Thursday, January 12, 2012

Protestant Evolution

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist


A poll conducted by the Gallup organization in 2010 found that 40% of Americans believe God created humans in their present form - all science and fossils to the contrary be damned!  That same poll revealed that 54% of Americans believe that humans developed (evolved) over millions of years.

The Republican party knows that the theory evolution is nonsense.  Sarah Palin, for instance, has stated her belief that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time - sometime less than 6,000 years ago when, according to some rigid Christian fundamentalists, God created the earth.

Recently the Southern Baptist Convention surveyed 1,000 American Protestant pastors to get their take on the theory of evolution and some ancillary matters.  Forty-six percent of those surveyed agreed that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old, while 43% disagreed.  Seventy-four percent of the Protestant ministers surveyed believed that Adam and Eve were real people.  Many of these same pastors usually aren't reticent about letting their congregations know how Jesus would have wanted them to vote.

So these Republican presidential candidates appear to know exactly what they are doing when they begin waving the flag and bearing the cross.  They aren't just playing to the base, they're singing to the choir!

And Bible-thumpers vote!

Can I have an "Amen!"

2 comments:

Xobekim said...

The National Geographic's Genographic Project took mtDNA specimens from thousands of persons across the globe.

These results even looked directly into the ancestry of Charles Darwin. Darwin's line extended back to when his ancestors left North Africa or the Middle East some 45,000 years ago.

Darwin was a direct descendant of the Cro-Magnon people.

That study was also able to point to each person's maternal line. Everyone, everywhere, has a maternal mtDNA pointing to one woman.

Christians call that woman Eve.

Science, I believe, reinforces not only scientific theory, or disproves them, but also reinforces the cultural myths surrounding the first humans.

It is easy to see how our ancestors, lacking science, developed their observations into religious theory.

That science does not refute religion comes as no surprise to me.

Science and religion are not incompatible. Closed mindedness, whether practiced by religious fundamentalists or brute minded scientists, will never lead to truth.

Don said...

Whether or not science disputes the existence of God is definitional.

If, as the early deists claimed, God is the clockmaker who simply puts it all in motion, then anything that results, e.g. Big Bang, is God-driven.

MtDNA is an interesting test of origins but we need to be careful before claiming that cultural myths have been reinforced.