Re: Britain: How did we get here?

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 20:47:52 -0400, Jason Spaceman
<notreally@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From the article:
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Evolution is on the way out - more than 30% of students in the UK say
they believe in creationism and intelligent design. Harriet Swain
reports on a surprising new survey

Tuesday August 15, 2006
The Guardian

Chris Parker, a final-year English student at Hertford College,
Oxford, believes God made the world. Ask him why, and he talks
cogently about the gaps in evolutionary theory and how explanations
involving intelligent design are unsatisfactory. But, ultimately, it
is because: "As a Christian, I have believed in it for a long time and
I have no reason to doubt it."

Kim Nicholas, who is studying to be a primary school teacher at the
University of Hertfordshire, agrees. "I have grown up in a family that
goes to church and I have become a Christian," she says. "When I look
at things in the world I think it is amazing that God has created it
for us. If you have faith in God you can believe he has done it,
whether there is evidence or not."

Annie Nawaz, a second-year law student at Hertfordshire, distinguishes
between scientific and "natural" evidence written in stone in the holy
books. "As a practising Muslim, the holy Qur'an - that's our proper
evidence," she says. It does bother her when this conflicts with other
kinds of evidence, but "it just comes down to the way you have been
brought up and your beliefs and values and how strong they are".

Such views are less unusual among UK students than you might think. In
a survey last month, more than 12% questioned preferred creationism -
the idea God created us within the past 10,000 years - to any other
explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of
intelligent design - that some features of living things are due to a
supernatural being such as God. This means more than 30% believe our
origins have more to do with God than with Darwin - evolution theory
rang true for only 56%.
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Read it at
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1844478,00.html

An English major, a primary school teacher who takes faith in the
absence of evidence and a law student who believes a religious tome
counts as evidence 'written in stone' and who prides herself for
sticking to her guns in the face of contrary evidence. So it isn't
just in America where non-science nonsense appears to be given equal
weight regarding a question directly relating to science.

Although tragic in a sense, this says more about the worthlessness of
polls other than to point out yet again how ignorant the masses seem
to be on a given topic. The right to an opinion is a far cry from
being an informed opinion.

.