Evolution, Big Bang Polls Omitted From NSF Report 495
cremeglace writes "In an unusual last-minute edit that has drawn flak from the White House and science educators, a federal advisory committee omitted data on Americans' knowledge of evolution and the Big Bang from a key report. The data shows that Americans are far less likely than the rest of the world to accept that humans evolved from earlier species and that the universe began with a big bang."
What would be the reason, from NSF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Shame? It's a not bad starting point...
They explain why (Score:5, Informative)
in the article.
Re: (Score:2)
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Between blinds, the one-eyed is king.
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Insightful)
Between blinds, the one-eyed is king.
Unfortunately not. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is locked away in an insane asylum because he talks about things no one else can even conceive of.
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately not. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is locked away in an insane asylum because he talks about things no one else can even conceive of.
They have to catch him first.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Country of the Blind [readbookonline.net]
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Lots of cannon fodder. That's the answer.
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You make it sound like superpower status was recently achieved.
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Yeah, it seems like the USA is slowly going back to the Middle Ages. Ignoring strong scientific evidence, torturing innocent people, a government that ignores the needs of the normal people... Luckily Obama has put a stop to most of this already. Let's hope he can turn the process around and make America sane again.
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Seeing that the Obama White House objects to this retraction is thrilling, compared to the Bush years when every day seemed to bring yet another disaster for the environment, science, and world peace. I am not saying Obama has fully lived up to his campaign promises - he hasn't - but when I think how America was plummeting under Bush, all I can say is, elections matter.
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you just proving you didn't read it either? It sounds like the NSB/NSF was choosing scientific method OVER politics and religion in this case.
Quote: "National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), says it chose to leave the section out of the 2010 edition of the biennial Science and Engineering Indicators because the survey questions used to measure knowledge of the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs."
They were badly formed questions for a literacy test. Instead of asking if they agree with the statement "The universe began with a big explosion", they should have asked something to determine IF people had a firm grasp of what the big bang theory WAS. Sure, personally I think that is by far the most likely theory (and that evolution is clearly fact at this point), but literacy is about comprehension, not belief.
It's like asking in a classics survey whether "Prometheus shaped man out of mud to be brought to life by Athena". No, I would have to answer I don't believe that. Does that mean I am not literate in Greek mythology?
Re:They explain why (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that any question on any survey could conceivably contradict someone's religious beliefs. If a survey designed to measure the scientific literacy of the general public find that large numbers of people choose religious beliefs over factual knowledge, that is a valuable datum indicating that scientific illiteracy is alarmingly high.
It's like asking in a classics survey whether "Prometheus shaped man out of mud to be brought to life by Athena". No, I would have to answer I don't believe that. Does that mean I am not literate in Greek mythology?
False analogy. Being literate in mythology does not require that one consider the myths under study to be evidence about the way the world works -- in fact, the very word "mythology" rather implies the opposite.
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a matter of belief. Scientific literacy requires an understanding of the evidence, and the evidence is overwhelming that all living things currently on Earth, including humans, evolved from earlier forms. Any person who is not aware of the evidence is scientifically illiterate, and any person who, when confronted with the evidence, refuses to accept it, is irrational. "Belief" doesn't enter into it ... unless you're talking about the relgious beliefs which seem to have a remarkable ability to make people act irrationally on this particular matter.
I know what you're getting at with your last sentence. If you want to push the "science is a religion" meme, go ahead, but if you're going to do that, you really should get rid of the fruits of rational scientific thinking ... such as your computer, and just pray really hard that your posts will appear on Slashdot. Be sure to let us know how that works out for you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that by definition, if people think that their religion trumps science in places as wel
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why some people believe that it must be one or the other. I think I'm one of a large group of moderate conservatives who believe that religion and creationism can coexist. While I personally believe that none of this just randomly happened, I also do believe this is a good portion of the bible that is meant to be taken metaphorically, not to mention that a good deal of the meat of the bible has morphed over centuries of retranslations. Just as it is wrong for someone who is Pro-Creationism to call someone who is Pro-Evolution a moron who believes in fantasies, it is also wrong for the opposite to happen. Yet somehow our society has gotten to the point where if you do not agree with someone else, you are a radical quack who is doing the equivalent of smoking crack and jerking off to the *insert religious book or random science book here* and pictures of *insert random radical on the left or right here* having sex with a donkey. I mean seriously, it doesn't really matter what you believe anymore. There is a group of people ready to eat you alive metaphorically speaking no matter what you believe. I think most of us are sitting here in the moderate middle just shaking our heads and hoping all of the radical groups on both sides just shut the fuck up and go away.
