DEvolution in America

[Shryke]

Look at his second or third post.

Not there.

He rants for awhile about "Religion mudding the waters about Evolution", which is true.

But none of that explains away the strong correlation between "Education Level" and "I don't know" and the complete lack of a correlation between "Church Attendance" and "I don't know".

The less educated you are, the less likely you are to believe in Evolution. This is not surprising.

What he's arguing, and what the poll actually refutes, is that those that don't know either way are also doing so because of religion. The poll shows that religious attendance has no over-acrhing effect on whether someone answers "I don't know" or not.*

*Technically, there's a bubble in the middle for those that attend church every few weeks. But those that go all the time and those that never go both come out to essentially the same.

[CiaranAnnrach]

What? On no, I meant, EHK is not harmful on the board, whereas he may well be in the real world; poor wording on my part.

Oh.

Perhaps. But, if he succeeds, and society gets better, then he was right and I am wrong, and I'll admit it. Otherwise, if he succeeds, and society gets worse or doesn't change, then we get to tell him "I told you so." And that would be awesome.

And...if nothing changes, then whatever. At least he'll be venting out there where I won't have to deal with it. :P

[HT Reddy]

Perhaps. But, if he succeeds, and society gets better, then he was right and I am wrong, and I'll admit it. Otherwise, if he succeeds, and society gets worse or doesn't change, then we get to tell him "I told you so." And that would be awesome.

yeh but him being right and improving society won't be an ultimately good thing if it means a reduced number of believers. In other words, yes religion has a negative impact on some aspects of society, but it's worth it.

[CiaranAnnrach]

Not there.

You don't get to be agnostic on one of the most fundamental questions of basic scientific reality. 'No opinion' is almost as stupid and ignorant as 'no' in this case. I mean would we hesitate to lament and scorn those who had 'no opinion' on whether the earth was flat or not? Same scenario here. You either believe the sky is blue, since it is in fact fucking blue, or there's something wrong with you whether you're fence sitting or firmly in the other camp. Cause quite frankly, there's no fucking fence to sit on. This is about as either/or as you get. If your answer is maybe, you're still dumb.

Was the post I was thinking of. Later he does go on to say that the people wouldn't be on the fence if there was a second opposing option to pick from. To me that makes his stance concerning the people on the fence pretty clear.

Anyhow, good luck with the argument. I'm out for awhile.

[CiaranAnnrach]

yeh but him being right and improving society won't be an ultimately good thing if it means a reduced number of believers. In other words, yes religion has a negative impact on some aspects of society, but it's worth it.

If society improves, then that means that religion had a net negative impact on society. (i.e. it did more harm than good, and EHK was right.) If society gets worse, then religion had a net positive impact, and all the people arguing for religion were right. You are trying to say it has a net positive impact. If EHK is right, and religion has a net negative impact on society, then it is not worth it.

Though, I'm cheating here a bit, because a lot of this was discussed at length the last time religion came up.

ETA: Personally, I believe religion has a net positive impact, but that's me. Aside from EHK getting his wish and seeing the results for himself, I don't think anyone short of God Himself coming down from on high can convince him otherwise.

[Shryke]

Was the post I was thinking of. Later he does go on to say that the people wouldn't be on the fence if there was a second opposing option to pick from. To me that makes his stance concerning the people on the fence pretty clear.

Anyhow, good luck with the argument. I'm out for awhile.

No, that's just him trying to throw out the people who aren't sure, despite them being an important part of the poll, because it conflicts with his ideas.

[HT Reddy]

If society improves, then that means that religion had a net negative impact on society. (i.e. it did more harm than good, and EHK was right.) If society gets worse, then religion had a net positive impact, and all the people arguing for religion were right.

Agreed. My point is that EHK being right wouldn't justify supporting him.

[EHK for Darwin]

Not there.

He rants for awhile about "Religion mudding the waters about Evolution", which is true.

But none of that explains away the strong correlation between "Education Level" and "I don't know" and the complete lack of a correlation between "Church Attendance" and "I don't know".

The less educated you are, the less likely you are to believe in Evolution. This is not surprising.

What he's arguing, and what the poll actually refutes, is that those that don't know either way are also doing so because of religion. The poll shows that religious attendance has no over-acrhing effect on whether someone answers "I don't know" or not.*

*Technically, there's a bubble in the middle for those that attend church every few weeks. But those that go all the time and those that never go both come out to essentially the same.

People are influenced by religion in America whether they attend church or not. It is easily one of the most significant major cultural influences in the country. You can't not be affected by it. Higher education merely provides a vehicle by which people might learn to think more critically or conversely might attract people already inclined to such things, and thus has the effect of negating some of religion's dumber influences. As for polling correlations, the lack of 'maybe's' in the weekly church goers is explained pretty easily by the 41% of them in the 'NO' category. Not alot of leftovers for Maybe at that point.

