48% of Americans Reject Evolution 1856
MSNBC has up an article discussing the results of a Newsweek poll on faith and religion among members of the US populace. Given the straightforward question, 'Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?', some 48% of Americans said 'No'. Furthermore, 34% of college graduates said they accept the Biblical story of creation as fact. An alarmingly high number of individuals responded that they believe the earth is only 10,000 years old, and that a deity created our species in its present form at the start of that period.
This is interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The poll looks fairly well-constructed, but the problem is that evolution has become extremely politicized. For many, this question wasn't asking about science-- it was a political question (are you with the conservative-christians or the liberal-atheist-scientists?).
I think the real story here is the process by which scientific issues get politicized. It's a process that we really need to understand. John Timmer over at Ars Technica often writes about this.
Glass half full? (Score:4, Interesting)
Even with the rise of the evangelistic movement and the ties many have to the anti-evolution movement, they still pull only 48%.
Sounds not half bad to me.
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Evolution is, to many, extremely unintuitive, aside from religion. I've noticed that people have a really hard time with lots of other concepts similar to evolution (market economics and such).
Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad (Score:4, Interesting)
Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.
Hmm. Larry Wall is an evangelical Christian. According to his page [wall.org], he attends this church [nlnc.org].
Now, since his contributions are not valuable by your estimation, what is the name of the programming language which you have been developing for over 20 years and is the de facto language for development of dynamic web content and for automating system administration tasks on nearly every operating system?
I'm waiting.
Re:Even Jesus talked in parables (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out Calvinism and Arminianism on Wikipedia sometime. Use it as background for reading Miltons paradise lost and you'll begin to understand the history of the debate that still rages on today.
Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad (Score:3, Interesting)
For many reasons, we--the scientist and scientifically minded--kind of gave up on trying to explain our understanding and objectives to the "layman" and now the rift between us just keeps growing... this is bad because sheeple they may be, but they elect those who set the rules and decide where funding goes (think stem cell research, etc.).
Just like with racism or other unacceptable behavior, I always speak up and try to get across my point of view when faced with the irrational. At a minimum, I'm showing them that there is an alternate point of view, that not everyone agrees--usually only the fanatics are heard because they tend to speak most and loudest... Time to be heard!
Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad (Score:4, Interesting)
The braindead cry loudly evolution does not happen. Scientist silently go to work. Maybe to find a way to prove facts, which will convince even those, which of course is impossible. But more likely because they don't care, thinking truth will always win.
The braindead cry more and louder, because there is nobody who really opposes them, they win more and more often. Without dedicated opponents they win at schools, they win in the public media. They are fare more visible than they deserve. The final result is, that two legged protein lumps, which would be better suited as emergency food rations in hard times govern you and tell you what is right and what is wrong.
Re:How many non-religious don't believe in evoluti (Score:3, Interesting)
Beyond Belief (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically according to the research he quotes, there are stances the brain takes of thinking. Like the "physical" stance, how an object will react to gravity, etc. But that is slow and not really useful in judging complex machines (like animals for example). So there is a "design" stance, where you judge the function of an object and determine it's expected behaviour. That is sometimes too slow, so there is the "intention" stance, which assigns intentions to things. That tiger over there is going to attack me not because it has sharp claws capable of killing, but because he intends to kill me so I better run. Get the point. Anyway, according to research, infants and young children are especially prone to think in an intent stance. Thus it is conceivable that the thinking that something must have a reason or intent, is something to be discarded through a conscious effort.
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I'm a lax hindu*, and evolution fits right in with my world view, and that of others I know. Infact AFAIK I don't know a single creationist.
*by which I mean I'm religious on Tuesdays and during holy festivals and other holy days.
