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The Daily Telegraph called him "the greatest naturalist of our time, perhaps all time". For the Morning Post he was "the first biologist of his day". The Times saluted the rapid victory of Charles Darwin's great idea and said that "the astonishing revelations of recent research in palaeontology have done still more to turn what 20 years ago was a brilliant speculation into an established and unquestionable truth". The Manchester Guardian said that "few original thinkers have lived to see more completely the triumph of what is essential in their doctrine". The St James's Gazette predicted that England's children would one day be taught to honour Darwin "as the greatest Englishman since Newton".

These responses appeared in print on 21 April 1882, after the news of Darwin's death at his home in Down, Kent. The writers were people who knew the Bible, and they addressed readers who had grown up in an overtly devout society. Many remembered the religious and scientific uproar following publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859. It argued, with detailed evidence, that life's extraordinary variety had stemmed, over an enormous period of time, from a common ancestry, and that the mechanism was the operation of natural selection upon tiny variations in heredity.

But Darwin's audience heard only part of the story. The clinching discovery of the biochemistry of genetic inheritance and therefore of random genetic mutation - the famous double helix of DNA - was not made until 1953. The mostly anonymous contributors who rushed to judgment that morning had before them only a fraction of the findings that now support the theory of evolution: a theory as confident as the predictions of Newtonian physics at speeds significantly lower than the velocity of light, as sure as the thesis that matter is composed of atoms. They could have been forgiven for their sometimes equivocal salutes.

There can be no such equivocation in the week of a survey which showed that only around half of all Britons accept that Darwin's theory of evolution is either true or probably true. In a democracy, citizens should respect each other's beliefs; and citizens have a right to express their beliefs. But in a democracy, a newspaper has an obligation to what is right. The truth is that Darwin's reasoning has in the last 150 years been supported overwhelmingly by discoveries in biology, geology, medicine and space science. The details will keep scientists arguing for another 200 years, but the big picture has not changed. All life is linked by common ancestry, including human life. The shameful lesson of this 200th anniversary of his birth is that Darwin's contemporaries understood more clearly than many modern Britons.

Two things distinguish a late-Victorian audience from a modern one. Educated Victorians knew much more about their own religion, and the problems of interpretation in sacred scripture. They understood that if the Bible was God's word then the world around them must also be an account of His handiwork, to be scrutinised, glossed and annotated by science. Second, they were prepared to follow and even join in scientific debate about those chapters of Earth history revealed in the rocks. Many of the tribute-payers of 21 April 1882 understood that evolution had not been, in 1859, a new or particularly shocking idea. Others had proposed it; they understood that Darwin had demonstrated it. They foresaw disturbing moral, political and intellectual implications. But they were ready to confront them.

If Darwin's doctrine be true, said the Morning Chronicle, "the result may be contemplated with composure, for the further we get from falsehood, the nearer we get to happiness". Science has advanced, but left a very large number of people behind. Unhappily, 200 years on from the birth of one of the world's greatest scientists, we are still not so far from falsehood.

Labels: Britain, Charles Darwin, DNA, evolution, science

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The Problem with Evolution Surveys

By Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director
02 February 2009 04:14 pm ET

In a new survey, a quarter of Britons say they believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "definitely true," with another quarter saying it is "probably true." That left half of the 2,060 people surveyed stating they were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it. That's how the survey was presented in The Guardian, with a headline claiming "half of Britons do not believe in evolution."

To those who know evolution to be a solid scientific theory, this poll might seem a glum assessment of public opinion. But let's break that latter half down, as the Guardian subsequently did:

About 10 percent of the survey respondents said they favor creationism, the idea that God created us and everything in seven days sometime roughly 6,000 years ago. Another 12 percent put their stock in intelligent design, an idea (not a theory) stating that life is too complex to not imagine something — presumably God — having a hand in it. "The remainder were unsure, often mixing evolution, intelligent design and creationism together," the Guardian article states.

