As if this is News: Americans don't know shit

Hambydammit
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As if this is News: Americans don't know shit

Not that this is really news to most people here, but the New York Times has reported that most Americans are jack shit ignorant about science, and scientists don't like how ignorant Americans are.

NYT wrote:
Almost a third of ordinary Americans say human beings have existed in their current form since the beginning of time, a view held by only 2 percent of the scientists. Only about half of the public agrees that people are behind climate change, and 11 percent does not believe there is any warming at all.

According to the survey, about a third of Americans think there is lively scientific debate on both topics; in fact, there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution and there is little doubt that human activity is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere in ways that threaten global climate.

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Not suprizing, but when you

Not suprizing, but when you look at the entirety of the human species, most are not that educated in science. I think in our intire history as a speices, it is because of "Dawkin's moth" of our predilection to incert a gap answer, instead of actually doing the hard thing and observing and studying and testing. It is much easier for the species to make shit up than to admit that we don't know.

I have to admit myself that I have forgotten lots of the math and science I once knew. BUT, one thing always rung true in these classes. When you followed the method, step by step, you got the answer right. When you plugged in the wrong data, or messed up the formula, and looked at the answer in the back of the book, you knew somewhere in the process, you got it wrong.

SCIENCE is hard. SCIENTIFIC METHOD any moron can understand.

Science is a description  of field of study when USING Scientific Method.

All that "scientific method" means is following a step by step process.

But it is sad to me that myth is more important to people than looking for ways to solve disease, hunger, and meteors hitting the planet.

 

 

 

 

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It's sad that both evolution

It's sad that both evolution and global warming have been so heavily politicized. Frankly, I don't care if people don't believe in evolution. But we've got to get serious about global warming.

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geirj wrote:It's sad that

geirj wrote:

It's sad that both evolution and global warming have been so heavily politicized. Frankly, I don't care if people don't believe in evolution. But we've got to get serious about global warming.

I think the "serious" here is not so much knowing the facts, but rather caring at all. I find that most people are rather indifferent to the fate of the future of the world, a future they won't be a part of. Their devotion is to the "here and now".  They are individuals whose indifference yields them to a philosophy, of "shit happens, people fucking die, and we move the fuck on", and this is sort of the dominant attitude one will find, not only among many Americans, but the attitudes of China and India as well. 

Thinking that the problem is scientific education, is misguided, the problem is that people don't care to learn it at all. They don't care to seek out the information about Global Warming, exactly because they don't give a shit about it at all. 

 

 


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Hamby wrote :Americans don't know shit

 The article was discussed on NPR the other day,and the one dude that was playing the devil's advocate,blamed the scientist for not making it easy for most people to embrace the scientific method and he also blamed the school system for making it hard for students to accept being called nerds,other students were bullying the kids in the science and space programs.Bad teachers and Elites Scientist.  

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 The problem goes a bit

 The problem goes a bit beyond a 'don't care' attitude, there is a significant fraction who have a real antipathy to both ideas.

I am really depressed by the figure of 2 percent for 'scientists'...

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BobSpence1 wrote: The

BobSpence1 wrote:

 The problem goes a bit beyond a 'don't care' attitude, there is a significant fraction who have a real antipathy to both ideas. 

The survey didn't take into account antipathy. I think we have a tendency to exaggerate popular feelings, by the extreme we find in the media, but most most fundies are not John Hagee, nor Kent Hovind, they may share similar views, but not so passionately. Most of my community is composed of fundies, and I get the opportunity to travel to various parts of the country meeting these type of Christians all the time. 

To give you an example of some sense of indifference, most of them do not accept evolution, or they're agnostic about it, all them know where I stand, and any sort of discussion we have on the subject ends rather quickly, because of lack of interest on their parts in pursuing it. Most "fundies" don't eat up articles on AiG, or know a thing about "creation science", nor attempt to expound on it, most of them have no desire to visit forums. 

And any sense of hostility is not directed at the ideas so much, but rather the purveyors of them. The ravaging atheist crusader of science, is met with hostility not for purveying science, but rather for being ravaging. The hostility towards global warming, is more directed at the sensationalist.

But whats really lacking is any sort of interest in these subjects, not just by fundies, but by the greater populace, and I'm a victim of this myself. I find myself rather indifferent to the outcomes of global warming, it's the equivalent of telling me the world is going to end in a million years if I don't commit myself to radical changes to prevent it. I like most of the world, lack any sort of "love" to care. People are more concerned about putting food on their tables, keeping themselves entertained, paying the bills, the concerns of their everyday life, which extends to their children's lives as well, but subsequent generations after that get cold stairs. 

