Gordon Simons wrote:
> An article in the science section of today's NY Times
> claims "More than half (of the American public) think(s)
> that the dinosaurs and the earliest humans coexisted."
> Assuming this is a valid statistical fact, I wonder what
> percentage of those who believe this are Christians, and
> what percentage of those who know better are Christian.
This statistic is one from an NSF study of American
understanding of, & attitudes toward, science which can be found at
http://www.nsf.gov. I would guess that creationist misinformation is
responsible for a significant part of the 52% who think this. (I just
caught "Dr." Carl Baugh telling
a gullible audience that humans lived together with dinosaurs on TBN a
couple of days ago.) But I suspect that we shouldn't discount the
influence of things like The Flintstones and the current Dinotopia.
That may seem absurd but the images formed by popular entertainment,
when not countered by any serious science education, can be important.
An overall result of the NSF study is that science education &
scientific literacy in the US is, in a word, bad. I think that the
state of science education is an important social issue that churches
should be addressing.
A related issue: Some may reply that the answer to bad science
education is home schooling. But that prompts another question: What
fraction of kids who are being home schooled are being taught some
variant of creation science or ID?
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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