48% of US Adults believe human evolution was guided by God or a higher power! Versus 18% of US Adults who reject Evolution in every form.
53% of US White “mainline” Protestants believe human evolution was guided by God or a higher power! Versus 16% of this same category that reject Evolution in every form.
58% of White “Evangelical style” Protestants believe human evolution was guided by God or a higher power! Versus 38% of this same category who reject Evolution in every form.
66% of Black Protestants believe human evolution was guided by God or a higher power! Versus 16% of this same category that reject Evolution in every form.
48% - ALL US Adults: with 33% more accepting a purely natural form of evolution!
53% - White Mainline Protestants: with 30% more accepting a natural form of evolution!
58% - White Evangelical Protestants: with just 4% more accepting a natural form of evolution.
66% - Black Protestants: with just 6% more accepting a natural form of evolution.
How does this compare to the Catholic vote in the US?
56% of all US Catholics believe human evolution was guided by God or a greater power.
While only 13% of this same category rejected Evolution in every form. 30% of Catholics
(the same % as in White mainline protestants) accept a purely natural form of Evolution!
The surprising conclusion?!: in America, Catholics were the least likely to reject Evolution!
Only the completely unaffiliated were less likely to reject Evolution:
64% accepting purely natural Evolution, 24% god-guided evolution, and only 11% rejecting evolution completely.
Thanks for putting this together @gbrooks9 , but we all know what the problem is… Christians are abandoning their biblical foundations by the multitudes. It will really only be a small remnant that holds onto the Truth. In that particular the remnant will have no affiliation with any of these corrupt organizations, but they will stand in the purity of the word of God and reject the opinions of man (i.e. evolution).
I’m willing to accept your prediction if you clarify your prediction just a little bit more:
Mainline Protestants? Have they abandoned their biblical foundations? Or do they represent a group that still have biblical foundations?
If even 58% of Evangelical Protestants accept God-Guided evolution… I think there’s some hope that BioLogos might agree that speaking to that group is worth doing!
[1] The part where we here at BioLogos refuse to discuss God-Guided evolution?
Or
[2[ The part where we here make a little Pew-dip nod towards god-guided evolution…
but expect everyone to clearly understand that we have zero interest in God-guided evolution?
You do realize that Biologos affirms this but generally admits they cannot pinpoint specific scientific results but rather it is a belief they hold to based on the Scriptures.
This response of yours, @pevaquark, is actually the strongest statement in favor of such affirmation I have yet to read in BioLogos… other than postings made by me, on my own dime, for a couple of years. So I thank you for it!
I agree with you completely, @pevaquark, that there is no “pinpointing” specific scientific results. And I think it would be wrong for someone to seek that kind of evidence.
As to my 2nd question being the same as the first question - - this is a matter of tone and style.
I find that most of my time on the topic of evolution is spent asking participants in two different blogs (this one being one of them) to please stop discussing Evolution as though the only way to discuss it is as if God doesn’t exist.
I have yet to find a single other participant willing to do the same… at either location.
Don’t be like certain people who no longer post here who would always insist that unless a person uses the exact phrasing he would have chosen, that something is therefore “never addressed.”
Yes, God guides evolution the way he guides every other process he uses to sustain and provide for his creation. If someone believes humans are intentionally created in God’s image and humans evolved, than at some point that person would have to affirm that God’s intentionality was expressed through the evolutionary process.
The fact that no one really wants to talk about your cosmic rays does not mean everyone here is allergic to the idea that God guides evolution and brings about intentional results through evolutionary processes.
As a matter of fact, I was under the impression that you were one of those who didn’t think God firing photons into human gonads had much merit.
And if I had to do it over, I think I would have avoided the cosmic ray scenario, not because I think it is wrong, but because it ignores all the other ways God can create just the right mutation.
There seemed to be more interest from list participants in God “allowing Evolution to run itself”… which to me is something that makes as much sense as God “allowing Hades to run out propane gas”!
So, are there some stealthy “God-Guided-Evolutioners” here-abouts?
This is good news and a considerable improvement over the statistics I was previously acquainted with.
This kind of satire is an extremely bad idea because of Poe’s law. It simply isn’t possible to tell the difference between fanatics and a parody of those fanatics.
Does God guide evolution?
It depends on what you think that means exactly.
Do I think our biology is some kind of divine design? No.
Do I think that God’s interference is required for speciation to occur? No.
Do I think God interfered to get a particular shape and color? No. I would absolutely oppose any attempt to cater to what amounts to anthropomorphic narcissism and racism.
Do I give God some credit for our biodiversity? Yes.
Do I think God might have had a role in events like the extinction of the dinosaurs? Yes.
Do I think God might have played a role in encouraging the development of the human capacity for dreams, emotions and language? Yes.
Do I think God interfered in evolution by firing photons into DNA? No I do not. I think it was more a matter of providing the challenges which encouraged certain developments. In other words, pretty much the same way that God involves Himself in human and Christian affairs.
I think speculating about it doesn’t have much merit and I don’t think the fingerprints of God are scientifically detectable. I’m content to live in the mystery. But just because you don’t want to speculate about what particular techniques God may have used to influence creation doesn’t mean you insist on some sort of front-loading scenario where all God’s divine action is at the very very beginning and the rest is autopilot.
I wouldn’t go as far as Mitchell in all his no-s, but I agree with his yeses, especially the one about providing challenges that pushed things in a direction.
So if God WERE to make something from de novo miraculous creation… he would spend more time with its genetics than if he had a million years to shape the creatures evolution of the very same genetics?
This provoked me to wonder if we can find any “Biologos-style” believers who don’t think God is 100% engaged. To disagree with this, George, is for the believer to propose that God is involved “here and here”, but not “there or there or there”. As if God’s involvement looks suspiciously like a limited human engineer with a finite amount of time that must be spent wisely to reach a certain goal.
I suspect the reason you don’t see us lining up in droves to endorse your challenge, is that it usually ends up being a Trojan horse that conceals the inevitable follow-up challenge: “okay - so show me scientifically where God’s fingerprints are then…”. Which is then to imply that if God’s fingerprints are identifiable here in phenomenon A, then we we have by implication identified phenomena B, C, and D where God’s fingerprints are allegedly “absent.” And it is precisely because I am a “100%er” here that I think it is a fool’s errand to go scientifically searching for demarcation separating God’s involvement from his alleged “non-involvement”.
What specifically do you want everyone to agree with now? That if we could just use one particular phrase, which I may have done now haphazardly or in a way different than you meant it, all will be right with the world again?
But that is how scientific theories are judged in science. Just like how radiometric dating is talked about independently of God’s involvement. Or general relativity or quantum mechanics or everything in science. My belief in God is completely independent of the evidence for common descent and the theory of evolution. But rather I can affirm that I believe based upon the Scriptures that what we think of as ‘laws of nature’ are part of the ‘upholding’ that the Son does (1 Col 1:17 or Heb 1:3).
Methinks megalomania must run rampant in your new haunts. It’s rubbing off on you. For instance, I had this to say not long ago:
[quote=“Jay313, post:232, topic:35494”]
There is more than enough evidence to satisfy me and 98% of all scientists (presumably that includes biologists) that evolution is the simplest and best explanation, and God was guiding it every step along the way. (The last bit is my faith talking. Your mileage may vary.)
[/quote
I intentionally messed up the quote function so that you can find the topic and the post and verify that it’s real and that it was posted long before you raised the question. I could go back and find similar statements going back several years, if you’d like. But I’d rather let you spend your own dime on that particular quest.
For others reference: