After reading the latest letter to the editor in the Oct. 29th
paper and being the recipient of another personal attack, I decided
to do a little research. From my very first letter I have basically
wondered two things: First, what are the people who are against
Intelligent Design being taught in the classroom afraid of?
Editor,
After reading the latest letter to the editor in the Oct. 29th paper and being the recipient of another personal attack, I decided to do a little research. From my very first letter I have basically wondered two things: First, what are the people who are against Intelligent Design being taught in the classroom afraid of? And second, when did it become OK to bash someone for being a conservative Christian? I think I may have found the answer in my research.
At the Web site www.pollingreport.com/science.htm I found the following results. I will focus on the results of three polls, but it included several more. In a CBS News Poll dated Oct. 3-5, 2005 the question was asked, “Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin of human beings? 1) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process. 2) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process. 3) God created human beings in their present form.”
The results were as follows: Statement 1, 15 percent of adults, statement 2, 30 percent of adults, statement 3, 51 percent of adults. The polling error was 4 percent. If you add statements 2 and 3 together somewhere between 77 and 85 percent of all adults believe that God is involved in the origin of human life. In this poll the results were broken down by political party and 57 percent of both Democrats and Republicans agreed with statement 3.
In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll dated Sept. 8-11, 2005, the question was asked, “Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings? 1), Human beings have evolved over millions of years from other forms of life and God guided this process. 2) Human beings have evolved over millions of years from other forms of life, but God had no part in this process. Or 3) God created human beings in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it.” Note the change in order to make the poll more reliable. Statement 1, 31 percent. Statement 2, 12 percent. Statement 3, 53 percent. The margin of error was 3%.
Once again, somewhere between 81 percent and 87 percent of all adults said that God was involved in the origin of human life. But here is the clincher, in a Harris poll dated June 17-21, 2005 the question was asked, “Regardless of what you may personally believe, which of these do you believe should be taught in public schools? 1) Evolution only i.e. Evolution says that human beings evolved from earlier stages of animals. 2) Creationism only. i.e. Creationism says that human beings were created directly from God. 3) Intelligent design only. i.e. Intelligent design says that human beings are so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them. Or 4) All three. The results were: Evolution only 12 percent, Creationism only 23 percent, Intelligent design only 4 percent, and all three 55 percent. Very interesting that creation only outscored evolution, but all three was the top choice.
This was my point all along, why not present all options to our students and then trust them to make an informed decision? Isn’t critical thinking one of the skills we want our kids to leave school with? To really put this in perspective use some simple math and put actual numbers to these polls. If there are roughly 150 million adults in the United States, that means that about 120 million believe that God is somehow involved in the origin of human life, about 80 million flat out believe that he created human life and about the same number believe that all three options should be taught in school. Only about 30 million believe strictly in evolution. So why are the public schools being help hostage by this 20 percent? I ask again, What are they afraid of?
Randy Logue, Hollister
