USA believes in evolution more than Ontario?

[White Cat]

From the Globe & Mail

New polls show that a larger share of Americans - 53 per cent - believe in evolution than do Ontario residents, only 51 per cent of whom believe that "human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years."

Over all, 59 per cent of Canadians said they believe in evolution, according to the Angus Reid poll of 1,088 adults conducted June 12-13. Twenty-two per cent agreed that "God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years," and 19 per cent told pollsters they weren't sure.

Even those who say they believe in evolution may be confused about what that means exactly. The poll found 42 per cent of Canadians agree that dinosaurs and humans co-existed on earth - but evolutionary theory says non-avian dinosaurs died out about 60 million years before humans evolved in their current form.

"Wow. Oh boy," responded Pam Willoughby, an anthropology professor at the University of Alberta. "We're obviously not getting our message across."

Here's the breakdown by province/region:

Code: Select all

                  Evolution  Creation  Not Sure
Quebec                71%        9%      20%
British Columbia      65%       21%      15%
Canada                59%       22%      19%
Alberta               58%       28%      14%
Manitoba/Sask         56%       33%      11%
Atlantic              53%       26%      21%
United States*        53%
Ontario               51%       26%      23%

*Separate poll by USA Today of 1,007 American adults

SOURCE: ANGUS REID STRATEGIES

I put a question mark in the subject because the US figure comes from a different poll, so we don't know whether the wording was the same.

[Alferd Packer]

Yeah, they might count theistic evolution or some such nonsense in that USA Today poll.

[Darth Wong]

Polling consistently shows that nearly half of Americans are not just creationists, but young-Earth creationists. This poll asks people to choose between evolution and young-Earth creationists with no third option other than "don't know", and only 26% of people chose young-Earth creationism.

The article writer is obfuscating the results. This poll makes people choose between option A and option B, while most American polls have more options than that, thus allowing people to cherry-pick the results to get the conclusions they want. If you look at an apples to apples comparison, Gallup says 44% of Americans think humans were created in their present form in the last 10,000 years, while Angus-Reid says that 26% of Canadians feel the same way. That also tracks with the differences in church attendance between the two countries, not to mention the rather drastic difference in our attitudes toward things like gay marriage.

I'd say that whoever wrote the article had an agenda to distort the results.

PS. I checked the USAToday poll they're referring to, and they had a lot more options than that. They are massively distorting the two polls by comparing them in this manner. They actually combined two results and ignored significant overlap in order to get this 53% figure, while the Canadian poll was designed to have zero overlap.

[Darth Raptor]

Even those who say they believe in evolution may be confused about what that means exactly. The poll found 42 per cent of Canadians agree that dinosaurs and humans co-existed on earth - but evolutionary theory says non-avian dinosaurs died out about 60 million years before humans evolved in their current form.

This is a factual misconception, not a theoretical one. Creationism has little to do with it, because from The Flintstones to FedEx commercials and since the fucking 19th Century mosty people erroneously believe that our ancestors spent their lives running from tyrannosaurs. Tyrannosaurs are often depicted alongside stegosaurs too (there's just as much a gap between T. rex and Stegosaurus as there is between T. rex and H. sapiens). Is that Creationism as well? While Creationists are people who don't have their facts straight, not all people who don't have their facts straight are Creationists.

[General Zod]

That poll's a really shitty comparison anyway, isn't it? Even just glancing at it it doesn't seem right to compare the percentages of a country with a province.

[Darth Wong]

As I said though, the numbers are being distorted to make it appear that support for evolution in the US is far higher than it actually is. The fact is that even the Institute for Creation Research accepts some kind of evolution; it's necessary in order to explain how all the world's species came from a number that could fit on Noah's Ark. So when you add up all the people in the US who believe in some form of evolution and then compare that to the people who vote one way in a black/white choice poll, you're bound to get a really misleading result.

[Jericho Kross]

How many of these people have even stepped into a science class. Some of my friends were young-earth creationists [one even went so far as to say he will prove scientists wrong by finding the Garden of Eden ], until they stepped into an actual science class and figured it out for themselves [dinosaurs co-existing with humans]

[Justforfun000]

I'd also venture to say though that the reason for the higher number in Ontario for "creationism" is undoubtedly the huge amount of foreigners here that are probably more religious than secular. This would affect the percentage a fair amount as well I would think.

[Darth Wong]

I'd also venture to say though that the reason for the higher number in Ontario for "creationism" is undoubtedly the huge amount of foreigners here that are probably more religious than secular. This would affect the percentage a fair amount as well I would think.

The Filipinos are the worst; nearly 100% of them are either Catholics or Jehovah's Witnesses. In their home country, many people crucify themselves at Easter every year.

[White Cat]

That poll's a really shitty comparison anyway, isn't it? Even just glancing at it it doesn't seem right to compare the percentages of a country with a province.

Uh, why not? It's normal (at least in Canada) for polls to compare the various regions, with a figure for the country overall.

PS. I checked the USAToday poll they're referring to, and they had a lot more options than that. They are massively distorting the two polls by comparing them in this manner. They actually combined two results and ignored significant overlap in order to get this 53% figure, while the Canadian poll was designed to have zero overlap.

This seems unfortunately typical of the way the Globe deals with polling figures. Do you have a link to the USA Today poll?

