You make several good points, Razib. Also, you utilize some framing elements that have potential usefulness well beyond the specific issue. In particular, the notions of default models and (empty) verbal tokens caught my eye. I have encountered many a believer who believed in something that they didn't actually know what it was. I also think we have a default model, which is anthropomorphic on account of us being social creatures and the anthropomorphic model applies to mom, dad, sis, the kids at school, the teachers, etc., etc. Works okay for the dog too, up to a point. So why not try the angry daddy in the sky theory for lightning?

However, I don't agree that evolution is counter-intuitive. I think there's actually an alternative default model, impersonal/mechanistic. Maybe you have a better term for it. Both genetic and culture in the wide sense influence the span of each default, and of course there is disputed border.

can you elaborate on point #2? also, i have to give props to john derbyshire for this use of the term 'default model.'

re: familial analogy, i think there is something to this, but i think it is more important that we seen agency in the world around us. it is natural then to imbue that agency with some of our social concepts.

Kudos for a thoughtful and insightful post. As a former Catholic, one insight that I can add is that instruction in Catholic parochial schools varies widely on many issues, including evolution. My high school biology class (circa 1968) was taught by an elderly nun in a conservative parish that was an outpost of French Canadian immigrants in New Hampshire. As best I can remember, evolution was either omitted entirely or very much downplayed (resulting in a tedious boring class with lots of rote memorization). However, in the same school we were sometimes taught by younger priests and lay teachers, and they often promoted views that were much more progressive.

The idea that there was considerably flexibility in viewpoints allowed by the Roman Catholic church is also tied up with the issue of "ex cathedra" pronouncements. I was led to believe that unless the Pope specifically said he was speaking "ex cathedra", one could still dissent and remain a faithful Catholic. If the Pope did speak "ex cathedra" on some topic, he was supposedly invoking the authority conferred by Jesus to St. Peter (and to all successive Popes) to issue morally infallible pronouncements. It's my understanding (and I'm no expert) that the Pope seldom speaks "ex cathedra", and has never done so with respect to evolution.

Often people have a perception that culture is an all-powerful force in reshaping how you view the world

I don't think this. But I do think that culture shapes our view of the world in ways that are often unknown to us, i.e. that the world might be different in surprising ways from what our culture leads us, without our knowledge, to assume.

I suspect that the biggest psychological influence that favors creationism in the USA is the desire to fit in.

Being a non-conformist in a small religious community would have a certain cost I suspect.

Take some of those religious Americans to secular Europe and their beliefs may well change after a few years.
I wonder if anyone's tested this?
Do expatriate Americans living in Europe eventually become more like Europeans with respect to Darwinism?

I'm not positive what you take as point #2 in my comment, but it's probably the thing about believers not knowing what they believe.

Most recently, I got into a discussion about the nature of existence in heaven with some average guy type believers. Their "belief" in heaven turned out to be an empty box when I opened it up with a question about whether they still expected to have an ass hole.

On a somewhat different note, none of these people was really ready to fully buy into biblical literalism. Rejecting biology is one thing, rejecting geology and astronomy too, that was more than they could quite bring themselves to. The most ignorant and fundamentalist of the bunch allowed as to how the world and the wider universe appear as if they are old. From there, we came to an agreement that science offers the simpler and generally more useful way to explain evidence and make predictions; but as a philosophical matter the possibility that the whole thing is a putup job from ten thousand years ago remains open. From that point, when the ignorant fundy attacked evolution as science with the usual lame stuff, I could point out that he must think God is more stupid than he is, making everything look old except for that thin spot he thought he put his thumb through.

Broadly speaking, I don't think Creationism can be rejected as a possibility. Do we know for sure that space aliens or the Archangel Gabriel didn't nudge an asteroid of a cosmic ray somewhere along the line? No. Do we know that the universe isn't a dream in God's mind that started 10 kya? No. Shrug.

This was all before I heard about the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster.

Atypically, it seems to me that Razib is glossing over human variation in what "makes sense". In general I agree with the post, but evolution always "made sense" to me, and I suspect to him, prior to learning any quantitative models of it. Also, I think that at least some people do have a sense of what very large numbers mean. I will say that it seems to me that I *do* grok what 100,000,000 years means, though probably not what 1,000,000,000,000 years means. I know at least one person who I believe does grok what 1,000,000,000,000 years means too.

In general I agree with the post, but evolution always "made sense" to me, and I suspect to him, prior to learning any quantitative models of it.

there is variation and there is abberation.

I'm not surprised that Mormonism is changing under the influence of non-Mormon Protestants. The boundary lines are very porous between different religious faiths in North America.

In theory, there are significant doctrinal differences among the branches of Protestantism. Presbyterians, for instance, believe in salvation by an elite, whereas Congregationalists believe in salvation by the grassroots. Anglicans, in theory, aren't even Protestants at all, having broken away from Catholicism before the Reformation.

In reality, however, the average Protestant is at best dimly aware of these differences. I know of many who have converted from one Protestant denomination to another simply to save driving time on Sunday. And ideas circulate even more freely.

At present, the most dynamic idea-creators within Protestantism are the fundamentalists. And their ideas are percolating throughout the entire population that claims to be Christian. Even non-Christians (charismatic Catholics, certain Jewish groups, and even Muslims) are being influenced by memes from the Christian fundamentalist subculture. The Black Muslims, for instance, were originally a deviant Christian sect that had no real linkage to the Islamic community. They then progressively "returned" to Islam, and in the process made a substantial contribution to the formation of modern radical Islam.

"Even non-Christians (charismatic Catholics, certain Jewish groups, and even Muslims)"

That should be "non-Protestants" (my apologies to charismatic Catholics).

Good point, Peter.

Christianity is peculiar in it's attachment to doctrine about matters that are both beyond proof and disconnected from direct, perceived self interest; matters such as salvation, the nature of the trinity, etc. Why this should be is hard to understand from the POV of the psychology of most people or from the POV of a philosopher. It's best understood from the POV of an epidemiologist looking at Christianity as a family of commensal/parasitic organisms.

Razib, I think the agency framing and the narrower anthropomorph framing are both useful. A high rez picture of the underlying processes would probably fall somewhere in between. That is to say, our default framing of agency has some specifically anthropomorphic coloring.

Christianity is peculiar in it's attachment to doctrine about matters that are both beyond proof and disconnected from direct, perceived self interest; matters such as salvation, the nature of the trinity, etc. Why this should be is hard to understand from the POV of the psychology of most people or from the POV of a philosopher. It's best understood from the POV of an epidemiologist looking at Christianity as a family of commensal/parasitic organisms.

we need to be fully aware of the diversity of dynamics within "christendom" though. the free market metastable american denominational religious market has not been the norm throughout the history of christian cultures, which has been characterized by the church universal. as for christian emphasis on doctrine, there is something to this, but my hunch is that these distinctions are overplayed (theology, from what i gather, is rather well developed in shia islam for example).

There's a taxonomy to this doctrine thing. It's not disconnected from Greek and Jewish roots, and of course Islam flatters both Judeism and Christianity with imitation. However, both Islam and Judeism put more of their doctrinal chips on behavior rather than on the nuances of theology. With religious identity securely anchored in behavior, it's mooring doesn't interfer with the realm of perception. Catholicism has evolved in this direction (by intelligent design) after the bad experience with Galileo.

I think we agree far more than we disagree, just a matter of getting our terminology aligned and some matters of emphasis.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down,"

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
From The Onion of course.