Surprising Number Of Americans Still Don't Believe In Evolution

I believe in evolution and I believen in some higher "being", creating us to evolve.

I dont know if it was "God" or aliens, either way, we were created.

Im not saying that we were created back then how we are now, but we evolved. Like a bacteria.

My thoughts are we were tailored for this planet, to see what would happen, like a living petri dish.
They/it/God, put us here in varying forms to see how we would evolve.

The species jumps we see in our "history" is just them/it/God, starting over or even tweeking the DNA.

If you look at it from this prespective, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. So people thinking "God" is in the sky, makes sense, because thats where our 'creators came from.

Maybe, just maybe, the same happened to them, they were told thats what they were created for and it was just their turn to do it to another "petri dish" (Planet). Then told to obsurve, help and "carry on" the reasearch, and development.

That is food for thought.

tsingtao
sorry but that doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

gorilla's don't sweat? dogs?

Actually, no, not like us. They only sweat from their hands/paws, not all over their bodies.

reply to post by DocScurlock

Well the problem with panspermia is it's highly unlikely SURVIVING life could make the journey between stars. This is because asteroids and/or comets do not shield them enough from cosmic radiation and/or do not have enough internal heat. It's possible life could travel beteen planets, but controversial. Beyond this, i can only think pre-life materials can travel between stars, and this much is proven. What if there's something that can travel between stars that can change dna directly or indirectly of existing organisms? That would be interesting.

See here:
www.spacedaily.com - Scientists discover cosmic factory for making building blocks of life...
io9.com - Building Blocks of Life Found on a Comet...
news.softpedia.com - Comets Can Create and Carry the Building Blocks of Life, Researchers Found...

I agree wiht you that without all the variables we're shooting in the dark. Then again, science isn't about having a 100% answer, it's about having an answer that's reliable and scrutinized. All these theories, including the theory of evolution, are the closest thing we have to a truth, but they can't be 100% unless you have faith in them. Who can say we have all knowledge? Only people with faith.

See here:
www.sciencedirect.com - Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety...

Growing evidence indicates that religious belief helps individuals to cope with stress and anxiety. But is this effect specific to supernatural beliefs, or is it a more general function of belief — including belief in science? We developed a measure of belief in science and conducted two experiments in which we manipulated stress and existential anxiety. In Experiment 1, we assessed rowers about to compete (high-stress condition) and rowers at a training session (low-stress condition). As predicted, rowers in the high-stress group reported greater belief in science. In Experiment 2, participants primed with mortality (vs. participants in a control condition) reported greater belief in science. In both experiments, belief in science was negatively correlated with religiosity. Thus, some secular individuals may use science as a form of “faith” that helps them to deal with stressful and anxiety-provoking situations.

reply to post by Tylerdurden1


Very interesting proposal. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Instead of fighting amongst ourselves about which theory is correct, we should be combing our accumulated knowledge and working together.

reply to post by Krazysh0t

It would if what you said was true, except it DOES support evolution. The fossil record is what most of the theory is built on. There has been mountains of evidence presented in this very thread that proves you wrong. Instead of making baseless claims, back yourself up with some proof.

Mountains of evidence re the fossil record supporting DE? Hmm, I've been following this whole thread and have failed to see that. Feel free to point it out, however. As for my making baseless claims, well, that's quite the charge in the face of the base I have laid down to support them. Guess you missed these in response to someone else making the same misinformed statements you are making. Just for fun, google "paleontology's dirty little secret."

Here's a few nuggets re the fossil record and that undisputed evidence you were speaking of. If you don't like these, whatever you do don't go into the link. Don't know who compiled it, but it is massive and quite damning.

"Darwin’s prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record." Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myth of Human Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 45-46.

“It is hard for us paleontologists, steeped as we are in a tradition of Darwinian analysis, to admit that neo-Darwinian explanations for the Cambrian explosion have failed miserably. New data acquired in recent years, instead of solving Darwin’s dilemma, have rather made it worse.”
-Dr. Mark McMenamin - 2013
Paleontologist at Mt. Holyoke College and author of The Emergence of Animals

"Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them."
David Kitts - Paleontologist - D.B. Kitts, Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory (1974), p. 467.

"Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series." -
Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University

"What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types."
Robert L Carroll (born 1938) - vertebrate paleontologist who specialises in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians
en.wikipedia.org...

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record."
Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma 1988, Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9

"The evidence we find in the geological record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be .... We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin's time ... so Darwin's problem has not been alleviated".
David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History

"A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God."
Paleontologist, Mark Czarnecki
www.mcleanbible.org...