By my calculation, that means only 22 percent reject evolution outright. That's significantly different than the newspaper's headline. It's also quite different from frequently cited surveys in the United States that apparently have found more than half the population doesn't believe in evolution. Those surveys are typically flawed, too, however, or their results are discussed way out of context. Here's why:

The confluence of evolution and religion is a very tricky topic for pollsters to get at, because many people hold multiple views. Among them:

* Some people agree that evolution is at work in the animal kingdom but don't see it having a role in humans.
* Others are comfortable with the notion that humans have evolved but figure God either set it all in motion or actually keeps a hand in the process all along, with the assumption (by some in this group) that scientists are pretty darn clueless.
* Still others see the theory of evolution as a scientific concept, whereas God is a spiritual concept, and the two have nothing to do with each other.
* At either end of the spectrum, of course, are those who reject evolution and those who reject God.

There's another huge problem that suggests surveys of this nature typically don't delve deeply enough into what people really think: Some people simply know very little about what evolution theory is, and in fact very little about the scientific concepts that underpin the theory, including modern genetics. Their answers to out-of-the-blue questions from a telephone pollster may come with little thought, perhaps rooted in emotion or, in some cases, even wishful thinking. And if they do think, many people may not really know what they think about all this because unlike scientists, educators, activists and LiveScience readers, they don't sit around pondering all this too much.

As an illustration of how little Americans know about basic science, The FASEB study also analyzed the results from a 10-country survey in which adults were tested with 10 true or false statements about basic concepts from genetics. One of the statements was "All plants and animals have DNA." (The correct answer is "yes.") Americans had a median score of 4.

Imagine framing a poll question this way: "When over a few generations a virus mutates to resist the effects of an antibiotic, thereby becoming deadly to humans, that's an example of evolution. Do you believe in evolution?"

All this matters because the theory of evolution is one of the most well-supported theories of science, and scientists and most science teachers think it should be taught in science class without religious ideas such as creationism and intelligent design. (Intelligent design purports to simply offer an alternative way of looking at the theory of evolution, but in reality it is a sneaky means by its promoters to bring creationism into science classrooms, critics say.)

Footnote: You're going to be hearing a lot about Charles Darwin this year, because the father of the theory of evolution would be 200 years old. There will be worthwhile discoveries regarding evolution that happen to coincide with the hoopla, and then there will be feature stories written to sell newspapers and drive web traffic, many of them rooted in well-meaning efforts by scientific organizations and institutions aiming to battle those who would tear evolution down. Thought you ought to know.

Labels: Britain, creationism, evolution, intelligent design, Robert Roy Britt, surveys

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Half of Britons do not believe in evolution, survey finds

More than one-fifth prefer creationism or intelligent design, while many others are confused about Darwin's theory

Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design to explain how the world came about, according to a survey.

The poll found that 25% of Britons believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "definitely true", with another quarter saying it is "probably true". Half of the 2,060 people questioned were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it.

The Rescuing Darwin survey, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, found that around 10% of people chose young Earth creationism – the belief that God created the world some time in the last 10,000 years – over evolution.

About 12% preferred intelligent design, the idea that evolution alone is not enough to explain the structures of living organisms. The remainder were unsure, often mixing evolution, intelligent design and creationism together. The survey was conducted by the polling agency ComRes on behalf of the Theos thinktank.

James Williams, a lecturer at Sussex University, said: "Creationists ask if people believe in evolution. Evolution is a theory and a fact. You accept it because of the evidence. What the creationists have done is put a cloak of pseudo-science to wrap up their religious belief."

Later this month scientists and academics from across Europe will meet in Dortmund, Germany, to discuss evolution and creationism. It will be the first European conference of its kind to deal with different aspects of attitudes and knowledge related to evolution. They will discuss specific difficulties regarding the acceptance of evolution theory in their home countries.

Williams, who will give a paper presenting a British perspective on evolution and creationism in school science, said: "Evolution is very badly taught in schools so the results of the survey don't surprise me. On the other hand, creationism has traditionally been an issue in North America and there is a big problem in Australia and Turkey. It matters if people don't understand how science works."

Labels: Britain, Charles Darwin, creationism, evolution, intelligent design, Rescuing Darwin

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Friday, February 06, 2009

Religion now more divisive than race, says public

AT least four out of 10 Muslims do not believe that communities should be forced to integrate in Britain, according to a new poll.

It also found that religion has become a more divisive issue than race.

The survey for the Government's Equalities and Human Rights Commission revealed that more than half of the public believe it is likely that the UK will have a non-white prime minister within 20 years.

