a simple prop

Nearly a third of Texans believe humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time, and more than half disagree with the theory that humans developed from earlier species of animals. More here.

Steve Barr (whom I have had the pleasure of spending a significant amount of time with discussing such things as E.O. Wilson’s idea of conscilience and Catholic philosophy) has this to say in First Things (that noted liberal evolutionist journal of record) about ID:

It is time to take stock: What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists. If we are to look for ID achievements, then, it must be in the realm of natural theology. And there, I think, the movement must be judged not only a failure, but a debacle.

And it moves on from there. Predictably, Dembski has a little hissy fit that begins with “Steve Barr and I used to be friends.” Apparently Dembski can’t help but make it personal and then claim that all of Barr’s successes are due to … wait for it … Dembski!

Let’s hammer this home:

The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists.

Indeed. Despite the handwaving that the end of Dembski’s piece (and his tip o’ the hat to his virtual lab), he’s unable to provide a concrete example of an advance we have gotten because of “ID theorists”.

I did a relatively unscientific poll among my Origins, Evolution & Creation class the other day, asking them (through a written assignment) to accept one of the three “standard” poll positions about human evolution: recent creation of humans, God-guided evolution, or naturalistic evolution. You may remember that the national support for these positions runs at about 47, 38 & 15 percent and that these figures have stayed fairly constant over the past thirty years.

The proportion of self-identified young earth creationists in the class was 6% whether one looked at the class as a whole, science majors, biology majors or non science majors. That’s noticeably less than the 47% national number. While education is (hopefully) playing a part in this, I think there might also be a slight under-reporting due to the question being asked in a classroom environment (a similar online poll last year in the same class gave an 11% YEC group although that poll didn’t ask explicitly about human evolution). I find it interesting that there appears to be no effect of major on whether one was a YEC or not. Looking at that 6%, many explicitly stated that they adopted that position in the face of the scientific evidence precisely because they felt their religious belief required them to. I wasn’t able to find any respondent who rejected human evolution because of evidential reasons.

Among science majors, 69% were naturalistic evolutionists and 25% held to god-guided evolution. There was no difference between biology and non-biology majors. I find this interesting as I would have, perhaps naively, expected biology majors to perhaps accept evolution at a higher rate.

When one looks at the non-science majors, the pattern changes significantly. Only 38% of this group hold to naturalistic evolution while 56% believe in god-guided evolution. Make of this what you will.