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Bias? (Score:1, Interesting)
This blatant bias is why most of Slashdot, outside of the circle of regular posters, will always be regarded by the rest of us as a nest of total losers. You may have your opinions about any number of ideas, and people such as myself (which despite what your opinions are, are 98% of the time WAY more informed than this inner circle) may often agree with many of the things posed here (and in regards to the subject at hand, I too think that there was way more than some magic wand waving around to the creation of the earth/universe/etc.). That said, when you start posting straight off that anyone who has a different opinion especially when it involves deep seeded spiritual beliefs must be somehow stupid, uneducated, or just a moron, then you have already lost the argument. Does the phrase, "catch more bees with honey than with vinegar" mean anything to you? Probably not. I'm sure you justify this with "oh they're too stupid to waste my time on". Hey, I feel the same way a lot of the time. But if you have any delusions that you're accomplishing anything more than one big circle-jerk, any thoughts towards influencing others to your way of thinking, then you have approached it from the perfectly, exact wrong direction. Attitudes like that don't win anyone over, it makes them turn around and go listen to someone else, anyone else, who doesn't come across as a sanctimonious asshole, such as is often the case here. And please, none of this "religion is the biggest bunch of arrogant people there is!" crap either. The belief in science as the total master of everything to the point of sterilizing any kind of faith or hope from any and all subjects, has become a far more powerful religion than most traditional religions could have ever hoped to be. And its a religion completely devoid of anything inherently "human".
48% of Americans Reject Evolution...So? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe, but this denial of evolution is a US-only phenomena. Could be related to poor US high school education I suppose (since that's the only time most people are going to be taught about it).
Goodbye Superpower... (Score:4, Interesting)
This kind of ignorance makes it possible for once again, the same few to control the many.
Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad (Score:5, Interesting)
Rejecting evolution makes you a gibbering idiot who is unable to govern your own life and hates science? Do you realize how incredibly arrogant that is?
I don't believe in Evolution. I haven't seen enough facts to support it. I hold the same to be true for all mechanisms whereby the earth, life, and the universe were created. Nothing has enough evidence to support any kind of solid conclusion. There's a bit too much guesswork for me to accept it.
So, IMHO, all it takes is a few preconcieved notions to get you to pick one theory over another. Which one is right? Beats me. I, like most of society, have the luxury of not needing to know how things started to function. And not just function - an understanding of virtually all science, technology, culture, art, and search for truth is available to me without being sure about that.
The only thing I have to deal with is a very special kind of ignorance. The ignorance of the halfway educated - of those who believe that they have Learned and now Know the Right Answer and can therefore Show Others the Way. Once you really start to getting into how things work, you realise that you Know Very Little and Always Will.
How can you be so sure?
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pot, kettle, black (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Even Jesus talked in parables (Score:1, Interesting)
Genesis 1:25-27
(Humans were created after the other animals.)
Genesis 2:18-19
(Humans were created before the other animals.)
and also:
Genesis 1:27
(The first man and woman were created simultaneously.)
Genesis 2:18-22
(The man was created first, then the animals, then the woman from the man's rib.)
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/acco
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the thing, though.
It's not entirely faith - it is based on a methodology that's proven to work, and that methodology (i.e. science) isn't always written in stone. We change the way we do things based on what we observe and learn.
And finally, if you *really* wanted to understand something, nobody is stopping people from going to a library and spending a few years understanding the science. It boils down to how badly you want to have something verified personally.
We even question everything that comes about. There's a reason publications are peer reviewed. I mean, science by its nature tends to be very fact-oriented -- immaterial of whether or not you believe that an apple falls to the ground, it does.
No, I think it boils down to something else. At the end of the day, this is how it works for the religious nutheads - "I cannot be bothered to do all that, but my prejudice tells me I'm right. Therefore I should be."
Most of these "Christians" are hardly that. They are just zealous idiots afraid of change and are merely using religion as a crutch. They are no different from the other religious nutheads all over the world. They are no different from the people who burnt witches, books and killed people for thinking.
Given the chance, they would gladly do that - it's just that it's a little hard in this day and age to get away with doing stuff like that.
