Joseph Graves from EvoS Blogs
How Does Creationism Harm African Americans?
Author page for Graves - HERE
EvoS - HERE
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution
The data indicate that the majority of Americans accept a Biblical account of the origin of the human species. Even more striking is the fact, that of those who accept Biblical accounts, 77% of these individuals accept a literalist interpretation of the event occurring over six 24 hour days. As an African American scientist, I had always suspected that the response to this question amongst those of my own ethnicity would be even higher. To address this suspicion I recently contacted the Peter Hart and Bill McInturff polling organization and asked for the response percentages for African Americans. Their data showed the following:
These data validate what I have always known, African Americans are ½ as likely as the general population to accept evolution as a valid explanation and 1.4 times more likely to accept the Biblical account. Finally within Biblical account, the literalist explanation (6 days) was 76% about the same as the general population (but remember a larger percentage of African Americans reject evolution.) Why does this happen? [Snip] I argue here that the fundamentalism of the National Baptist Convention is causing harm to the African American community. Specifically its fundamentalist views make it more difficult to attract talented African American students into careers in science (specifically those disciplines in science that may contradict fundamentalist doctrine, e.g. Archaeology, Anthropology, Human Genetics, or Evolutionary Biology.)
)