Along with missing that, perhaps you missed this as well:

To further complicate matters, it seems there's problems with the adaptation to environment as a driver of evolution. I just came across this while looking for something else and it is quite interesting.

After six years of work and publication, the conclusion is clear: none of the common Ice Age mammals and birds responded to any of the climate changes at La Brea in the last 35,000 years, even though the region went from dry chaparral to snowy piñon-juniper forests during the peak glacial 20,000 years ago, and then back to the modern chaparral again.

In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates. No matter how many presentations I give where I show these data, no one (including myself) has a good explanation yet for such widespread stasis despite the obvious selective pressures of changing climate. Rather than answers, we have more questions—and that’s a good thing! Science advances when we discover what we don’t know, or we discover that simple answers we’d been following for years no longer work.

www.skeptic.com...

So much for your baseless claim re me making baseless claims. The fossil record does not support Darwinian evolution and all the hand waving in the world is not going to change that. Again, for the nth time. Evolution happens. But there are serious holes in the Darwinian model. Deal with it.

You should probably learn the difference between the Theory of Gravity and the Law of Gravity. The Law of Gravity doesn't explain WHY an object pulls every other object in the universe towards it. It just gives the equation to calculate the force applied.

You missed the point, which was other theories have laws that support them. The theory of evolution does not. Just one of many reasons there is reasonable doubt as to its veracity.

The sooner the idea that random mutations naturally selected explains this whole shebang we call life is selected out of the knowledge base, the better.

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist and am not well educated. However I have read of the theory of evolution: "survival of the fittest", have seen many documentaries about many different animals where the narrator says something like : "...and so theses animals knew they needed to adjust so they developed wings and beaks that rip your digits off", or "...they needed to develop their sense of hearing so they don't have eyes anymore and have white skin..." or well you get the idea.
I'm sorry, but my limited understanding of evolution is one that takes a very very long time, works with the gene pool in tandem with the surrounding environment to produce a perfect species to adapt and survive within that changing ecosystem....well according to text books and documentaries. My question was and has always been: If a being is living at a certain period of time within a changing ecosystem (and when has that NOT happened?) and the lifespan of that being is not expected to survive long enough to see the result of that eco system's change, then to what end is evolution trodding toward?
Now, if you add the story of human evolution to the mix, with all it's fossil record and no missing link, why on earth would the crown of evolution be Homo Sapiens Sapiens? With evolution being within the field of "Natural Science" why in bloody hell did evolution produce a "species" that cannot survive in any ecosystem on its home planet naked? Every other "species" manages just fine with it's own body, naked...some make tools, some teach generations (crows, apes,etc) but very few. And to this mysterious mix, every ancient writing, story, tradition, teaches that human beings were taught to: write, sew, hunt, defend (with weapons as there are no claws or fangs), and even cook and heal. To me, our own very existence is "proof" that evolution has NOT occurred.
As to my "belief"...well that is for another thread.

TLomon
I am a bit surprised by these findings. To me, it shows a failure in the educational standards if this many people refute evolution entirely.

Not all that surprised, since I was well aware of this poll by Jon Miller of Michigan State University -

To me, it shows a failure in the educational standards if this many people refute evolution entirely.

Well yes, but they don't really refute it do they? Most just hold a ignorant and uninformed position on it.

Some feebly attempt to refute it with a lot of bat# insane copypasta taken from their YEC true believer websites, some may even exhaustively attempt refutation, but their arguments are almost always based on logical fallacies, ignorance or misinterpretation of the facts, or, even worse, bible verses. Others like the presuppositionalists attempt to change the rules of standard debate, almost in recognition that in a fair fight they haven't a snowballs chance in hell..

But they are not successful. Evolution has not been successfully refuted, ever (i.e where are the scientific peer reviewed papers? answer is they do not exist).

But yeah, it's a sad indictment of the education system over there, and of the power the religious right now wield..

reply to post by jonnywhite


I've heard that certain varieties of spores can survive intense cold and radiation and still be viable. I always wonder if some of the plants/fungi on Earth may have originated someplace else. Maybe we walk by "aliens" all the time and never realize it!

reply to post by missvicky


First off, no species is any more evolved than the other one. It is pure arrogance when humans claim to be the most evolved species on the planet. Every species is equally evolved to fit in their specific niche in their ecosystem. The goal of evolution? If you could call it anything, it would be the continuation of life through ever increasing complexity. As for humans evolving to be hairless, Google is your friend:

Why Humans and Their Fur Parted Ways

Dr. Mark Pagel of the University of Reading in England and Dr. Walter Bodmer of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford have proposed a different solution to the mystery and their idea, if true, goes far toward explaining contemporary attitudes about hirsuteness. Humans lost their body hair, they say, to free themselves of external parasites that infest fur -- blood-sucking lice, fleas and ticks and the diseases they spread.

