Majority of Americans reject the theory of Evolution.

[tallahasseedem]

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20051024100409990019

-snip-

NEW YORK (Oct. 23) - Most Americans do not accept the theory of evolution. Instead, 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved.

These views are similar to what they were in November 2004 shortly after the presidential election.

-snip-

The only thing I have to say is :wtf: and I cant say that I am surprised, only embarrassed by our society.

[liberalpragmatist]

1. Sigh

:banghead:

[drummo]

37. I feel your pain

[SammyBlue]

261. Give me that old time religion

Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
It's good enough for me.

Darwin was wrong. . .man's still and ape!

[Gato Moteado]

2. seeing freepers is a good case for not believing in evolution......

....i mean those knuckle draggers haven't done any evolving in a million years or so.

[Union Thug]

3. Americans.. The dumbest flock of dodos ever assembled on a single...

continent.

Oh please... abracadabra! Poof! ...so there was a talking snake, see. And there was a couple of people that didn't know they were naked and then the evil woman ate an apple and then they were naked.. and then..

OH PUH-LEEEEEZ

GROW THE HELL UP AMERICA. Take your fairy tales and ghost stories elsewhere.

[Perky]

35. Speaking for the majority of americans:

No. I don;t think we should leave and lets bigots of any political stripe lead.

[Zhade]

125. You're defending these idiots?

Hey, it's one thing to believe in some unproven god - if it makes you feel better, awesome - but to ignore the reality of biological evolution is sheer insanity.

It's hardly bigoted to point out that ignoring the overwhelming evidence for evolution's observed and confirmed existence is idiotic.

No one's saying, for example, that believers suck *because* they're believers. THAT would be bigotry.

[Perky]

151. but that is preciesly what is bieing said.

I am not degending intelligent design I am simply criticising fols who would want to push people of faith out of the way and off this site.

It is offensive.

[Zhade]

173. Give me an example of that happening, and maybe you'll have a point.

Show me where anyone is trying to push "people of faith" anywhere, let alone off this site.

Cite an occurrence of actual bigotry, because I'm not seeing it.

People who believe the biblical creation myth is literally true, despite all evidence to the contrary, are ignorant of the facts of the history of life on this planet.

That does not make them evil. It just makes them wrong. I called them idiots out of frustration, and I'll own that. But even that was not bigotry, because I elsewhere indicated that believers who don't think the creation myth to be historical fact are not ignorant.

No persecution going on that I can see. If you see it, share the posts with me. Otherwise, I can't accept your argument as valid.

Nothing personal.

[Perky]

180. But what you don't get is that it is personal

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5157411&mesg_id=5157450

If I choose to follow the God of the Bible and his Son, I have made the important leap of faith that the Bible is truth provided under Divine Inspiration To believe othewise sets up a situation where God is creating falsemess either because He is a the greatest practical Jokester ever or He is a liar.

But there is nothing in Scripture that supports that.

For many if the Creation story is not true, then that means we get to deide for ourselves what in the Bible we chose to believe and what we don't. (Actually we do that anyway, but we don't talks about that...haha).

But when some one says that People who believe the Creation story your are saying that the whole of their faith is a sham. At best it is insensitive at worst it is intolerance. The original post and the earliest part of the thread has nothing to do with creationsm or Intelligent Design. It happened to be about evolution vs creation: not what we teach our kids in public school.

And Yes the Intel Design folks are trying to foist religion on people by arguing that is is science. and no,religon has no place in the the classrom. Not because it violates the establsihment clause, because it does, but because it waters down faith to an unacceptable level. I don;t want teachers being required to teach things they do not believe because it does God more disservice than service.

[fishwax]

245. You don't have to believe the creation story to be a Christian

Period.

[Perky]

256. Of cours you don't.

And many don't.

But for others, particualrly fundamentalist, their faith begins and ends with the issue of inerrancy. They can not concede that the Creation Story is wrong because to do so would be to surrender the faith they have know to the vagaries of moderism and exisitentialism.

But beleid in the Creations story is not in and of itself dangerous (nearly all Christians stuggle with the the Story..and most put it on the shelf and choose not to deal with it conclusively).

Where the danger lies is those few vocal zealots who suggest that the state has a resposbility to promote their views equally by putting it on a par with evolution. Ultimately it really is not even a fight for supremace its a struggle for relevance (at least it is when they are not trying to sell books or get mor donations)

WHat they do not get is that Prayer in homeroom creationism/ID in Biology would do nothing to save socety from ruin or people's souls from eterna damnation.

Honorring GOd is not the responsibility of the state it is the responsibility of the CHurch and when they attempt to dictate to the secular world what should and should not be taugh, they wind up pushing far more people aweay from what they seek then those that they might draw,


I don not want the depth and breadth of my CHristianity being taught by people being forced to do so.... and neither should they.

[Zhade]

262. I have no control over people who choose to believe myth...

...over proven reality.

If they believe the biblical account of creation is literally true, I'm sorry, but they are ignorant of reality.

Once again, pointing that out to people who choose to believe things in spite of established scientific evidence that runs counter to the myth is not persecution, and it's not personal.

If they choose to be offended by the fact that science disproves their belief in literal creationism, that's not my problem, and I will not apologize for representing reality to them.

And please note that I NEVER said their faith was a sham - that's a strawman on your part. I did, however, say they are wrong - and they are. Science proves their belief to be wrong.

If they continue to believe, and insist that science is "false" or "led by the devil", or whatever - again, not my problem. I can't do anything for anyone that divorced from reality.

[BeTheChange]

266. "over proven reality"

If it is proven reality, why is it that we still cannot make life out of nothing?

When you can take nothing and make something then we can talk about "proven reality".

See, the same way you seem to be chastising Christians and shaking your head through out this thread....

I also shake my head trying to comprehend how anyone can believe that something as complex, faceted, beautiful, terrible and perfect as life can be explained away as some type of random occurance... some one in 20 gadzillion chance that we havent even come close to recreating.

The difference is, I dont judge you for believing that life is so random, so un imbued with worth and miraculous energy. Yet your words like "wrong", "idiots", "insanity", "myth" judge those who believe differently then you..

Im sorry that you have become so jaded against religion and against 51 % of your fellow citizens.

[Zhade]

274. Your post starts with a flawed premise.

"why is it that we still cannot make life out of nothing?" - this question concerns abiogenesis, which evolution most decidedly does NOT deal with.


"When you can take nothing and make something then we can talk about "proven reality"."

Just because we cannot perform abiogenesis (to my knowledge), that in no way makes the myth of creationism any more valid. The lack of ability to do one thing does not automatically entail that the opposite possibility is the necessarily true one. That's a false dichotomy, and another lapse in logic.


"The difference is, I dont judge you for believing that life is so random, so un imbued with worth and miraculous energy."

You are ascribing things to me for which you have no basis to allege. You have NO idea what I believe about life - you've never asked me. So, another weak strawman argument.


"Yet your words like "wrong", "idiots", "insanity", "myth" judge those who believe differently then you.."

1) Science proves the myth of creationism impossible to be true. Things like carbon-dating and the sheer weight of history itself shows the belief in the "literal truth" of the creation myth to be wrong.

(Besides, considering that there are TWO distinct creation stories in the biblical book of Genesis, even 100% literalists are wrong about HALF of their religion's creation myth.)

2) "idiots" was wrong - "scientifically ignorant" is a better descriptive term.

3) I never used the word "insanity". You have placed that into my mouth. Kindly extract it, as it is not true.

4) Main Entry: myth
Pronunciation: 'mith
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek mythos
1 a : a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon b : PARABLE, ALLEGORY
2 a : a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially : one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society <seduced by the American myth of individualism -- Orde Coombs> b : an unfounded or false notion
3 : a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence
4 : the whole body of myths

The biblical account of creationism is, indeed, myth.


"Im sorry that you have become so jaded against religion and against 51 % of your fellow citizens."

Not jaded against religions, just don't believe any of them to be reflective of reality. They are without evidence to prove their stories to have happened, thus I no more accept them as valid than I do the myth of Santa.

That's just how it is - I don't have a problem with believers, I have a problem with believers being ignorant of scientific and historical fact and refusing to admit its reality if it happens to challenge their chosen belief system.

It does a disservice to everyone, the believer included, when bald-faced facts are rejected for literal interpretations of scriptures clearly meant as allegory.

If that's "judgemental"...well, I can't say I can do much about the opinion of anyone who is willfully ignorant of science and fact. They are who they are. They may be awesome people, but informed as to how life happened on this planet they are not.

[BeTheChange]

284. Okey doke..

I do wish to clear one thing up. I put no words in your mouth. You did use the word insanity in your post #125.

Why are you so arguementative and angry that you would be so quick to make accusations? I have no need to put words into your mouth. You are issuing them forth just fine yourself.

Science does not prove the idea of a Creator to be untrue. As I said, the hypothesis, or theory, it makes about the creation of life is just a theory.. it is a best guess.. the mathmatics behind the chances that out of an ammonia pool some protein bonded and here we are are just as staggering as the idea of faith. The Bible doesnt give a specific time period and it is widely known and acknowledged that 7 days is not literal. Nothing that science has actually proven negates the ideas of a Creator that many Christians have.

Now, you seperate the start of life.. Ill go ahead and leave the jargonization out.... with evolution and that is cool. But it still plays into the equation. You do a disservice to your fellow countrymen by labelling them as idiots and insulting their intelligence. Evolution is a big topic in practically every church small group at one point in time. I have never, in all my decades of church heard people completely refuse evolution. They question aspects of evolution and wish to make sure that it is presented as theory. It cant be proven.

Theory: the·o·ry Audio pronunciation of "theory" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (th-r, thîr)
n. pl. the·o·ries

1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
2. The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice: a fine musician who had never studied theory.
3. A set of theorems that constitute a systematic view of a branch of mathematics.
4. Abstract reasoning; speculation: a decision based on experience rather than theory.
5. A belief or principle that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: staked out the house on the theory that criminals usually return to the scene of the crime.
6. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.


Why is it that we cannot recreate the evolution of an organism.. or even create environments that force adaptation and evolution in less advanced species at will? Why dont chickens take to the air? Why havent they adapted to get away from prey? Why havent fish stopped spawning in the place of their birth, learning over time the environmental pitfalls that await them in much of our inland water? Why is our species so special? Why didnt everything evolve at the same rate?

I dont have the answers to all those questions and either does science. But I digress, cause Im not going to engage in arguements about this. The beauty of freewill and uniqueness is that we all are able to have whatever opinions we wish.

[Zhade]

288. You're still arguing against points I never made.

"Science does not prove the idea of a Creator to be untrue."

This is yet another strawman - I never argued that science proves the idea of a creator to be untrue. I stated that science disproves the literal interpretation of the biblical account of creation. Science proves that the earth is NOT 6,000 years old, for example.


"As I said, the hypothesis, or theory, it makes about the creation of life is just a theory.. it is a best guess.. the mathmatics behind the chances that out of an ammonia pool some protein bonded and here we are are just as staggering as the idea of faith."

Once again, for those who don't yet understand it: evolutionary science does not deal with abiogenesis. You are arguing against a position evolutionary scientists don't even take. It's not part of the equation.

You would think that those of you so willingly to argue against the scientific facts of evolution would at least understand what evolutionary science studies and what it doesn't bother itself with. As it is, you're arguing against self-constructed positions - more strawmen.

Until you understand how evolutionary science works at a rudimentary level - which includes the realization that IT DOESN'T DEAL WITH ABIOGENESIS - the discussion is pointless. You're arguing from a mistaken perspective, and that has to be corrected before progress can be made.

[fishwax]

296. You keep doing this strawman/bait and switch

Being a "believer" in god/christianity doesn't preclude believing in evolution. Believing in evolution doesn't equate to saying god doesn't exist. When Zhade says, quite specifically, that the earth is simply not 6000 years old, as many people still believe that it is (and as the original argument against evolution insisted), he's not negating or ridiculing anyone's belief in god. He's criticizing their belief that the world is 6000 years old.

If someone wants to believe the moon is made of green cheese, they're welcome to believe that ... but those of us who live in reality owe them no special sensitivity when it comes to discussions of lunar matter. And if someone wants to believe the Bible is literally true and that the world is 6000 years old, that's fine, but I don't see why (particularly in discussions of science or evolution) we shold dance around the fact that they're demonstrably wrong.

[libertynliberalism]

178. Most people WANT TO BELIEVE in the idea of GOD

Evolution is cold esoteric science. God and the idea of a divine hand is much more comforting.

[okieinpain]

74. maybe there was a talking snake, who knows. just because you

don't believe doesn't mean others are wrong to believe.

[Dark]

87. Uh, it does if science runs counter to it. You know, facts? Like carbon

dating?

[okieinpain]

122. well you know there are still a lot of things that modern science can't

explain also. there are gaps in the old evolution theory.

[Ravenseye]

203. No there aren't

ok there are, but there always will be these 'gaps' that you refer to. The difference is you say "gap" and mean "complete hole in the theory which disproves it" and they say "gap" meaning "well we don't have a fossil for this 10,000 year span, but we have ones right before it and right after it, and we can clearly see the connections."

These 'gaps' you speak of don't disprove evolution in any way. When you're talking about a process over millions and millions of years, you're never going to have one skeleton from every single year for each animal. You don't need all that though.

