Believe in the Super Bowl

I blogged recently (Indoctrinate, Don’t Educate) on the steady growth of a very significant segment of the U.S. population choosing an “education” that eschews scientific theory in favor of rather literal interpretations of the Biblical stories. Choosing Evangelical home schooling or fundamentalist Christian education over secular alternatives, public or private, this phenomenon explains the explosive growth of the Tea Party, founded on such extreme social conservatism. It also explains why so many Americans believe that the world was created whole cloth within the last 10,000 years, despite an overwhelming mass of scientific evidence that the earth is billions of years old and zero scientific evidence in support of that 10,000 year theory (or anything close to it).

In June of last year, Gallup conducted a poll that asked which of three statements most closely reflected the subject’s actual belief. One indicated that man evolved over millions of years from other species without divine intervention. A second presented the first statement but indicated that this was a God-guided process. The third category stated that God created the world pretty much as we know it 10,000 years ago. 42% of those polled selected the third, creationist theory, a number that has not fluctuated much since 1982, which is when this poll first began (long after the home/Evangelical schooling trend accelerated in the 1960s/70s).

Not surprisingly, “Religiousness relates most strongly to these views, which is not surprising, given that this question deals directly with God's role in human origins. The percentage of Americans who accept the creationist viewpoint ranges from 69% among those who attend religious services weekly to 23% among those who seldom or never attend.” These fairly powerful numbers are significantly different from most of the rest of the world.

“A [university] comparison of peoples' views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower… Among the factors contributing to America's low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, the researchers say.

“American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close,” said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.” LifeScience.com, August 10, 2006. Scientists have overwhelmingly taken an rather firm stand to the contrary, however.

“[T]he scientific community considers intelligent design, a neo-creationist offshoot, to be unscientific, pseudoscience, or junk science. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that intelligent design ‘and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life’ are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own. In September 2005, 38 Nobel laureates issued a statement saying ‘Intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent.’ In October 2005, a coalition representing more than 70,000 Australian scientists and science teachers issued a statement saying ‘intelligent design is not science’ and calling on ‘all schools not to teach Intelligent Design (ID) as science, because it fails to qualify on every count as a scientific theory’.” Wikipedia

But if you are a religious person with a betting interest in the Super Bowl, do you have an advantage? Does deflategate suggest that the Patriots are less God-fearing than the Seahawks? Should you bet accordingly? Do God-fearing athletes get extra blessings? “One in four Americans say yes, according to a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and Religion News Service.

“Twenty-six percent of Americans and 27 percent of self-described sports fans believe God plays a role in determining which team will win a sporting event. Even more -- 53 percent of Americans and 56 percent of sports fans -- say God rewards faithful athletes with good health and success… Sixty-five percent of Catholics and 68 percent of Protestants believe God rewards faithful athletes, while just 27 percent of the religiously unaffiliated say the same.

“Protestants, at 45 percent, are more likely than other religious groups to believe God plays a role in determining the winner of a sporting event. Thirty-one percent of Catholics and nine percent of the religiously unaffiliated agree.

“Two weeks before the 2014 Super Bowl, half of American sports fans said they believed God or a supernatural force had a hand in the games they watched, according to a PRRI study at the time. Included in that percentage were the 26 percent of Americans who pray for God to help their team, 25 percent who think their team has been cursed and 19 percent who believe more generally that God is involved in determining who wins on the court or in the field.” Huffington Post, January 22^nd. Too bad there isn’t a religious poll that accompanies sports betting. And perhaps that’s why so many church-goers prefer their worship service over watching their favorite teams in person or on television. They already know who’s going to win anyway.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how scientifically competitive a future America will be when there is such a huge segment of the population raised not to question facts when there is conflicting religious doctrine.