Once hairlessness had evolved through natural selection, Dr. Pagel and Dr. Bodmer suggest, it then became subject to sexual selection, the development of features in one sex that appeal to the other. Among the newly furless humans, bare skin would have served, like the peacock's tail, as a signal of fitness. The pains women take to keep their bodies free of hair -- joined now by some men -- may be no mere fashion statement but the latest echo of an ancient instinct. Dr. Pagel's and Dr. Bodmer's article appeared in a recent issue of The Proceedings of the Royal Society.

missvicky
However I have read of the theory of evolution: "survival of the fittest", have seen many documentaries about many different animals where the narrator says something like : "...and so theses animals knew they needed to adjust so they developed wings and beaks that rip your digits off", or "...they needed to develop their sense of hearing so they don't have eyes anymore and have white skin..." or well you get the idea.

My advice is to go back and watch those documentaries and re-listen. That is not what they said (unless they are from some strawman mischaracterisation by a YEC's film (for example one of Ray Comfort's dishonest videos)).

If you do this and find the above paraphrasing was accurate, please cite the work as a reference. I for one would be interested in seeing it.

jonnywhite
reply to post by DocScurlock

 

Well the problem with panspermia is it's highly unlikely SURVIVING life could make the journey between stars. This is because asteroids and/or comets do not shield them enough from cosmic radiation and/or do not have enough internal heat. It's possible life could travel beteen planets, but controversial. Beyond this, i can only think pre-life materials can travel between stars, and this much is proven. What if there's something that can travel between stars that can change dna directly or indirectly of existing organisms? That would be interesting.

See here:
www.spacedaily.com - Scientists discover cosmic factory for making building blocks of life...
io9.com - Building Blocks of Life Found on a Comet...
news.softpedia.com - Comets Can Create and Carry the Building Blocks of Life, Researchers Found...

I agree wiht you that without all the variables we're shooting in the dark. Then again, science isn't about having a 100% answer, it's about having an answer that's reliable and scrutinized. All these theories, including the theory of evolution, are the closest thing we have to a truth, but they can't be 100% unless you have faith in them. Who can say we have all knowledge? Only people with faith.

See here:
www.sciencedirect.com - Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety...

Growing evidence indicates that religious belief helps individuals to cope with stress and anxiety. But is this effect specific to supernatural beliefs, or is it a more general function of belief — including belief in science? We developed a measure of belief in science and conducted two experiments in which we manipulated stress and existential anxiety. In Experiment 1, we assessed rowers about to compete (high-stress condition) and rowers at a training session (low-stress condition). As predicted, rowers in the high-stress group reported greater belief in science. In Experiment 2, participants primed with mortality (vs. participants in a control condition) reported greater belief in science. In both experiments, belief in science was negatively correlated with religiosity. Thus, some secular individuals may use science as a form of “faith” that helps them to deal with stressful and anxiety-provoking situations.

edit on 3-1-2014 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)

Well panspermia isnt about life being transported so much as the building blocks for life. Basically amino acids are created in an asteroid hits a planet and if the conditions are right leads to life or so the theory goes.Your getting someones take on it who doesnt understand the theory. However if an meteor impact actually shot some microbes into space it would depend on the condition of the planet they were created on. If the microbe already lived on a planet bombarded by radiation then yeah sure they could survive.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by missvicky

 

First off, no species is any more evolved than the other one. It is pure arrogance when humans claim to be the most evolved species on the planet. Every species is equally evolved to fit in their specific niche in their ecosystem. The goal of evolution? If you could call it anything, it would be the continuation of life through ever increasing complexity. As for humans evolving to be hairless, Google is your friend:

Why Humans and Their Fur Parted Ways

Dr. Mark Pagel of the University of Reading in England and Dr. Walter Bodmer of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford have proposed a different solution to the mystery and their idea, if true, goes far toward explaining contemporary attitudes about hirsuteness. Humans lost their body hair, they say, to free themselves of external parasites that infest fur -- blood-sucking lice, fleas and ticks and the diseases they spread.

