Farrell Till

Well, the Peoria, Illinois, area has several other universities and colleges in it besides Bloomington/Normal. Bradley is in Peoria, and Western Illinois University is in Macomb. The University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University have satellite campuses at Springfield, and there are several community colleges in this area. I'm located right in the middle of an area that has six universities and several colleges within an 80-mile radius. I taught at one of the community colleges before I retired, and I was surprised when a survey taken showed that most of the students there accepted the theory of evolution. I'm sure that the thousands of college stuents in this area would drop the percentage of creationists well below 99%, but otherwise it is hard to find anyone who accepts the theory of evolution.

CX

Fair enough. I've only been down that way a few times and never for very long. I have noticed however that religious attitudes are very different (I'd say more provincial but that would be very elitist of me) in the Midwest than on either coast and have more in common with the "bible belt" than other parts of the country. But that could be my own bias. In any event I've probably derailed this thread enough.

JaeIsGod

In my town almost nobody above 45 or so has had any real education. Most just started to work when they hit 16 and still know squat. Among the younger crowd there is a small group of people who actually seem to have a clue about the world , but the majority seems utterly ignorant about the outside world.

I have met one guy in my town who thought evolution might be true , but he isnt sure. Rest seems to be die hard YEC who punish their kids for using the word evolution.Its considered a curse around here , I remember my mom going crazy when they used the word in a cartoon =]

excreationist

goat37:
Your comment about Jeopardy is very important... maybe an Einstein-type YEC might also not have a very deep knowledge about evolution. i.e. their genius could be focused in another area.
As far as Einstein goes, his specialty is theoretical physics, yet he never accepted that quantum physics may be real, even at the time of his death in 1955 when he had a minority view. (e.g. see Now You See It, Now You Don't)
Perhaps the main reason why he refused to accept the possibility of quantum physics is summed up in this famous statement of his: "God does not play dice with the universe".
from here - "Einstein was unable to accept Quantum Theory because of his belief in an objective, orderly reality: a reality which would not be subject to random events and which would not be dependent upon the observer. He believed that Quantum Mechanics was incomplete, and that a better theory would have no need for statistical interpretations."
So with that assumption, he stubbornly rejected quantum physics.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/313.asp
BTW, according to AiG, Kurt Wise's doctoral degree in palaeontology was completed at Harvard under Professor Stephen Jay Gould. So that YEC would be quite intelligent and knowledgeable about a relevant field (palaeontology). Remember that there wouldn't be many YEC's in the world that are qualified (therefore knowledgeable) in relevant areas such as biology, astronomy or geology. And they might refer to YEC books when thinking about the fields they aren't qualified in and draw confidence in YEC from those other fields.

The New Testament specifically talks about the belief in God being based on faith and Jesus often praises people for their faith. (e.g. bible search for "have faith") So it isn't necessarily a cop-out.

pz:
That is terrible!!! So only less than 5-10% of the kids would be exposed to it in the education system (through science degrees) and even less people would believe in evolution due to their lack of exposure to it. Well at least some of them would hear about evolution and millions/billions of years on TV.... but that wouldn't be as good because they'd just get small snippets of information that a long creationist site or book could argue away.

excreationist

JaeIsGod:
But you were just answering to their questions with unsupported assertions. You were talking as if they agreed with you. You should say things like "Well I think...." and "...that's just what I think" (kind of apologizing)
Those questions involve them thinking about whether YEC is correct or atheism is. They're not considering OEC due to what YEC's have told them. (That the Bible quite clearly teaches a young earth, etc, and that the Bible says that it is inspired, etc)

It may be a good idea to say that many or most people who believe in evolution would still believe in some kind of God or gods and maybe an afterlife. Though many people, including yourself, don't need that belief to be fairly happy.

You could point out that Christopher Reeve (who played Superman but is now very disabled) doesn't believe in God. (see celebatheists.com) He believes in a kind of spirituality where an inner strength and love is involved though. He also believes in souls.

If they (hypothetically) reject YEC, they might reject Christianity too, but that doesn't mean that other things like out of body experiences and some form of afterlife (like reincarnation) isn't true. You could bring that up to show that you aren't just trying to force feed them atheism. They'd probably reject things like reincarnation anyway though since there isn't much evidence for it.

On celebatheists.com there are many other examples... including agnostics.
e.g.
Katharine Hepburn said, "I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other."

You could ask the person how those people could be fairly happy - yet many of them would doubt that the afterlife exists. (Some atheists/agnostics might believe in the afterlife though - like Buddhists? or semi-Buddhists/New-age people)