How did we get here?

I have to admit I was really surprised by this UK figures about belief in creationism or intelligent design among university students indicating quite a turnaround from the 70's when I would have guessed that a fraction of the numbers would believe in creationism.

Opinionpanel Research's survey of more than 1,000 students found a third of those who said they were Muslims and more than a quarter of those who said they were Christians supported creationism. Nearly a third of Christians and 10% of those with no particular religion favoured intelligent design. Women were more likely to choose spiritual explanations: less than half chose evolution, with 14% preferring creationism and 22% intelligent design.

Now, there are further questions to be asked of this as presented. One of those is what is meant by intelligent design. I suspect, unless there was more detail in the questionning, that many respondants might well have thought intelligent design is evolution guided by God. In which case it's not such a big deal.

I think too that the 400kg gorrilla in the corner may be a cultural one, however to do with distrust in the agendas of 'authorities' like scientists and a disposition to give credence to marginalised narratives and to give notional alliegence to 'surpressed' beliefs which otherwise have no real impact on lives except to vaguely reinforce commitments already made [for the most part the kind of dynamic we see at work in things like the 'Da Vinci Code']. It is a way of resisting the totalising narrative of some science as presented in popular culture; give a place to the marginalised discourse. 'Science' after all has given us the Bomb, the threat of ABC weapons, global warming and very scary visions of the future not to mention its easy take-up by the proponents of eugenics and Nietzchean ethics ... take it down a peg or two.
That's just a set of hypotheses, but worth stating in case they help answer the title-question.

And then of course, the ever growing voice of the creationist perspective among the growing edge of western Christianity has had its effect by riding on the back of the oversimplistic reading of scripture ironically produced by the modernist mindset that it is deployed against in other areas, like this one. This is allied with the shrewd deployment of rhetorical power by creationist leaders to marginalise 'accommodationist' perspectives on the matter of origins so that it takes some energy and commitment to swim against the tide in some congregations, especially when you have articulate and 'cool' figures promoting the view too.

And, of course, another thing is, how come such a high figure among people who mostly don't go to church? That has to be worth chewing on, assuming that I have interpreted the stats right. It is noteworthy how many people from a Muslim background are creationist too. I think that petrodollars are probably backing that up. Another irony, given that petroleum is part of the evidence for evolution and the geophys for finding the stuff is based on evolutionistically-informed geology, if I'm not mistaken.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | higher news | How did we get here?:
Filed in: evolution, religion, creationism, students, research, UK, intelligent_design, Islam,