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:3, Interesting)
It is thusly in their beliefs to say "X is true because we believe it to be true", which is circular reasoning and faulty logic.
(Although I am, like badenglishihave, a relatively strict Christian, I am not blinded to reality by my beliefs as many such people are.)
-uso.
Re:The Thirty-Percenters (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that you have just explained it in a way which is subtly wrong supports the idea that it is counterintuitive. An animal does not adapt. It is born with a certain set of DNA, which it cannot change or control, and it lives or dies as a result what DNA it has (along with other factors like chance).
In fact, this makes for a bit of a paradox. A single organism cannot ever adapt. Its DNA is essentially immutable, or at least it certainly cannot do anything to change its own DNA in any useful way. So you have an organism, and that organism has offspring, and so on. You have a whole chain (lineage) of organisms, and none of them can adapt, so how does the adaptation occur?
The answer, of course, is that adaptation in that sense doesn't really occur at all. What occurs is that new, different organisms are created when organisms reproduce, and the different ones either are already adapted or are not already adapted at the moment they're born, and the well-adapted ones end up reproducing.
This is a bit counter-intuitive because it's not how people solve problems. Humans generally apply intelligence to a problem. If you're a car company and you want to sell a new model of car, you don't make a bunch of new types of car at random without any direction, then ask potential customers if they suck or not, then throw out the ones that suck. That would be enormously wasteful and slow given limited resources, so humans rarely ever do that. Instead, you figure out what you want, you apply theory, and you make a plan to go directly where you want to go (or as directly as possible).
As it turns out, my sister is a Ph.D. student in genetics, and I am a computer programmer. We've had conversations about the similarities and differences of computer code and genetic code, and it took me a while to grasp, but there are really more differences than there are similarities. If a programmer wants to create a construct, he sits down with a piece of paper (or whiteboard), charts out what he wants it to do, and writes some code, hopefully (if he has any training) in a nice, orderly manner. If he's any good, he makes it modular and separates concerns so that (say) code for the GUI is not mixed in with code for the filesystem.
DNA does not work like this AT ALL. There are huge, gigantic sections of DNA code that are never used. Then there are sections in certain places which are used for two TOTALLY UNRELATED purposes just because the particular sequence of base pairs happens to fit both purposes. It is the equivalent of compiling a header file full of constants (say, error codes or strings) and then after you're done compiling, going, "Oh hey, since we are using a Pentium processor, that sequence of bytes for the error codes happens to also be a valid sequence of opcodes. So now I don't need to bother writing the first half of memmove(), because it already exists right there! Whoopee!" Except that it's worse than that because the DNA will have 100 other copies of memmove() in other places, all different, all incompatible, and most with bugs. Except that you can't call them bugs, because there is no spec. You expect them to do "wrong" things every now and then, indeed often, and the only real crime is to do something so wrong that the organism doesn't survive. And the only reason it does survive is that the system is pretty redundant and tolerates chaos pretty well, except when someone gets heart disease, cancer, dementia, a sore lower back, etc.
The point is this: imagine how you would design a human. Now look at a real human -- it's almost nothing like what you'd make. It's simultaneously way more "clever" and way sloppier. It's totally whacked, totally effective, and the way it works is pretty alien to how we think. Biology, in general, is very complex and is not very intuitive.
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe in evolution. I don't believe in god. I believe that the earth climate is currently warming .
I am pretty certain that the climate warming won't have catastrophic effects on the human population. The most serious scenario would be a new iceage. Flooding and storms are minor concerns, and nothing new. People will move from the worst affected areas as always. The earth getting warmer is not very likely to cause a runaway effect, because in that case earth wouldn't have been able to establish a "stable" (relativly) climate in the first place.
I am fairly certain that humans are behind atleast some of the warming. We are 6 billion people after all. There is the possibility of the sun having more effect than most scientists think, so I can't be completly certain.
