about virtually all moral issues."

How's that for "subjective morality"?
This just goes to show that the sum of human experience, or the human history if you like, has given us more information about good morality than religious texts.

While I think Prager has some nice clear thoughts in between here, he conveniently forgets that it's not only Islam which is the background for these books. American creationism is considered as maybe the most puerile fringe of Christianity. A couple of pedophile priests would never sway anyone, but systematic idiocy will.
Islam is a very serious problem, of course, but being liberals we are terribly understanding to people with lousy childhoods and poor education in violent countries. But God-fearing Americans have the possibility to get a proper education, and all they wish is to corrupt it with silliness from Genesis.

Terrorism may have been the final straw, but the reason why Atheist books are best sellers is because there's a lot more to religious problems than Osama Bin Laden.

48 percent of weekly churchgoers not in favour of Creationism Museum

The poll was conducted on behalf of "The Campaign to Defend the Constitution," or DEFCON. According to the survey, 48 percent of those who said they attend church weekly said the idea of the museum, which presents dinosaurs alongside Adam and Eve, was "scientifically unsound" or "biblically inaccurate."

OneNewsNow.com, July 5, 2007

Inferior Design

I had expected to be as irritated by Michael Behe’s second book as by his first. I had not expected to feel sorry for him.

[...]

It commits the logical error of arguing by default. Two rival theories, A and B, are set up. Theory A explains loads of facts and is supported by mountains of evidence. Theory B has no supporting evidence, nor is any attempt made to find any. Now a single little fact is discovered, which A allegedly can’t explain. Without even asking whether B can explain it, the default conclusion is fallaciously drawn: B must be correct. Incidentally, further research usually reveals that A can explain the phenomenon after all: thus the biologist Kenneth R. Miller (a believing Christian who testified for the other side in the Dover trial) beautifully showed how the bacterial flagellar motor could evolve via known functional intermediates.

[...]

If mutation, rather than selection, really limited evolutionary change, this should be true for artificial no less than natural selection. Domestic breeding relies upon exactly the same pool of mutational variation as natural selection. Now, if you sought an experimental test of Behe’s theory, what would you do? You’d take a wild species, say a wolf that hunts caribou by long pursuit, and apply selection experimentally to see if you could breed, say, a dogged little wolf that chivies rabbits underground: let’s call it a Jack Russell terrier. Or how about an adorable, fluffy pet wolf called, for the sake of argument, a Pekingese? Or a heavyset, thick-coated wolf, strong enough to carry a cask of brandy, that thrives in Alpine passes and might be named after one of them, the St. Bernard? Behe has to predict that you’d wait till hell freezes over, but the necessary mutations would not be forthcoming. Your wolves would stubbornly remain unchanged. Dogs are a mathematical impossibility.

Nytimes.com, July 1, 2007

UK Gov boots intelligent design back into 'religious' margins

"The government has announced that it will publish guidance for schools on how creationism and intelligent design relate to science teaching, and has reiterated that it sees no place for either on the science curriculum.

[...]

Responding to a petition on the Number 10 ePetitions site, the government said: "The Government is aware that a number of concerns have been raised in the media and elsewhere as to whether creationism and intelligent design have a place in science lessons. The Government is clear that creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science. "

theregister.co.uk, 25th June 2007

So there! See also justscience.org.uk

Council of Europe to vote on proposal to fight creationism

"The theory of evolution is being attacked by religious fundamentalists who call for creationist theories to be taught in European schools alongside or even in place of it. From a scientific view point there is absolutely no doubt that evolution is a central theory for our understanding of the Universe and of life on Earth.
Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are pathetically inadequate for science classes.
The Assembly calls on education authorities in member States to promote scientific knowledge and the teaching of evolution and to oppose firmly any attempts at teaching creationism as a scientific discipline."

Council of Europe, Doc. 11297, 8 June 2007

Very long text. (Notice that Council of Europe is not the same as the EU.)
This will be voted over tomorrow. I have no idea about the outcome, particularly as this may in some ways affect freedom of speech (although I have not read all the 105 points and know nothing about it) , but I sure appreciate the initiative.

I think it sends a powerful message.