User talk:Ceid

Dear Ceid,

Thank you for your letter on Creationism. For your infomation Roman Catholics account for about two thirds of the worlds Christians. Protestant groups that accept evolution include Angligans, most Presbyterians, Methodists, most Calvanists, Lutherans, and many Baptists. So the Southern Baptists are in somewhat of a minority.

The proportion of Americans who believe in creationism is similar to the proportion who believe in haunted houses and tarot cards.

Evolution is not in crisis, it is accepted by the vast majority of biological scientists, and most theologians as well

Cheers

--Michael Johnson 09:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I also think it was a nice note. Just incorrect. See below for some perspective.--Filll 14:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Religious bodies
There are several religious organizations that have issued statements in support of evolution: In addition the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams has issued statements in support of evolution in 2006. The Clergy Letter Project is a signed statement by 10,000 American Christian clergy of different denominations rejecting creationism organized in 2004. Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education found, "of Americans in the twelve largest Christian denominations, 89.6% belong to churches that support evolution education." These churches include the United Methodist Church, National Baptist Convention USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), National Baptist Convention of America, African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, and others.

Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church
Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church are compatible according to the Church. Catholics are asked to reject an intelligent design that contradicts evolution in order to be in agreement with the Church position. On the 12th August 1950, the Roman Catholic Church accepted that the ‘doctrine of evolution’ was a valid scientific inquiry, stated by Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Humani Generis saying “research and discussions… take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution”. In the same encyclical the Magisterium holds that a Catholic can believe in the creation account found in sacred scripture. However the encyclical rejects what it described as some “fictitious tenets of evolution”. Following this announcement Catholic Schools began teaching evolution.

In 1996 Pope John Paul II gave a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in which he said “Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.”

Between 2000 and 2002 the International Theological Commission found that “Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.” This statement was published by the Vatican on July 2004 by the authority of Pope Benedict XVI who was actually the President of the Commission while he was a Cardinal.

Although the Magisterium has not yet made an authoritative statement on intelligent design (and it may not if intelligent design is not proven to be a science) it actively supported Jesuit Father George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory, in his denunciation of intelligent design “Intelligent design diminishes God”.

US citizens
Even among the most fervent American Christians, the 15% that are evangelical Protestants, only 47.8% believe that the Bible is literally true, and 6.5% believe that the Bible is an ancient book full of history and legends. Only about 11% of Catholics and mainline Protestants believe the Bible is literally true, and only 9% of Jews believe the Torah is literally true. About 20% of Catholics and Protestants reported that the Bible is a book of history and legends, and 52.6% of Jewish respondents felt the same about the Torah. These figures make it clear that a large fraction of Christians and Jews do not subscribe to the necessary beliefs to adopt creationist principles wholeheartedly.

International attitudes
A study published in Science, compared attitudes about evolution from the United States, 32 European countries (including Turkey) and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%). Public acceptance of evolution is most prevalent in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden at 80% of the population. (See the chart)

It should also be noted that the US is less than 5% of the world's population, and of the developed nations has the most religious population by far. There are 1 billion Catholics in the world whose Church has no problem with evolution. Most of the almost 0.9-1.3 billion Hindus have no problem with evolution. There are another 1 billion protestants, and most of the protestants in the US have no problem with evolution, so it is a bit speculative to think that the protestants in other countries like Africa will be more fundamentalist than the US. We have to investigate what the more than 0.9-1.4 billion Muslims think. I do not think you will find a lot of support for your theories among the Buddhists etc. Or the 1.1 billion nonadherent/atheist groups. Or among the almost 300 million Japanese, most of who practice shintoism. And so on. I can do a far more extensive study, but it hardly seems worth it. This view you are pushing is a minority position of a minority position of a minority of a minority.

I might also note that there are more than 9000-30,000+ different Christian sects, all with their own interpretation of Christianity, none of which agree with each other.

Scientific support
There is overwhelming support in the scientific community and academia for evolution. One estimate in 1987 was that more than 99.84% of almost 500,000 scientists with professional credentials in the earth and life sciences supported evolution over creation science. An expert in the evolution-creationism controversy, professor and author Brian Alters, states that "99.9 percent of scientists accept evolution" A 1991 Gallup poll of Americans found that only about 5% of scientists (including those with training outside biology) identified themselves as creationists.