76% of Weekly church-goers are No or No opinion. 70% monthly church-goers are No or No opinion. The first BIG dropoff occurs in the seldom/never category. They are 45% no or maybe. That's quite a steep drop. There is absolutely a religious correlation. The poll does not give us the more interesting breakdown, church attendance + education and how it correlates to Yes, nos, I don't knows. It could very well be that not alot of Post-grad's go to church.

This poll quite simply does not provide the information we'd need to absolutely settle this issue. And I don't think any poll actually could. The effects and influence of religion go far beyond the weekly church goers. The effects of their century long smear campaign against evolution reach everyone to varying degrees. If you have no idea what you're talking about and no in depth study of the field, some of their arguments even sound reasonable. I mean the eye is a pretty damned complex thing. How can it really go from nothing to being there? (obviously it doesn't, but that's the disingenuous horseshit they're peddling) And we live in America, home of the free & brave, equal rights and fairness for everyone. And on equality, isn't it more equal and more fair to teach both sides of the controversy? To argue it out instead of dogmatically accepting whatever the scientists give us? Aren't they every bit as fundamentalist as your Pat Robertson's and such?

On its face to the completely uninitiated, this shit doesn't sound too bad. It can have the effect of casting doubts and raising questions amongst the uninformed, even if it doesn't stand up to rigorous (or even lazy) analysis. So you will get FAR more No's and Don't knows than you otherwise would, even amongst those who don't attend church, above and beyond anything that can simply be attributed to bad education.

Fact is most people don't know a weak argument when they see it. They don't know the logical fallacies, the strawmen, the false dichotomies. They don't know that the gap peddling and 'EXPLAIN THIS' ahah's have been debunked and explained a thousand times over. Education can improve these things. But education's job would be so much easier if it didn't have to fight through religious nonsense and misinformation. Nor would education necessarily need to do much of a job if there was nothing opposing it. Bad education and lack of education will always be a problem for everything. Take a poll of 1,000 people, ask who wants a better education system and I suspect 998 (there's always two idiots) say yes. That's simply a natural state of affairs. Education always can be improved, everyone wants it to be improved, but people disagree on just how to do it and/or don't always want to expend the resources to do it.

But disbelieving an established, confirmed, and reconfirmed a thousand times over scientific theory is not natural whether you're versed in the subject or not. Its not unavoidable. It takes an outside force with an agenda. That force is religion. And on that particular instance, it MUST be fixed. But if we take that 1,000 person poll again, more than half are gonna say there's nothing that needs fixing on that point.

yeh but him being right and improving society won't be an ultimately good thing if it means a reduced number of believers. In other words, yes religion has a negative impact on some aspects of society, but it's worth it.

No it isn't.

[EHK for Darwin]

No, that's just him trying to throw out the people who aren't sure, despite them being an important part of the poll, because it conflicts with his ideas.

What is there to be unsure about? Oh that's right, religion again.

[Shryke]

What is there to be unsure about? Oh that's right, religion again.

Or, you know, Evolution in general being something the ill-educated do not understand.

When it comes to education level, "No" and "Don't Know" follow the exact same pattern.

HOWEVER, when it comes to church Attendance, while the "No"s still follow the same pattern, the "Don't Knows" DON'T.

Because they are saying "Don't know" for a different reason then the people saying "No" are.

You are, again, putting the Cart before the Horse. Trying to blame Religion for ill-education, when it's in fact ill-education that makes religious, non-evolution believing crazies so persuasive.

[EHK for Darwin]

When it comes to education level, "No" and "Don't Know" follow the exact same pattern.

HOWEVER, when it comes to church Attendance, while the "No"s still follow the same pattern, the "Don't Knows" DON'T.

Because they are saying "Don't know" for a different reason then the people saying "No" are.

Are you reading chicken entrails or something? If you go to church weekly, the No's siphon off a shitload of the don't knows. Add em together and there isn't much of a statistical drop between weekly and monthly attendance. But there is a large one once you get to seldom/never attending. Also, what reason do people have to have so many doubts around the issue? What is there out there that makes people hesitant to cast a definitive 'vote' either way? I know of only one group actively casting doubt on evolution. You might have heard of it.

Where is this debate or controversy without religion? Where is there a substantive reason to doubt without religion? Yeah, education can help the problem. But it is not THE main problem. Education is trying to do the right thing, sometimes doing it badly. Religion is in large part actively encouraging and indoctrinating the wrong thing. This is the difference between traffic accidents happening and 25-60% of drivers actively trying to run eachother off the road.

[ljkeane]

76% of Weekly church-goers are No or No opinion. 70% monthly church-goers are No or No opinion. The first BIG dropoff occurs in the seldom/never category. They are 45% no or maybe. That's quite a steep drop. There is absolutely a religious correlation. The poll does not give us the more interesting breakdown, church attendance + education and how it correlates to Yes, nos, I don't knows. It could very well be that not alot of Post-grad's go to church.

I suspect that 60% of the US population are not members of religions that dispute the validity of evolution and as the amount of concern given to this issue in other western developed societies seem extremely low regardless of how religious their population is I don't think that it's entirely clear that religion is the sole cause of the problem.

