A new poll from Gallup:
If you’re in a room of 100 people, odds are likely about 40 think God created humans about 10,000 years ago, part of a philosophy called creationism, according to a Gallup poll reported Friday (Dec. 17). That number is slightly lower than in years past and down from a high of 47 percent in both 1993 and 1999.
And 38 percent of Americans, the poll estimates, believe God guided the process that brought humans from “cavemen” to today’s incarnation over millions of years, while 16 percent think humans evolved over millions of years, without any divine intervention…
Orlando Figes, in his excellent history of the Russian Revolution (A People’s Tragedy – do read it, if you get a chance) noted that the communists would, at times, stage debates between a priest or other believer and someone who would assert the materialist view of life’s origins. Naturally, these debates were cooked up to impress the peasants – convince them that all of what the priests said was false as a means of undermining belief in God. Given the way things were conducted, the believers invariably came across pretty badly…but one time the materialist got in to trouble when, to the laughter of the peasant audience, he was forced to claim that the universe had created itself. How else to explain how it got here? But, apparently, 16% of the people of the United States will stoutly assert just that – and they are considered the smart ones!
There are variations of nonsense – some being more nonsensical than others. The most nonsensical of all things, in my view, is to figure that the universe came in to being all by itself. There is no logical way to look at the universe except with an “assume God” at the start of it. Making such an assumption does not, then, require you to believe in any particular theology about God – but to envision existence without some thing to call it in to being is, well, rather silly.
And silliness has ruled the day for us, for quite a long time – Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit notes a lawsuit being filed by a man who seems to have been denied a job as an astronomer because it was discovered – horror of horrors! – that he is an Evangelical Christian. I guess you can’t be a scientist if you believe in God – my late father would be much surprised at this recent determination. But if you’re going to believe something as asinine as “no God”, then I guess its easy to then go on and believe that a Christian couldn’t look at the stars as well as a non-Christian.
To me, the fact that, if you add it up, 78% of the people believe that the universe was created by God indicates how strong common sense is – even after more than a century of relentless propaganda against a Creator, most people just can’t see it any other way. And they can’t see it any other way because there is no other sensible way to look at it – it takes rare training to deny the obvious and work out some bizarre theory of life and origins which asserts there is no God in the process. Is it silly to believe that God created the world in 6 literal, 24 hour days about 10,000 years ago? Perhaps, but no more silly than figuring it came out of nowhere and by random chance produced, out of the same biological origin, both man and flea.
Used to be our Western, Judeo-Christian world was ruled by Reason. Then came the Age of Reason, and we’ve been in an insane asylum ever since. We must pray for a world in which Reason is restored – and when even scientists will be permitted to think for themselves.
Blogs For Victory 