However, the black and Afro-Caribbean community, 56 per cent of which believe that the failings of the 1999 police inquiry into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in south-east London in 1993 would still be repeated today, retain some reservations about progress in race relations.

But a greater number of people in all communities apart from Muslims believe that Britain has become more racially tolerant.

Commission chairman Trevor Phillips said: "It is heartening to recognise that here in Britain we have a sophisticated sense of our own identity and an appreciation and interest in difference.

"But we can't be complacent. The survey points to emerging religious divisions.

"And as we mark a darker moment in our own history, the 10th anniversary of the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it is clear the police still have work to do to convince our ethnic-minority communities they deserve their trust."

Labels: Britain, Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Muslims, race, religion

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Researchers to probe why people believe in religion

Wed Feb 20, 2008

By Peter Apps

Page one of two...click on external link for full article

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - A team of British-based researchers will spend the next three years probing why people believe in religion.

They will undertake what they said is the largest research project of its kind, armed with a grant of almost two million pounds ($4 million) from a U.S. foundation.

The grant came from the Sir John Templeton Foundation. It was founded two decades ago by a Wall Street banker to support science by funding investigation into the "big questions".

Some experts argued there might be an evolutionary advantage to religious belief, possibly because a society believing in an all-knowing moral god might follow rules better, giving it an advantage over others.

"Groups that have religious sentiment might be more likely to co-operate, giving them a comparative advantage," Barret said. "Children seem to find the idea of an all-knowing God to be a very easy one to take on. It's very attractive in an intuitive sense."

As well as the monotheistic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, researchers will also look at belief systems with multiple gods from Hinduism to ancient religions still practiced in parts of Latin America.

Labels: Britain, God, gods, John Templeton Foundation, Peter Apps, religion

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Teaching happiness: the classes in wellbeing that are helping our children

From Times Online
February 18, 2008

Binge drinking, mental health issues, adolescent suicide: how can we solve the problems that beset so many children? The answer may lie with the new science of positive psychology

In a classroom in South Tyneside, a small group of 11-year-olds is considering the finer points of Stoic philosophy. The teacher, Mrs Carrahar, points helpfully at the blackboard. “Come on now, kids, remember your ABC: Adversity, Belief, Consequence. Sometimes how we feel about things depends on ... what? It begins with P ... Yes, Darren?” “Perspective, miss!” says a small child. “Very good, Darren!”

The class is the latest experiment in a new movement called “positive psychology”, which is slowly but surely revolutionising the way that education is approached in the English-speaking world. It is the brainchild of Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. If there is one figure responsible for the deluge of books, articles and TV programmes on happiness with which we have been inundated over the last five years, it is Seligman. So, when I meet him in a hotel suite in London, it is a relief to discover that he is not some moronically upbeat figure, like the self-help guru played by Patrick Swayze in Donnie Darko.

In fact, he tells me, “I was a slightly depressive grump for the first 40 years of my life”. After considering a career as a professional bridge player, then turning down a Fulbright scholarship in analytical philosophy at Oxford, he eventually became a psychologist and forged a distinguished name for himself studying “learned helplessness”, or how animals (and people) learn to give up in apparently hopeless situations.

While researching the phenomenon, Seligman was struck by something: some people, and even some animals, didn't give up even in highly adverse circumstances. He began to be interested in the opposite phenomenon, “learned optimism” - why some people possess unusual powers of resilience and self-control, and whether those powers can be taught or cultivated in others.

When, in 1998, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association, the largest body of psychologists in the world, he decided that he wanted to use his presidency to shift the discipline from its histor-ical focus on mental illness to a new focus on mental health and wellbeing.

He began to gather together his own and other people's research from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), as well as from neuropsychology, the social sciences and even economics, to try to find the secret to living well. His team discovered that about 50 per cent of our average happiness level is genetically conditioned. But the rest is conditioned by things under our control: both external factors, such as our job or social life, and inner factors, such as how we think and what values we have.

His team undertook a huge amount of life satisfaction surveys, to look at what really made people happy. They discovered that some external conditions were not as important as people commonly believed: changes in income, for example, played a marginal role in life satisfaction. Other external conditions played a much bigger role, such as having a rich social network or being married.

