At 07:14 AM 3/4/00 -0500, George Murphy wrote:
> It may be worth pointing out that in his _Rocks of Ages_ Gould takes Draper
>& White to task for promulgating the myth that the earth was generally
believed to
>be flat in Columbus' time. Gould is more even handed in his criticisms of
(as he sees
>it) transgressions on one another's territories by science & religion than
some
>might expect him to be.
I would want to point out that the myth of a flat earth, while not held by
the intelligentsia, who left all the written records, may very well have
been held to by the general populace. Phillip Johnson is fond of citing
the 1991 Gallup poll. He says:
"According to a 1991 Gallup poll, 47 per cent of a national sample agreed
with the following statement: "God created mankind in pretty much our
present form sometime within the last 10,000 years." DArwinisms Rules of
Reasoning, http://www.mrccos.com/arn/johnson/drr.htm accessed 1998.
The vast majority of the scientific texts written today would most
assuredly not reflect the societal reality that exists today--that almost
half of the American people believe that mankind is less than 10,000 years
old and has no relationship with the apes. Future historians, 500 to 1000
years hence, will most assuredly conclude that no one today really believed
that mankind was only 10,000 years old.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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