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I think I'm one of a large group of moderate conservatives who believe that religion and creationism can coexist.
And then there's everyone from the babelfish school of thought that insist creationism and religion cannot coexist.
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Insightful)
... Just as it is wrong for someone who is Pro-Creationism to call someone who is Pro-Evolution a moron who believes in fantasies, it is also wrong for the opposite to happen. ...
Whoa there boy ... you seem to be attributing equal weight to both concepts. There is an unbelievably large amount of evidence to support evolution and in all the time that people have been finding fossil evidence not one piece has been found to support creationism, and if it had you can bet your bottom dollar it would have been splashed around the globe and lauded by the religious fraternity as proof of (their flavour of) god.
Comparing creationists to evolutionists without at least some nod to the different weightings attributed to their likelihood is akin to saying there's nothing to choose between the 'globe earth' and 'flat earth' camps, and people rightly pour scorn on flat-earthers!
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I just don't understand how the hell we've made it to superpower status...
Well, we might note that "superpower status" is in great measure made up of things like nuclear weapons, which the general population had no part in producing. There's also an economic component to that status, but again, those were built under the guidance of a rather tiny portion of the population (and regulated so that they wouldn't shoot themselves and the rest of us in our collective feet by a small population of anti-trust regulators ;-). The general population had little input to all this power.
The American anti-science, anti-intellectual attitude is a property of the masses; our super-power status is a property of the actions of a small minority of thinkers and doers. There's no difficulty understanding how we could have both.
Of course, most of the American industrial power seems to have been outsourced over the past decades, so we might be seeing the end of it all. And our government is more and more in the hands of know-nothings who are proud of their willful ignorance. So that superpower status may be reaching the status of "polite fiction". America's primary remaining power might be its military, which is more and more dependent on outsourced technology, and that's not a very stable situation.
Stick around and find out how it all develops. Maybe you'll live to see who inherits the top-dawg position among nations.
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I thought "Choking the Beast" was some sort of Republican sex act, like the "wide stance" or the "lesbian bondage club."
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I thought "Choking the Beast" was some sort of Republican sex act, like the "wide stance" or the "lesbian bondage club."
Of course not. It was printed on a few of the receipts left in the drawer of the Oval Office desk after Bill Clinton moved out.
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Republican sex is just like Democratic sex, but with Republicans theres less same-sex and a desire for lower taxes.
More BDSM in Republican circles.
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Informative)
Airport bathrooms around the country disagree.
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Re:They explain why (Score:5, Funny)
Nice try, but I'm not getting suckered into RTFA that easily!
No they did not. (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
That explains nothing.
And ...
So the guy pushing for the removal cannot maintain a consistent argument for that removal.
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So the guy pushing for the removal cannot maintain a consistent argument for that removal.
Not how I see it. People interpret yes/no questions very differently; hence his "blunt instrument" remark. In general, I (background -- statistics) would probably answer yes to a binary question if I felt it to be mostly true. My wife (background -- philosophy) would probably answer no or "i don't know" to many of the same questions.
The problem with accurately designing surveys often boils down to understanding how people react if they have qualms about giving a yes/no answer but really feel in the midd
I think you misread that. (Score:2)
Really? From the way it seems to be phrased, he said that they would not answer "No".
Not that they would not answer.
What ar
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There is not a double negative in the text you quote.
There is no indication that not answering is an option.