Once hairlessness had evolved through natural selection, Dr. Pagel and Dr. Bodmer suggest, it then became subject to sexual selection, the development of features in one sex that appeal to the other. Among the newly furless humans, bare skin would have served, like the peacock's tail, as a signal of fitness. The pains women take to keep their bodies free of hair -- joined now by some men -- may be no mere fashion statement but the latest echo of an ancient instinct. Dr. Pagel's and Dr. Bodmer's article appeared in a recent issue of The Proceedings of the Royal Society.

edit on 13-1-2014 by Krazysh0t because: (no reason given)

Thumbs up guy your exactly right and who knows we may not be the smartest species on our planet either were just not willing to admit it.

news.discovery.com...

jonnywhite
reply to post by DocScurlock

 

Well the problem with panspermia is it's highly unlikely SURVIVING life could make the journey between stars. This is because asteroids and/or comets do not shield them enough from cosmic radiation and/or do not have enough internal heat. It's possible life could travel beteen planets, but controversial.

The requirements you outline for life's survival in a near vacuum are a little off. There is documented evidence of microbes surviving on the exterior of the ISS for over 500 days and that offers far less protection that an extraplanetary object.

www.popsci.com...

reply to post by peter vlar


Just google "Waterbears". They not only survived in the vacuum of space with ease, but they even reproduced.

ReturnofTheSonOfNothing
reply to post by peter vlar

 

Just google "Waterbears". They not only survived in the vacuum of space with ease, but they even reproduced.

I googled it and found this in Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org...

Tardigrades can survive the vacuum of open space and solar radiation combined for at least 10 days

"At least 10 days" doesn't sound like very long. Even using rockets it's a 6 month journey to Mars. Impact debris is not very likely to make the journey that quickly, but even if panspermia is possible within a solar system, interstellar distances are another matter, so jonnywhite may be right about that.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


If you look at the link I posted a coue posts above yours you'll see an exams of microbes surviving for well over 500 days on the exterior of the ISS which is more than enough time for impact enecta to make it to earth from our 2 karst neighbors. Whether or not microbes can survive longer is unknown until further data is collected but it is least a feasible scenario albeit unproven at the moment.

reply to post by TLomon


Actually I believe in both micro evolution and creationism, not macro evolution that they teach in school.

We can now clone humans. That there is called creationism. It's not unscientific at all.

reply to post by ReturnofTheSonOfNothing


Well I'll be! You learn something new everyday here on ATS!

peter vlar
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

If you look at the link I posted a coue posts above yours you'll see an exams of microbes surviving for well over 500 days on the exterior of the ISS which is more than enough time for impact enecta to make it to earth from our 2 karst neighbors. Whether or not microbes can survive longer is unknown until further data is collected but it is least a feasible scenario albeit unproven at the moment.

Yes. I've mentioned this a few times, but micro-organisms turn themselves into a cyst when their environment dries up or freezes. In this state of suspended animation they can survive extreme environments for very long periods of time. Once conditions return to more reasonable levels, the organisms revive and live on.

They have dug up microbial cysts buried in arctic/antarctic permafrost dated at hundreds of years and they have revived them. They suspect that microbes could last for thousands or years or even longer in such a state.

peter vlar
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

If you look at the link I posted a coue posts above yours you'll see an exams of microbes surviving for well over 500 days on the exterior of the ISS which is more than enough time for impact enecta to make it to earth from our 2 karst neighbors.

The ISS chooses the orbit it does because it's not like interstellar space. There is slightly more atmosphere (though we would still call it a vacuum) but more importantly, and the reason NASA uses such a low orbit which requires more fuel to keep it aloft (due to atmospheric drag) is because radiation is lower than in interplanetary space.

So, 500 days aboard the ISS exterior is not like 500 days of traveling to Mars.

en.wikipedia.org...

Of the above factors, all but the first one apply to low Earth orbit craft, such as the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Exposures on the ISS average 150 mSv per year, although frequent crew rotations minimize individual risk.[12] Astronauts on Apollo and Skylab missions received on average 1.2 mSv/day and 1.4 mSv/day respectively.[12] Since the durations of the Apollo and Skylab missions were days and months, respectively, rather than years, the doses involved were smaller than would be expected on future long-term missions such as to a near-Earth asteroid or to Mars (unless far more shielding could be provided).

On 31 May 2013, NASA scientists reported that a possible manned mission to Mars may involve a great radiation risk based on the amount of energetic particle radiation detected by the RAD on the Mars Science Laboratory while traveling from the Earth to Mars in 2011-2012.

So, 6 months aboard ISS is not a radiation problem for humans, but the same time traveling to Mars is a radiation problem for humans.

However it would be very optimistic to think panspermia could occur in 500 days. The Mars rocks found on Earth are likely to have been orbiting the sun for many millions of years before impacting Earth.