[arewenotdemo]

124. Whaaaa?

Help our brothers and sisters, FSM.

Before they devolve any further.

[okieinpain]

127. what's fsm.

[muriel_volestrangler]

136. The Flying Spaghetti Monster

A sarcastic response to the Intelligent Design claim that "oh no, we're not talking about the Christian god, we could be talking about any intelligent designer, honestly, so this isn't promotion of religion, but we still want this put into science lessons". See the first link in my signature.

[B3Nut]

209. ROFL @ that sig!

I was hearing the Emerson, Lake & Palmer version of Jerusalem as I read that, and imagined it being sung in Greg Lake's voice over Emerson's majestic Hammond...good thing I wasn't sipping coffee, it would have ended up on my monitor!

That's a SCREAM! :rofl:

Todd in Beerbratistan :toast:

[okieinpain]

225. oh no I'm not saying that jesus is the only way, or that god is

particular to muslims, or christians. I just believe that mess called the bible, or koran, there is some truth. and that truth is we were created by a superior being. I also believe that there will be a judgement day and we all will have to answer for our behavior on this planet.

hey call me stupid, crazy, I really don't give a fuck. I believe and I always will. and one day you will also.

[nadinbrzezinski]

289. A fellow Noodler I see

praise thee for the light of the FSM will light your day.

:-)

[Name removed]

75. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Dark]

97. Well, union thug is right.

When is the last time America got high test scores in any area.

How many Americans even know where the fuck Iraq is? Or what the fuck Iraq is?

We ARE an ignorant people. We don't know anything about the world around us. Hell, even here. Blue staters don't educate themselves on red states, and vice versa.

We are not a stupid people, we just don't know any better.

[Perky]

106. Loook it is not ok

to tell people who believe in creation that they are stup and should leave any more than it is ok to tell african-American they should get on the next boat home.

THere is not dofference. Its bigotry and ugly and as Demorats we ought to be offended by it.

[Union Thug]

121. Be offended... that's fine.

But I still wish they'd take their ghost stories elsewhere.... instead of trying to replace science with mythology, and fact with fable.

People can choose ignorance, but don't pollute my kid's mind with this nonsense.

[Warren DeMontague]

123. okay, they shouldn't leave.

but they should stop trying to foist that crap off as science... and they're still woefully clueless about reality.

[Perky]

147. I am glad you got my point.

Thanks.

[Zhade]

128. People that believe the biblical account of creation is literally true...

...are ignorant of the facts.

You are NOT being persecuted, even if you're one of the ones who fails to understand the scientific facts of life on this planet.

If a poster said "Perky, you suck and are evil, like all believers", THAT would be a bigoted statement.

[Ravenseye]

200. Another way of looking at it is...

Someone has a religious book which they have faith and belief in, which says that when the sky is clear the color of the midday sky is orange, much like the citrus fruit when it is ripe.

So then someone holds that book up and proclaims the elementary schools as bigoted because they teach the children that the sky is blue, when the religious book clearly states that the sky is orange.

Scientists, and anyone willing and able, can lift their heads and look at the sky, compare it to a color chart, and clearly see that the midday sky is blue. They take pictures, color spectrum analysis, a variety of experimental and observational techniques, and say that all their evidence points to the sky being blue.

"BIGOTRY!" shouts the ones holding the religious book.

Is the religious one stupid? Is the scientist bigoted?

There really is no difference with that and the situation we're talking about.

[Zhade]

276. Good example.

NT!

[muriel_volestrangler]

141. Judging someone on their understanding on science

is not the same as judging them on their ancestry. The first they can correct; the second (a) doesn't need correcting (b) cannot be changed. So don't try and compare talking about someone's education with someone's colour.

[Zhade]

277. THANK you.

NT!

[PerpetualWinter]

275. Being black isn't a choice...

believing in the 100% unproven, especially with ZERO physical evidence, however is.

[opiate69]

283. There is a HUGE difference...

"Look, it's not ok to tell people who believe in creation that they are stup and should leave any more than it is ok to tell african-American they should get on the next boat home."

You CHOOSE to believe in whatever religion it is you follow. Enough with the false analogies already.

[maxsolomon]

247. blue staters know plenty about red staters

many of us USED TO BE red staters.

i personally know these following red state types:
sheltered suburban catholic conservatives
country farmer conservative bigots

however, NONE of these people know any:
artists
homosexuals
minorities
illegal drug users

so i call BS on your assertion. the essential difference between liberal & conservative is the liberal is not afraid to learn about anything, even contradictory theories. don't drink the GOP koolaid.

[radwriter0555]

158. these people still think adam & eve stood in a garden & talked to a snake

and we wonder why they think that Saddam flew the 91101 planes?

They're idiots. They believe the mindless crap they see on teevee. They honestly don't know that newspeople are just actors reading a script.

[RebelOne]

181. In my opinion, anyone who believes in the myths of Adam and Eve,

Noah and the ark, Mose parting the sea, Jonah and the whale, etc. is a complete idiot. Yeah, and then there is the tooth fairy, Easter bunny and Santa Claus.

[formernaderite]

260. I hate to burst your little bubble ....but many democrats who vote

democratic every time....also believe this to be true. Hello, have you ever been to a pentecostal holy roller inner city church? The people worshipping aren't repubs. As an atheist, I'm surprised its only 51%. That means there are quite a few repubs who don't believe that crap as well.

[swag]

4. Wow, we're really going to keep pace with the rest of the world

technologically and economically with that set of primitive superstitions.

[Zhade]

129. Stunning, isn't it?

I mean, I can understand believers who think, say, that their god created evolution. It's consistent, and at least accounts for evolution's proven reality.

[MountainLaurel]

236. 'Splains a whole helluva lot

Like the fact that the majority of postdoctoral fellows in U.S. universities are actually not from the United States.

[shraby]

5. You have to remember a few years ago

they had an incoming freshman class in college place France on a map of Europe. Most couldn't do it. It's no surprise they don't believe in evolution.

[deadparrot]

6. My countrymen depress me.

The worst thing? If we had a half-decent education system, this wouldn't be an issue. Except that every time anyone mentions major education reform, we get tagged the "liberal elite."

Thank you, you right wing fuckers. :banghead:

*goes to read Fitzmas threads*

[DemInDistress]

7. And God make the earth in 6 days

made Adam from clay,made Eve from Adam's rib and then Eve was tempted
by a snake,they ate the apple from the tree of knowledge then soon
realized they were naked and God kicked their ass out where they had to earn a living...Give me a fucking break !!!!!!!!!!

soory for my french

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Welcome to Dumbfuckistan.

No wonder * is president.

[OnionPatch]

9. These kinds of polls make me

want to move out of the country. I have a young daughter. Will the cultural stupidity rub off on her? :scared:

[tallahasseedem]

13. I am also trying my best to shield...

my little ones from this insanity. It is going to be hard, but as long as we all stand firm there may be hope.

[madeline_con]

10. 51 percent....

Of those who were home, answered the phone, agreed to participate, etc.

According to the disclaimer at the bottom:

"This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 808 adults, interviewed by telephone October 3-5, 2005. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points."

Only 808 were representative of "Americans"??

Could be only 47% reject evolutionary theory.

[ultraist]

58. Good catch. I think the poll severely lacks reliability and validity. n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

91. 51% to 47% sounds a little more accurate:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/front.htm

[Bridget Burke]

184. Yes. We need more information on the survey

808 people sitting at home, eagerly awaiting some nice surveyor to talk to, may not represent the whole country.

[tallahasseedem]

251. Kind of like...

when Survey USA did their polls before the election and would call only freeps.

[xray s]

11. explains alot about Bush's base

If you believe dinosaurs lived with people 5000 years ago, you'll believe anything.

[okieinpain]

78. a lot of those people are the kerry's base also. don't forget that a

lot and I mean a lot of blacks would find a lot of the comments in this post offensive.

[Warren DeMontague]

93. Apparently they'd find scientific truth offensive, too.

Believing the Earth is flat doesn't make it so.

[okieinpain]

102. I don't think they asked that question. I believe the question was

do you believe man was created by god/ or a god whatever makes you feel good. Me personally I believe in god, and I always will. I'm not stupid, I'm not ignorant, I just believe in a creator.

to believe that your body as complex as it is, as perfectly balanced as it is crawled up out of a pool of gunk, and became the perfect machnine it is now. is to me just as impossible as a superior being creating man is to you.

[Warren DeMontague]

145. I didn't say it was impossible.

I just said there's no evidence, and as such it's not science.

There is, however, evidence for the 4.5 billion year history of life on this planet, from -if not gunk- at the very least extremely primitive multicellular organisms all the way up to me and you. So, we came from gunk, whether or not invisible superior theological beings were involved in the process, or not. Evolution is not really debatable, not once you know the facts and understand the evidence. Now, whether or not that precludes a "creator" is a whole nother ball of wax. People who can't make evolution gel with their religious beliefs, it's understandable that they might have a problem with scientific FACT. Other people manage just fine.

I'm not one of them- I happen to think that the western, monotheistic, Judeo-Christian-Islamic notion of a big invisible MAN in the sky is a little absurd. That's only MY opinion, of course. For purposes of the linear, lower chakra political debate in this country, I suppose you'd call me an atheist, although I'm actually more of an Agnostic Taoist Eris-Worshipper.

As far as something as complex as the human body (although I'd differ with the "perfect" on a few things, like wisdom teeth and male nipples.. And stuff like Sickle Cell Anemia- the genes of which confer immunity to malaria when combined with a non-sickle cell gene- is actually PROOF of natural selection and mutation in action) developing from "gunk", or a single-celled organism, of course it's hard to believe. Once upon a time, not too long ago, you and I were both a single-celled organism, and before that we were a sperm and an egg. But anyone who doesn't understand that the boundary between "non-living" chemical matter and life is tenuous and fuzzy, indeed, doesn't understand how mad cow disease works. If a protein can act in an identical fashion to a 'real' living organism in a cow's brain, why is it so hard to accept that chemicals became self-replicating 4.5 billion years ago and developed into DNA, RNA, etc?

[Silent3]

155. Perfect?

to believe that your body as complex as it is, as perfectly balanced as it is crawled up out of a pool of gunk, and became the perfect machnine it is now. is to me just as impossible as a superior being creating man is to you.
Amazing, yes. Perfect? Not a chance. There are plently of things about the human body that, if they were designed, they were stupidly designed.

Take for example the human (or other mammalian) retina. It's inside out from the way it should be. If the blood vessels and nerve connections were running along the back of the retina instead of the front of the retina (like in the eye of an octopus) human vision would be sharper, we wouldn't have blind spots in each eye, and we wouldn't suffer from ailments related to this poor "design", such as detached retinas.

Of course, the typical True Believer response goes something like: "You can't know what special purpose He had in mind making the eye this way! His way is the best, even if you can't see it!"

My response to that? I can't play the piano at all, but that doesn't mean I can't tell when someone's made a bad mistake playing the piano. If you claim the proof that "God made it" is that something is perfect, and that you know that thing is undeniably perfect because God made it... well, that's a rather pointless circular argument, isn't it?

[okieinpain]

234. so I gather that the people that you learned that design flaw from.

are now mass producing perfect eye's and are currently installing them and curing blindness.

[Silent3]

252. Even with a clear analogy right in front of your badly "designed" eyes...

...you jumped right into the traditional, bogus "show me you can do better yourself!" argument.

I can't design a car, but if I see a car with seats facing backwards or a glove compartment "conveniently" located under the hood, beneath the battery, I know that's a bad design. I don't need to have the ability to fix the car to declare that I can see bad design.

The human knee is a bad design. The often self-destructive responses of the human body to burns and nerve damage, which can make matters much worse than the original injuries, are bad designs. I do not need to know how to fix those things, nor does any other human, in order to recogzine clear flaws. Your position is a logical fallacy.

Of course, to be completely accuracte, I don't actually see these flaws as bad designs because I don't see them as designs at all. They're biological systems which just happened that way. From an evolutionary standpoint, these things make perfect sense because evolution doesn't need to create perfection -- it need only do good enough a job with a series of small changes to available structures to produce a creature which is marginally more likely to survive than the competition.

[okieinpain]

263. I didn't say you do it. I said why can't your scientist do it.

talk about badly designed eyes.

[Silent3]

268. The concept of noting flaws in the human body has nothing to do...

...with whether I or anyone else can fix those flaws. What don't you get about that? The ability to spot a flaw and the ability to fix a flaw are not it any way related.

Chances are good (at least if our species lives long enough before self destructing) that we will be able to repair many genetic defects some day and make our bodies better than the hodge-podge evolution has provided. Whether such advance occur, however, is also completely beside the point from being able to recognize our own biological make-up as being far from "perfection".

[Zhade]

278. Right on.

:thumbsup:

[Kailassa]

170. more "believing" ... *sigh*

Instead of telling us nonsense about what you Believe was asked, why not read the article?

... 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form,
and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process.
Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved. ...

This question on the origin of human beings, asked both this month and in November 2004, offered the public three alternatives:

1. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process;
2. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process; or
3. God created human beings in their present form.

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20051024100409990019
(formatting changed to make reading easier)

[okieinpain]

232. what's your point

[Kailassa]

239. My point is that you had the evidence there, but ...

You chose to believe some nonsense out of your own head about what was asked and tell us that, instead of bothering to look at the list of questions for yourself.