The previous sentence is not a double negative either.
Re:They explain why (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy most singly responsible gives his public excuse as to why, but it isn't intellectually consistent and completely fails to address why this change (allegedly in the works for years) would have been left alone for all the drafts then changed between the last draft and the release.
"It's faith questions, not science questions" isn't an answer, it's an excuse. Why feel compelled to change it now when other countries are leaving it alone and if it's so useless, just include it and the people reading the results will ignore it. And, if it is a good thing to exclude, why wait until after the last draft to make the change?
It stinks of a political or religious move, not a scientific one. The real science one would be to leave it in and put an asterisk at the end saying *These results are faith oriented and should not be considered science questions." Or, at the very least, not "lie" by releasing drafts knowing they will lead to a misconception of what will be in the actual report.
Re:They explain why (Score:4, Insightful)
WWJD (Score:2)
Re:WWJD (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the real conclusion to be drawn here is that americans are more prone to be skeptical of absolute assertions based on prevailing theories.
While being decidedly unskeptical of absolute assertions based on a 2000 year old fairy tale.
What is TFA trying to say? (Score:3, Insightful)
When TFA says "data on Americans' knowledge of evolution and the big bang", that suggests it's a measurement of Americans' awareness level of the existence of the topics.
But when the TFA says "Americans are far less likely than the rest of the world to accept that humans evolved from earlier species and that the universe began with a big bang", that suggests it's a measurement of American's agreement level.
Awareness != Agreement != Acceptance
For example, while I might be FULLY AWARE of and understand the reasoning behind Christianity, that does NOT mean that I accept the notion as true.
TFA seems to be suggesting that if you disagree with some topic, that you simply do not understand the topic, which is a complete fallacy.
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Awareness != Agreement != Acceptance
I'd like to make you aware of my agreement with your equation that evaluates acceptance.
Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Not in regards to scientific issues.
You can refuse to accept that the Earth is not the center of the Universe, but that DOES mean that you do not understand the SCIENCE behind it.
Not so bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Big Bang is, well, Big Bang, and only some religious fundies would have issues since the rest of us don't really care one way or another.
Sharing ancestors with apes, well, bit less so.
Evolution: now this is different since it's a demonstrated fact.
Something I've noticed... (Score:2, Interesting)
When it comes to this sort of polling, there's a little thing that slips by the people who comment on them.
When people from other countries take this sort of test, we get a solid mix of answers, taken seriously.
When people from the United States take them, a regular sample of about 33% hit the "funny answer button."
You get high school students who will, given the chance, answer "Who was Martin Luther King?" with "D. A famous dentist."
You get people on the Internet who answer "what is evolution?" with "D. A
Re:Something I've noticed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is the evidence that that happens more in the US than elsewhere?
Re:Something I've noticed... (Score:5, Funny)
Where is the evidence that that happens more in the US than elsewhere?
We took a poll.
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Knowledge != Belief (Score:3, Insightful)
Unsurprised (Score:2)
Luckily it's Friday afternoon, and the bar is close by.
Cue dozens of dilettantes (Score:3, Interesting)
"The prevailing theories in science might one day be overturned so why shouldn't I remain ignorant?"
These are the same people who will insist that using anything more abstract than C means you're not a real programmer.
At the end of the day, thinking for them is more about ego-defense than actual synthesis.
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So is this thing about calling out the dilettantes with vague, demonizing similes.
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At the end of the day, thinking for them is more about ego-defense than actual synthesis.
You're describing Apologetics, right?
You know, this idea explains a lot why American society is so prone to "cognitive dissonance". People refuse to recognize hypocritical beliefs on their part, simply because they fail to actually produce their own synthesis of their own thoughts. They're perfectly fine mapping out completely opposing beliefs given the argument at hand.
Big Bank and Evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, these two theories are not on a level playing field. Evolution is a ridiculously strong theory, it's really hard for anyone to not "accept" it unless they do so based on entirely irrational beliefs.