The team also identified the inner work that can improve your wellbeing. They incorporated many techniques from CBT that have been proved to help to overcome depression and anxiety disorders. They also tried out cognitive and pedagogic techniques from ancient philosophy and spirituality, such as the idea of character strengths from Aristotle, mindfulness from Buddhism and learning to challenge one's irrational beliefs from Stoicism, then tested these insights empirically, to see if they really worked. As Seligman says: “We took some ideas from ancient philosophy and married them to the new scientific study of happiness. Aristotle never had the benefit of the seven-point scale [used to measure life satisfaction].”

So, while positive psychology is in some ways a “new science”, and a new way of approaching education, in other ways it is a return to the norm for Western education, which for centuries, through the Roman Empire and beyond, taught young people philosophic techniques to manage their thoughts and emotions. Indeed, he may not know it, but the ABC model of emotions that Darren is learning on Tyneside comes directly from a Stoic philosopher called Epictetus, who suggested that “it is not events, but our beliefs about them, that cause us suffering”.

It has also been taught for the past two years at the £9,000-a-year Wellington College in Berkshire. There, a teacher called Ian Morris, who bears a striking resemblance to David Miliband, tries to guide his wealthy young pupils to a rounded sense of the good life. He says: “Most of them really seem to value the lessons. You occasionally get some mucking around. I sent one boy out for clowning around and he complained, ?I got thrown out of happiness classes for laughing', which I thought was pretty funny.” Harry, a polite 16-year-old whom I meet at a meditation workshop at Wellington, says the wellbeing classes have a decent reputation among the pupils. “We're a very sporty school, and Mr Morris appeals to that in the classes. For example, he teaches us a basic meditation technique which he says Sir Steve Redgrave used before big rowing races.”

Britain is, at the moment, doing badly in terms of helping its young to achieve wellbeing. The UK came bottom in a recent Unicef survey of life satisfaction among children in 21 developed countries. The Institute of Psychiatry announced last year that the number of children with emotional and behavioural problems in the UK has doubled in the past 25 years. The number of adolescent suicides has quadrupled.

To try to take the teaching of wellbeing forward, Layard organised a pilot scheme to teach “resilience” in 22 state schools in South Tyneside, Hertfordshire and Manchester. Last July about 100 teachers and local council officials spent ten days at the University of Pennsylvania, where they trained with some of the most famous psychologists in the world, including Seligman himself and Aaron Beck, the inventor of CBT. They came back enthused. “The ideas we learnt were so useful, even for our own lives,” says Diane Wood, assistant to the chief executive of South Tyneside council. “In ten days, our head of child services overcame his fear of flying, while I don't think I've argued with my teenage son once since I went on the course.”

They started to teach the subject in September to 4,000 kids ranging from 11 to 16. The classes include teaching cognitive techniques to some troubled adolescents who have dropped out of schools because of bullying or other problems. I sat in on one in South Tyneside. The teacher, Melissa, started by picking out entries from a “problem box”, into which the students had put anonymously written notes about problems they were facing.

One note that Melissa read out says: “I'm not sure I can take any more. I feel so stressed and bad all the time. It all started when I went to the new school.” The pupils then discussed the problem, empathising and asking what could be done to change things, both in terms of the person's inner beliefs and his or her external circumstances. One affable 16-year-old boy with tattoos on his arms, Geoff, said: “I lost a tenner the other day. I was stressed at first, then I figured, well, it could have been more.” The boy next to him laughed, “Yeah, but it wasn't your money, was it?” “Well, that too,” Geoff conceded with a smile.

The pilot scheme is intended to last three years, during which the children will be surveyed to check the effect of the classes on their wellbeing and emotional resilience, compared with groups who haven't been to the classes. The results so far have been good; council officials in Tyneside and Hertfordshire are already eager to roll out the subject to more schools.

Seligman tells me that nowhere else in the world have his ideas been so taken up by public policy as in the UK. “There's a real buzz here about the politics of wellbeing,” he says. He compares Britain's embrace of both positive psychology and CBT to the Renaissance government of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, which used its wealth to help to translate and reintroduce ideas from ancient philosophy.

