Acceptance of evolution by high school students: Is religion the key factor?

Per TFA, apparently not in Brazil...

I've updated my comment to answer that because I figured not everyone would know. But the TL;DR is that teleology is the assumption that existence has a purpose.

I should have qualified that with "violently at odds with the scientific view of reality" (I've gone back and edited my original comment). And it's not hard to see how this can happen. Quantum mechanics is pretty violently at odds with most people's intuitions.

> those who hold YEC beliefs have an inconsistent belief system

No, that is absolutely not what I am saying. Their belief system is, for the most part, logically sound, and so it is consistent. But it is violently at odds with science, and so they end up with conspiracy theories to explain why scientists believe in evolution so overwhelmingly. Conspiracy theories are improbable, but they are not inconsistent.

> violently at odds with reality

Most of the views people have that they call reality are conclusions drawn from interpreting observations based on assumptions. They aren't repeatedly observable or a case where the observation is shows "reality" without interpretation based on assumptions.

This is how people come to different conclusions.

Learning to understand the different assumptions people make for all views was enlightening for me, personally.

> How can something be both logically sound and violently at odds with reality?

Firstly, logical soundness has little to do with reality; here's a logically sound argument:

All mammals nurse their Young

Ducks are mammals

Therefore ducks nurse their young

Obviously the statement "Ducks are mammals" is false, garbage-in, garbage-out, but the logic itself is sound.

Now there was an entire field of philosophy called "Rationalism" that had a chief tenet that innate ideas and deductive reasoning was superior to sensory information. Rene Descartes formulated "I think therefore I am" because any empirical evidence of the existence of an item is suspect, but the logical statement that "if a thought occurs, then some being must be doing the thinking" is irrefutable.

Be aware that there are many epistemologies besides empiricism.

The axioms can contradict a particular view of reality. The "scientific" axioms assume that objective reality can be observed (they reject solipsism). Solipsistic axioms don't accept this, only the state of one's own mind can be directly observed so it's the only objective reality under these axioms. Religions accept the existence of one or more gods as axioms, usually with some extra axioms declaring the properties of such god(s).

A reasoning is logically sound if it applies valid reasoning rules on well formed propositions.

Young earth can be both false and logically sound, in that case it would also be the case that some of its assumptions or models need to be wrong.

Another example of a logically sound yet wrong theory is the Ptolemaic model of the solar system, if nothing else because by Fourier analysis it follows that you can approximate well any periodic orbit using enough epicycles.

Young Earth Creationism

I believe it's "Young-Earth Creationist"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

Young Earth Creationist. It’s a kind of creationism that posits the world is somewhere around 6,000 to 10,000 years old. That number was arrived at through interpreting scripture as inerrant and correct.

This is in contrast to other forms of creationism which have different interpretations of just how long events that happened in the scripture took place. For instance the days of creation need not be modern 24 hour days.

> They assumed that an omnipotent God existed.

I actually doubt that they assumed that. Much more likely their belief in an omnipotent God was based on some more fundamental assumption, like that the Bible is true.

Taking seriously the idea that the Bible -- and the book of Genesis in particular -- is the revealed Word of God.

You typically find these people in Evangelical churches that adhere to a literalist interpretation of the Bible, which is the main distinction from other sects of Christianity. These groups also tend to have out-of-mainstream views on eschatology and their own role in bringing the "end times" in the near future (often they believe it will happen in their lifetime).

It's a Protestant thing, I believe. Catholics have a central authority that is in charge of telling people more or less what to believe, but Protestants are free to make their own interpretations so they sometimes choose to believe stuff that sounds crazy to outsiders.

The Catholic Church happens to believe in evolution, so most Catholics accept evolution as well.

Yes it is. To put it bluntly a large portion of the American population is scientifically illiterate. Some of them believe the earth is around 6000 years old. They even have museums dedicated to such things.

> Is that some weird American thing?

Yes, but no. It's still quite common in other places as well (take a guess), but none you are as likely to hear of as the US. The US may also be the developed nation in which such belief is most common and - more importantly - openly discussed.

Yeah same here; not catholic but, for the Netherlands, very strict Christian (I do not know the particular name in English); we were taught evolution, dinosaurs and carbon dating etc.

I think there's a strong evangelical influence over Catholic culture in the US. Church doctrine does acknolwledge evolution, but with certain exceptions such as human consciousness.

Disclosure: Went to Catholic university

This was during the height of the teaching of "intelligent design" in schools debacle, so I'd say it's very much a US thing.

I was raised Catholic in a very rural rustic area of midwest USA, and we Catholics laughed at those of other religions who "didn't believe in evolution".

Well the point of the paper is that regardless of what your religion teaches (and the Roman Catholic church, in particular, is not anti-evolution; but not pro-evolution either, and offers its members essentially a choice of which mechanism of creation to believe), your "sociocultural environment" influences your beliefs more than what religion you say you're a part of. So yes, in accordance with the paper, it's probably more likely that even Catholics in the U.S. will be exposed to more anti-evolution indoctrination and more of their parents and teachers will try to deny evolutionary science, even if they aren't members of a specifically anti-evolution sect.