I might think, if not say, someone who doesn't "believe" in evolution is an idiot. I would not say the same thing about the Big Bang for various reasons, among them the fact that the Big Bang does not explain the state of existence at T(Big Bang) - 1. It does not explain creation, and in fact creation is inherently inexplicable unless one resorts to "Magic" of one form or another.
Re:Big Bank and Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is to say there was any state of existence before the Big Bang? Einstein has taught us that space and time are part and parcel of the same thing, that is the universe. Without the Big Bang there is no universe and therefore no time, and T-1 is a null pointer error. Hawking and Hartle have actually shown how time can emerge into existence during a Big Bang. cf. quantum cosmology.
From a philosophical point of view it can be argued that asking what happened before the Big Bang is the same thing as asking who created God. It is the same problem in a somewhat different context.
Einstein and Hawking have dealt with the question in a naturalistic setting, in this century Augustine of Hippo dealt with the question from a religious point of view some 1500 years earlier.
Re:Big Bank and Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, much about evolution is, I think, less certain than most people make it
Unfortunately, you are entirely wrong on this point. Evolution is much, much more robust than most people think. It has literally mountains of evidence backing it from dozens of fields. There's is absolutely no possible way in which it could be entirely wrong, unless you are willing to go into solipsistic notions like "reality is just a big collective dream".
On the other hand, the Big Bang theory has only a small handful of evidence backing it. It is a very simple theory that makes few predictions, and offers few explanations or an underlying cause for any of it.
For example, there's still no clear picture of:
- why the universe is even expanding in the first place.
- what the "inflation" period at the very beginning was caused by or exactly how it occurred
- we still don't know why there's much more matter than anti-matter
- we still don't know precisely why matter is distributed the way it is at large scales
- we're still not entirely certain if the laws of physics were precisely consistent across all time (including the first few femtoseconds)
- I'm yet to see convincing evidence either way of whether the universe is going to keep expanding forever, come to a big crunch, or what...
If the Big Bang theory was as good as you make it out to be, all of those questions would be answered conclusively and rigorously. Right now, our understanding of the universe is not much better than epycicles [wikipedia.org]. We can make good numeric or statistical predictions about a few things, but we have no idea why our models work, and everything breaks down at the extremes.
Thats what happens when you dont enforce secular (Score:2)
education.
under the guise of 'practicing our faith', innumerable religious sects and groups pump youth with bullshit.
this is just the opening stages though. just keep it that way for a few decades more, you may see even the most basic scientific rules and laws getting challenged.
Knowledge and belief (Score:5, Interesting)
If your beliefs separate you from knowledge, then you lack knowledge. Their polls are about measuring knowledge. Removing it because some beliefs keep people intellectually backwards is a shame.
It doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Why are we concerned if people, in general, accept the big bang theory or evolution? Why not worry about general relativity and quantum mechanics?
For the vast majority of people, it simply does not matter. Will it pay my mortgage or put food on my table if the sun revolves around the earth or the other way around? If not, then why should they care?
We're all (sometime I wonder though) nerds here, so we care, but most people don't. I know that the operation of my GPS navigator depends on both general relativity and quantum mechanics, but it works whether I believe them or not. How many other people know or care?
A better question would be to ask if they believe that the scientific method is a valid method of seeking the truth. Another question would be if the scientific method was the only valid method of seeking the truth.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because if they do not accept these things it shows how little value science and education have in our society. The reality is current US culture is very into denialism and superstition.
I want my old America back... (Score:2)
What the hell happened? I want my old America back... Can't you level-headed Americans (there must be *some* of you left...) do something about it?
Re:I want my old America back... (Score:4, Informative)
The first long term settlements in America were by extreme religious groups like the Pilgrims and Puritans. The idea that America didn't used to be particularly religious is not historically accurate.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
True, however the United States of America, the nation as it was conceived by the Founding Fathers, was also very much based upon the idea of religious tolerance. It was precisely because of this that the United States managed to attract the best and brightest in the past: that people could be assured of their safety regardless of their own personal religious beliefs and practices. Unfortunately, it seems that increasingly growing and vocal groups are all set to overturn this longstanding principle...
