[Thor]

Originally Posted by Bagor

2060 IMO isn't a big enough sample size to represent a population of 61 million.

To that statement, here is Richard Dawkin's exchange with Johnathan:

24. Comment #331345 by Richard Dawkins on January 31, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Here's my e-mail exchange with Jonathan Wynne-Jones, in which you can see the context of my 'pig-ignorant' remark. He sent me the raw findings, which I have here extracted and interspersed with my comments, which are in bold.

Only half of the UK population consistently choose evolution over creationism or Intelligent Design, according to a major report published today by Theos, the public theology think-tank.
This is in line with previous surveys, for example the Eurobarometer Survey of 2005, and the MORI poll commissioned by the BBC in 2006.
Nick Spencer, the director of studies at Theos and co-author of the report, said:
“The problem is that evolution has become mixed up with all sorts of ideas – like the belief that there is no God, or no purpose or no absolute morality in life – which people find very difficult to accept."
This may well be true, but it is illogical. Whether evolution is true or not should depend on the strength of the evidence, NOT on whether people find palatable something else that they perceive to be "mixed up" with it.
“The tragedy is that this was never Darwin’s position. Three years before he died he wrote ‘it seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.’
“And in one of the last letters he ever wrote, to the philosopher William Graham, he said, ‘my inward conviction [is] that the Universe is not the result of chance'."
Obviously life, which was Darwin's own subject is not the result of chance. Any fool can see that. Natural selection is the very antithesis of chance. The error is to think that God is the only alternative to chance, and Darwin surely didn't think that, because he himself discovered the most important non-theistic alternative to chance, namely natural selection.
“Sadly, however, Darwin’s own beliefs have been ignored or misused by some of his modern disciples. Today too many people associate Darwin and his theory with a bleak and brutal vision of life, which is why so many people are sceptical about evolution."
Once again, it is totally illogical to say, "X is bleak and brutal and I don't like X, therefore X must be false". The truth is the truth, whether you find it bleak and brutal or not.
Paul Woolley, the director of Theos, said:
“Darwin was a truly great natural scientist – not a theologian or a philosopher. Both his theory and the tragic loss of his favourite daughter played a role in his own loss of Christian faith. But, by his own admission, even in his wildest fluctuations he was never an atheist."
Darwin described himself as an agnostic. His son Francis recounts an interesting conversation that Darwin had, toward the end of his life, with the atheists Edward Aveling and Ludwig Büchner. Darwin asked them why they called themselves atheists. They replied that they neither denied nor affirmed God. Then Darwin gave what his son Francis described as a 'thoughtful response', concluding, "I am with you in thought, but I should prefer the word Agnostic to the word Atheist." When Aveling replied that 'Agnostic' was but 'Atheist' writ respectable, and 'Atheist' was only 'Agnostic' writ aggressive, Darwin "smiled and responded, 'Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind? It is all very well for educated, cultured, thoughtful people; but are the masses yet ripe for it?"
“Unfortunately, he is being used by certain atheists today to promote their cause. The result is that, given the false choice of evolution or God, people are rejecting evolution."
For the third time, this is illogical. The evidence for evolution should be the sole criterion, not whether it is associated with something unpalatable. Unpalatability is irrelevant to truth.

Wynne-Jones replied, asking if he could phone me, but I preferred e-mail:

Richard, thanks for your comments. I appreciate it. would it be possible to ask you a couple of quick questions over the phone? Mainly, what do you make of such a large number of people being open to creationism . . . The figures are not so bad as the comparable figures from the USA or from Turkey (and presumably other Islamic countries) . . . and what do you put this down to?
Well, probably mostly ignorance. To put it into perspective, the Eurobarometer survey of 2005 found that 19% of the population of Britain think it takes one month for the Earth to orbit the sun. Nobody could say that this is due to wicked atheists scaring them with bleak and barren philosophy! If you think it takes one month for the Earth to orbit the sun, you are just plain pig-ignorant. Evidently 19% of the British population are sufficiently ignorant to believe that. The same survey found that 28% of British people believe 'the earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs'. With that level of ignorance of science generally, it is hardly surprising if a comparable number believe in creationism.

That was the end of our exchange. You'll notice that my phrase 'pig ignorant' referred to the 19% of people in Britain who think it takes one month for the Earth to orbit the sun. My intention was to rebut the charge that 'aggressive atheism' had driven people into the arms of the creationists, and I did so by pointing out that there is also widespread ignorance about other scientific matters.

Richard