What the paper doesn't really go into is to how religion influences that "sociocultural environment"--it's just measuring effects for individuals. It's clear to me that "teach the controversy" movements, attacks on evolutionary science like the Scopes trial, attempts to remove evolution from biology texts and the actual removal in some schools are in large part motivated by religion, and comprise a lot of that "sociocultural environment" the paper refers to. Catholics have a choice whether to believe in a literal six-day creation and the creation of all life in its current form, so in a place like the U.S., where it's simply more socially acceptable to be an anti-evolutionist, they'll do so in more frequent numbers than where it's not.

> And suggesting that dinosaurs weren't real would just get you laughed out.

There's a contrarian part of me that sees this as somewhat negative. It suggests that perhaps some students may actually have hidden beliefs that they're simply unwilling to expose due to the lack of space for unconventional ideas in the environment. Are students being educated or merely bullied into a particular point of view?

That's another question from this study. They say students "given instruction on the nature of science" accept evolution more readily. What is the "nature of science?" And, what does that instruction entail, exactly?

>Is that some weird American thing?

Almost certainly.

Also, in there most protestants don't consider Catholics to be Christians.

The place is completely bananas.

It definitely is an American evangelical/fundamentalist thing. (Might also be elsewhere, I can't say) The history is that in the 1800s many seminaries, beginning with German seminaries, began teaching theology that differed from traditional orthodoxy. In the early 1900s a counter-movement emerged in the US which insisted on five fundamentals (hence "fundamentalist"): the Bible is "infallible" and inspired by God, the virgin birth of Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, that Christ's death atoned for our sins, and the reality of Jesus' miracles. It seems that over time the first point seems to become a literal interpretation of much of the Bible, in particular, Genesis 1. I assume this is because the Modernist theology has to symbolize the Bible if it wants to harmonize the Bible with Modern ideas about there is no literal God, miracles can't happen, etc., since a God that exists and intervenes (e.g. miracles) is kind of the whole point of the text. I'm not totally what happened or why, but it seems like the fundamentalists simplified things from "these are our assumptions" to "this is what the Bible says". YEC is the poster-child, but an unnuanced, one-sided view is endemic. I think evangelicals were originally more nuanced, but over time seem to have merged with the fundamentalists.

However, I don't think the Church has historically had an official position on how long creation took. I know some early Church fathers figured Creation took 6000 years: "a day is to the Lord as 1000 years". I also assume that "1000 years" had a similar feeling as "a million years" to us: you can do math with it, but a million years is pretty much an unimaginably long time.

It is also well-known that it is a hermeneutical error to interpret poetry literally, but there is little recognition, at least among evangelicals/fundamentalists that Genesis 1 is actually poetry, and hence interpreting it literally is what I would call a hermeneutical gaffe.

I wouldn't doubt that this was a regional or a diocese/parish/whatever thing.

Yeah, as a Catholic-school graduate, that seems bizarre. It would be more likely to hear my teachers deny transsubstantiation than to deny evolution.

Living in the south in America I've encountered this mindset over and over. One of the best people I ever hired, absolutely top tier intelligent and productive, completely believed in the young earth theory and that dinosaur bones were placed there by god. Not exclusive to catholics, southern baptists, etc. Just "religious people in the south".

It's depressing and my cousin's son who is being home schooled by the same sort of religious mother is just criminally under-educated for his age. We don't live in a small city, one of the larger ones in America. It's just sad to see that this is often the status quo around here.

Don't forget George Lemaitre, Catholic priest and formulator of the Big Bang Theory.

I'm going by what they told me, I never attended Catholic school.

I took comparative religion studies at University. The first weeks of class, the Christian teacher (the other was a formal Buddhist) said clearly, you can easily divide modern Christian denominations between those that take the Bible as literal Truth, and those that do not; the latter generally being the literate ones.

This was a conservative area at the height of Republicans' push to teach "intelligent design" in schools instead of evolution.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the result of tribalism, or deliberately not teaching certain things to keep parents happy. At the time, parents were sending kids to private schools so they wouldn't be "indoctrinated" into an atheist/scientific agenda with evolution in the curriculum.

Why do you think that? I personally know grown adults who believe (or doubt) that dinosaurs did not exist.

If I was going to write a fake story, I'd make it actually entertaining.

Yes, and the Christian denomination (or at least what they'd like to consider themselves as) I was raised in would point at Catholic Church and laugh at its spiritual weakness, seeing acceptance of evolution as a compromise in both senses of the word.

It is optional though and not endorsed - more like has not been clearly denounced. Even then the publication used for permitting believing it advises caution.

I wouldn't use "believe" in the context. Catholic church does not specifically endorse evolution, but it finds no conflict between scientific concept of evolution and its teachings. I would call it "acceptance".

Many small Pentecostal and evangelical churches gain a lot of media attention thanks to their conservatism, fundamentalism and obscure views. Fortunately, they do not constitute the majority of Christians worldwide (at least not yet).