These are flawed questions. (Score:2)
Failure to accept an assertion is not the same as failing to understand that an assertion has been made
Those are not, in any practical sense of the word, facts. Whether or not they are literally true
Big Bang for the Buck (Score:2)
Not believing what you know. (Score:3, Insightful)
"the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs."
i.e. the respondents might belief X is false even though they know X is true. That's the best description I've seen of the stupidity of religion.
Only here (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans and apes share 96% of their DNA. I forget which comedian asks if you have sandwich that's 96% crap and 4% ham, would you still call it a ham sandwich?
That by itself doesn't prove we descended from apes, but sure would seem to lend it scientific plausibility. If you're faith leads you to a different conclusion, that's fine. But that doesn't mean the rest of us need to teach it in school or avoid teaching what science can measure.
Turned the numbers around (Score:4, Interesting)
The question should be, if a sandwich is 96% ham and 4% crap, would you still call it a ham sandwich. And yes you would. A disgusting ham sandwich but a ham sandwich still.
And we are not descended from Apes, we share a common ancestor. And we share one with most life if indeed not all.
And faith shouldn't go against facts and be considered normal.
If my faith led me to believe gravity doesn't affect me, wouldn't I be considered normal if I jumped of a building? No, I would be called insane. If ignoring the theory of gravity is insanity, then so is ignoring the theory of evolution.
It wouldn't be that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
If the USA would be a country like Afganistan or Italy without nuclear weapons I wouldn't care and hope that some day they will understand that religion is not a good source to find out how the universe come into existence, but a possible good source for ethics and mental stability (as long as you do not become a fanatic). The real problem is that there are so many religios fanatics running around in the US believing in all kinds of things including Armageddon. And now think one of those crazy guys becomes president and pushes the button... This possibility frightens me most. Therefore it is very good to hear that the US is reducing their nuclear potential. Even though they will still be able to fry everyone on this planet. But at least not six times.
My Brother's Keeper (Score:4, Interesting)
Americans are far more likely to be ignorant religious loonies who refuse to believe scientific fact in favour of archaic superstition and myth and profess to follow the word of a deity, meanwhile trying as hard as they can to ensure that the poor and sick don't get the help they need.
Can someone please explain why America is like this?
Re:Warm, salty, gritty... (Score:5, Funny)
Not the White House. (Score:2)
The explanation doesn't appear to have soothed White House officials, who say that the edit—made after the White House had reviewed a draft—left them surprised and dismayed. "The Administration counts on the National Science Board to provide the fairest and most complete reporting of the facts they track," says Rick Weiss, a spokesperson and analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Re:Not the White House. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look... (Score:5, Informative)
These are not "fights over science." They are fights between high confidence viewpoints backed by strong, yet malleable theoretical underpinnings, and the viewpoints of ignorant, and/or gullible, and/or critical-thinking deficient and consequently superstitious low-functioning who subsist on a diet of dogma and wishful thinking; compounded enormously by our huge social error of putting religious delusion off-limits for serious public criticism at most levels, particularly in schools.
Our problem is a social problem brought on by the underlying theocratic disease we continue to allow our people to suffer from.
It isn't going to go away until/unless all currently popular religion is treated the way it should be - the same way we treat Odin and Zeus. As the imaginary creations of primitive societies. This should be done in school. As part of normal education. So kids have some chance of escaping the cycle of ignorance that religion uses to propagate itself. Kids should be exposed to the (many) falsehoods used as arguments for religion, from the loaded dice of Pascal's wager to the complete and utter intellectual bankruptcy of creationism.
Even then, I bet it takes a couple of generations to die down to the level of, say, astrology. We'll never eradicate it completely, or at least, not until we edit gullibility, stupidity, and the inability to think critically out of our own genome, and expose the underlying dogmatic thinking as part of a normal education.
Countdown before some poor utterly deluded person comes in here to "defend" some religion or other: 3, 2, 1...
