Conservatives and evolution
By DougJ, Head of Infidelity March 11th, 2011
Remember when I asked some conservative bloggers whether or not they believed in evolution? I was told that these particular bloggers were so well-educated that of course they believed in it.
Well, it turns out that data suggests that highly educated conservatives are only slightly more likely to believe in evolution than those with little education. Interesting, huh?
Not really.
March 11th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
This is O/T, but since I live in Michigan, and with the latest Republican tomfoolery in state government, I think this needs MUCH MUCH more attention.
Rachel Maddow discuses Rick Snyder’s plan to strip democracy away from local governance because, well…THERE’S AN EMERGENCY! SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUpO1QFMDtM
March 11th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
If you claim to believe what the rubes also believe, it is easier to raise money from said rubes. In the end, it’s always about the money.
March 11th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
So, American conservatives are idjits. USA! USA!
March 11th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
And a sizable percentage of those who say they do agree with Evolution are probably referring to Evolution from God/Adam.
March 11th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
It is interesting, but only inasmuch as it speaks to an unwillingness to engage with empirical facts. I have to think this stems from the same belief system that underlies their unwavering faith in the free market, jesus, and cheap labor
March 11th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
Social Darwinism is more their thing baby!
March 11th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
I find it amazing how much more idiotic our conservatives are than anywhere else. The opinion gap for AGW is about twice as great as in the next most divided country. (I wouldn’t have expected Switzerland to be #2, either.)
March 11th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
I always think of this post by Digby from way back in 2005 whenever the topic of conservatives and evolution come up:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com.....is-is.html
It seems that to be a member in good standing of the conservative literati you must distance yourself from evolution even if you do believe in it. Truly strange stuff.
March 11th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
I really want to find where all these conservative intellects gather in public. The dems have their drinking liberally. The pre-2008 libertarians drink too – all 10 of them in Central TX would meet every month at Opal Divines.
But where do all these intellectual republicans meet and drink and talk about science? I’ve been to the country clubs, and I’ve never, ever heard someone there emote about evolution or science education.
March 11th, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Sometimes education is just a way to learn fancier words to justify the stupid shit you already believe in.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
@srv:
Same place they make plans to volunteer at the local soup kitchens and rationally weigh the evidence supporting supply-side economics.
Every time I think about moving to another country, I’m left trying to decide whether it’s preferable to be 2000 miles from a psychotic, mentally challenged country with nuclear warheads or within its borders.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
And by highly educated conservative you mean what, that they’ve at least been to high school?
March 11th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Please don’t call it “don’t believe in evolution”. This is no question of believing.
They refuse to acknowledge evolution. Keep repeating that.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
I’d suggest that the word “educated” is being misapplied here.
If you come out of your MBA program still thinking that 2+2=5… well sorry, but you’re not really “educated”.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Team spirit, pure and simple.
Team Blue is big on evolution, no self-respecting fan of Team Red would be be caught dead not believing the opposite.
I have a depressing feeling that a lot of recent elite liberal support for unions, and particularly public sector unions, rests upon no firmer foundation, though.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
I cannot wait till they move on to some other widely accepted Scientific theory. Gravity would be the best – and presents the most grounds for differing opinions! But I doubt it.
The Electromagnetic theory seems ripe for doubting. Really, magnets? How do they work?
March 11th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
This study suggests 3 possible explanations:
1. Conservatives are lying;
2. Conservatives are stupid; or
3. Conservatives are both lying, and stupid.
These are the 3 possible explanations for every conservative response to everything.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Doug, when will you remember to refudiate Stalin and the broccoli mandate? You know liberal bloggers believe in Stalin and the broccoli mandate unless it is specifically refudiated.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
@Sebastian: This. Using the term “believe in evolution” concedes the cons’ framing.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
It’s sorta galling that they thought the questions were patronizing. Anyone who’s ever talked to a few conservatives – educated or not – knows many reject basic science.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:57 pm
They used to believe in it, until they found out that liberals did also.
March 11th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
I’m aware I have a liberal bias.
But how is it that conservatives are so full of shit about everything?
March 11th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
@ChrisB:
No that means that they attended an Ivy League school as a legacy. Note that ‘educated’ in this context purely means ‘has attended school’ not ‘has actually learned something’.
March 11th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Everyday survival-of-the-fittest in action:
March 11th, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Using the term “believe in evolution” concedes the cons’ framing.
I prefer “understands evolution.”
March 11th, 2011 at 4:17 pm
@Sebastian:
This times a zillion.
@Stefan:
Understanding is elitist, but I’ll give it a whirl.
March 11th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
@dr. bloor: Depends on if it’s turned its rage outward (toward other countries) or inward (toward its citizens). Or, to Godwin the thread, both, as in WWII Fascism.
March 11th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
@Calouste: I don’t know about that. Fact is, your average college graduate – whether coming through a liberal arts program or otherwise – can graduate with a BA or equivalent without taking a single college-level biology course. Even for those schools with traditional requirements for students to take a minimum # of credit-hours in each of the 3 major discipline areas (Sciences, Social Sciences, & Humanities), you could coast through Astronomy, Env. Science, etc. without taking a single course where evolution forms the core backbone of the course. Heck, you don’t even need to now a whit about evolution in Chemistry or Physics for the most part.
March 11th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
@Calouste:
I can top that:
March 11th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Just watch the NOVA episode on Kitzmiller v. Dover.
The refutation of evolution is part of a plan.
March 11th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
I advocate that educated people take back the word “belief”, which seems to have the connotation of being unwarranted, something like “faith”. Belief is just a mental state with respect to some proposition (okay, philosophers have spent a lot of time trying to pin it down in more detail, but it’s a reasonable approximation).