Catholics aren't hardcore Bible literalists.

> The very fact life is billions of years old and all these religous texts don't even mention about it even once or the fact that dinousaurs existed for hundreds of millions of years really makes a lot of organized religions look like fools.

That is only true if you accept the idea of Biblical (or, more generally, textual) literalism, which is largely a feature of a subset of Evangelical Protestant sects in America starting in the mid-to-late 19th century.

For thousands of years prior to that, pretty much everyone was perfectly content understanding that these were stories to inform our understanding, some of them pure myth, some allegory, some depicting historical events (often with embellishments of one sort or another).

Sure, but technically speaking, a god could have created the universe, as is, while you were reading this sentence. It would appear, and you would know, that the universe is billions of years old, yet it would not be.

There's no contradiction once you assume an all powerful creator. That's why logic won't win these discussions.

The Mythbusters had it right; the difference between science and screwing around is paying attention and writing it down.

Few eminent scientists produce great science at that point. It is no surprise that minds deteriorating with age reach absurd conclusions. The question before us is, of course, whether it is mental deterioration or accumulative wisdom.

After all, many eminent scientists also claim to not know their children in the last few moments of their life. Were they suddenly privy to some grand truth or were their minds breaking?

Yes.

Yes, unfortunately. It's one of those things where an ironic meme/movement eventually gets coopted by people who don't pick up on the irony and are sincere.

It's similar to 4chan/TheDonald ironically meme-ing about Trump until it wasn't ironic, and boomers unironically taking shit they read on anonymous message boards as fact.

My friend works for a major aerospace corp and likes to engage (politely) with people who believe it's impossible to go into space and so forth, in hopes of possibly educating someone whose mind isn't already made up.

I was surprised to learn there is a very large proportion of flat Earthers in this group. They genuinely believe what they say. They also argue using every logical fallacy possible. He said he only had one genuine conversation, i.e. with someone trying to understand his argument and not just refute it, in several years.

Numerous people with these beliefs show up to ridicule the very idea of space travel or a spherical Earth on pretty much every single relevant video and article ever that has a comment section. That would seem to indicate that a lot of people hold these beliefs.

Very much so. Both are not rational, but for different reasons.

Flat earth is something that you can readily disprove through both personal experience and physical evidence. Fly around the world in an air plane or sail by boat, see the curvature from high elevation or low orbit, etc.

Religious belief is, practically by definition, belief in something that is not falsifiable. It is inherently not rational (otherwise it would be acceptance rather than belief). There are rationalizations and arguments that some will accept, but the heart of the matter is that belief is the difference between religion and science.

Depends on whether your religion involves denying basic facts.

Believing in a god in and of itself doesn't involve denying basic facts, it just involves belief.

Evolution doesn't say anything about the origin of the universe. It explains how populations of living organisms change over generations.

>Flat Earth is trivially falsifiable.

It's falsifiable, but not trivially. For example, due to atmospheric refraction we can see some distance around the curvature of the Earth. A common Flat Earth "demonstration" / "gotcha" is to show examples of photographs taken of distant objects, that shouldn't be visible because they'd be below the horizon (checkmate, Globalists). The optics phenomena are complicated, and most people have to take it on faith that the physicists aren't lying. And if you already think there's a global conspiracy to deny the Flat Earth, that's a non-starter.

There are a lot of things like this where it's actually a bit more complicated -- some second-order effect that isn't satisfactorily explainable with high school physics. And they have them all memorized as talking points. So a naive debater can get caught unawares and look foolish.

No, it's based on observation and mathematical models. Computer science helped a lot in this regards, and i found myself at a loss when people on "Hacker"news don't seems to know about a whole field of their discipline.

Hell, we recently had a computer simulation that demonstrated HGT. I thought any engineer would have been interested on this story, but apparently not.

Evolution is observable and is also a fact. The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria is one example.

Well, as "scientists" always claim, the onus is on proponents of the theory to show me observable evidence, not me on the lack of it.

> the best explanatipn we have

Exactly my point. So in absence of a better explanation we will just acceptance SOMETHING to give us some comfort so we can distance ourselves from religious people. Doesn't matter that our BEST explanation may not be true

That's... not relevant? We've discovered quite a bit about how the world works in the last century and a half since then. For example, we've discovered that people trying to propagate a concept of "micro" vs "macro" evolution are simply parroting an anti-intellectual rejection of fact.

Your comment tells me you have preached this a few times that you've memorised it. I say this because you added "just" when I actually didn't have that in my comment. Read again. "Evolution is a theory and not observable" is not the same as "evolution is JUST a theory". Theory, scientific theory, whatever, it's not fact, is it? The "scientific" community have been so desperate about labelling it as fact that they've redefined what a scientific theory means and are trying to pretend that it's actually a fact, completely disregarding observability and repeatability of the hypothesis.

You 'believe' in evolution, I believe in a supernatural creator. We're both believers.