The Government's interest in CBT and positive psychology is, in large part, thanks to Lord Layard, who wrote an influential report in 2002, pointing out that the Government spent more money on incapacity benefits for the mentally ill than it did on unemployment benefits. Mental illness, he declared, was “the major social problem facing our country today”.

Positive psychology also seems to offer a way forward for education beyond the ethical relativism of the past 30 years when, in the words of Darrin McMahon, the author of The Pursuit of Happiness, “the only people teaching values in schools seem to be sports coaches”. The science of happiness is a way in which timeless values and philosophical techniques can be reintroduced into the classroom.

Even among the leaders of the wellbeing movement, there is disagreement over what the meaning or goal of life should be: Lord Layard thinks the goal of policy should be “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. Seligman says: “There's too much emphasis on happiness, I think. I'm interested in the meaningful or virtuous life, what the Greeks called eudaimonia.”

As concepts of wellbeing are slowly introduced into the national curriculum, this pluralism of views needs to be displayed, not hidden away. Young people need to be given guidance in tried and tested ways of thinking and living, but they also need to understand that no two people (or prophets) ever fully agree on the meaning of life, and no amount of scientific data should ever stand in the way of them making up their own minds.

Labels: Britain, education, happiness, Jules Evans, learned optimism, Martin Seligman, positive psychology

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Saturday, December 08, 2007

Britons who don't know where Jesus was born

By Jonathan Petre
08/12/2007

The extent of Britons' ignorance about the Christmas story is illustrated today in a new report which shows more than a quarter of adults do not know where Jesus was born.

A survey found 27 per cent of Britons aged 18 and over were unable to identify Bethlehem as Jesus's birth place, while the figure rose to 36 per cent of people aged between 18 and 24.

The poll also found that more than one in four people - 27 per cent - were unaware that an angel told Mary that she would give birth to a son, with some saying she was informed by the shepherds.

Most people surveyed believed that Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Nazareth rather than Egypt when they escaped from King Herod, and a few even said the holy family's destination was Rome.

Only 12 per cent of adults could answer all four questions about the Christmas story correctly.

The results of the survey, conducted among 1,015 adults last month, are likely to refuel the debate about the secularisation of Christmas.

The poll found that people's knowledge dips significantly with age, with only seven per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds able to answer all four questions correctly. Middle aged people, aged 55 to 64, knew the most, with 18 per cent getting all the questions right.

The findings followed research by the Sunday Telegraph last weekend showing that only one school in every five was planning to stage a traditional Nativity play this year.

Paul Woolley, the director of Theos, the theological think-tank which commissioned the survey, insisted the survey showed the Christmas story, in its classic formulation, was still "very much" in the "cultural bloodstream" of the nation.

"The fact that younger people are the least knowledgeable about the Christmas story may reflect a decline in the telling of Bible stories in schools and the popularity of Nativity plays," he said.

"No one seriously thinks that being a Christian or a member of the established Church is the same thing as being British today.

"But, at the same time, if we are serious about social cohesion we can't afford to ignore the stories that have bound us together as a culture for a thousand years.

"Any attempts to down-play the Christmas story in order to help social cohesion are likely to be counterproductive."

Unsurprisingly, Christian churchgoers knew the story best, with 36 per cent answering all questions correctly, compared with only five per cent of those describing themselves as atheists.

The questions

1. According to the story in the Christian Bible, where was Jesus born?

73 per cent correctly said Bethlehem. Of the 27 per cent who were wrong, 10 per cent said Nazareth and 9 per cent said Jerusalem.

2. Who told Mary that she would give birth to a son?

73 per cent correctly said an angel. Of the 27 per cent who were wrong, six per cent said the wise men, five per cent said the shepherds and four per cent said Joseph.

3. Who was Jesus' cousin?

48 per cent correctly said John the Baptist. Of the 52 per cent who were wrong, 12 per cent said Peter, six per cent said Luke and six per cent said James. 26 per cent said they did not know.

4. Where did Joseph, Mary and Jesus go to escape from King Herod when Jesus was a young child?

22 per cent correctly said Egypt. Of the 78 per cent who were wrong, 52 per cent said Nazareth, five per cent said Babylon and one per cent said Rome.

Labels: Britain, Christian, Christmas, Jesus, Jonathan Petre