new blog ... that Pew Poll that painted Christians as fool kinda bugged me. As always if you hop to the blog you get a pretty picture... ok.. not pretty but you get a picture.
The mainstream media, it seems, does not understand what most Christians believe with regard to the origins of life nor do they understand what Darwin wrote with regard to the origins of life.
Here is a paragraph representative of what I am talking about:
Opinion polls over the past two decades have found the American public deeply divided in its beliefs about the origins and development of life on earth. Surveys are fairly consistent in their estimates of how many Americans believe in evolution or creationism. Approximately 40%-50% of the public accepts a biblical creationist account of the origins of life, while comparable or slightly larger numbers accept the idea that humans evolved over time. The wording of survey questions generally makes little systematic difference in this division of opinion, and there has been little change in the percentage of the public who reject the idea of evolution.
Creationism and Darwinism are not mutually exclusive despite the author's confusion. Darwin's magnum opus is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life . Please note what is not in the title. There is zero mention of the origin of life. Darwin wrote about the origin of species; he described how life already in existence changed over time. When the author compared Darwin's theory of evolution to belief in a biblical account of creation he presented it as a zero sum game. It isn't. Darwin did not address the issue of the origin of life. Certainly there are those who believe in the Genesis account as literal fact but this is a minority view despite the faith of our mainstream media.
Pope John Paul II in his Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996 said:
"In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points....Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies – which was neither planned nor sought – constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."
It is the official position of the Catholic Church that evolution and creationism are not incompatible. The problem here is our author's presumption that they are. One supposes this arises for two reasons: 1) our author is unfamiliar with the theory of evolution and 2) our author takes it as an article of faith that Christians are unable to accept that the world is round. This kind of reporting says a great deal more about the mainstream media and our elites than it does about people of faith... and it bugs the shit out of me.
The mainstream media, it seems, does not understand what most Christians believe with regard to the origins of life nor do they understand what Darwin wrote with regard to the origins of life.
Here is a paragraph representative of what I am talking about:
Opinion polls over the past two decades have found the American public deeply divided in its beliefs about the origins and development of life on earth. Surveys are fairly consistent in their estimates of how many Americans believe in evolution or creationism. Approximately 40%-50% of the public accepts a biblical creationist account of the origins of life, while comparable or slightly larger numbers accept the idea that humans evolved over time. The wording of survey questions generally makes little systematic difference in this division of opinion, and there has been little change in the percentage of the public who reject the idea of evolution.
Creationism and Darwinism are not mutually exclusive despite the author's confusion. Darwin's magnum opus is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life . Please note what is not in the title. There is zero mention of the origin of life. Darwin wrote about the origin of species; he described how life already in existence changed over time. When the author compared Darwin's theory of evolution to belief in a biblical account of creation he presented it as a zero sum game. It isn't. Darwin did not address the issue of the origin of life. Certainly there are those who believe in the Genesis account as literal fact but this is a minority view despite the faith of our mainstream media.
Pope John Paul II in his Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996 said:
"In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points....Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies – which was neither planned nor sought – constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."
It is the official position of the Catholic Church that evolution and creationism are not incompatible. The problem here is our author's presumption that they are. One supposes this arises for two reasons: 1) our author is unfamiliar with the theory of evolution and 2) our author takes it as an article of faith that Christians are unable to accept that the world is round. This kind of reporting says a great deal more about the mainstream media and our elites than it does about people of faith... and it bugs the shit out of me.
No reasonable person would have been said such things, so what Pope noted is not surprise. 