This is rather reminiscent of what creationists and IDers do, they believe a weird notion and try to promulgate that, instead of looking at well documented and easily available evidence to see what really happened.

[okieinpain]

264. what is you easily available evidence, that we crawled out of

a pool of goo, and morphed into man. then why hasn't all crawlers evolved, why are there still monkeys. there are plenty of un-answered questions that science can only guess at.

[Zhade]

280. Listen carefully, please:

Evolution DOES NOT IN ANY WAY deal with abiogenesis, which is what you are describing with regards to "a pool of goo".

Not knowing why "all crawlers" have not evolved does not mean the unproven myth of creationism has suddenly been proven.

There are still monkeys because, like many before you, you are confused and possibly ignorant of the fact that evolution posits that man and ape came from a single common ancestor. Evolutionary theory does NOT postulate that man came from monkeys - that is disinformation or, at best, ignorance of the science behind evolution.


Seriously - you guys should at least KNOW what evolutionary science studies and what it ignores if you're going to argue against it.

[okieinpain]

282. well since you're so informed enlighten the ignorant. :~)

[Zhade]

287. I think I just did.

If you have a problem with the facts about evolution, it certainly isn't because of the "how did life *originate*" question, because evolutionary science doesn't concern itself with that.

Such was the sum total of my point.

[Name removed]

301. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Silent3]

298. You don't want to be thought of as stupid or ignorant...

...but then you throw out massively stupid questions like these:

"then why hasn't all crawlers evolved, why are there still monkeys."

The cherry on top is this:

"there are plenty of un-answered questions that science can only guess at."

If your questions were truly out of curiosity, it might be more forgivable. The stupidity and ignorance lies largely in the fact that you imagine yourself to have "a real stumper!" there, with that "Oh, yeah! You can't answer this, now can ya, smart guy?" attitude.

Suppose your last name is Smith. You have a great grandmother with the last name Jones. You don't ask, "If a Jones became a Smith, how come there are still Joneses?", do you?

You don't even understand the simple, damn near self-evident fact that evolution involves branching trees of descent. A species can branch into one or more other species, and this branching can happen with or without the original species going extinct. What's so hard to understand about that?

How much more about evolution are you still willing to criticize, what "holes" and "gaps" do you imagine you can point out, when it's apparent that you're woefully ignorant of the simplest aspects of that which you criticize?

[MadHound]

207. Even though you have evidence of evolution in action all around you?

You find that evolution is a tough concept to grasp? Look around you, specifically look at the microscopic level. Drug resistent bacteria are multiplying at alarming rates. What makes them drug resistent? They have evolved! Let's see here, penecillin was first used on a widespread basis during the late thirties. So it has taken, at most, seventy years for some bacteria to become resistant to penicillin, so resisitent that penicillin is no longer effective.

That is a single celled organism that has evolved within just seventy years, and in some cases less. This earch, and life on it, have been around for millions of years now(that is if you believe the scientifically verifiable evidence, if not, well then nothing is going to convince you) Why do you find life evolving over millions of years so impossible when you have seen it evolve within your own lifetime?

[Zhade]

138. Are you calling black people idiots?

Do you think they're not smart enough to understand the facts that prove evolution or something?

[PowerToThePeople]

12. ...poll results tallied by deibold inc. n/t

[melody]

14. that's a loaded question

The vast majority of these people, I'll be willing to bet you, have some non-religious mystical "god" in mind and not the white guy with the gonads.

[WindRavenX]

15. Even though this is a small sample size, it is very depressing

...Nor does it buck earlier poll; I recall ones that said basically the same thing.
Americans are dumb as a pound of bricks when it comes to math and science,and it's only going to get worse.

[okieinpain]

80. so are those that believe in god that voted for kerry or gore also

dumb as a pound of bricks. funny last time I heard, dean believed in god also.

[WindRavenX]

85. yes

I don't care about the God aspect of this- it's irrelevant because evolution IS NOT ORIGIN SPECIFIC; in other words, God/a creator can be totally fine with evolution.

The people who believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, that evolution doesn't exist, yes, they are dumb. I don't care if they're liberal, conservative, love Kerry or Gore or Bush or McCain, they are ignorant. And it's not because they're religious, please understand this! You can believe in God AND evolution, but to deny evolution is flat out ignorant of the basic facts of the natural world.

[okieinpain]

94. well what you just stated, is not what many are posting. I would

be curious to see what the response would be to "You can believe in God AND evolution". could you start a new post with that as the question.

[WindRavenX]

100. Many, many people say this

In fact, most scientists do believe in a creator (like my Marine Biology professor)- they just know that evolution is not concerned with the origin of life,but rather just the change of life :hi:

[okieinpain]

117. cool, I can deal with that and believe in it also.

[Warren DeMontague]

105. plenty of people manage to believe in evolution and "god"

without any contradiction.

but the people who don't believe in evolution, no matter who they voted for? They may not be as dumb as a pound of bricks, but they're woefully under-educated, misinformed, or living in serious fucking denial.

[okieinpain]

115. well sure there are those that believe that. but you have to admit

there are not a lot of post stating that. I find it really funny watching those suicide bombers today using the very science that they probably reject.

I mean if you believe in allah so much, and that allah is guiding you to blow up people why not just get out and pray for your enemies destruction. I probably shouldn't post this, because it can be turned around and used against me, but oh well.

[Warren DeMontague]

140. You are asking the wrong person

for an explanation of the logic which drives the increasing numbers of glassy-eyed religious fundamentalists of all stripes willing to kill -and die- for what I believe are two dimensional, cartoonish mental constructs of the "divine".

Yep. But then, I don't understand how Pat Robertson can profess to be a "Christian" and advocate assasination.

[Zhade]

142. Remember the poll that found 25% of Americans thought...

...that the SUN revolves around the EARTH?

Yeah. It's painful how stupid some are. And yes, that's stupidity.

[annabanana]

16. Sorry. . I'd have to see the question that was asked

and of whom
before I'm going to worry about what has GOT to be a bogus statistic.

[Jacobin]

17. 51%...same ones who could be convinced to vote for *

Dumbfuckistan, indeed

[niallmac]

18. I'm sorry, but I do not see how 808 people can be a valid sampling.

[slackmaster]

20. It's plenty if the sample is properly selected and stratified

:argh:

[niallmac]

46. I guess. What a country!

[Orrex]

70. Heck, we can streamline the 06 and 08 elections

Just poll 808 people and make sure that they're properly selected and stratified.

I'm familiar with statistics, but I'd like to see the math. 808 won't get you past even a minimal margin of error on a well-packed sports stadium, let alone a whole country.

However, I must grudgingly admit that my own anecdotal sampling of coworkers and acquaintances yields much more than 51% who don't accept evolution as documented fact.

[slackmaster]

19. Y'all know how dumb the average person is, right?

Half of them are dumber than that.

[kineneb]

21. "majority of americans think earth is flat,"

that the lives of celebrities are important and that there is a tooth fairy.

Now we know that this should not be call "the land of opportunity" but "the land of reject idiots."

Should change plaque on Statue of Liberty to something like this (sorry, not a poet here):

Send me your tired,
your reject idiots,
yearning to impose
their stupid beliefs
on others.

[Arkana]

22. "In other news, those same Americans have also rejected the theory

of gravity. Subsequently, they flew up off the ground, hurtled into the sun, and were burnt to ashes."

[PowerToThePeople]

24. Hehe, that must be the rapturing they talk about.

They just need to have more faith that gravity is just an illusion placed into their world by Satan.

[Union Thug]

23. This makes a good cross reference..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=13825&mesg_id=13825

[okieinpain]

25. I believe that god created man. I really don't see what the problem

is.

[IChing]

29. Find but keep your beliefs out the courts and schools

[okieinpain]

72. sure, but shouldn't you keep your's out also.

[Warren DeMontague]

96. Do you understand what science is? How it works?

If you believe that magical invisible gremlins are responsible for causing objects to fall when you drop them, does that mean that we shouldn't teach gravity in public schools?

[okieinpain]

110. well I've never heard a person that believes in god, state that science

has no basis, that they may not trust all that man creates yes. but not many would say that gravity is "magical invisible gremlins". you do believe that man has created computers, and planes, and is fast-ly moving to creating their own form of life, right.

well why can't there be a being more intelligent then us. do you think that in all of the galaxies, and universe's that we are the only intelligent ones.

[Warren DeMontague]

133. Huh?

Evolution has to do with the physical evidence, fossil, DNA, etc. and has to do with what we KNOW about the history of life on this planet. Science works by verifying hypotheses with experiment and evidence. If there was any evidence, at all, for "intelligent design", much less "creationism" or the Genesis account in the Bible, they would BE science. There isn't. People seem to think that because Science doesn't spring up and say "shit, where is God in all this", that it has an anti-God bias. No, they don't look for Zeus's, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster's invisible hand in everything, either. No idea, be it "God" or whatever else, gets special treatment in science.

And if evidence shows up for invisible bearded men in the sky with an unnatural obsession pertaining to which hairless apes on planet earth are screwing which other hairless apes, and whether or not they're married or the same gender, then THAT will become "science".

As far as intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, that's a totally different question.. based on logic and the observed fact of the sheer magnitude of the Universe (another point which, I think, makes biblical stories about a sky-man overly concerned with the fate of small bands of human beings in a narrow geographic region all that much more absurd) shit no- I'm convinced there is probably a lot of intelligent life in the Universe...

just not as much in this country, judging by these poll numbers, as I might have hoped.

[okieinpain]

221. well can you prove the big bang theory, I mean really is there a

experiment that you or any scientist can do that proves that. where is your proof that some piece of shit wondered up on land and evolved into some sentient being.

face it some of your science is just another form of religion.

[Silent3]

257. Face it -- you haven't a clue what science is really about

Ideally, yes, you want to be able to fashion an experiment which reproduces exactly what you're trying to prove. But science does not require that specific form of evidence.

By your apparent standards of required evidence, it would be impossible for forensic science to ever provide compelling evidence in a murder trial. Why? Well, until the scientists can make Alice kill Bob with the candlestick in the dining room all over again, thinking Alice killed Bob would be just a matter of faith, right?

The creationist "demand for evidence", in which they try to pose as being more properly scientifically skeptical than anyone else, is very much like the desperate tactics of a defense attorney in a murder trial. Whatever degree of evidence the prosecution presents, you can always stamp your feet, claim that it's not "good enough", and raise the evidentiary bar higher.
Do you have DNA evidence?
Yes.
Okay, do you have a videotape of the crime to prove that the DNA didn't get there some other way?
Yes.
Well then, do you have experts to testify that the videotape is not an elaborate fake?
Yes.
Hah! We've hired our own experts, and they say the tape is fake. Can you prove the credentials of your experts?
Yes.
Can you prove they aren't lying simply because you're paying them to give friendly testimony?

...etc., etc., etc....

Oh, by the way, have you proven yet that my client didn't have an evil twin?

(Last surviving member of original jury commits suicide. Mistrial declared. Process repeats.)

Ask yourself these questions:

Could creationists and ID-ers come anywhere close to meeting the endless evidentiary demands they place on evolution, or are they much, much, much easier on themselves?

If applied to other areas of science, would it be possible to make any claims at all about the past? Are you willing to say that anything which cannot be experimentally reproduced here and now is simply a "matter of faith", and no other types of experimentation or data or patterns of indirect evidence count for anything?

If someone didn't want to believe that George Washington was the first President of the United States, and that someone used the same debate tactics creationists and ID-ers use, do you think you could ever come close to meeting this person's demands for evidence, especially when almost anything you present gets dismissed as nothing more than the writings of conspiratorial historians and the ignorant followers they have duped?

[okieinpain]

265. "But science does not require that specific form of evidence."

of course science doesn't because there are things in this world that science can't explain, they can only guess. you can't prove that there is no god, just like I can't prove there is. why call anyone stupid just because you don't agree with them, it's just two views of the same glass.

you say that because god isn't something you can touch, he doesn't exist. yet at the same time you say your science doesn't require that type of evidence. funny stuff.

[Silent3]

271. "Guesses" come in varying degrees of quality

of course science doesn't because there are things in this world that science can't explain

Who's arguing that science can explain everything? Of course it can't. Are you implying failure to meet the impossible standard of explaining everything is a major weakness?

Are you implying, as is so often sadly the case, something along the lines, "Science doesn't know everything/can't 100% prove anything... therefore whatever comforting fantasy I prefer is just as good!"?

...they can only guess.

Scientists can do far more than "only" guess. Using the scientific method properly one can come up with "guesses" that are much better than many people's so-called facts.

you can't prove that there is no god, just like I can't prove there is.

Who said anything about proving the existence, or lack thereof, of God?

What I will say about God in a scientific context is this: Invoking "God" has no explanatory power.

(Foolishly for a moment) take Intelligent Design at its word that the concept of an Intelligent Designer has nothing to do with the specific concept of the Christian God. Thus stripped of all of the emotional and dogmatic baggage which often tries to go along for a free ride, what characteristics does this "Designer" have left? Nothing more than this: it is that which created those things for which we can find no other explanation.

