The Evolution Gap

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

A columnist of the New York Times reports a startling discovery for those of us following the religion story. It is the sudden widening in the gap between the share of Republicans and Democrats who believe in evolution. They used to be but 10 percentage points apart. In recent years, though, the gap has exploded to 24 percentage points. The percentage of Democrats who credit evolution inched up, while the ratio of Republicans who believe in evolution has plunged to 43%.

The columnist, Charles Blow, dug up this scoop on the Web site of the Oracle of Pew. The OoP itself uncovered this news using the old newspaperman’s gadget, the telephone. It discovered that the “share of the general public that says that humans have evolved over time is about the same as it was in 2009,” when it was 60%. It found that a third “reject the idea of evolution,” hewing to the belief that humans “have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.’”

That this is believed by more Republicans than not upsets Mr. Blow. “Sad news” is how he characterizes the evolution gap. “In fact,” he writes, “this isn’t only sad; it’s embarrassing.” His discomfort, if not his reasoning, tempts one to consolation. Writes he: “I don’t personally have a problem with religious faith, even in the extreme, as long as it doesn’t supersede science and it’s not used to impose outdated mores on others.”

It’s not clear, though, what he’s saying here, since faith, even though it is not always used to impose its mores on others, does — almost by definition — supersede science. It’s what faith does. Mr. Blow does note that “some people,” as he puts it, “see our extreme religiosity itself as a form of dysfunction.” He cites as a source for this assertion yet another oracle, the journal Evolutionary Psychology, which turns out to speak in tongues.

“The level of relative and absolute societal pathology in the United States,” he quotes one of its authors, Gregory Paul, as writing, “is often so severe that it is repeatedly an outlier that strongly reinforces the correlation between high levels of poor societal conditions and popular religiosity.”* Lest one set this down as a dressed-up bigotry, Mr. Blow asserts that there is “something else is also at play here, something more cynical.”

He calls it the “natural result of a long-running ploy by Republican party leaders to play on the most base convictions of conservative voters in order to solidify their support. Convince people that they’re fighting a religious war for religious freedom, a war in which passion and devotion are one’s weapons against doubt and confusion, and you make loyal soldiers.”

Writes Mr. Blow: “There has been anti-science propagandizing running unchecked on the right for years, from anti-gay-equality misinformation to climate change denials.” The “evolution denialism,” he writes, “gets even worse” when “you look at white evangelical Protestants.” He quotes the Oracle of Pew as announcing that, as Mr. Blow puts it, “while white evangelical Protestants make up only 18 percent of the population overall, they ‘make up 43 percent of Republicans who fall into the category of staunch conservatives.’”

From there Mr. Blow rattles on about the Oracle of Pew’s definition of “staunch conservatives” as those who take “extremely conservative positions,” agree with the Tea Party and “even more strongly disapprove of [President] Barack Obama’s job performance.” He goes on a tear against opposition to the war on Christmas, scorns Fox News, and belittles Newt Gingrich.

Well, one thing to be said for Mr. Blow is his ability to make a column out of a proclamation of the Oracle of Pew that found the share of the general public that believes in evolution to be holding steady with what it was four years ago. The scientists may — yet again, as they have so many times — change their narrative of evolution. All the more credible the Torah Sages, whose account has held up for millennia.

_________

* It turns out that Evolutionary Psychology gives America quite a raking over in the paper to which Mr. Blow alludes. It cites something called the “Successful Societies Scale.” Reports it: “The historically unprecedented socioeconomic security that results from low levels of progressive government policies appear to suppress popular religiosity and creationist opinion, conservative religious ideology apparently contributes to societal dysfunction, and religious prosociality and charity are less effective at improving societal conditions than are secular government programs. The antagonistic relationship between better socioeconomic conditions and intense popular faith may prevent the existence of nations that combine the two factors.” It’s unclear to us whether the Successful Societies Scale covers the formally atheistic countries like, say, North Korea.


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