Re:Look... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the White House. (Score:5, Interesting)
RF = 5.35*ln(C2/C1) = 3.71 W/M^2 for a doubling of CO2 concentration - Fourier's 1824 prediction of the GHG properties of CO2 derived from it's spectra. Faraday confirmed Fourier's predictions by experiment in the 1850's. A modern version of that experiment can be seen here [youtube.com].
"Anyone mentioning the subtle detail that climate is chaotic"
Usually doesn't know the difference between climate and weather, let alone the difference between forcings and feedbacks.
"The only systems we can predict are systems that are, thermodynamically speaking, in equilibrium."
Yeah right, the size of expansion joints in bridges and railway tracks are picked out of a hat.
"But if the AGW "debate" proves anything, it's that science is no longer allowed to tell people "we don't know"."
No, what it proves is that a measly few million bucks worth of anti-science propoganda [sourcewatch.org] can create a huge army of usefull idiots [wikipedia.org] such as yourself to create the impression of a debate about a well understood climate forcing.
The rest of the "science" in your post is so wrong it makes creationist arguments look reasonable. The whole thing is an accurate demonstration of the GP's astute observation that "stupid and pissed off (at the IPCC) is the new cool".
Ironically, your post also contains the cure for your ignorance in your call to teach scientific philosophy [wikipedia.org], unfortunately you don't seem to have taken your own advise and uncritically repeat the misinformation and red-herrings fed to you by lobbyists.
Re:Not the White House. (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be blissfully unaware that the infra-red radiation re-emmited from Earth is at a different wave length to the visable/ultra-violet radiation that it absorbed. Climatologists and the IPCC are well aware incoming infra-red is absorbed by GHG's, it's the reason why infra-red astronomy requires a space based telescope.
"And please don't start about fractals having large-scale shapes until you've at least READ about what chaos is."
Chaos theory and fractal dimentions were covered in my maths major, is that good enough for you?
"A chaotic system can be, at a specific point, a perfect triangle."
Again you seem to have failed to take your own advise, a triangle could be used as the stating point for creating a fractal but it is not in itself a fractal nor is there anything chaotic about a perfect triangle. Climate is the long term statistics of weather and is in a state of dynamic equilibrium on human time scales, it only becomes chaotic when feedbacks occur due to a considerable forcing being applied. Geologic records indicate that when this occurs the climate system tends to amplify the direction of forcing. Super computers are used to explore the effects of feedbacks using FEA, as I have shown by quoting Fourier the effects of forcing via inreased CO2 can be worked out on a pocket calculator and has absolutely nothing to do with chaos theory.
As for water vapour, see my first post where it talks about knowing the difference between a forcing and a feedback.
"Of course this theory makes [IPCC] policies totally incomprehensible."
I think you mean UNFCCC. The IPCC do not formulate or offer any political policy.
"Heh, I seriously doubt you'd even be able to tell me the name of a single program capable of answering this question without googling"
Mathematica is the first to spring to mind, it can implement FEA simulations to abitrary resolutions.
BTW: I have been following climate science for three decades, which is well before Google or the IPCC came into existance, at first it was simply a natural extention to my interest in computer simulation via finite element analysis (in which I am degree qualified). I suspect you dislike my use of Google because the links it provides conflict with your bald asertions.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. They asked the questions and did not like the embarrassing answers America gave. Like our child mortality rate, our scientific literacy rate is not something to be proud of. The majority of American do not believe in the big bang or evolution. You may, but most do not, whereas in the rest of the first world, most people do believe in these things.
Where are you getting 'asshat within the White House' from? The National Science Foundation is not located in the White House. Why blame the President for this? This was not an editing error. The questions were asked, but the answers were deliberately omitted.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of American do not believe in the big bang or evolution
Good. I don't either. I merely accept them as models that make useful predictions and which are subject to amendment in light of experimental evidence. Mind you, that might be because I'm a scientist and not a priest.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
See, this is why I like Electrical Engineering. Everything I work with is invisible, nobody can explain how it works (there aren't even any good theories*), and it can kill you if you forget to turn it off. Even if it doesn't kill you, it might give you cancer or muck up your offspring. The behaviour of any given device is erratic at best, taken for granted, or just plain whacky.
