Why I ain't Evangelical!

According to this poll (mentioned in the previous post), nearly half (48%) of Americans reject the scientific theory of evolution. More worrisome, one-third (34%) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact.

This does not come as a surprise to us and we have repeatedly dealt with the issue on this blog (here, here, or here for instance) and it is roughly always the same numbers that come up. I don’t intend to discuss the validity of the “theory of Evolution” in this post – we have also covered that many times (as here, here or here).

It is worth telling our non-Christian friends however, especially those in Europe, that not all Christians have a strict literal view of the bible. Not all Christians are creationists. Not all Christians reject reason or science or even reality.

While (in the same poll) 73% percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39% of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41% of Catholics agree with that view (which shows incidentally that creationism will be a hard sell for Pope Benedict).

Now of course, I believe in freedom and that people should be entitled to their rights to deny science and reality if they want to. After all, stupidity should also be a right in a true democratic society (and some REALLY use that right to its full extent). And to be fair, not all the blame should be put on the Evangelical Church: bad education in science with a poor understanding of biological concepts, especially genetics may have a lot to do with it (see here). But you’d think that people would be humble enough to recognize their lack of understanding and leave it to the scientists. But, no they don’t. Well, of course, the confusion that those people make between religion, science… and everything else for that matter… surely does not help.

Here again, a line should be drawn....