Unless one can tease out specific predictable characteristics of this Designer or Its designs, which are falsifiably subject to experimentation, all you will have accomplished is saying, "that which I cannot explain is caused by That Which Does the Unexplainable" -- a useless tautology which goes against the maxim "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily".

If you don't think the variety and forms of life can be explained by the known natural processes of the physical universe, or found by probing more deeply into that physical universe, what good does it do you as an explanatory mechanism to postulate something harder to explain and more difficult to define as the means of accomplishing those hard-to-explain conditions?

you say that because god isn't something you can touch, he doesn't exist. yet at the same time you say your science doesn't require that type of evidence. funny stuff.

I've said no such thing, and you're only spinning your wheels against your own uninformed caricature of the nature of science.

[okieinpain]

281. "that which I cannot explain is caused by That Which Does the

Unexplainable" -- a useless tautology which goes against the maxim "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily".

do yourself a favor and quite trying to explain something that you don't understand. I have faith and you don't, it doesn't concern me that you don't. if that's how you want to live your life fine. I on the other hand believe in God. I believe that their is a heaven, and there is a hell. I believe that we both have souls and where you spend eternity will be decided by what you do here on earth.

I've known people with similar beliefs as yours, and it's always so amazing to see them when they hit that low in their lives (which we all will have) that they look for something other then "science".

[Silent3]

294. Swing low, sweet chariot

I've known people with similar beliefs as yours, and it's always so amazing to see them when they hit that low in their lives (which we all will have) that they look for something other then "science".

When I'm hungry, I look for food, not science.
When I'm sleepy, I look for a comfortable bed, not science.

Science doesn't satisfy all needs. What a shock! Of course, science can tell me a lot about food and sleep and nutrition, about how to design a better bed, and about many other things.

You seem to have this massive hang-up about science not being the be-all, end-all, does-everything-for-you, satisfies-all-needs answer to EVERYTHING. And since it's not the ANSWER TO EVERYTHING (including stupid questions about evolution which make no sense) you keep implying, without saying straight out, that this is some sort of massive failure which can only be solved by... by what? God? Well, how's that an answer and not just a comforting name for "I don't know"? How does that answer invalidate those areas where science does have a lot to say?

do yourself a favor and quite trying to explain something that you don't understand.

What exactly is it that you imagine I'm trying to explain that I don't understand?

As for what people do when they hit a low in their lives... do you imagine this is a great recommendation for religion and faith in God? A lot of people abuse alcohol and drugs when they hit lows too. What are you saying other than God makes for a good emotional crutch? I'd be much more impressed (though still not swayed without more to go on) by someone who "finds God" when things are going well in life.

[Zhade]

290. Great posts.

NT!

[Zhade]

175. "you do believe that man has created computers, and planes..."

Uh, no, we KNOW that these things exist. We can see and hear and touch them. We know what they are compsed of, how they work, what can be done with them...

You seem to be confusing facts and beliefs. Science does not deal in beliefs, but facts.

[okieinpain]

217. that's not exactly true. science puts a lot of "faith" in things that they

can only guess about. there are arguments over the big bang theory. there are arguments over black holes, there are times when "science" has to go back and reconsider some supposed "facts".

science a lot of the time is just a good educated guess.

[CardInAustin]

250. No no no no....

Science doesn't put FAITH in anything. If some miraculous discovery was made that proved evolution, quantum physics, etc science would drop those theories like a bag of dirt. That is the difference. Science proposes theories that are based on empirical evidence that best explain the world around us.

okie, think of the slippery slope you are proposing that we travel. You are saying that it is ok to teach ID/creationism in class. Why? Because evolution cannot be 100% proven (nothing can be proven 100% for that matter.....but I digress)? Ok, I say the Flying Spaghetti Monster created everything in the universe. What is my proof? None needed, it is my belief, and should therefore be taught in science class. There is absolutely not one iota of difference.

If you want to teach ID or creationism that is fine....in a religion class. But that "theory" shouldn't get anywhere near a science class.

I find this fundamental lack of scientific understanding to be very disturbing. :argh: Come on people, it is not that hard. Just because you like it or believe it does NOT make it so. AAAGHHHHH!!!!

[IChing]

130. Yes my 10 commandments of the Zorothrusths universe and alien thought

I have keep out these beliefs out of teaching in schools
and working in the courts I just used

Logic,
Science
and empirical truth.

[Zhade]

174. Science isn't a belief system.

There's a world of difference.

[muriel_volestrangler]

42. The rejection of all the fossil evidence?

Now, the 3 in 10 who say God guided the evolution of humans are accepting that the fossil evidence is real. They're not closing their eyes to simple facts.

But the 1 in 2 who think God created humans as they are now are claiming that all the stratified fossils found are - what? Fakes planted by Satan? By God? By a 200 year conspiracy of scientists? Or that evolution applied to all animals, including Neanderthal Man, but excluding modern Homo sapiens, which God created to look as if it had evolved from earlier hominids, but which actually had no relation to it?

[okieinpain]

67. nope I just don't believe that you got here by accident. I really don't

do you really that that as perfectly balanced as the human body is that all of that just happened over time. I believe in intelligent design, but not like fundies do. I just believe that we were created by someone more advanceded then we are. I really don't see why that is such a big jump of logic.

but I don't have a problem with evolution, I just figure that's logic for those that don't believe in god.

[Warren DeMontague]

101. "do you really believe that as perfectly balanced as the human body is...

that all of it just happened over time?"

Why, yes, I do. Male Nipples, Wisdom teeth, and all those other perfect design features 'just happened' over 4.5 billion years, which is a VERY LONG time.

And it's backed up by the fossil evidence, the DNA evidence, ALL the physical evidence. As soon as evidence for your intelligent designer comes in, then the scientific community will have to accept it, won't they.

[muriel_volestrangler]

146. So are you saying you don't accept that we developed by evolution?

ie you are in the 51% that believe God created humans as they are now? Or are you in the 3 in 10 that think evolution happened (ie that animals in the far distant past had descendants that gradually became more and more like present day humans, until we got modern humans), but that God directed that process of change? I can't tell from your post above.

[St. Jarvitude]

163. OK - where is your experimental and observational evidence of this?

Until you can get a substantial amount of evidence to back up your hypothesis, it should stay out of science classes, which require a conclusion to be reached through the scientific method, and in philosophy classes where it belongs.

[GreenPartyVoter]

220. My bil insistst there were dinosaurs on the ark.

[muriel_volestrangler]

228. It's weird - that's an idea that isn't needed for Christian belief at all

After all, there are clearly no dinosaurs around now, so if one thinks they existed at some time, they must have died out. If one accepts the Bible as literal, then Noah successfully kept all the animals available to him alive. So either they died out after the ark (in which case you have to explain how Noah fitted them all in), or they died out before - in which case there's no need to come up with the explanation at all. I can't understand why the bible literalists don't just go for the simple explanation.

[MountainLaurel]

237. That's it Muriel

They're taught that fossils and dinosaur eggs were planted by Satan to test their faith. I've heard it myself, in the pretty little church I attended as a child.

[IChing]

64. "I believe that aliens created man. I really don't see what the problem"

have you ever read Doris Lessing?

or know who she is?

[okieinpain]

69. well wouldn't a alien be considered god by a lesser intelligent being.

[IChing]

79. good point no argument...

I hate these type of threads except for the intelligent design of a intelligent discourse.

:toast: you should read her writings she won a noble prize for literature.
but it is her later writings after her writings on woman issues.

it was fiction or written by a woman like the bible.

[rasputin1952]

131. If aliens created man...how come we got the STUPID aliens...

you'd figure that they could do a better job...you gotta figure they would be pretty smart zipping through the Cosmos...but we get the dullards...:shrug:

[IChing]

139. It was a rhetorical argument you dith...sorry you are a mod

Lessings sci-fi novels stated that there was a battle .... on ownership

I throw stuff out for
thought

not on beliefs.

[IChing]

152. need to add-------it is an open experiment....to see what happens

[IChing]

26. Read this post in science

The only debate on intelligent design, the easiest explanation needed for
debate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x13863

[Gloria]

27. I guess they don't believe that cells mutate to form cancer cells...

or that those virus don't change either.....evolution in microcosm, as far as I can tell....

[Coastie for Truth]

28. Where are we going ?

1. Our technical, scientific, and medical dominance was built by the "Greatest Generation" -- and helped along by their kids, the "Sputnik Generation."

* The "Greatest Generation" have all pretty much retired (youngest are in their late 70's)
* The youngest of the "Sputnik Generation" are in their late 50's.

2. In my opinion (and I'm an old codger and curmudgeon) our education system underwent major changes for the worse in the late 1960's and 1970's.

* And we "Progressives" are not blameless.
* But, neither are the Fundies or the Repukes.

3. We "require" foreign graduate students and H1B guest workers to barely maintain our scientific edge - except we're not maintaining our lead.

* There's more then a little bit of truth in The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney
* Evolution/Intelligent Design is just one aspect of the dumbing down.
* The ban on Stem Cell Research, the ban on sex education.

4. And our industrial base is "outsourced" and "offshored."

5. "Evolution" - a symptom, but not the underlying pathology.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS -CHILDREN OF ALL AGES


WE ARE COMMITTING SUICIDE ONE CUT AT A TIME

[Agnomen]

30. Look at the bright side:

"These views are similar to what they were in November 2004 shortly after the presidential election."

at least they're not getting any dumber - holding steady at 51%

[skipos]

31. This polls results doesn't both me THAT much

"three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process."

I would expect most people who believe in some form of God to feel that way. That God has some hand in some things on earth. "God guid" the process doesn't have to be some heavy handed Adam and Eve type of belief.

Don't you ever hear people thanking God for this or for that? They feel that s/he has something to do with their success. Why is it so hard to believe that these people feel God has SOMETHING to do with the evolution of the earth?

[Inland]

32. But that's 45% for evolution. Not too bad, considering

how uneducated people are.

[johnnie]

33. To be honest

I don't really care. People will learn things when their time is right. Why does it piss people off if others think what they think?

[Perky]

38. That is a very good question. I ave another one.

Why is it ok to call all Christians Idiots? WHy is that tolerated?

I mean there are not Chrisitan on here saying everyone who does not believe as they do are going to hell...but it is seemingly ok to blast away with utter incivility under te guise of Free speech.

[johnnie]

45. I don't think anyone should be belittled because of their beliefs

Religion and philosophy is a very personal thing to people and to put them down because of it is wrong. A lot of people are afraid of many things and their best way to cope is to put down others because they believe in things. That is a typical response to ignorance. Attack what you fear.

[muriel_volestrangler]

50. If you've ever seen that on DU, have you alerted?

And if you did, and it didn't get a response, did you write to the Admin about it? If so, what did they say?

[Perky]

60. They thanked me for making them aware.

[muriel_volestrangler]

149. Do you still know which thread(s) it was on?

I'd like to see what it said, and the general reacion of people to it.

[Perky]

190. apne thing I am not going to do

Is beome known as the CHristian Curmudgeon by alerting on anythin that I see as offensive. I would rather engange directly and get eople off this tract that all Christian are narrowminded and stupid, WHich certainly is the undercurrent of this tread.

ANd I contend again that is is as insentive and intolerant as race baiting or using the c-word when speaking about women.

Deocrats are supposed to be the nice guys and the uber-tolerantm but alot of this thread is anything but.

There is a huge difference bewteen believing in the story of Creation and wanting to teach Creationism in the classroom. The OP never mentioned Creationism. the initial repsonder all blasted people who bbeleive the BIble storyas idiots. THat is inappropriate and shameful, naive and stupefyingly bigoted.

And again is against the DU Rules.

[muriel_volestrangler]

194. You keep claiming that people are saying 'all Christians'

and yet you can't point to examples, on this thread or, it seems, on others.

Those who believe in evolution, whether guided by God or not, overwhelmingly think it is possible to believe in both God and evolution – 90 percent say this. However, people who believe God created humans in their present form are more divided: 48 percent think it possible to believe in both God and evolution, but the same number disagrees.

No-one here is talking about 'all Christians' - they're talking about people who think evolution hasn't happened. The results of the poll above show that most people do not think these are the same groups. No-one on this thread has said so - but you keep railing against imagined insults against "all Christians".

It's a straw-man. You're arguing against a position that no-one else is taking.

It is not bigotry to criticise a position that ignores basic science. Do you think it's bigotry to call people who say "they is no man-made global warming" stupid? Proof of global warming only appeared in the last few years. Proof of evolution started appearing about 200 years ago.

[Perky]

202. I disagree

look at Union Thugs initial response.

"Americans.. The dumbest flock of dodos ever assembled on a single...
continent.

Oh please... abracadabra! Poof! ...so there was a talking snake, see. And there was a couple of people that didn't know they were naked and then the evil woman ate an apple and then they were naked.. and then..

OH PUH-LEEEEEZ

GROW THE HELL UP AMERICA. Take your fairy tales and ghost stories elsewhere."

[muriel_volestrangler]

206. Precisely

He/she criticised Americans as dumb, and then made clear it was aimed at people who believe that the story of a snake talking 2 humans into eating some fruit as the root of all sin is the literal truth.

That's not all Christians. It's a minority of Christians in the world (the Roman Catholic church does not believe the creation story is literal truth). It may also be a very few Jews (I'm not sure how many of them are still literal).

It is the USA which has this strange fixation with believing the Bible is all literal. Other countries laugh at it. We really do.