But for some reason, nobody comes up with a "God did it" explanation. Sure, we've got the magic smoke explanation, but nobody takes that seriously except the Rastafarians.
*No, really. Look at the quantum level, but try not to think about it or you'll go blind.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
nobody can explain how it works (there aren't even any good theories*)
Quantum electrodynamics produces results that agree with experiment to thirteen significant digits. It is probably the most accurate, successful theory ever devised.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Therfore it's a "good" theory in the same way that if the hooker gets your rocks off then she is a "good" hooker. Just be carefull not to fall in love with your theories or hookers.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Having a degree in Electrical Engineering and also a second major in applied physics and time in grad school for nuclear engineering and physics, let me illuminate this subject a bit.
Engineers don't really delve into the why of things. The learn the basics and then hammer on the practical applications. You get just enough theory to get by.
Physics is more or less the opposite. They work with lots of theory and theoretical models. The applications they leave to the engineers ...and the applied physicists. Applied physics tends to be in the middle; they test the models in the real world and they try to find useful applications for the data/model/results.
The point is, though, engineers aren't taught things like high-level theoretical models because they wouldn't really be useful for them. There are certainly theories and models that explain 99% of what goes on in EE.
If you're asking what are fundamental forces like electricity, magnetism, and gravity... Well, people are working on that too, although progress is slow.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That is exactly what I was about to say. If someone asked me if I "believed" in evolution, I'd answer "No", because I don't "believe" in it. I don't "believe" in anything, I don't have any kind of "believes". I am against "believing" things.
On the other hand, I understand that based on existing evidence, evolution is the the best theory we have. Off course, some things about evolution might be wrong, but you have to differentiate between 'evolution' and 'the theory of evolution'. Our understanding of how ge
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like our child mortality rate
We count babies as "born" which most countries end up counting as "stillborn," which hits a different category in the stats. For that matter, we have premature births which end up with nice, healthy babies - that most countries can't even keep alive - or won't even try...
Some European countries don't count a baby death as "infant mortality" until the baby reaches three days (they don't issue birth certificates until then, and the infant mortality stats use birth certificates for generating that statistic).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting, if true. Do you have a source?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"The international ranking of the United States improves somewhat when these alternative measures [controlling for varying stillborn assessments] are used but it is still relatively low and appears to be deteriorating."
The CBO report doesn't exactly support the grandparent.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
until the baby reaches three days (they don't issue birth certificates until then,
Would you care to detail which countries? I live in Europe and the birth certificate can be issued immediately after birth in my country.
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
> ...which is measured differently than pretty much every other First World nation on the planet.
No it isn't. This claim is plucked out of thin air whenever someone mentions the US' relatively high child mortality rate. I must have seen this happen a dozen times now, and (unsurprisingly) there is never any substantiation given.
International medical studies always go to great lengths to identify and, where possible, eliminate bias due to differences in reporting methodology. A comparative study of child mortality does *not* simply use each nation's definition of what constitutes a live birth.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, you're the one twisting the stats, whether intentionall or not. If you'd said "less than 1% of all births" then what you said would still have been technically true, though it also is pretty meaningless given that all countries have less than a 1% infant mortality rate. Also how exactly does "measurement error" fit in here? Are people accidentally deciding babies are dead when in fact they're alive?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with the parent that the primary, or at least one of the primary motivations that caused the board members to actually act on this was that the survey results were embarrassing. However, that does not mea
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would guess your mix of family and friends are fairly well educated? Not a random sample then. There is a dangerous strain of anti-intellectualism loose in America these days. A belief that common sense beats book learning, too much of which will in turn kill common sense. It amounts to a pride in ignorance.