Not only do most scientists accept evolution, but there is a widespread belief in the scientific community that intelligent design (an explanatory principle closely related to creationism) is unscientific, is pseudoscience, or is junk science. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that intelligent design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own. In September 2005, 38 Nobel laureates issued a statement saying "Intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent." And in October 2005 a coalition representing more than 70,000 Australian scientists and science teachers issued a statement saying "intelligent design is not science" and called on "all schools not to teach Intelligent Design (ID) as science, because it fails to qualify on every count as a scientific theory."

In 1986, an amicus curiae brief asking the US Supreme Court to reject a Louisiana state law requiring the teaching of creationism in the case Edwards v. Aguillard was signed by 72 US Nobel Prize winners, 17 state academies of science and 7 other scientific societies. This was the largest collection of Nobel Prize winners to sign anything up to that point. The amicus curiae brief also clearly described why evolution was science, not religion, and why creationism is not science.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society with more than 130,000 members and over 262 affiliated societies and academies of science including over 10 million individuals, has made several statements and issued several press releases in support of evolution. The prestigious US National Academy of Sciences that provides science advice to the nation, has published several books supporting evolution and denouncing creationism and intelligent design.

There are many scientific and scholarly organizations from around the world that have issued statements in support of the theory of evolution

Early scientific voting, resolutions and statements
One of the earliest efforts to express support for evolution by scientists was organized Nobel Prize Winner German biologist Hermann J. Muller in 1966. Muller circulated the following petition entitled: "Is Biological Evolution a Principle of Nature that has been well established by Science?", in May of 1966:
 * There are no hypotheses, alternative to the principle of evolution with its “tree of life,” that any competent biologist of today takes seriously. Moreover, the principle is so important for an understanding of the world we live in and of ourselves that the public in general, including students taking biology in high school, should be made aware of it, and of the fact that it is firmly established, even as the rotundity of the earth is firmly established.

This manifesto was signed by 177 of the leading American biologists, including Nobel Prize Winner George G. Simpson of Harvard, Carl Sagan of Cornell, John Tyler Bonner of Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner George Beadle, President of the University of Chicago, and Donald F. Kennedy of Stanford University, formerly head of the United States Food and Drug Administration.

This was followed by the passage of a resolution by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in the fall of 1972 that stated, in part, "the theory of creation...is neither scientifically grounded nor capable of performing the rules required of science theories". The United States National Academy of Sciences also passed a similar resolution in the fall of 1972. A "A Statement Affirming Evolution as a Principle of Science." was signed by Nobel Prize Winner Linus Pauling, Isaac Asimov, Nobel Prize Winner George G. Simpson, Caltech Biology Professor N.H. Horowitz, Ernst Mayr, and others, and published in 1977. The governing board of the American Geological Institute issued a statement supporting resolution in November 1981. Shortly thereafter, the AAAS passed another resolution supporting evolution and disparaging efforts to teach creationism in science classes.

Support for evolution in medicine and industry
A common complaint of creationists is that evolution is of no value and has never been used for anything and will never be of any use. Nothing would be lost by getting rid of evolution, and science and industry might even benefit.

However, evolution is not just part of science, but is being put to use in medicine and genetics and industry. Corporations such as pharmaceutical companies utilize biological evolution in their development of new products. It is claimed that they do this because they have a profit motive, and the motive encourages them to use the take a hardline, verifiable approach to their research and development efforts. There is no luxury of time and effort to be wasted on ideas that do not have substantial scientific support behind them.

Because of this, there have been some expressions of support for evolution on the part of corporations. In Kansas, there has been some widespread concern in the corporate and academic communities that a move to weaken the teaching of evolution in schools will hurt the state's ability to recruit the best talent, particularly in the biotech industry. Paul Hanle of the Biotechnology Institute warned that the US risks falling behind in the biotechnology race with other nations if it does not do a better job of teaching evolution. James McCarter of Divergence Incorporated  states that the work of 2001 Nobel Prize winner Leland Hartwell which has substantial implications for combating cancer relied heavily the use of evolutionary knowledge and predictions. McCarter points out that 47 of the last 50 Nobel Prizes in medicine or physiology also depended on the use of evolutionary theory.