[Perky]

208. ANd then told them to

stop believing and in fairy tales and ghost stories and leave.

He seems to go beyond simply the story of Creation.

THe line between beleif in God and belief in the Creation story is tricky ground. If one believes that Jesus is the Redeemer of mankind that fell in the Garden does that make people who belive in Jesus and the Salvation he offers idiots as well?


I think we agree that Creationism or ID in School is a bad idea (you from your perspective and me from mine)

[muriel_volestrangler]

218. I don't see why beliefs can't be criticised and ridiculed

If we say "The Americans and British were idiots for believing in the stories of WMD - take your stories of yellowcake elsewhere", there's no bigotry there. It's a judgement on the intelligence of a group of people, and a criticism of a tale which doesn't make sense in the real world.

It's the same for people who think we all descend from a pair who ate a magic fruit on the advice of a talking snake.

[Perky]

253. ok but to extend your argument then it would be ok to

say you wish all Blacks would be shipped back to Africa because they are lazy, shiftless crack whores.

Or all Jews should be gassed because tehy take all the good jobs.

Or for that matter all peole who don't beleive in the Creation story are not welcome in my political party. because our's is the Party of the ALmighty.

All three of those arguments are propounded ad nauseum by people we both I assmue oppose. If those arguments were made on this site I suspect the Posters would be quickly booted and banned because it would be offensive to African Americans and Jews.

But it is somehow ok to offend Christians who think differently then you... On this site... when it was not proviked by any comments, evangeleical, fundamentalist or otherwise... on this site.




(just so you are aware,this conversation does not offend me, I find it fascinating and instructive)

[muriel_volestrangler]

258. No to the first 2, yes to the third

Because the first 2 are judging groups of people on the basis of 'race', and are (a) wrong, because those claims about 'Blacks' or 'Jews' don't hold up to scrutiny, even as averages, (b) generalisations that cannot be taken as a basis for a judgement that affects individuals (you might point out correctly that men commit more violent crime than women, but that does not mean that all men should be locked up, and women shouldn't), (c) flawed, because dividing people into those categories has many problems anyway (does 'black' apply to anyone with a skin darker than a certain shade, or any known ancestors at all from sub-Saharan Africa within the past 1000 years, or a certain percentge of ancestors there 1000 years ago, or what? Is 'Jewish' a religious, ethnic or genetic description?). Finally, the actions concerned are extreme (deportation or murder).

The 3rd is acceptable - just as you could form a party saying all members must believe that the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor would be a good thing in the USA. Each individual makes a choice on their beliefs, whether political or religious, and other people can react (as long as it's a legal reaction) to those choices - which could be allowing them to join a party, to boycott them, to criticise them, or to insult them.

It's not just Christians who get offended on DU. Israel supporters offend Palestine supporters, and vice versa. Those who want gun control offend those who believe in the right to bear arms, and so on.

We do have the right to call ideas stupid, including on DU. At times, we see people who retain stupid ideas, in the face of the evidence, as stupid as well. To expect us to never use the words 'stupid' or 'idiot' about any idea, or the people who hold it, just in case there's one DU member in the 10,000 who regularly post (or 80,000 who are members) who might come along and claim membership of the group is unreasonable. We need to be able to judge ideas to hold our discussions and make our cases.

[Perky]

269. Thanks for the obvious thoughtful response.

I have to quibble a bit with the first example. If you note my example I did not say they should be removeed because they were black I said they should bve remove because they were all shiftless.

THe difference there was intentional though somewhat subtle.

As to the third (and here is where we get to the heart of it I suppose) are you suggesting that the GOP has the right to push out all evolutionists from the party and the Democrats have the right to push out thos who beleive in the creation story based on a sincere albeit perhaps naive understanding of the world?

[muriel_volestrangler]

295. If the GOP or Democrats could make such a decision, they'd have the right

to do it - they aren't official organisations, and and since they are about beliefs, it should be OK for them to decide to exclude people on the grounds of professed beliefs. Both those cases would be electoral suicide, because it would annoy a lot of people - not just those who would be excluded.

To put it as an example which might happen, I'd say the Green Party would have the right to exclude people from its membership who say there is no man-made global warming and that the evidence for warming has been made up.

In your first example, since 'all Blacks' have been marked as shiftless (without evidence), the effect is "all Blacks must be deported". It's the same as the second example - the claim that "Jews take all the good jobs" is given as an excuse for killing them.

[Perky]

297. I think you avoided the question

THe issue is not can they but should they exclude or purge people on the basis of their views on creation?

[muriel_volestrangler]

300. You asked "do they have the right"

Your words: "are you suggesting that the GOP has the right to push out all evolutionists from the party and the Democrats have the right to push out thos who beleive in the creation story based on a sincere albeit perhaps naive understanding of the world?"

But I thought I also answered the "should they" - I said it would be electoral suicide - in other words, they shouldn't (from a self-preservation point of view - I'd be happy to see the Republicans tear themselves apart).

But that doesn't stop us, as DUers, from criticising beliefs that other DUers have. As I said, some are much more contentious, such as Palestine or guns.

[Perky]

302. You still have not ansered the question I am posing.

Regardless of impact do you think a political party should effectively purge its rank, by whetever means of those who have a belief system on creation/evolution that is contrary to their base support?

Do you think they should do this as a means of differentiation of the parties and, if you will, purification.

Do you think anyone who believes in evolution should be forced out of the GOP?

[muriel_volestrangler]

303. That's a new, and weird, question

because people, or parties, don't make decisions "regardless of impact". What's the point of making a decision it you're not thinking about its effect?

But I will answer this question for you as well, since you seem so keen on asking them.

Should a party recklessly purge its ranks of people of people who disagree with the majority of its members? Well, since it's decided to be reckless, then why not? If the party has decided it doesn't have any purpose any more, it may as well make random decisions. The next week it could say all the purged members should come back, and be given control. If you're being reckless, you may as well have fun.

Why are you so interested in purges of party members?

[Perky]

304. Because the thread that got me started

did not simply suggest that people who beleive in creation were idiots but more genreally, foks who believe in the Bible (the list was extended to "ghost stories and Fairy tales) are not only stupid, but should just "get out"

WHat I am asking is whetehr or not you are endorsing of that view.

[muriel_volestrangler]

305. And finally you pose a question I will not answer

because it's a straw man. I can only assume you are referring to post #3 in this thread. You are grossly distorting what was said in it: it did not talk about the Bible as a whole, it did not talk about political parties (which is what your questions have been about), and it did not say (and I note you put this in quotes, as if you are using the exact wording) "get out". It said 'take (the stories) elsewhere'.

What's the point in this discussion now? You keep changing your question, and complaining that I didn't answer your new question. You claim insults that are not there.

[Perky]

306. Technicaly you are correct

He did refer to americans and pretty much said that those that believe in the creation story which is effectively those americans who are Christians and Jews and beleive in Creation to go elsewhere.

GROW THE HELL UP AMERICA. Take your fairy tales and ghost stories elsewhere.

other similar quotes:

RebelOne (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-25-05 04:39 AM
Response to Reply #158
181. In my opinion, anyone who believes in the myths of Adam and Eve,
Noah and the ark, Mose parting the sea, Jonah and the whale, etc. is a complete idiot. Yeah, and then there is the tooth fairy, Easter bunny and Santa Claus.

radwriter0555 (1000+ posts) Mon Oct-24-05 09:23 PM
Response to Reply #3
158. these people still think adam & eve stood in a garden & talked to a snake
and we wonder why they think that Saddam flew the 91101 planes?

They're idiots. They believe the mindless crap they see on teevee. They honestly don't know that newspeople are just actors reading a script.

sufrommich (67 posts) Tue Oct-25-05 05:51 AM
Response to Original message
192. This is just sad.
Is there another industrialized first world country that has not moved beyond knee jerk religion?The answer is no.No offense to the religious people on this board,but the majority are willfully ignorant and proud of it.


Walt Starr (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-25-05 06:54 AM
Response to Original message
211. This is exactly why the United States will lose superpower status
With dipshits like these, who needs to fight a war against us?

We are a nation of superstitious morans (sic).

stepnw1f (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-25-05 08:10 AM
Response to Original message
222. Sorry... I Don't Buy It
More Christo-Fascist Propaganda! Perception is very thin that's why in the end they can't win.

233. There are a ton...it's bullshit for one simple reason...51% of Americans..
...don't even consider themselves xtians....so do the math...

51% of the poor deluded cloud-being worshippers that were asked this obscure question may have responded that way, but the majority of folks in this country believe in different gods...

mainer (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-25-05 08:32 AM
Response to Original message
229. It's why the "Era of America" is over
Every great civilization has its shining moment. Then it fades. The U.S. has rejected science and is slipping into a dark age of superstition, fear, and isolationism. We lost the edge in technological excellence when our countrymen decided that magick explains everything.

We no longer deserve to be the world's leader. In just about anything.

arwalden (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-25-05 08:32 AM
Response to Original message
230. Probably The Same 51% That Voted For Bush.
Idiots. Complete, total, idiots.
EOO (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-25-05 04:02 PM
Response to Reply #246
259. Another great Hicks quote:
"Hey, you ever notice how the people who believe in creationism look really unevolved?"

[PerpetualWinter]

279. Belittle Republican beliefs you are okay, but...

belittle a religion at all and you are evil. Fuck that, I've never been much for coddling the thin skinned.

[Zhade]

292. Sorry, your beliefs don't get a pass just because you want them to.

You have the right to your beliefs, but there is no rule - anywhere, ever - that states that your beliefs remain uncriticized.

If someone says something ACTUALLY bigoted, like "Perky is an evil person, because s/he is a Christian", then the mods will act on an alert.

However, saying "believing in a talking snake and a naked woman who ate fruit and thus cursed mankind is stupid" is NOT persecution of Christians, because it is NOT attacking Christians for simply being Christians.

Plus, there's the whole "black people don't choose their race, but believers choose their belief system, so any attempted analogy is actually false" thing.

[Zhade]

291. Christians aren't being called idiots.

People who willfully refuse to accept the science of evolution are being called idiots.

Take your persecution complex elsewhere, no one's buying.

[WindRavenX]

41. their ignorance is hurting the next generation of scientific thinkers

I don't care if people are ignorant; I care if they want OTHER people to be ignorant LIKE THEM.

[johnnie]

54. But this is a "poll" of average people

Science was started to disprove religion and they continue to try and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. We are not a very advanced species and it will still take a long time before humans will really understand a lot of things. In the day of people still clubbing people over the head for shiny things, it cracks me up that people think we have truly become an advanced society.

[PowerToThePeople]

57. Newton's philosophy of Nature.

He very much believed in a creator. But one who created the very laws of nature that we have relentlessly tried to uncover with the scientific method.

[WindRavenX]

61. Science was not started to disprove religion

It was started to understand the natural world around us.

Average people should not be allowed to hinder the progress of the dedicated people in the fields sciences, arts, and math.

[johnnie]

65. Yes it was started for that reason

I can't put arts in the same category as science and math. Art is a natural expression of the mind, math and science is a unnatural conception by man to explain what they didn't and don't understand.

[WindRavenX]

68. True, but Americans as a whole don't value ANY of those categories

Why do you think science was created to disprove religion?

Aristotle would have a bone to pick with you.

[johnnie]

83. Because before science proper

Everything was explained with a religious "theory". I'm not saying a group of people got together and said "Hey, let's disprove religion" but there were people who didn't go for the explanation of things such as "there is a big dome over the world and those lights are holes in the dome". They started to look at things and try to prove things with "reasonable" explanations. I believe that even some things that are scientifically proved right now will also be proved to be something else.

[WindRavenX]

88. Ok, I agree with this....

..but where does using reason to explain things somehow equal "disproving" religion? I dont understand yout point, and it seems we're agreeing, so I was wondering if you could elaborate :hi:

[johnnie]

98. I don't remember exactly where my reasons for saying that came from

It was things I read many a moons ago and I would have to research where that knowledge comes from. It was just up in my brain..lol. It isn't something I can "link" to to show you that.

What it comes down to is religion and mythology being the source that explained things to people for many years and some people using "scientific" methods to explain away some of those old beliefs. It isn't putting down science, it is just explaining why many people experimented to explain things.

[PowerToThePeople]

99. Wow! Guess what we call this? Evolution - of thought.

"I believe that even some things that are scientifically proved right now will also be proved to be something else." - Johnnie

edit - and, most are not scientifically proven, just they best working theory we have to explain the occurrence at present.

[johnnie]

109. You caught on

Good going. What I am saying is that many people (even here at DU) tend to think we have advanced beyond anything that will ever be.

If there are people that think that man was created "In God's image", then so be it. If people here think that is has been undoubtedly shown that we came from evolution, then so be it. To think we have discovered the true evolution of humans and there is no other answer is foolish and pretentious.

[PowerToThePeople]

77. unnatural conception by man to explain what they don't understand

Wow, I think many here would say Intelligent design fits that phrase exactly.

[johnnie]

89. And I think many here won't

We have to get off of our high horse and realize that we aren't as intelligent as we pretend to be.

[wtmusic]

166. The next generation will be less scientific than ours

and so on, until belief in science proves an asset to survival (again). Right now, it's an impediment to procreation -- scientific thinkers are more likely to feel socially responsible, and therefore less likely to have as many children; they are more open to homosexuality. Genes for scientific thinkers are simply not being passed along as fast as those of religious baby-poppers.

