Riley Redux

   "My head's made up. You can't confuse me with the facts." -- Chester A. Riley, lead character in "The Life of Riley" radio series starring William Bendix.

   "More than four in 10 Americans continue to believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, a view that has changed little over the past three decades."  -- Gallup Inc., June 2, 2014.

   Since 1982, the Gallup organization, based in Princeton, NJ, has been asking Americans about evolution and whether God guided it. In the latest poll, 42 percent agreed with the statement that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago. In 1982, those who agreed were 44 percent of the total. That percentage ranged from a high of 47 percent in 1994 and in 2000  to a low of 40 percent in 2011.
   About a third of those surveyed accepted that humans beings developed over millions of years, but maintained that God guided the process. Finally, those who subscribed to a secularist viewpoint -- that humans evolved but God had not part in the process -- doubled in number since 1999, but still accounted for only 19 percent of those surveyed, according to the Gallup report.

   The scary thing remains the lack of change over the years the survey has been taken, using the same questions. Regardless of any and all evidence to the contrary, it's frightening that so many people -- 42 percent -- hold a view that has little scientific support.
   Spirituality and religion have important places in human society, but so does science, and there need not be any conflict between them. Whether one believes in a Creator God or not, whether Deist, Theist, Atheist or Agnostic, we are given the intelligence and therefore the obligation to seek answers to Nature's puzzles. While we search, religion (or spirituality, if you will), provides a way to explain or at least accept the unexplainable until we acquire enough knowledge to understand and explain.
   Many of the best scientists have themselves been sincere believers in a Creator God. Charles Darwin, the best known proponent of evolution, was himself an ordained minister.
   The word "science" is rooted in the Latin term "to know." And that is the goal of scientists, to learn, to know and to understand.
   The education system fails in its duty when it fails to balance knowledge and belief.

   Hence the motto for this series of commentaries: Belief without thought endangers freedom.