We're a culture in which men get trampled to death in pursuit of bargains. We don't care too much about the lives of others in the beyond. It's not a worthwhile concern. The sign of our times, is a new form of barbarism, a philosophical one, a detachment of the world. We live in world with a plethora of distractions, to avoid engagement with the world and people around us.

And I say this, not as person telling you what others are like, but also speaking about how I am like as well. 

 


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Yah, the 2% figure bothered

Yah, the 2% figure bothered me at first also. However, if one does a bit of digging, it turns out that the AAAS is a “society of societies” that has a lengthy list of member associations. Further, the list of groups who are members, while lengthy, is probably telling on this matter: http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/affiliates/ the first few that stand out are: The American Dental Association. The American Academy of Forensic Sciences. The American Library Association. The American Philosophical Association. The American Political Science Association. The American Society of Civil Engineers. If you follow the link, you will see that that only covers the first half of the A section. So there is probably a hole wide enough to drive a truck through as far as who may have taken the test. I am somewhat more concerned about the numbers which they got on global warming. Here is one of the images from that section: Photobucket When I look at the numbers for scientists, I am left wondering just what questions they were asked. There are, of course, a small number of respectable scientists who are skeptical over the details of the matter. However, that is (at least as far as I am aware) a debate over the details, not over the substance.

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theTwelve wrote:And any

theTwelve wrote:
And any sense of hostility is not directed at the ideas so much, but rather the purveyors of them. The ravaging atheist crusader of science, is met with hostility not for purveying science, but rather for being ravaging. The hostility towards global warming, is more directed at the sensationalist.

 

Honestly, I have yet to meet a “ravaging atheist crusader of science”. I think that if you consider matters a bit more deeply, you will find that the majority of atheists accept science more readily than do fundies. However, at the heart of the matter, atheism has nothing to do with science. Atheism is more of a philosophical matter. Some would even say that it is a huge hole of nothing in particular and it happens that science fits fairly well into that hole.

 

Still, atheism is a hole and even if one calls science the plug, it is a category error to confuse the lpug for the hole.

 

theTwelve wrote:
People are more concerned about putting food on their tables,

 

As well that they should be. However, it is a matter that we can foresee that your grandchildren may not be able to put so much on their tables. Although, I am not sure if that is a bad thing. The population of the planet has doubled since I was a kid and that is probably not a very good thing either.

 

If the population was scaled back to perhaps three billion or so, then the level of industry needed to sustain them would probably not be great enough for global warming to be so much of a concern. Perhaps it will even prove to be self correcting if the changes are enough to damage agriculture in general. The thing here is that we really do not know if that is likely to happen. However, scaling back industry will probably play a role in long term population reduction as well, so one way or the other, if we as a species are still here in a couple of centuries, I suspect that the climate will be much better understood and there will be fewer of us.

 

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Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

As well that they should be. However, it is a matter that we can foresee that your grandchildren may not be able to put so much on their tables. 

 

Well, i think most people don't have any real affection for their yet to be conceived grandchildren, they are granted less affection than fetuses. People may say they do, because it sounds like the correct thing to say, but in terms of conviction, i'd say it's fairly non-existent. How many people plan for their grand-children's future (besides those that are already have some)? How many people make willful sacrifices in their daily lives for the future of their grandchildren and beyond? Peta members have more affection for flies, than most people do about yet to be born, grandchildren. 

Most people affections are relegated to themselves and those in close proximity, grandchildren don't make the cut.

I can say I wish I did feel a real sense of compassion towards my future grandchildren, but asking me to, is sort of like banging on a dry well.

 

 

 

 


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Ken G. wrote: The article

Ken G. wrote:

 The article was discussed on NPR the other day,and the one dude that was playing the devil's advocate,blamed the scientist for not making it easy for most people to embrace the scientific method and he also blamed the school system for making it hard for students to accept being called nerds,other students were bullying the kids in the science and space programs.Bad teachers and Elites Scientist.  

It is not the fault of scientists.

 

There is a big difference between 1+1=2 and Quantim Mechanics.

While I agree that Scientific Method itself has been conflated to more than it really is as being eletist and eggheaded, there are scientific feilds that laymen need broken down for them.

Scientists should not throw laymen into the deep end all the time. But by teaching the over all laymen that Scientific Method is merely nothing more than following a step by step process, we can at least  open the door that science is approachable.

There are things myself in science that I will never understand. I will never understand neurobiology. But I do know that when I took my tests in biology, or in physics, when I didn't follow the method properly I got the answer wrong.

METHOD, merely means the order of steps we take. Anyone can understand that.

 

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Brian37 wrote:Scientific Method is a step by step etc.....

Yes,it sounds easy,and I know that it is easy,but the fact is that students place a road block in their own minds when it comes to science.It's like the old saying  goes  ~  " People  fear what they don't understand"        so they don't take out the time to learn about it.

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