Lest this reflector become mere bickering and repetitive argument regurgitation,
I'll take it upon myself to add some much needed context and vision. I haven't
read this reflector long, but I've noticed a heavy emphasis on majoritarianism, as
if the evolution question could be put to a vote, and denials of any "evidence,"
which bear a disturbing resemblance to the denials made by holocaust revisionists
and beg the question, how can anything really be "proved."
Americans are actually very divided on this issue according to one poll I found.
46% of Americans do not believe that humans evolved from other animals, compared to
45% who do, leaving 9% undecided. (New York Times News Service 4/27/94) However,
the vast majority of Americans say they are not materialists. 96% of Americans
believe in God, and 85% of Americans belong to the Christian faith. (Los Angeles
Times 6/28/98) More educated Americans are more likely to accept that humans
evolved, and just among physicists and astronomers, 78% are atheists. (Oregonian
12/22/97)
Americans are not alone in their belief in creationist myths. For instance, in the
mostly nonreligious country of Japan there is still strong sentiment for the myth
that Japanese people descend from a sun god. This stems partly from the Japanese
unwillingness to believe that they could be at all related to Korean people.
Fortunately, there is reason to believe that Americans' values are shifting away
from these primitive beliefs, even as states such as Kansas seek to eliminate the
teaching of evolution in public school. For one thing, American religiousness is
becoming deinstitutionalized. The fastest-growing religious group in the nation
are people who are religious but unaffiliated with any church or synagogue. (Los
Angeles Times 6/28/98) Particularly alienated from churches are men, only a third
of whom attend compared to nearly half of women. (Christian Science Monitor
10/6/97) Interestingly, half of Americans who claim they regularly attend church
in polls are in fact lying. For decades, the US polls showed that 40% attend
service once a week, far higher than most Western nations. Follow up studies by C.
Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler showed that half of these people were just
giving poll answers they think they're "supposed" to give. (Knight Ridder News
Service 1/16/99)
I suspect that religion is becoming a victim of the era. Christianity was an
agricultural era philosophy that fit nicely into the industrial age. It became
synonymous with the values of normalcy that complemented the structured nature of
factory work and suburban life. It also became integral to the "conservative"
ethic which confronted the anti-industrial age philosophy of communism. Now that
the Cold War is over, fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives, and military
conservatives have become more inclined to express their differences in the
political realm. Fiscal conservatives have centered their world-view around the
supremacy of free opportunity to bring ideas to the marketplace. This is
problematic for the religious as technologies like the Internet and biotechnology
confront them and transform society. In anticipation of this, the Roman Catholic
Church declared that Darwin's theory of evolution is "more than a hypothesis." "By
this very clever move of the Pope, it will allow Darwinism to be studied not as a
hypothesis but as a real scientific truth, which will allow discussions on crucial
issues such as bioethics," Giulio Giorello of the University of Milan told the
Associated Press. (10/23/96) The human genome project may result in the muting of
the many little "nature vs. nurture" debates. As the public becomes more aware of
the findings of this research they will gain more understanding of how genetic
characteristics benefit our survival. In addition, as biotechnology makes life
longer and easier, perhaps people will be less inclined to think about death and
the after-life. In contrast with the "right to die" controversy, institutions of
religion may have to reject technology and take a more "pro-death" stance in the
bio-tech age.
The Christian religion is not devoid of a vision for the future, but its vision is
an apocalyptic, violent, and vengeful one. Nevertheless, this vision is very much
mainstream in the US. Nearly 60% of Americans believe this, and a third of those
expect it within decades. (AP 12/11/94) Should the world not come to an end,
religious sentiment will suffer on two fronts. With so many Americans expecting
the end of the world within their lifetime, their children may become disillusioned
with religion when they see that their parents have died and the Lord has still not
come. Furthermore, it's obvious that many Christians have grown anxious. A few
months ago a Roman Catholic priest educated in Los Angeles helped to murder perhaps
over 1000 of his followers whom he had promised that the world would end at the
turn of the millennium. The "Bible Codes" movement also expects the end of the
world to happen within this decade.
My opinion is that humanity will always have a religious impulse because it's
probably partly genetic. However, the power of religion in the world is in
decline. Ultimately, organized religion is not necessary for civilization as
exemplified by the Chinese Empire. Buddhism was injected into Chinese civilization
by the barbarians to the north as they used their might to conquer the empire.
Brian
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