I do think that responders are revealing their biases a bit. Evolution as a concept as opposed to just a scientific theory has been used as a politically-loaded issue specifically in how it relates to ideas about education vs. maintaining religious beliefs, so "belief in" evolution is part of a culture war package that I think has been bought into somewhat as a bulwark against secularism and liberalism in general. My experience regarding evolution as science is that a lot of people get a very basic education that they just don't think about. It isn't an intellectual question for them at all. When you get into the "Well, then, how do you think it happened?"question, the whole conversation turns useless. It's not that there's some great revelation that turned evolution on its head and it could be true. They just don't like, you know, the idea. Something, something, but God did...
Why the shift in numbers? I couldn't get anything that solidifies this, but it seems I recall from 2009 on, both major parties started leaking membership as more people identified as "Independent". It strikes me that just as the GOP became more white and Christian, it's really a question of retention--the people who were more skeptical of evolution would be the people more likely to have remained affiliated with the party. But I also wonder about the rise of Christian Dominionism and the homeschooling movement--that possibly has an impact as well.
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Evolution, global warming, taxes, government regulation, trying not to be bigot: These are all part of the modern right-wing Kulturkampf.
They're agin all of 'em!
~
What has long annoyed me most about the "culture war" aspect of right/left debates is the idea that a pious lie might be favored over an "inconvenient truth" under the asumption that some higher purpose is served. It just does not make sense to me that anything practical can be accomplished without first facing facts, whether one likes them or not.
Hi Vixen,
I think it suggests an ongoing shift of epistemology. For centuries matters connected with divinity were the province of philosophy and theology.
A few centuries ago (after Thomas Aquinas set up the medieval public school system -- and he liked Aristotle) science started to come on strong. Science has had a wonderful and remarkable success at accomplishing things and explaining the natural world.
And so epistemology based on philosophical or theological views started to be replaced by an epistemological scientism.
So we came around to the idea that when you want to ask the question, "How do we know something," the answer is, "You have science find out about it and explain it to us."
However, today science has become politicized and therefore has lost some of its credibility. In addition, what you pointed out about home schooling and so forth is true. But the thing is, this culture war you speak of has brought a lot of highly trained and talented scientists who are Christians into the debate. Many of them are as sophisticated as their critics. And these are primarily the scientists that Christians listen to.
So I think epistemology is slowly shifting back to philosophy and theology.
As you know, argument for design is really just the old teleological argument for God which is advanced after one understand the cosmological argument.
None of the people I have talked with doubt that evolution occurs in the natural world. The contention is whether it says anything about the human species and whether it says much about cosmogenesis.
I think this whole matter is complicated because we don't remind ourselves enough that this whole left/right debate only goes on among about 30 million people who follow politics. Out in the regular world, opinions are much too diverse to corral into two convenient abstractions.
You realize that this left/right thing is composed of generalities based on abstractions. Two competing fictions. No doubt it is a useful placeholder concept for people trying to understand how the vote is going to go, but it suffers from the flaws of all concepts. It can only be stretched so far before it becomes useless. Perhaps a bit like the famous bell shaped curve which is supposed to denote normalcy. All very well until you begin to really consider individuals and their motives.
For example, my black religious friends mostly vote democrat, but as they are connected the to black church, they are categorically against abortion, same-sex marriage, or the homosexual movement trying to piggy-back on the civil rights movement which they consider their domain (one of my black friends was just pressing this idea on me as we brought in the New Year last night).
So apparently the overwhelming opinion of the the black church has not changed in its repudiation of evolution and so would not have been part of the Pew poll.
--Formerly Amherst
I think this whole matter is complicated because we don't remind ourselves enough that this whole left/right debate only goes on among about 30 million people who follow politics. Out in the regular world, opinions are much too diverse to corral into two convenient abstractions.
It's a good point--no group, however demographically granulated, it really monolithic in its viewpoints. One might find a dozen different opinions in a single pew, even if the parishioners are reading from the same hymnal. Which is what really fascinates me about these kinds of topics.
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