Re:But it is sooo simple to understand (Score:5, Funny)
Let's face it, atoms do show up out of thin air. How else can you explain the weight I've put on lately? Damn new heavy elements. I sure wish those scientist types would stop discovering them.
Re: (Score:2)
Thin air is made of atoms.
It's where plants get the carbon that they turn into, well, plant material. (Yep. Giant redwoods are mostly distilled air.)
So from the evidence you present, I deduce that you are a plant.
Re: (Score:2)
2. Evolution is the explanation for the variety of species that exist on Earth. It has nothing to do with life from non-life. Why is this so hard to understand?
3. Why am I feeding a troll?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your theory is testable and observable?
Re:But it is sooo simple to understand (Score:4, Insightful)
At least the scientists try to understand what actually happened. If they find out that the big bang didn't happen like they though, they will revise the theory, like most of the theories were revised as proof was found. Classical mechanics (you can accelerate up to infinite speed) -> relativity (actually, you can only accelerate up to c, but never reach it) -> quantum mechanics (electrons do not behave as tiny spheres with a charge after all, they behave as tiny spheres with a charge and waves at the same time) is one example.
On the other hand, religious people do not revise their holy books, they just say that whatever proof to the contrary exists, it must be false/created by devil/etc.
Also, I really like when religious people argue that their religion is the only true religion when using the same arguments as all the others - "It's written so in the book". For example, why are Christians right and Muslims/Scientologists/Ancient Greeks/FSM believers/etc wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
There was nothing in the universe. Not one atom. All of a sudden a tiny thing showed up (out of thin air) and exploded and gave birth to the physical universe.
Who cares that the most basic laws of physics say that there is absolutely no possible way the physical universe should be here. There should not be ONE SINGLE ATOM in the universe. But there they are.
Then ... life popped up all over the place.
Yeah I feel sooo dumb for wondering why the physical universe could not have just popped into place from thin air for no reason.
The atheists of this age are a wonderful irony. Elitist simpletons who simultaneously think they are genius yet have no ability to think for them self.
So you think the "invisible man in the sky" explanation is more credible than what science has come up with so far?
Let's not forget that it wasn't so long ago that our knowledge didn't even go back as far back as the Big Bang. As recently as the period leading up to the renaissance we weren't all that sure how the Earth fits into the neighbouring planets and the local star, to say nothing of how old or big the universe was. Just because science has frontiers now or because you don't understand the science (
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You seem to imply there's an easy answer to the origins of this universe which "science" is just too stupid to conclude. What might that answer be? If your assertion is that it had to be created from "outside" then the latest physics is tending to agree with you. It has begun to see this universe as only one small bubble in a continuum which is much larger...
Science is nothing more than our closest and most carefully-recorded observations of the cosmos, and a set of methods for direct inquiry regarding the
Re:But it is sooo simple to understand (Score:5, Insightful)
I pity you - you have been brainwashed into feeling stupid when wondering about these things. The smartest people on the planet wonder about the origin of the universe, and have discovered many wondrous things, yet you idly dismiss them.
Your overconfident arrogance would be annoying if the tortured remains of your natural curiosity were not pitiful.
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But when we fielded some honest tube-thumpers [lasvegashype.com], everyone said it was lame:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
From a strictly scientific viewpoint, neither of those have been definitively proven.
From a strictly scientific standpoint, no scientific theory has ever been definitively proven, in the mathematical sense of the word. Scientific theories can be disproved (falsified), but not definitively proven. For some theories, the mountain of evidence supporting it can be so big that it is essentially considered proven by laymen, but the scientific standards of proof are much higher.
And the theory of evolution is one such theory with a large mountain of evidence in support.
Changing answers doesn't mean what you think (Score:5, Insightful)
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm [tufts.edu]
"[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was [perfectly] spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." - Isaac Asimov
Re:My question (Score:4, Insightful)
The "primordial soup" theory, one of the corner stones of evolution has been largely rejected by scientists
The "primordial soup theory" isn't even a _part_ of Evolutionary Theory, let alone a "cornerstone" of it.