Ironically, the shift in thinking away from evolution is proof that it exists and is doing just fine and dandy.

[Ilsa]

34. In a few years, a larger majority in the US will reject evolution because

the religious freaks are doing everything possible to make sure students don't get a real education. This country now ranks 17th in the world in students between 18 and 24 going into science and engineering fields. People on the streets brag that they don't read. The fucking president of the United States brags about not reading a newspaper. The anti-thought/anti science causes have taken over.

[WindRavenX]

107. This is what I'm talking about

We REVEL in our ignorance.

I don't care about the God aspect of science...believe what you want. But I'm livid about this because people want ignorance to be CULTURALLY ACCEPTED. Fuck that noise.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

36. That's 51% of all those people polled, not 51% of all Americans....

...and I have my extreme doubts as to the people polled on this topic.

[FM Arouet666]

39. The majority of Americans are dumb as stumps.

[cry baby]

40. I just don't believe this poll. I can't believe it. nt

[evirus]

43. I'd like to know

what percent of those groups know what photosynthesis is?

[porphyrian]

44. Don't believe it.

"The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points."

With an error margin of plus or minus four percent, this survey is meaningless. It has to be plus or minus two percent or better to be worth paying attention to, and CBS News and AOL should not only know this, but are irresponsible in reporting this garbage. They might as well just make a bunch of shit up and declare it as fact.

Ask CBS or AOL if they would pay for data with a plus or minus four percent error margin for their marketing.

[evirus]

51. probably why

that there is probably why my research and statistics class keeps point to a book titled "How to Lie With Statistics"

[muriel_volestrangler]

53. So at least 47% believe God created humans as they are now

That's still appalling.

[porphyrian]

62. Not really.

Think of it as anything with an error margin of more than plus or minus two percent as being useless data, so your calculation based on the meaningless information is also meaningless. You might as well just make something up at that point.

[muriel_volestrangler]

157. Can you explain that to me, please

Because I thought that a margin of error told you when 90% (or 95%, I can't remember) of the time that a sample was taken, it would get within the given amount of the real figure.

But you seem to be saying that samples suddenly become meaningless if their margin of error is more than 2% (eg the vast majority of political opinion polls takem which have a sample size of about 1000, and a margin of error of 3%). This is a completely different theory of statistics to what I have heard. Can you point me at a starting point to find out about it?

[porphyrian]

191. How about this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error

[muriel_volestrangler]

198. That would appear to back my interpretation rather than yours

Where does it say that margins of error of more than 2% render a poll meaningless?

[porphyrian]

214. It doesn't, that's just an accepted fact in survey research.

From the Wikipedia link:
"Note that the margin of error only takes into account sampling error. It does not take into account other potential sources of error such as bias in the questions, bias due to excluding groups who could not be contacted, people refusing to respond or lying (selection bias), or miscounts and miscalculations."

You can't make projections about the meaning of survey from the margin of error. You can, however, tell how professionally the sample was collected with which to do the survey, which in this case is crap.

You were attempting to calculate the number of people who believe God created us by mathematically applying the margin of error to the frequency of an answer on a crap survey.

Another thing to ask for when determining if a survey is crap is the RESPONSE RATE. People don't like to talk about that, especially when they are trying to fix numbers and falsify data to support false claims with legitimate-seeming surveys. Of the 800-odd total people surveyed, how many of them do you think actually answered the survey at all? If it was less than half, would you feel confident about the results? What about less than a quarter? How many surveys do you participate in, and how many do you just refuse?

[muriel_volestrangler]

215. I assume that 808 people answered the survey

and that a lot more were contacted, so they could get the 808 number. If Wikipedia is right that 95% is the standard confidence level used, then a number of 808 replies would make sense.

Yes, a poll has to be carried out carefully to allow for people refusing to respond, bias in who can be contacted, and so on. But I can't see how you can infer that from the margin of error.

As this page shows, the results are consistent with other polls taken this year, and Gallup polls taken in earlier years.

Is it just that you regard all the opinion polls that news organisations use, whether on political opinions, science, or anything, as crap? That they've never been any good?

[porphyrian]

216. No, they said the sample size was 808.

That's the number of people originally asked the survey, whether they responded or not. You should never assume...

This isn't about my opinions, this is about my familiarity with survey research. I'm sorry you don't like what I'm saying.

[Wilms]

47. How many believe in Santa? n/t

[ikojo]

48. Then people wonder why the US falls further and

further behind in the sciences and math.

Many good writers in the US because Americans are ones to believe any fantasy (WMDs, Bush was elected etc).

[Canadian Socialist]

49. I think this is a good thing

Of course, I am speaking from a point of view that is planning on overcoming the U.S. While the U.S. is dumbing down their population, we (and Europe/Asia/Australia et al) are educating our people. Then, when you people can't even work the nuclear weapons, etc. we will take over. BaaaaaHaaaa. It is all a socialist plot. And you fell for it! O, shit, I just exposed "Project CAE"! It doesn't matter. Because the ones in power? They can't figure out the "internets". The Freepers? They can't even spell. I don't think they can figure out a map.

[PowerToThePeople]

52. I want in.

I'm a socialist with an Engineering degree. Can I come over the border?

[evirus]

55. depends

will you work for below minimum wage, accept no health care or insurance coverage and like working in damp dark rooms? or in unbarable heat/cold?

if yes then the answere is... come right over, leave your family there, you dont need them ;)

[PowerToThePeople]

63. Hell, no different than what I have had since * took office.

Sounds the same or better. Viva la Revolution!

[Canadian Socialist]

66. I would advise you to check out the Government of Canada

website. They have a "self test" which rates several things. If you have a post-secondary degree, in something that is desirable, you get a lot of points. Having English and/or French as a first language are also plusses. Adding, if you have certain skills, and express an interest in sparsely populated areas, you are in, my friend.

However, may I say, do not listen to this person.
"will you work for below minimum wage, accept no health care or insurance coverage and like working in damp dark rooms? or in unbarable heat/cold?

if yes then the answere is... come right over, leave your family there, you dont need them "

I think he is speaking about illegal immigrants. And, as well, even if you are an illegal, if you have the bona fides, you very much may be accepted into Canada.

[TreasonousBastard]

76. You wouldn't be ...

General Claire, would you?

http://cwd.ptbcanadian.com/

[Canadian Socialist]

82. Very amusing. No.

I'm just an old lady in Calgary. Who believes that we are one people, that have to help each other. And when our children step out of line, you have to put them either in time out, or give them a good swat on the bottom; not to hurt, just get the attention of the child.

[Perky]

56. Umm this whole thread is pretty offensive folks,

Why is it ok to call all Christians Idiots? WHy is that tolerated?

I mean there are not Chrisitan on here saying everyone who does not believe as they do are going to hell...but it is seemingly ok to blast away with utter incivility under te guise of Free speech anyone who does not believe as you do,

SUre you are entitled to your opinions but some of this stuff is as bigoted and narrowminds as the wingnuts you hat so much/

I am not saying anything postive or negative aboutthe Creation story. ALl I am saying is that you need to lighten up on the harshenss of the the rhetoric.

It is patently offensise and not appropriate if you read the DU Rules.

[WindRavenX]

71. Who called Christians idiots?

I've only seen people (myself included) call Americans idiots; granted, Christians are in that category...but I didn't single them out :hi:

[ultraist]

73. What are SU rules?

BTW, not all Christians believe in creationism. I don't think it's really Christians that are being bashed but people who believe in creationism.

[Perky]

95. Right. I am A CHristian and I find the Creation story Challenging

to say the least. I don;'t see how it work either. But that is not the point. Its intolerantat and bigoted to say that those who believe in the Creation story are idiots. Particularly when a good portion of them are Democrats.

THe point is that it is thais type of attack on people who do not beleive as you do that pushes people into the hand of the GOP. WHo constantly whispers in their ear that Democrats are anti-God.

[WindRavenX]

104. It's not intolerant to say that Creationism should be left out of school

I don't care if you believe in the account of Creation in Genesis- I do demand, however, that it not be presented as scientific fact.

[Perky]

108. I agree but that is not what the majrity of these posts are saying

Not by any stretch.

[WindRavenX]

116. I understand

But also try to understand that for many of us in the scientific community, we are extremely fed up with being told our hard work is somehow...equivalent to just believing stuff in a book. That's why some of us are a bit...grumpy :hi:

[Name removed]

144. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WindRavenX]

154. there is a difference in a opinion and a difference in choosing to ignore

...facts.

Like I said, believe what you will. But the scientific facts are provable facts and should not be compared to your Creationist mythology.

[Perky]

193. Here is the crux.

I am not degending intelligent design I am simply criticicing folks who would want to push people of faith out of the way and off this site.

It is offensive. ANt that very clear was what was being suggested in the earliest responses to the original posrt,

It was not: Peeople who believe in Intelligent Design should leave this site or peopl who beleive in Creationism. It was people who believe in the Creation story are idiots and should leave the country.


Even if I believe that the Creation story is allegorical that is offensive to Jews and Christian and even for Hindus. I have an absoute right to beleive what I want to beleieve without someone one telling me if I beleve in certain thins that I am idiot and I am so unwanted that I should leave the country.


THat is as narrowminded and bigoted as the Klan

[Warren DeMontague]

112. Is it intolerant to say that people who believe in the creation story are

WRONG?

How about people who believe in a flat Earth?

How about the people spending millions on a "history museum" in Ohio that tells kids that dinosaurs were on "Noah's Ark", and the Earth is LITERALLY 6,000 years old?

And to boot, these geniuses are taking over school boards and trying to introduce their mind-rot into public school science classes, at least when they're not trying to wipe their butts on the constitution or criminalize the birth control pill.

Of course, as always, it's the Christian Fundamentalists who are the "oppressed victims". Never mind the fact that they're on a fucking jihad to turn our country into a Theocracy.

So what word would you use, if not "idiots"?

[Perky]

134. There is a diference between saying someone is wrong and

calling them idiots.

So you think anyonw who thinks the world was vreatesd in 6 days 6,000 years ago is wrong.. FIne.


But the level of agiation suggest a hatred for folks who disagree with a position you happen to hold.

When someone says ANy body who believs in these faitytales out to just leave is as offensive to them as it would be offensive to some DU memeber as some one offering all African-american a one way ticket back to Africa.

It is the same thing.

[Warren DeMontague]

153. I'm not the one who said they should leave

But I reserve the right to call them idiots, just like I reserve that right for people who voted for Bush, people who think we can screw the environment because they'll be raptured next week, people who think gays deserve the death penalty, people who want to make the birth control pill illegal, or people who are in denial about global warming.

And NONE of this would be an issue- at all- if fundamentalists weren't trying to rewrite public school science textbooks.

[Perky]

196. No you were not the one

but it was someone who said:

"Americans.. The dumbest flock of dodos ever assembled on a single...
continent.

Oh please... abracadabra! Poof! ...so there was a talking snake, see. And there was a couple of people that didn't know they were naked and then the evil woman ate an apple and then they were naked.. and then..

OH PUH-LEEEEEZ

GROW THE HELL UP AMERICA. Take your fairy tales and ghost stories elsewhere."

THat is not about Creationsism or Intelligent Design....that is about telling anyone who believes in the Creation story that they should leave.


And folks wonder why CHristians embrace the GOP?

[Warren DeMontague]

84. Evolution is not an "opinion" somehow equal to the belief that there were

dinosaurs on Noah's ark.

Evolution is scientific fact, backed up by physical evidence. This wouldn't even be an issue if the fucking flat earthers could leave their crap out of public schools.

[Perky]

113. I am not defending Creationists here.

I am talkinb about the arrogant and bogoted attack on people solely becuse they do not believe in evolution. THat does not mean they think Creation should be taught in public schools.

[IDemo]

59. Evolution is a fact

http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/evolution.html

So it's a "theory" - so what?

theory - an explanation or system of anything.

Many anti-evolutionists will say "Yes, but it's only a theory, it's not real is it?" People who say this are confused about what a theory, in the scientific sense, actually is. From my emails I know that the single most common misconception about evolution is to confuse the fact and the theory.

Evolution is a fact. Shocking and controversial this might sound, but bear with me. I'm not talking about Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. I'm talking about the changes in the gene pools of all species that occur every single day due to births and deaths. If you accept that most members of a species do not all have the exact same DNA (which is easily demonstrated), and you accept that sexual reproduction combines the DNA of two parents to form a slightly different combination of genes, and you accept that not all creatures survive long enough to be able to reproduce, then....

You have accepted that evolution is an observed, natural fact. That's all it is. A change in the genes over time. Evolution happens. Things evolve. That's what it means. There is no debate in the scientific community as to whether or not evolution is a fact. It is a fact of nature, just like gravity.

The theory of evolution, on the other hand, is an attempt to describe what is happening, how and why. The theory describes the facts and the evidence. The theory comes after observation of the facts. The theory of evolution may be hopelessly wrong (although it has stood the test of time for 150 years already), but that would not change the fact that evolution occurs - we would just have to find a new and better theory for explaining it.

[woo me with science]

81. yeah, and homeopathy works too...

and repressed memories are real.

