USA: Today less Republicans believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution than in 2009.
Republicans are ditching evolution in favor of creationism.
In 2013 just 43% of Republicans believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Put another way, 57% believe that humans are the same now as they were at the beginning of time. These are “creationists”.
Democrats are much more likely to believe in human evolution (67%).
Overall 33% of Americans believe that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of timeβ.
Does this fundamental belief have any impact on cat ownership?
I am surprised at the very high percentage of Americans who disagree totally in Darwin’s theory of evolution. I thought it was common sense.
We don’t know from this survey what creationists believe about the relationship between animal and human. It is likely to be a belief that humans are superior and different to animals. This might encourage a less respectful relationship with cats
Whereas evolutionists are more likely to believe that humans are “human animals” and that we are at one with animals but apart. This should encourage a more respectful attitude towards cats.
Conclusion: Democrats are better cat owners than Republicans! Disagree? There are obviously millions of great Republican cat caretakers and some bad Democrat cat caretakers. However, the general trend points towards Democrats being more sensitive towards cats because of this fundamental belief.
Notes:
- This page is a bit of fun with a slightly serious side to it. Please don’t take it too seriously π
- By all means comment on this but PoC is in the middle of a transfer to a dedicated server. This article may have to be recreated in a few days time and the comments may be lost. Update: the transfer is completed so this does not apply anymore.
- Source: figures based poll by Pew Research Center
It is an amazing comment. It must be a subject that interests him! Great.
What a comment, Marc!
I love it when you get all fired up!
You make a lot of sense; but, what are some solutions?
As they say, “Bells can’t be unrung”.
Fantastic comment. I am not very philosophical. I am pragmatic and practical but, things are not right and to disbelieve Darwin’s theory is not good. It disturbed me to read that more US right wingers are creationists than before. It is a growing concept amongst a segment of society.
I agree because, for me, this a measurement of how good we are at survival in the long term (we just can’t get it right long term). It measures how sensible and intelligent we are and how harmonious world society is (it is not harmonious and it is dysfunctional).
Christianity has a bad history in its relationship with animals, which is the point I am making. They have tried to clean the religion up but the history is so poor that it is a ball and chain around the religion.
There was a time, perhaps, millions of years ago when briefly early humans lived within a sustainable ecosystem and they did not disturb it. The more “advanced” we became, the more we demanded too much from nature. We decided we were above nature and could do as we pleased with it. Cat breeding to extreme to “refine” the natural cat is an example. The result? Crap! Sometimes a distorted cat that is more ill than the original.
This quote requires a book to respond to it. Christianity has failed. It is failing. It continues to fail in the UK because it is wrong and unhelpful — this is my personal viewpoint. I would expect Christianity to fail in the USA in the future. I respect all viewpoints. Please don’t be upset by my ideas.
You’re right DW. I don’t expect comments on this subject. It is, though, very important because it goes to the heart of a person’s attitudes towards animals or it should do.
Also, I tend to pick topics that pop up and interest me. It is a bit philosophical and it is about people :). Cat lovers want to read about cats, I know. However, cats live in a human world. What we do is everything to a cat.
Happy New Year DW to you and your family. You have a nice cat friendly home. I wish I was a cat living in your home.
Wow Marc, what a great comment. And you are not even home! Safe travels and hurry home. Happy New Year.
And Dee, I would vote for ET.
Michael, I don’t think you will get a spirited back and forth on this subject in this forum. Consider your audience, for the most part. 99% cat lovers, we are. I don’t know many extreme right wing Republicans, though the scary part of Facebook is you find out more than you want to know about people. Thank goodness for the ” block” setting.
Here, is to a sustainable ecosystem! I will toast to that. Happy New Year to all, and to your cats!
Dee – it’s the same in other western countries – but what I’m more concerned with is not the politicians ‘personal’ beliefs but more the problem of religious belief systems controlling politics.
Case and point being the age old question of abortion. It should not be age old – once abortions were possible the discussion should have ended. It’s not progressive and it’s downright backwards to legislate and make abortion a question of law in principle. Of course there needs to be law surrounding everything, but a person’s rights to have a baby or not should be left to that person. Making abortion legally a hard thing to do is theocratic. In some places women must wear such and such and in other places they are challenged for wanting to have an abortion – both are for the same reasons in the sense that they are because of the predominant religion in the area concerned.
The other very good example is the ‘global gag law’ or ‘order’ which prevents aid of any kind to institutions around the world which endorse or facilitate abortion. Again – it’s one thing to have personal views and live one’s own life as such but it’s quite another to impose your belief, by law, onto other people’s lives. The only reason I hard on about this is because I am offended by the fact that we are told certain western governments are ‘the good guys’ – the future, the ones who promote Freedomβ’ and it’s such utter bollocks. Yes perhaps we are more free, but at what cost, and to whom? And are we really free? and what about the 12 year old in a factory in Bangladesh who is making that very nice shirt you got for just 5 bucks? Is it fair to say our culture is the better one simply because on the surface it looks more desirable to us who are anyway conditioned to live with it? For me the overriding measurement – or sliding scale of value – comes in terms of the planet and animals and ecosystem. There is no greater irony than the fact that the people who live most differently to us, the ‘social other’, are doing the least damage to this planet, and suffering the most in many cases. So this brings us back to Freedomβ’.
Michael – you are most probably right in your generalization – the belief system of creationism doesn’t bode well for animals. It’s all wrong. Furthermore it has led us to the edge of total collapse and destruction. I wonder this, just as an example: If the budhists had been the majority in history, would they have invaded other cultures and gone around taking from them what they pleased at the cost of people’s lives. Christians have been the the biggest deciders in where this planet is going and something about that religion has led the world down this path which Michael rightly points out to be one of sustenance from the earth’s ecosystem, where it is there for the use and luxury of humans with very few, if any, short term strings attached.
However we know today that sustenance will only continue if it is achieved sustainably. Sustainability in the long term means to sustain every living thing in our ecosystem so it may continue to live since it is, in of itself, a living thing of which we are a part. We can’t reduce any part of it because it’s complex and every part is needed for it to survive.
In this day and age the meaning of life has come down to the meaning of death. Humans don’t do life so well, but they sure as hell do death very well. Humans can’t see past their own noses let alone their own lifetimes – and christianity is a part of that. I think the idea of heaven and hell is just a way out of the here and now. The idea that a priest can forgive you is just a way to continue doing bad things. I spent from the age of 8 until 18 going to church every weekend and in some cases earlier on, every day, repeating the prayers and hymns over and over such that I can still remember them now word for word. This time of my life is a bad memory. Indoctrination. Compulsory theocracy. But coming back directly to the point of this article – I can’t say I came out of 10 years of semi religious education feeling like I had learn’t a darn thing about animals. Sure the animals are mentioned numerous times in the bible but the underlying message was always about something else. The sermon would be about anything and everything, but not caring for the animals and the trees. This christian indoctrination did not give me constructive or better relationship with the earth. It was almost always focused on other people or myself. Christianity teaches kindness to others and that is a good thing. But as Michael says, it doesn’t help us out of the real problem and perhaps has even created it, which is that we are all going to destroy ourselves and this planet in a matter of time.
Surely the real meaning of life can be derived better from the mechanics of our once sustainable ecosystem. Surely the best and most good we can do is to emulate and live according to that lesson. Sure, love thy neighbour while you are at it, since that most likely is a lesson of sustainability too – all religions fit inside the greater fact of life here. For the true and most real answers don’t look to your god, look at the sky and look at the ground and look at all the life around you and try to understand how to take care of it as if it were your own child – and then you will already be where you need to be π