[Darth Wong]

This seems unfortunately typical of the way the Globe deals with polling figures. Do you have a link to the USA Today poll?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2 ... ults_n.htm

When you look at the poll with its multiple levels of answer and the fact that there is significant overlap in the percentages for evolution and creationism, it's pretty obvious that the Globe did an apples-to-oranges comparison.

[The Dude]

Polls from the US typically break down as roughly 50% YEC, with only 10% accepting purely natural evolution. The remaining 40% generally answer something along the lines of "I believe in evolution, but God did it". This category actually includes a wide variety of positions, including IDers, OECs, and "theistic evolutionists". This will include those who accept evolution of animals, but not humans.

My guess would be that the percentage of Americans who would agree with "human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years." would be less than 25%.

Back to Canada, I wasn't surprised to see Quebec in the lead (it's by far the most secular). I am surprised to see Ontario at the bottom (albeit with slightly lower proportion of creationists than the prairies). The dinosaur thing is just embarrassing.

[B5B7]

How disappointing - I thought the topic was going to be Americans not believing in Ontario. [and believing in evolution more than in Ontario]

[White Cat]

Genesis clearly states that Manitoba borders Quebec.

[General Zod]

That poll's a really shitty comparison anyway, isn't it? Even just glancing at it it doesn't seem right to compare the percentages of a country with a province.

Uh, why not? It's normal (at least in Canada) for polls to compare the various regions, with a figure for the country overall.

The sheer difference in population makes the percentage comparison virtually worthless. It would be like saying 50% of the people living in Arkansas believe in YEC creationism while only 15% of the people in the US altogether believe in it, and then going on to say that Arkansas clearly has more believers than the entire United States based purely on the percent. (Obviously I pulled those numbers out of my ass, but it should give you an idea how skewed such a comparison is).

[White Cat]

That makes no sense. The difference in population clearly makes percentage the proper measure to use.

If someone said there were to say "The USA has 150 million YEC believers, while Arkansas only has 2 million, therefore Arkansans believe in YEC less than Americans overall," that would be a skewed analysis, due to the differences in population. However, using percentages allows you to say "50% of Americans believe in YEC, compared to 75% of Arkansans," which gives an accurate picture of the relative belief rates (leaving aside my made-up numbers).

[Lisa]

Weird, in my grade school (a Catholic school in Toronto) we were taught a) evolution is real, b) the book of genesis was created after the rest of the old testament of the bible and factually incorrect and c) god created life and caused man to evolve as part of creation. Even to a 9 year old this was a lot easier to swallow then the book of Genesis. I don't know if it was part of the curriculum or just taught that way at the schools I went to and the school my dad taught at (another elementary Catholic school in Toronto).

And while I am no longer Catholic I still hold that while man can create the conditions for life to happen we have not actually created life yet.

I do wonder how much of the teachings at school were overridden by the parents at home (my school was in an Italian immigrant neighbourhood with many of my classmates either being FOB or 1st gen Canadians)

[General Zod]

That makes no sense. The difference in population clearly makes percentage the proper measure to use.

If someone said there were to say "The USA has 150 million YEC believers, while Arkansas only has 2 million, therefore Arkansans believe in YEC less than Americans overall," that would be a skewed analysis, due to the differences in population. However, using percentages allows you to say "50% of Americans believe in YEC, compared to 75% of Arkansans," which gives an accurate picture of the relative belief rates (leaving aside my made-up numbers).

You're still not quite getting it. Take your statement, now say "50% of Americans believe in YEC, but 75% of Arkansans believe in it, therefore Arkansas has more believers". That is effectively what the poll is doing. It's not saying that the percentage is higher. It's saying that the numbers of a location with a smaller population has more believers because of the higher percentage, regardless of the numbers.

[Edi]

That makes no sense. The difference in population clearly makes percentage the proper measure to use.

If someone said there were to say "The USA has 150 million YEC believers, while Arkansas only has 2 million, therefore Arkansans believe in YEC less than Americans overall," that would be a skewed analysis, due to the differences in population. However, using percentages allows you to say "50% of Americans believe in YEC, compared to 75% of Arkansans," which gives an accurate picture of the relative belief rates (leaving aside my made-up numbers).

You're still not quite getting it. Take your statement, now say "50% of Americans believe in YEC, but 75% of Arkansans believe in it, therefore Arkansas has more believers". That is effectively what the poll is doing. It's not saying that the percentage is higher. It's saying that the numbers of a location with a smaller population has more believers because of the higher percentage, regardless of the numbers.

You're a moron. The unstated but implicit corollary to that is in general, 50% of people are fucking morons, but in location X, 75% of people are fucking morons, therefore location X has more morons relative to population size. That's the only reasonable way to interpret it and your bullshit is nothing but sophistry.

[General Zod]

You're a moron. The unstated but implicit corollary to that is in general, 50% of people are fucking morons, but in location X, 75% of people are fucking morons, therefore location X has more morons relative to population size. That's the only reasonable way to interpret it and your bullshit is nothing but sophistry.

If that actually is the case, then I simply misinterpreted what the article meant by "larger share of the population". To me "larger share" comes off as "larger numbers", which is why comparing a country to a province didn't seem quite right.