[Warren DeMontague]

86. We're also told that a majority of 'em voted for Bush.

The message being, a lot of people in this country are dumb as fucking dirt.

[MarsThe Cat]

90. i call shenanigans on their polling data...

if that's indeed what they used...
NO WAY only 15% of Americans believe in evolution.

[Fox Mulder]

92. Do those people still think the earth is flat?

:eyes:

[rasputin1952]

103. I find this poll hard to believe. 808 people, with no idea where they

are makes this one dubious at best. Who sponsored this one as well?

What I find a little more disturbing, is that people of religion are dumped on immediately. Tolerance of views should be the norm rather than the exception. Most of the Christians I know, have little problem w/evolution. The facts are imiprical and while some people like to think Creation is the only way we could be here...most are not so single minded.

This discussion is a good thing to have, but there are different aspects that people have, and we should be tolerant of those views...:D

[ultraist]

161. I agree. The poll was probably sponsored by the Christian Coalition

aka Bushcorp. It looks like propoganda to me.

[SoCalDem]

111. That would be the "majority" of the 30% who CLAIM to be THE majority

:)

[Zhade]

114. The rest of the world often says Americans are stupid.

If this is to be believed, a HUGE (HUGH!!!111!!!) number of Americans are abysmally ignorant of reality.

[Warren DeMontague]

118. MO State Pastafarians: OUR HEAVEN HAS A BEER VOLCANO!

Figure this thread could use a laugh.



http://venganza.org/spread/springfield.htm

[cmf]

119. And a majority of Americans are friggin idiots.

I'm not surprised.

[Chovexani]

120. Frankly I don't blame them

Considering how many Americans evolution seems to have passed by. :eyes:

[Greyhound]

126. I hope this poll says more about the people that go to AOL for news

than the sheeple in general. It's not good either way. :scared:

[Seabiscuit]

132. I'm thoroughly ashamed of "most Americans". We're an international

disgrace.

[MrScorpio]

135. Please, let me go live in Holland...

Release me now!

[insane_cratic_gal]

137. OMG Consider the source

of the article again AO(feking)L the poll is shoved right in there.

I'm shocked it's only 51 percent considering its a freeper lover browser.

Consider how many polls are freeped. I don't even bother with Aol polls they are crap. Don't give me any crap about the election sample of 2004.. given the statical friggin miracle that was.. 1 in a trillion odds.

"This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 808 adults, interviewed by telephone October 3-5, 2005. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points."

[IChing]

143. 808 by phone gives shit.....most use call blocking now and cell

good point.


Oh wait that science ........

[Warren DeMontague]

148. So why did we elect a fucking drunken CHIMP President, twice? nt

[evirus]

150. make your self

quote incubus; make your self: "if i hadn't made me, i would have fallen apart by now"

[choie]

156. This is a tempest in a teapot.

We're talking a tiny bit more than half of 800 polled. We don't know a) from what sections of the U.S. these samples were taken, nor do we know exactly how the question was worded. Still we're supposed to take these results as, uh, gospel?

Nope. I don't buy that a result of about 450 out of 300 million is an accurate reflection of ANYthing. There's valid statistical extrapolation ... and there's bullshit. And I know which category THIS falls under!

I'm pretty cynical about this country, but I genuinely believe that we're smarter than polls and the media in general make us out to be. I believe most people voted for Kerry in 2004, and I believe that most modern U.S. citizens are aware that evolution isn't just a "theory."

Sure, some may believe a deity or other external force is responsible for a grand design that includes evolution. I may not subscribe to this idea myself, but I don't think it's an unreasonable belief. (To the contrary, I think it's a rather elegant way of juxtaposing religion and science.)

Anyway, I think this poll, like so many others, is a reflection of nothing but the bias du jour.

[Kailassa]

172. If you had bothered to click on the link, you'd know

exactly how the question was worded.

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20051024100409990019

[barb162]

159. This doesn't surprise me too much, but it is a bit higher than I

thought it was. I was travelling recently in NC, KY and TN and hearing people talking and the number of gospel stations on the radio and I saw how well kept-up the churches were in towns where people were living in these "shacks" ....

Giant generalization: I suspect once you get out of large metro areas people think a bit differently on evolution and believe the Bible word for word a lot more. The country is changing and not for the better...I think we are going non-secular.

[ultraist]

162. I saw the same thing traveling thru rural PA , upstate NY & the midwest

Church going people living in shacks. :eyes:

I can assure you, I don't live in a shack nor do I go to church. I get so sick of the Southern negative stereotyping around here.

BTW, Utah and several midwestern states have the highest Bush approval ratings. NOT Southern states.

[barb162]

Well I also saw plenty of million dollar plus houses there too

But what struck me was the number of really poor towns where the church was VERY nice and well kept. In these same places, I could get no radio stations other than Rush L. and gospel stuff...in the mountains where radio reception was not good. BTW, I am not trying to imply there is no middle class or no cities there and I was not stereotyping. But when a hotel front desk person is asked how long it takes to drive to X and she responds about 4 hours and that she went to a gospel singing event there 3 yrs. ago, you gotta wonder.

[barb162]

164. I was talking rural , small town versus large city,

not north v. south

[barb162]

165. self delete

[alarcojon]

160. This poll may be off somewhat

but the reality is frightening enough.

I don't care if you believe in God. But please have some respect for science and reason as well.

[muriel_volestrangler]

167. For all those who think this poll is inaccurate

The results are extremely similar to 4 other polls taken over the past year (and this was not an AOL poll, for those who say "ignore it, AOL are right wing" - it was a CBS News poll - it says that clearly at the top of the article):

http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm

Around 50% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form, and that we did not descend from other animals.

:-(

[WindRavenX]

168. super duper

:eyes:

[coda]

169. For perspective, 20 years of polls.

Gallup Poll. Nov. 7-10, 2004. N=1,016 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

.

"Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings? (1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process. (2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process. (3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Options rotated 1-3, 3-1

.

............Guided.....God Had....God Created Humans...Other/No
.......... .By God.....No Part.....in Present Form.........Opinion
..............%...........%..............%......................%
11/04......38..........13.............45......................4
2/01........37..........12.............45......................5
8/99........40...........9.............47.......................4
11/97......39..........10.............44.......................7
6/93.......35...........11.............47......................7
1982.......38............9.............44.......................9

[jbm]

171. my friends reaction to creationism..

When my friend realized they were teaching creationism in the local high school, she said, "I believe in God. I take my kids to church every sunday, but....come on!! Nobody REALLY believes that bible stuff!"

I wonder how many people are like my friend, and only mouth the words they're expected to repeat, but don't really believe them.

[The Minus World]

176. A Country Without Science

Man will invariably fill the gaps in his knowledge with myth, speculation and pseudoscience.

Joseph Campbell argued, in "The Power of Myth", that it is in man's interest to pursue belief in powers greater than himself. Perhaps there is some truth to this - the value of mystical thought, and the qualities with which it endows its subscribers. Beyond that, though, history has taught us of the manipulations of structured belief systems which eventually culminate with the arrogance of excessive wealth (Social Darwinism), imperialistic thinking (Manifest Destiny), and genocide (take your pick).

The most alarming feature of this trend towards Creationism is that the great empirical truths of Science, such as the evidence of evolution through fossil records, are largely ignored by the "faith-based community", and replaced with the inefficacies of custom and superstition, or supplanted by a slightly adaptive contortion of belief. No matter how hard one prays, it is common knowledge that colon cancer is better prevented through repeated, scientific check-ups.

Without the empirical truths of Science man would not have Penicillin. Without the empirical truths of Science man would still be speculating as to whether the corporeal world consists of naught but fire and air.

Evolution is not a tall tale of our amorphous ancestors crawling out from a "pool of muck". Rather, it is the known - wholly accepted and understood - theory which unifies the concepts of descent with modification and natural selection.

These are simply gilded terms for a concept we are very familiar with: if you survive to breed, your progeny will constitute the next generation. If you have the proper genetic adaptations for survival, your likelihood of surviving into breeding age is drastically higher. In short, "Survival of the Fittest".

Did a Creator of some sorts have a compulsion to set this whole process in motion? The likelihood of such a story as the one contained in the Genesis being anything more than a fabrication man created to satiate his growling maw of Scientific ignorance is simply not worth mention.

[Hekate]

177. One way to look at it: their god thinks really small

Maybe it's the way I was raised, but I've NEVER seen a problem with believing the ancient vastness of the universe and the complexity of our planet could be inspirited with divinity. A reeeeeally ancient and vast divine spirit. A billion years might be the blink of an eye; evolution an afternoon's exercise.

But speculation about divinity is theology, not science.

I'm just embarrassed that this country has managed to botch the education of its citizens so badly that they can't tell the difference between two areas of study: theology and science. There's nothing at all wrong with a person holding them both in mind, but they are as different as studying algebra and Latin and don't belong in the same classroom.

Peasants and serfs.

Hekate

[sweetheart]

179. But that isn't the theory of evolution

The people reject a theory about the origins of mankind, whereas the
theory of evolution, that natural selection is tested by events with
the strongest genes selected, this theory is "proven" to be substantial.

So how do these two things get distorted? I think that the theory of
evolution needs focus on the present time, and not bother with attempting
to explain how life came out of a soup of ammonia, where proteins just
accidentally formed against mathematically impossible odds. Perhaps
they should lay off the story telling, and start teaching people about
the actual theory and how we test a theory using the collection of
empirical evidence and scientific method.

51% of american have a legitimate reasonable doubt as to the explanation
of the origins of life offered. And just as possible, original human
DNA could have come from outer space, yet the theory of evolution would
have no problem with this. The problem is not the theory, but the
attempt to sell a poorly supported assertion that life formed a certain
way. And really, they don't know. It would be better to teach the
truth that we don't know, and that in not knowing, we look at different
world views, different theories, trying them on like hats or sunglasses
at the drug stoor.

But this origin of life, is NOT the theory of evolution, and i see
no conflict between a theist and a darwinist, in the sense that
maybe "god" created the subtle laws of the earth, natural selection
of DNA and other physics of reality; and that maybe the two ideas
are not so mutually exclusive.

Then rather it is to teach the difference between fundamentalism,
theism, atheism and agnosticism. Truth and settling for nothing but
truth is something they don't teach either. Rather we are pumped
full of convenient explanations and taught that it is science, when
rather the process of inquiry is the "science", and god help us
if 51% of americans reject that process... but it seems so.

[BeTheChange]

267. If I could, Id nominate this as the greatest post of this thread..

Thank you, for being so clear headed.

[sweetheart]

310. Thank you

:toast:

[LynnTheDem]

182. The American Talebornagain.

Can ya hear the rest of the world laughing their asses off at us?

Bloody hell.

[LynnTheDem]

183. The American Talebornagain.

Can ya hear the rest of the world laughing their asses off at us?

Bloody hell.

[Mike03]

185. Heartbreaking

I'm almost afraid to ask what they think about The Big Bang and Quantum Mechanics...

[malaise]

186. Have they accepted that the world

is not flat?

[SheepyMcSheepster]

187. notice the online version of this poll (most for evolution).

notice how much different the online version of this poll is if you follow the story link:

How were humans created?

By evolution alone 37%

By God in our present form 33%

By evolution, with God's guidance 31%

Is it possible to believe in both God and evolution?

Yes 70%

No 30%

Total Votes: 124,691

[insane_cratic_gal]

188. The question is loaded

This question on the origin of human beings, asked both this month and in November 2004, offered the public three alternatives: 1. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process; 2. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process; or 3. God created human beings in their present form.



Either way you slice it, creationism or believing God had a hand in the process of evolution is going to be there. I don't like it, but it's been taught at church for eons. But doesn't the question seem loaded? Can't we leave God out of it?

God, God, or monkey there wasn't a C option .. it's like a Saddam election: Saddam or not Saddam. What about I don't know.. why mesh faith and science together?

Lets face it when you stack God up against evolution, evolution is a lesser glamorous theory. The idea of a slimy mucky maggot vs angels and 6 days of hard labor vs millions of years or climbing out of mud.

"Then there was light".. who else can say that! "Then there was a star filled with brilliant yet deadly gas that took millions of years to form and one day will burn out." Doesn't have the same dramatic effect.
Not only is it lesser glamorous but you poo poo on the ideas of an afterlife. There is no drama with evolution, but the bible, now there is a story that reads like a centuries soap opera.




Here is where I think their caller sample comes from: But I say it's bullshit.. look how low their liberal % is ...
Americans most likely to believe in only evolution are liberals (36 percent), those who rarely or never attend religious services (25 percent), and those with a college degree or higher (24 percent).

White evangelicals (77 percent), weekly churchgoers (74 percent) and conservatives (64 percent), are mostly likely to say God created humans in their present form.

[Silverhair]

189. Sad, but not surprising. NT

[sufrommich]

192. This is just sad.

Is there another industrialized first world country that has not moved beyond knee jerk religion?The answer is no.No offense to the religious people on this board,but the majority are willfully ignorant and proud of it.

[zanne]

195. Bull.....

shit.

[blindpig]

197. Refusal to accept our animalness is the origin of many woes.

Our treatment of our fellow creatures and the land is directly related to this monumental arrogance. Would we treat the land and sea in ways alternately rapacious and negligent if we felt ourselves part of these places? If we considered ourselves on the same level of animals would we tolerate the degradation of factory farming of livestock? Would we breed fantastically beyond the level of the niche for which we evolved, displacing all other life, if we had respect for that life? The notion that we are the crown of creation will be our demise. The belief that this Earth is but a way station to our true home cheapens the Earth and makes its treatment irrelevant.

