Creationism in the UK: Overstated?

Forbes is running a story that finds the prevalence of young earth creationism is not as great as has been thought.  John Farrell, who right off the bat equates “creationism” with “young earth creationism” writes:

It was thought, based on surveys conducted in 2006, that more citizens of the U.K. were embracing creationism. Indeed, the BBC Horizon program found that 22% of U.K. citizens identified themselves as creationists.

Unsworth, who has a PhD in molecular biology from University College London, was skeptical, and her survey data suggest her skepticism was well founded.

“Many people simply haven’t thought much about evolution,” she said in a press release shortly after reporting her initial results at a Faraday conference in September.

“Survey questions may force them into ticking either a ‘creationist’ or an ‘evolutionist’ box,” she said, “but whether these labels have much real-life significance is pretty questionable.”

I would believe that most people haven't thought about evolution much. I certainly know that the people that I work with at ORNL don't give it much thought. It simply is not germane to their lives. The only reason it is to me is that I pursued evolution as an academic discipline.  I think that even in the Christian community, there is general apathy about it.  The story continues:

After carrying out detailed face-to-face interviews with over a hundred Christians and Muslims, Unsworth designed her own survey. Of 2,116 people in Britain, she found that only 3% reject the idea that plants and animals have evolved from earlier life forms, whilst 6.8% reject the idea that humans have evolved from non-human life forms. Only 4% would qualify as young earth creationists.

Further, she discovered that even amongst regular worshippers–meaning those who attend religious services once a month or more, only 14.3% reject plant and animal evolution, 28.6% reject human evolution and 10.2% think the earth is young.

England and Europe as a whole are, generally, more secular than is the United States and I wonder how different those numbers would be here. The same survey would have to be administered.

There is also truth to the idea that those numbers would be higher here in the south than they likely would be in other areas of the country.  As is the case here, there are bound to be pockets of people who accept creationism without reservation—the home school crowd comes to mind— and support for the Discovery Institute and its mission remains high here in the United States.

She is interviewed as saying that she has higher resolution on the data, with regards to different denominations and religions.  I would be very interested to see what that information shows.

English Education and the Rise of Islamic Radicalism

The Telegraph is reporting that education secretary Nicky Morgan has stripped kindergarten schools in the United Kingdom that teach creationism of taxpayer funding.  They write:

Any nursery that teaches creationism as scientific fact will be stripped of taxpayer funding. This is unlikely to apply to Christian nurseries as they tend to be more balanced. However large numbers of Muslim nurseries refuse to accept evolution. The rules will bring nurseries into line with schools. A government source stressed: “We are absolutely not saying, 'You can’t teach Bible stories’.”

This is a follow-up to a story that ran on Breitbart London, about the infiltration of the UK school system by radical Islamism.  The story on Breitbart reproduces a statement by Morgan to the Home Secretary, which includes the following:

But what Peter Clarke found is disturbing. His report sets out compelling evidence of a determined effort by people with a shared ideology to gain control of the governing bodies of a small number of schools in Birmingham.

Teachers have said they fear children are learning to be intolerant of difference and diversity. Instead of enjoying a broadening and enriching experience in school, young people are having their horizons narrowed and are being denied the opportunity to flourish in a modern multicultural Britain.

There has been no evidence of direct radicalisation or violent extremism. But there is a clear account in the report of people in positions of influence in these schools, with a restricted and narrow interpretation of their faith, who have not promoted fundamental British values and who have failed to challenge the extremist views of others.

Individuals associated with the Park View Educational Trust in particular have destabilised headteachers, sometimes leading to their resignation or removal. Particularly shocking is the evidence of the social media discussion of the Park View Brotherhood group whose actions “betray a collective mind-set that can fairly be described as an intolerant Islamist approach which denies the validity of alternative beliefs.”

Evidence collected by Peter Clarke shows that Birmingham City Council was aware of the practices that were subsequently outlined in the “Trojan Horse” letter long before it surfaced.

This is becoming a bit of an identity crisis for England, which has long prided itself on its MultiCulti viewpoint. The problem, of course, is sometimes you welcome viewpoints that have open hostility to yours.

Oldest Footprints Outside of Africa

Fossil footprints have been found in England that are thought to be 800,000 years old.  As Science Daily puts it:

The importance of the Happisburgh footprints is highlighted by the rarity of footprints surviving elsewhere. Only those at Laetoli in Tanzania at about 3.5 million years and at Ileret and Koobi Fora in Kenya at about 1.5 million years are older.

A lecturer in physical geography, and co-director of the Happisburgh project (http://www.ahobproject.org/), Dr Lewis added that the chance of encountering footprints such as this was extremely rare; they survived environmental change and the passage of time.

Timing was also crucial as "their location was revealed just at a moment when researchers were there to see it" during a geophysical survey. "Just two weeks later the tide would have eroded the footprints away."

"At first we weren't sure what we were seeing," explains Dr Nick Ashton of the British Museum "but as we removed any remaining beach sand and sponged off the seawater, it was clear that the hollows resembled prints, and that we needed to record the surface as quickly as possible."

This illustrates the fragility of the fossil record and how incredibly fortunate we are to have anything, let alone what we do have.There isn't a whole heck of a lot in England to begin with.  The boxgrove tibia is around 500 Kya and the Swanscombe skull is around 300 Kya.   We know that early Homo was in southern Europe around 1.2-1.3 Mya and now, in northern Europe by at least 800 Kya.