[Shryke]

Are you reading chicken entrails or something? If you go to church weekly, the No's siphon off a shitload of the don't knows. Add em together and there isn't much of a statistical drop between weekly and monthly attendance. But there is a large one once you get to seldom/never attending. Also, what reason do people have to have so many doubts around the issue? What is there out there that makes people hesitant to cast a definitive 'vote' either way? I know of only one group actively casting doubt on evolution. You might have heard of it.

Where is this debate or controversy without religion? Where is there a substantive reason to doubt without religion? Yeah, education can help the problem. But it is not THE main problem. Education is trying to do the right thing, sometimes doing it badly. Religion is in large part actively encouraging and indoctrinating the wrong thing. This is the difference between traffic accidents happening and 25-60% of drivers actively trying to run eachother off the road.

Lack of education casts a doubt on all sorts of scientific theories, with no help from religion.

But keep saying it's all religion's fault, it might make it true sometime around when Unicorns show up.

[EHK for Darwin]

Lack of education casts a doubt on all sorts of scientific theories, with no help from religion.

But keep saying it's all religion's fault, it might make it true sometime around when Unicorns show up.

Lack of education does not cast doubts. Lack of education simply makes you more susceptible to dishonest/ignorant bullshit peddlers attempting to cast doubts.

[ljkeane]

Lack of education does not cast doubts. Lack of education simply makes you more susceptible to dishonest/ignorant bullshit peddlers attempting to cast doubts.

If you have had sufficient education to understand the evidence for evolution and you still choose to believe creationism is scientific fact you're an idiot and that's your problem, it seems to me the only issue is whether students are being provided with a good enough education :dunno:

[Shryke]

Except you'll get "I don't knows" out of tons of people with most scientific questions. And most of those question have no group out to "disprove" them based on some agenda.

Lack of education will make people uncertain about things because they don't fucking know what your talking about.

[EHK for Darwin]

I suspect that 60% of the US population are not members of religions that dispute the validity of evolution and as the amount of concern given to this issue in other western developed societies seem extremely low regardless of how religious their population is I don't think that it's entirely clear that religion is the sole cause of the problem.

Whether your particular church or faith disputes evolution or not, you're still exposed to the nonsense from the faiths that do. The evolution friendly churches aren't exactly launching a counter-crusade on the issue. So while their influence may not be too negative, it is not necessarily positive either. That this may not be a huge problem in other countries doesn't really tell us much. Guns also aren't a problem in many other countries, but they are here. So we must (or should) implement measures against them that may not be strictly necessary in say...Switzerland. Deal with the problems you've got. Right now we've got religions in the US fighting a knock down, drag out, idiotic propaganda campaign against evolution. And its having their desired effect.

No other group I can point to is actively trying to CAUSE a problem. Some entities (schools) are simply insufficient at the moment to fixing the problems being caused.

[Ser Aardvark]

You realize that more people believe in evolution than don't according to this poll right?

[ljkeane]

No other group I can point to is actively trying to CAUSE a problem. Some entities (schools) are simply insufficient at the moment to fixing the problems being caused.

While I don't view religious groups that are so entrenched in their views as to reject the scientifically proven in a particularly positive light it seems somewhat redundent to rant against their bad influence, I suspect most rational people are aware their views are foolish.

The only realistic solution to what seems to be a very real problem is to address the education students receive so that they know that the evidence for evolution is clear.

[EHK for Darwin]

If you have had sufficient education to understand the evidence for evolution and you still choose to believe creationism is scientific fact you're an idiot and that's your problem, it seems to me the only issue is whether students are being provided with a good enough education :dunno:

This is bullshit. The problem is that various groups are smearing evolution on a massive, national scale and indoctrinating kids from birth in beliefs that are not only wrong, but fundamentally stupid. Schools can deal alright with simple ignorance. That's their job. They are less skilled at dealing with intentional, ongoing propaganda campaigns that carry divine fucking approval and parental/community advocacy. You're essentially asking schools not just to educate kids, but to win the battle of hearts and minds against parents and preachers. Don't you think that's JUST A BIT of a tall order? Double teacher salaries tomorrow and you're not gonna get that.

And even kids who are not raised in that environment will be exposed to similar nonsense. There is still active competition, an outside force encouraging and mandating ignorance. Schools got enough problems educating on subjects for which there are no outside preconceived biases. You're asking them to counteract varying degrees of cultural indoctrination. We could have the best schools in the world and that'd still be tough. And for many kids, there never will be a 'good enough' education that will counter those other forces.

Except you'll get "I don't knows" out of tons of people with most scientific questions. And most of those question have no group out to "disprove" them based on some agenda.

Show me that poll. A popularly 'known', but not widely understood scientific theory. Relativity, as discussed earlier, would be a good one. I highly doubt there will be that many 'I don't knows' when it comes to that. And even the ones that are there won't have much practical effect on the study of relativity and concepts related to it as the religiously motivated brain drain on evolution most certainly does.