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I've not studied the figures, so I'll leave Andy to defend his statements there, but I will add that I think we are not talking about a ''correlation'' of beliefs, but a ''basis'' of beliefs. The church, unfortunately, long ago capitulated to the majority view of scientists and felt that they had to "reinterpret" the Bible according to the findings of science, not realising that when we are talking about the past (long ages, the evolutionary family tree, etc.), that we are talking about ''history'', not ''science'', and that these scientists were basing their claims on naturalistic assumptions, not on scientific evidence. Therefore a very large number of Christians today accept long ages and (to a lesser extent) evolution, but even though these idea are accepted by many Christians, they are still at heart atheistic ideas. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 20:36, 26 November 2007 (EST)
I've not studied the figures, so I'll leave Andy to defend his statements there, but I will add that I think we are not talking about a ''correlation'' of beliefs, but a ''basis'' of beliefs. The church, unfortunately, long ago capitulated to the majority view of scientists and felt that they had to "reinterpret" the Bible according to the findings of science, not realising that when we are talking about the past (long ages, the evolutionary family tree, etc.), that we are talking about ''history'', not ''science'', and that these scientists were basing their claims on naturalistic assumptions, not on scientific evidence. Therefore a very large number of Christians today accept long ages and (to a lesser extent) evolution, but even though these idea are accepted by many Christians, they are still at heart atheistic ideas. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 20:36, 26 November 2007 (EST)
:Long ages are not necessarily atheistic, there are non-Christian cosmologies, like Hinduism that have no problem with long ages, and of course many Christians that have no problem with them either. Long ages by itself aren't atheistic. You might argue that they are in error, that the Church gave up it young earth for political gains, but criticism of the old world view and criticism of the Church for adopting it is just a tangent. The subject was the strong correlation between atheism and old earth belief - Andy said repeatedly that less of 1 in 100 believers also believes also in an old earth - and fact remains that a clear majority of people do combine a belief in God with a belief in long ages. They might be in error, but that doesn't change the fact that they do believe it, which implies that the correlation is by no means as strong as Andy suggests, nor that it is inevitable.[[User:Order|Order]] 21:47, 26 November 2007 (EST)
==Tides and the earth-moon distance==
==Tides and the earth-moon distance==