Slashdot Mirror
Is The U.S. Becoming Anti-Science?
smooth wombat writes "As a follow-up to a recently posted Slashdot article, Reuters UK has an article which poses the question: is the U.S. becoming hostile to science? From the article: 'Among the most significant forces is the rising tide of anti-science sentiment that seems to have its nucleus in Washington but which extends throughout the nation,' said Stanford's Philip Pizzo in a letter posted on the school Web site on October 3. Cornell acting President Hunter Rawlings, in his state of the university address last week, spoke about the challenge to science represented by intelligent design which holds that the theory of evolution accepted by the vast majority of scientists is fatally flawed. Rawlings said the dispute was widening political, social, religious and philosophical rifts in U.S. society. 'When ideological division replaces informed exchange, dogma is the result and education suffers,' he said." What is your take?
Supposedly Britian has a somewhat separated office of science within their government to make decisions that impact circumstances on environment, wildlife and global warming... much of these decisions take more than four years to measure for results, so they're obviously going to be ignored by any U.S. president whose voters believe otherwise. The British government appoints the person in charge of that much like we do the supreme court and federal reserve chairman, which is supposed to keep it relatively non-partisan.
I say we follow the British lead on matters like this. Of course it would have no effect on creationism/ abortion/ etc regulation, but its a start. As far as science in general, the United States is by far the leaders for scientific paper production, measured by citations. However, this number taken per capita or divided by the GDP of the country in question has always put the U.S. far behind in research, primarily to European countries. I'm not sure if this number has declined in the past few years having had a strong religious president.
Mostly, I think, the scientists just keep quiet and do their job of saving lives and advancing technology and let the naysayers bicker on the internet...
+1 insightful, -1 Troll, +1 underrated, -1 flamebait, and +5 right (unfortunately).
-nB
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Yes, there is a large, vocal, and frighteningly powerful group in the USA ignoring science for ideological reasons. Is there anything to learn by having a discussion on Slashdot about this?
Shouldn't we be asking Slashdot something like, "How do we stop the insanity?"
Seems like that could be more productive.
I think it goes beyond just anti-science. The way things have been going lately I'd contend that there's a general anti-education theme at play. It's not cool to be smart here, and it's definitely not high on anyone's funding list, no matter what the politicians may say. I've spoken a lot with my Father-in-law (he's Taiwanese) and we've come to the agreement that Americans in general are becoming increasingly complacent when it comes to education. Everyone's fat, happy and enjoying "Pimp my Ride" too much to care about the long-term impact of drastic education underfunding and a general lack of good teachers. I have two hopes: that the influx of educated foreigners in search of a better life here don't get completely blocked out by the xenophobes at home, and that the small percentage of Americans who are determined to get a good education are able to hold the line until people realize that education is a good long-term investment.
Derek
Don't Panic...
From the Article: Polls for many years have shown that a majority of Americans are at odds with key scientific theory. For example, as CBS poll this month found that 51 percent of respondents believed humans were created in their present form by God. A further 30 percent said their creation was guided by God. Only 15 percent thought humans evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.
.0000000001% different than they are, we would not have evolved in the same way- perhaps not at all.
Uh, this looks like a poll tweaked for contraversy to me. The 2nd answer presupposes the third; thus 45% of Americans think that humans evolve from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and a large portion of those believe that God wrote the rules that caused the evolution. The Big Bang itself is not only consistent with this point of view- it provides some proof of it. Something happened at planck time that changed the laws of the universe from a set of random variables effecting every particle differently, to a set of constants that all of our laws of physics are based upon. And not easy numbers either- really messy numbers that if they were even
So while our dearly stupid evangelical leaders may be going the wrong way, the American People as a whole seem to be as pro-science as ever.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Cute but the creationists have "genericized" creationism into intelligent design. That way multiple faiths can jump on the intelligent design band wagon. It's become the lobby group for religion.
Now to be fair though. I'll fight for anyones right to promote intelligent design; provided its sufficiently backed with QUANTITATIVE evidence. So far I keep hearing about more qualitative points like "How likely is it for an intelligent species like man to evolve from protoplasm?" It's not a scientific arguing point rather a philosophical one. The reality is no one can scientifically debunk points like that because there is no other ruler to measure that against!!