I am very uncertain about some of the assumptions made by many of the current climate scientists. I am doubtful about co2 being a root cause to global warming because of the co2 lagging behind temperature change. The realclimate response is flawed from the start because it fails to explain the lag once the temperature begins to drop. (Unless someone can show me that there is no lag when temperature begins to drop, in which case I will alter my belief.)
I am completly skeptical about the presentation of scientific research in mass media, because of the selection pressure being on sensationalism. There is also, way too much poltics involved.
Re:The Prostate (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Bullshit there, Dr. Epistilogics. The vast majority believed that the Earth was flat and that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Did that somehow compress the planet into a plane? Did it alter the workings of mass and gravity as we now know it? No? You mean even back in the middle ages, the Sun was still giant and the Earth was still relatively small, and the latter revolved around the former, and that both were basically round? It wasn't? Gee! So, basically, you're just huffing some killer dope and trying to sound educated? Go figure!
Re:Quick, call in the Hippie Power Squad (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow. I love when people talk about how arrogant it is to accuse people of being gibbering idiots, and then go on to prove what gibbering idiots they are? Arrogant? Seems more like prescient.
Evolution isn't an explanation for the origin of the universe. It's not really an explanation for the origin of life, either. It's the scientific model that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth by means of mechanisms like random mutation and natural selection.
And to the extent that a scientific model can be proven, evolution has been proven. Life on Earth evolved and continues to evolve (we know that from the fossil record and from continuing observations.) The theory of evolution tells us how that evolution happened. If you haven't "seen the evidence", then it's because you've never been in a biology classroom, or because you don't even understand what you're looking for evidence of.
How can you be so sure?
Who has to be sure? You need to accept uncertainty into your life. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we know nothing. There are questions in biology that evolution doesn't yet answer. Thank goodness, there's a lot of biologists who would be out of work, otherwise.
I wish this we're an April fools joke (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:America the Great (Score:3, Interesting)
2.) Why would I judge the behaviour and NOT judge the people that CHOOSE to engage in that behaviour? Behaviours is just a set of actions -- they have no moral value on their own. It's the PERSON who makes the choices that is good or evil, stupid or insightful, superstitious or rational Judging actions makes no sense. When someone molests a child, we don't put their behaviour in jail, we put THEM in jail. When Rush Limbaugh says that drug addicts should be given life sentences in jail, do you mock his hypocrisy or do you mock the fat blubbering crybaby himself? When people invade a sovereign nation, destroy its infrastructure, slaughter its people, and allow civil war to wage unchecked, you don't hang the strategy book for its warcrimes, you hang the people that made the decisions -- and if you get the chance, you hang the people that supported them.
3.) You still haven't suggested any way in which my contempt for Americans, even with millions of other people thinking the same way, can have any harmful affect on the world. In fact, you haven't even suggested a way that it can affect the US in any way. You haven't even suggested any reason why anyone would have even the slightest respect for America as a nation in any way. Europeans at least pay lip service to peace, freedom, and equality. England was the only one of the "coalition of the willing" nations to actually deliver more than a busload troops to Iraq, and even then it was against the wishes of nearly the entire population. Since world war 2, Europe has built up its infrastructure and invested in its people, while America has lets its cities collapse into huge ghettos and a few closed communities for the wealthy minority. Most Americans are at the point of considering "liberal" to be a slanderous and derogatory term, and think that the fear of change is a virtue. There is no way to put a positive spin on that kind of insanity.
HaHaHa (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes it will be the day when weak minded presidents and leaders have allowed religions to get a strangle hold on country politics and all the scientists are bought and paid for.
The churches can go back and write version 295 of the existing religious texts, adding chapter 2 where Adam fights the dinosaurs with his apple tree club to bring back some raptor burgers for Eve.
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:3, Interesting)
So you're suggesting Christians should believe in god and the teachings of Jesus, but not let their belief change their behaviour in the real world.
That explains a lot.