Comments on: A birthday present for Charles Darwin

By: Aceface

Aceface — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:06:26 +0000

Yeah,my friend back in weekend school had “Watchtower”pamphlets.There were small but pretty active group of JW among Japanese expat cimmunity in NY.

By: Jade Oc

Jade Oc — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:58:12 +0000

But that would make them more, not less, likely to accept evolution, no?

By: Roy Berman

Roy Berman — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:17:17 +0000

Re: Jehovah’s Witnesses.
From the link Adam posted above:

Day-Age Creationism is the belief that the six days of creation were really six geological epochs. Usually some effort is made to reconcile specific days in Genesis to specific epochs in Earth history, but since things didn’t really all happen separately and consecutively like in Genesis, such efforts are generally somewhat ham-handed. But at least they’re trying. Day-Age Creationism is what Jehovah’s Witnesses advocate in their Watchtower pamphlets.

By: Jade Oc

Jade Oc — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:20:19 +0000

Scientists would be 90% or more – taking into account the fact that it is perfectly possible to do very good science and still not believe in Evolution – pure mathematics springs to mind, as well as several fields of physics.

I’m surprised to see Catholics so low, since the Catholic Church has officially accepted evolution as the origins of human life (just not the human soul).

What do JWs believe? I know very little about them. But why do low?
Watching Bill Maher’s “Religulous” at the moment, which is…interesting.

By: M-Bone

M-Bone — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:21:18 +0000

Scientists should be on that list too.

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:14:44 +0000

Im surprised to see Muslim so low on that list.

Go jews.

By: Roy Berman

Roy Berman — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:27:22 +0000

By: Aceface

Aceface — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:57:48 +0000

You know this is really difficult to understand,because Japanese love all the series of essays on evolution by Stephen J. Gould.

Jade’s post reminded me of memory of Japanese weekend school back in the mid 80’s.I used to go to this school every Saturday that is being operated by renting the local American highschool that locates right near the Museum of American Natural History.I used to cut the class and go there to see dinos and stuffed animals.
Being a keen natural history reader,I knew aboutnlegendary white hunter Carl Akeley who collected all the African mammals for the museum and whose name immortalized by Akeley Hall of African Mammals.And Roy Chapman Andrews,who led the exploration team to Mongolia in the 20’s and discovered dinosaur eggs.
So cutting the class and wonder inside of AMNH was like my boy days dreams come true.

And one day,one of the teacher at weekend school(who was working for part time and originally a PhD student at Columbia)asked us whether any of us believe in creationist theory since this might effect the course of class when learning on evolution.That was bizzarre,because teachers never ask that sort of question in Japan.But I found a boy sitting right next to me was actually in that belief so, the teacher wrote a letter to his parent to discuss on the matter….
I’ve been wondering what had become of this kid.But I found him on an article on NewsWeek Japan him being a delegate of UN related institution in Kazakhstan…

By: Jade Oc

Jade Oc — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:39:33 +0000

This is scarier, from a link from Aceface’s link:
米科学普及団体ナショナル・ジオグラフィック協会のニュースによると、欧米、日本、トルコなど３２カ国を対象にした２００５年の調査で、デンマークやスウェーデン、フランスでは８割以上が進化論を受け入れていた。一方、米国では進化論を明白に正しいと考える大人は１４％にとどまり、３分の１が明確に拒絶するなど、進化論を信じる人は最下位のトルコに次いで少なかった。

I would like to compare “受け入れていた” and “明白に正しいと考える” though – there’s a fair bit of leeway between the two.

By: Aceface

Aceface — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:08:58 +0000

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20090212-00000615-san-pol