Razib on Mormons and Evolution

I think one would have to unpack what one means by authoritarian. Almost by definition if one is simply cherry picking then that’s not authoritarian as I understand it.

I do think though that many Mormons take a kind of lazy hermeneutics of easy proof-texting and reading a few easy books and treating them like dogma. That’s why I think McConkie was so influential from the 60′s through the 80′s. But honestly, when was the last time you heard Mormon Doctrine quoted in Church? It’s been an awfully long time for me. It seems to me that there was a significant transition in the 90′s.

That said, especially for the non-college educated (which was another of Razib’s points upon analyzing the data), I think there will be a tendency to keep to naive readings. It much easier when you are ignorant of the biology and find a few anti-evolutionary quotes from important figures even if those figures were writing decades ago.

What I’d really, really like to see is data of Mormon attitudes towards evolution with first a better form of the question and then a breakdown by education level, political beliefs and location. (i.e. are Mormons is less dense Mormon areas like Utah and Arizona more or less likely to be favorable towards evolution) I’d also like to see some analysis of what they actually understand by the term evolution. Sadly, so far as I know that sort of survey has never been done.

My predictions (and I think the statistical info Razib presents points in this direction) are the following:

(1) the more educated you are the more likely you are to believe in natural selection and the transition of life forms including man.

(2) the more your peers are conservative Protestants the less likely you are to accept evolution

(3) the older you are the less likely you are to accept evolution

(4) the more you identify with the very conservative wing of the Republican party the less likely you are to accept evolution (which is related to 2)