March 11th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
It’s a shibboleth. You have to deny global warming to be in the conservative tribe.
Also: if it pisses liberals off to deny science, they deny science.
March 11th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
@Stefan:
i like “understand”. not only does it imply that evolution is a fact (and not something to be taken on faith), but it also implies that someone who doesn’t understand is simply ignorant – they just haven’t bothered, or are incapable of, learning what it’s really about and why it’s as undeniable as a theory can be. and that usually is the case; you don’t find a lot of people who think evolution is false who actually understand what evolution means.
i shall endeavor to promulgate the idiom.
March 11th, 2011 at 5:07 pm
@cleek: Likewise. “Understand” is perfect.
March 11th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
@cleek: I think “understand” does have an implication of know how it works. For a non-scientist accept might be the better term. I have had a couple of college bio courses, but I am a humanities and social sciences person academically. I would be hard pressed to offer more than a surface description of evolution’s workings. Based on the understanding that I do have, I certainly accept that evolution has occurred and is occurring.
March 11th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
The best is to follow Ernst Mayr: What Evolution IS…
March 11th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
I remember these particular bloggers pointing out that they had written nothing to indicate a negative stance on evolution, and that they really weren’t conservative to begin with.
If you have issues with their supply-side cultism, you should take those head on; trumpeting a poll that shows supply-siders are less likely to accept some other unrelated issue like evolution is just a way to shut people up.
March 11th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
It is interesting, but only inasmuch as it speaks to an unwillingness to engage with empirical facts.
It’s a mindset that exalts blind faith and being a blind follower. They’re told what to believe by ‘higher authorities’ and it’s proof of their worthiness as follower-peons that they stick to their commanded beliefs in spite of all empirical evidence and logic. Ignorance is a virtue.
Not to quibble, but many scholars disagreee with using the word ‘believe’ when it comes to evolution or other scientific theories, as belief implies forming an opinion in the absence of evidence. Unlike the mouth-breathers’ creationism, evolution does not rest on goggle-eyed hero-worship of an individual or a book but on independently verifiable evidence.
March 11th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
The origins go back a little over 40 years ago, when Nixon and Buchanan et al started reorienting their party around white, uneducated, racist southern christianists who were freshly enraged at the federal gummint because of Brown v Board and Murrray v Curlett.
March 11th, 2011 at 6:43 pm
It’s a feature, not a bug. As an ideology that screws over most of the people who follow it, a concerted effort to denigrate facts and evidence, offer endless shiny meaningless baubles and distractions, suppress thinking, demonize out-groups, and exalt emotionalism and tribalism is essential for its continuation. The money men need a way to make the peons feel happy for being exploited and grateful for the crumbs they are thrown.
March 11th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
@CaptainFwiffo: That’s just their way of trying to make you blink. It’s like how decrying the tone of any liberal argument is their counter-argument. Topic change, anyone?
March 11th, 2011 at 7:18 pm
@lovable liberal: If you want to preserve the status quo in the face a innumerable problems with said status quo, you have to lie through the teeth.
March 11th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Most liberals claim they believe in evolution, but most liberal discussions of race and ethnicity show they don’t actually understand evolution or accept its implications.
March 11th, 2011 at 10:16 pm
@Redshirt: I cannot wait till they move on to some other widely accepted Scientific theory. Gravity would be the best – and presents the most grounds for differing opinions! But I doubt it.
Nah, gravity can’t be seen, like snow and monkeys. Maybe the universe tho. From where I’m sitting, it just looks like pinholes in a black cloth.
March 11th, 2011 at 10:47 pm
My family and friends range from fairly left of center to hard core right. I have never, ever heard a single one say that they don’t believe in evolution. One friend belongs to a pretty hardcore Evangelical church and even she believes in evolution, but that might be because she was raised as a Catholic.
March 11th, 2011 at 11:47 pm
@Peter A: There is only one proper response to this statement:
March 12th, 2011 at 1:08 am
@47: Most liberals act as if humans evolved up to about 100,000 years ago and then stopped. That’s not the way it works. We continue to evolve all the time. A group of humans isolated for 30,000 years will adapt to that environment in ways that other groups won’t. Natural selection works on humans the same way it works on dogs, cows, fruit flies, whatever. The line between “species” is somewhat arbitrary – life is fluid. The real lesson is that humans are not special or immune to natural laws. Is it scary that people with bad intentions are going to try to take advantage of this fact? I think it’s very scary, but burying one’s head in the sand and pretending we’re all the same is no answer.
March 12th, 2011 at 7:39 am
looking at the global warming charts, it’s interesting to note that the higher the education level of conservatives, the LESS likely they are to believe it’s happening
March 12th, 2011 at 12:36 pm
@steve: Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then simply at random. And it’s the edumacated wingers who are more likely to deny global warming.
The Democratic Party gets things wrong as well as right, but the Republicans have become the ignoramus caucus. They are actually proud of each stupidity.
March 12th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Sorry, I’m sticking with “belief”.
“Belief” is what’s being measuring here, whether individuals accept something as true. When dealing with political issues, that’s what matters, because that what people act on.
Whether those beliefs are True is important, but is separate from whether people believe in them. How we came to those beliefs is another issue still. Better to seperate those issues, in my mind, than to try and wrap all three up in a word determining “correct” belief.
Peter A: That’s a straw-man. Few liberals believe that all people are created inherently equal in all things. What is argued instead is that political equality is essential to a fair society, and that existing inequalities are more accurately attributed to structural forces (segregation, open discrimination, stereotype threat), than to genetics.
March 13th, 2011 at 11:46 am