A pox on the "Abrahamic Tradition" in all of its flavors. A pox on Descartes too.

:rant:

[countryjake]

199. Nobody asked me!

And 808 adults are NOT most Americans!

[dogfacedboy]

201. I, for one, will go on living by the words of Good King Festivus n/t

[Ganja Ninja]

204. Oh bullshit!

Seems right wingers always have a 51% majority. It's a lie told to embolden the religious right. I'll never believe that the majority of people in this country don't believe in evolution. People may be stupid but their not that stupid.

[Mutley]

205. Maybe that is true. And they have the right to feel that way.

That does NOT mean that ID, or Creation, has any business being taught in Public School as fact. The fact that evolution has been taught in public school since, what, the 30s(?) and allegedly the majority of people still believe in creation over evolution should show the RW fanatics that their followers do have the ability to decide for themselves. Evidently, most of them chose creation over evolution after being taught about both. So, why is it again that they feel threatened by the teaching of evolution in public school?

[kevinbgoode]

210. This poll sounds hokey as hell

especially that part about believing that humans evolved with God's guidance. Just because people believe they are children of God does NOT mean they don't believe in any evolution. WTF didn't they ask something about Noah's Ark? Or if they believed the story of Adam and Eve?

[muriel_volestrangler]

227. Surely that's why they put that option in

Because they thought that a lot of people believe that humans evolved, but that God guided the process - which is equivalent to "they believe they are children of God, and they believe in evolution". The poll would be hokey if that option weren't in.

I expect they didn't ask about Noah's Ark or Adam and Eve because they were doing a poll on evolution and belief in god. the ark has nothing to do with that, and Adam and Eve are a very specific topic of Abrahamic belief, which is only one aspect of god and evolution.

[Walt Starr]

211. This is exactly why the United States will lose superpower status

With dipshits like these, who needs to fight a war against us?

We are a nation of superstitious morans (sic).

[Breeze54]

212. Well, not if ...

you've seen pictures of bush, then you believe!!

[MadHound]

213. And thus we inch closer and closer to another Dark Age

When wisdom, learning and intelligence will be punished, not with mere persecution and ridicule, but with death and dismemberment.

Sadly, in my forty four years I have watched as our collective IQ has gone down, and our education system is continously dumbed down. I find it amazing that college grads today have less learning than what I graduated high school with twenty six years ago. And this has been an ongoing process for decades now. My mother remembers learning Algerbra in sixth grade, Calculus as a high school freshmen. Now most in most school curriculums a student is lucky to make Algerbra by the time they graduate high school, and Calculus isn't touched until college, if at all.

This is so sad in so many ways. We are doing ourselves, our country, and the world a huge disservice by the dumbing down of our education system. ID is just another brick in the wall, a wall that when built will block out the light of knowledge and we shall all be plunged into darkness.

[GreenPartyVoter]

219. I fall into the group of God-guided, but I am still an evolutionist and I

think it is frightening that so many people are so un or under-educated as to not recognize that evolution is a valid scientific process.

[stepnw1f]

222. Sorry... I Don't Buy It

More Christo-Fascist Propaganda! Perception is very thin that's why in the end they can't win.

[truebrit71]

223. I'm sorry but that is bullshit, plain and simple.

That is simply not accurate.

[muriel_volestrangler]

231. Can you point to any poll with substantially different results? (n/t)

[truebrit71]

233. There are a ton...it's bullshit for one simple reason...51% of Americans..

...don't even consider themselves xtians....so do the math...

51% of the poor deluded cloud-being worshippers that were asked this obscure question may have responded that way, but the majority of folks in this country believe in different gods...

[muriel_volestrangler]

238. I can point to 4 polls from the past year that agree with it

http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm

Where do you get "51% of Americans don't even consider themselves xtians"?

http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html

[truebrit71]

241. Remember, google is your friend...

:rofl:

[muriel_volestrangler]

242. But you don't have any friends, you mean?

Because I get my links by using Google, while you don't supply any links at all?

;-)

[Truebrit71sbruv]

286. I'm afraid I have to agree with my sibling on this...

...(yo mo-fo btw)...

The simple extrapolation of a poll... conducted among a nationwide random sample of 808 adults, interviewed by telephone October 3-5, 2005. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points... to be a truly representative sample of 295 million people is, I'm afraid, hogwash.


Polls have proven consistently to be wide of the mark - but more importantly, the "science" of pollsters is open to so much spin and "versioning" that you get the answer you want to your poll.

Ever wonder why pollsters with a "right-wing" bent get results that invariably favour thier view?

And the "plus or minus four percentage points" element, is a catch-all save-my-arse clause inserted in the part of the contract under the section Of course I'll get you the answer you really want.

I've not wasted my time believing in polls up to this point in my life, and I'm not about to start now.

[muriel_volestrangler]

299. "All polls are useless" is at least a consistent position

though I wonder if the people who say it bother to post on every DU thread that talks about a poll result, or only on the ones which give a result they are surprised by.

But the 'plus or minus four percentage points' is a mathematically accurate fact. No, it's not about "I'll get you the answer you want", it's about probability. It's part of statistics. You can't attack that number; you could accuse them of cherry-picking people they think likely to give a certain answer, but you have no evidence that CBS News did that.

Separate pollsters have come up with similar results in the USA. If you insist on throwing all the information from all of them away on the grounds they're all "right-wing", you'll know very little about the USA. For instance, you wouldn't be able to back up the claim that less than 50% of Americans regard themselves as Christian - which your sibling made a few posts above.

[Truebrit71sbruv]

307. Glad to be consistent at least…

... and I'm not so much surprised by the outcome of this latest foray by the pollsters into Statsland as shrugging and saying "same old, same old".

And I must venture that you are potentially expressing a degree of naivety if you genuinely believe that many organisations do not tailor their questions, the manner in which they are phrased and their delivery to the intended audience. Did CBS do it in this particular case? Perhaps not - I'd like to believe that there is definitely a degree of independent thought floating around the CBS newsroom. I'd like to hope so anyway. (Sorry, could not help sniggering at that last sentence when I read it over).

My reason for distrusting polls is not >snip on the grounds they're all "right-wing" <snip, but because whilst pollsters will insist on the "science" of an 808 person sample being enough to predict within 8% the accuracy of a poll - it just does NOT do it for me when you size that sample against a population of 295 million people.

Even the majority of polls I mistrust in the UK take a larger sample group than that - and we have a population a fifth of the US.

And MAN do they ever get things wrong - just look at the polls in the run up to the '92 and '97 General Elections.

Actually what irks me most about the article as published on the AOL site is the phraseology employed. It is circuitous and strident - and states as "fact" a poll with an 8% margin of error.

Still... when has factual accuracy ever bothered anyone?

[muriel_volestrangler]

308. The size of the complete popluation does not matter in the accuracy

That's what the mathematics says. A sample of 808 people has the same margin of error in the UK, the USA, China or Northampton. All you can doubt is whether the sample was properly random or not. In 1992 they did screw up in the UK; in 1997 the average of the last polls overestimated the Labour vote by 3% (http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk/papers/p56.pdf). So the polls generally get fairly close; in voting, a few percentage points makes all the difference, so any inaccuracy is very important, but here, we're talking about a general estimate of how many Americans believe humans didn't get here by evolution. Even if it's 10% wrong, a figure of 40% it still frighteningly high.

If one poll had come up with a substantially different answer, I might believe a charge of bias, intentional or unintentional, in the question. But they haven't (and 3 of the 4 others in the last year have a sample size of about 1000 - which gives a margin of error of about 3%, and is about as big a sample size as any poll ever uses). The evidence all points to about half of the American popluation thinking that God created humans in their present form, without evolution involved. There is nothing to throw reasonable doubt on that.

[Truebrit71sbruv]

309. Fair dos

<snip>The evidence all points to about half of the American popluation thinking that God created humans in their present form, without evolution involved. There is nothing to throw reasonable doubt on that.<snip>

And that's about the most frightening aspect of it all...

Perhaps I'm just hoping for inaccuracy...

[Skidmore]

224. "Most Americans". Looks to me like just over half

of that particular sample felt that way. How does that translate into "most Americans?"

[Nihil]

248. ROFL!

> "Most Americans". Looks to me like just over half of that particular
> sample felt that way. How does that translate into "most Americans?"

BECAUSE "OVER HALF" IS "MOST"!

QED!
:eyes:

(You know, I'm starting to believe that 808 *is* representative ...)

[Skidmore]

249. It's not "most".

It simply means that on person more than half in a sample of 100 agreed. Like in the elections, it certain doesn't represent "Most".

[Nihil]

293. If English isn't your first language then we can just drop this.

If English (or American) *is* your first language then I'd suggest you
go back to school as you obviously didn't understand first time round.

Like in the elections, more than half most definitely *does* equate to
most ... it's the meaning of the word but don't let that bother you ...
I'm sure you can just define "most" to mean whatever *you* think it
should mean ...

:eyes:

[MN ChimpH8R]

226. They should reject their bird flu shots, then

The flu and common cold viruses are a textbook example of evolution -they mutate and change on an ongoing basis. Why else are flu shots reformulated every year? Accepting a flu shot is an implicit endorsement of the scientific basis of evolution. Fundies have a religious duty to not get vaccinated. That should cull the herd a bit.

And now for a bit of fun:

All Things Dull and Ugly
Eric Idle

All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom.
He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid--
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!

All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.

Amen

[mainer]

229. It's why the "Era of America" is over

Every great civilization has its shining moment. Then it fades. The U.S. has rejected science and is slipping into a dark age of superstition, fear, and isolationism. We lost the edge in technological excellence when our countrymen decided that magick explains everything.

We no longer deserve to be the world's leader. In just about anything.

[arwalden]

230. Probably The Same 51% That Voted For Bush.

Idiots. Complete, total, idiots.

[Leeny]

235. Oh horseshit!

How was the question phrased and who did they ask? I happen to accept evolution exclusively, without any notion of a "god" having a hand in it. And I'm probably not in the majority. But I think there are a lot of folks who accept both the idea of evolution and "god"'s creation have don't consider them to be exclusive of each other.

I'd love to see how the question was asked and what the numbers were.

I don't know. Then again, maybe we're all just a bunch of lemmings.

[muriel_volestrangler]

240. Details here

"Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin of human beings? (1) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process. (2) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process. (3) God created human beings in their present form." Form X half-sample

"Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin of human beings? (1) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process. (2) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process. (3) God created human beings in their present form within the last ten thousand years." Form Y half-sample

"Do you believe that it is possible or not possible to believe in both God and evolution?"

http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm

"This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 808 adults, interviewed by telephone October 3-5, 2005. " http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/22/opinion/polls/main965223_page2.shtml

[PowerToThePeople]

270. At least Dems and Independents are smarter by this poll. n/t

[Kailassa]

243. Over 800 people answered in a phone survey.

... 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form,
and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process.
Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved. ...

This question on the origin of human beings, asked both this month and in November 2004, offered the public three alternatives:

1. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process;
2. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process; or
3. God created human beings in their present form.

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=200510...
(formatting changed to make reading easier)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

244. 51% of Americans have not evolved beyond sheer ignorance.

Just becaue most people don't accept it, don't make it so.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

246. Once again, Bill Hicks is called for:

"All over the world, people are shouting 'Revolution, revolution!' In parts of America, they're still shouting 'Evolution, evolution! We want our thumbs!"

[Initech]

259. Another great Hicks quote:

"Hey, you ever notice how the people who believe in creationism look really unevolved?"

[progressivebydesign]

254. Ya. And the majority of Americans watch 40 hours of tv a week.

Just because they're american, doesn't make them intelligent. What this tells me is that 51% of Americans are basically idiots. And that 15% of Americans are actually clued in to reality, not reality tv.

I'm of european descent.. why am I not living over there? I ask myself that often. Of course, the other half of me is descended from the Puritans.. which explains my confliction.

[Nordmadr]

255. More on this topic here with good discussion too:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5161247&mesg_id=5161247

Links have been provided back to this thread so thought I would do the same.

Olaf

[grannylib]

272. *sigh* and it's not just that...most 'Murkins are woefully ignorant of our

history, the Constitution, basic civics, basic ANYTHING.
Our educational system is so skewed these days, with sports being king and academics taking a back seat.
When was the last time a parent punched out a teacher because Junior didn't score high on the American History exam, or couldn't explain a text in Shakespeare, or couldn't solve an equation for x? (Unless the failure to do any of those things KEPT Junior off a sports team...)

[BiggJawn]

273. Stupid stays stupid. Pills won't help.

So I wonder how many superstitious Murkans DO believe the Earth is flat?

For every "improvement" in the I-Pod Jobs announces, another million profess a belief that Ernest Angely CAN cure deafness...This was what Sagan was talking about in "The Demon-Haunted World". the more complex society becomes, with widgets and machines that are beyond the understanding of their operators, the more the people retreat into superstition and belief in "angels"...."Angels make my computer work! It's TOO complicated to have been made by MAN!"

"Say BAY-Bee!"

[rumpel]

285. This poll has not included my opinion...