I know, let's seed another planet with some single strand protiens that could say come from a comet. Add water, sunlight and several million years of evolution and observe... oh wait.
*Cue twilight zone music* Maybe we're the grand experiment???
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Nazism is just one example of capitalism going awry under stress conditions. I know that all the great American democracy apologists will tell you that "something like that would never happen in the land of the free" blah blah blah. Bullshit power resides in the hands of those with economic power here. Your opinion and your vote doesn't mean anything in the face of economic power.
So in times of deep economic crisis (like these times for example) the ruling rich gear up for confrontation with the population that is seeing their salaries, their health care, etc. deteriorating. This involves a lot of supposedly irrational attitudes. In this case, there are no people with swastikas running around the streets spreading hatred against the Jewish community. It's more like white people running around the streets with crosses and American flags spreading hatred against Arabs (is there any real difference?).
Part of this process involves a direct attack of a lot of "rational" things, including (but not limited to) science.
There is no debate that's going to stop this trend. Things don't work that way. As the crisis deepens, we are going to see more and more of this crap that can only be stopped on the streets (as opposed to the lame ballot boxes).
So, this problem did not start in Kansas, it started on Wall Street. And is not going to be solved in elections, *if* we have any chance of solving it is by direct action. That excludes blogging.
I can't quote the person directly, but I spoke with a person at the NSF who told me that the NSF has been rejecting proposals that do not contain a "balanced viewpoint", i.e. not enough content about "Intelligent Design," (which in my book still equals creationism ).
Ironically, the NSF has just informed Kansas they cannot use some NSF materials because of their approach to teaching evolution.
Science in this country is in big trouble because it has become even more politicized. Science and dogma do not mix well...
The problem is not limited to the US, nor is it a product the "religious right". The anti-intellectual attitude prevalent today is just a product of the vague "postmodern" philosophy unconciously accepted by virtually all of western society. Postmodern philosophy, in this sense, rejects the absolute view of truth required by science as too "rigid". Science is the embodiment of the Law of Noncontradiction, "A cannot be A and non-A". But this is too restraining, too offensive for modern thought.
This is, incedentally, also why intelligent design is even close to being taught in schools; not because Christians are becoming so powerful or influential, but because the great mass of people don't really care whether ID or evolution is actually true, so long as no one gets offended. When faced with the question of what to teach in schools, the prevailing consideration is not "Which is true?" but rather "Which won't hurt anyone's feelings?". The fact that ID and evolution are logically contradictory doesn't matter; some people are offended by ID, and others by evolution, so we'll just teach both and everyone will be happy.
Let's face it, there's always been an anti-intellectual streak in the US, and now, these Bible-thumping ignoramuses are strengthening it.
These are the people who want to bring back Old Testament style theocracy, and think that it jibes with the Constitution. Check out the Christian Reconstructionist article on Wikipedia. Ultramontanes of the highest order.
Although I live in DC, I don't worry about Islamist terrorists as much as these folks taking over. Islamist terrorists could cause nasty infrastructural and personal damage, but these people, given a chance, will do everything they can to ensure nothing that conflicts with their interpretation of the Bible gets taught, women have no reproductive rights, gay people are executed for something they can't help being, etc., etc. They'll warp the laws to a viewpoint no one's held in 2,000 years - there's been progress since then, but they don't want it.
If they had their way, the only science that would go on would be to prove absurd things, like Moses really parted the Red Sea, instead of say, forensic ethnobotany to show how people ate.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
>
> As opposed to hundreds of millions non-americans fighting for reason..?
Group A: A fundamentalist theocracy of 237,500,000 people who reject the physics underlying radioactive decay, and who also reject the notion that DNA can, with suitable cleverness, be manipulated into new and useful forms.
Group B: A technologically-advanced splinter group consisting of 12,500,000 potential nuclear and biogenic weapons engineers.
When push comes to shove, Side A may have 20 times as many rifles, pointy sticks, and fists, but my money's still on Side B.
Note to the folks in Group A: If you think I'm only making fun of you, there's also...
Group C: A different fundamentalist theocracy whose population ranges from around 500,000,000 to 1,500,000,000 people, most of whom think the world would be a better place if everyone in both "Group A" and" Group B" were either assimilated or exterminated.
Just a friendly reminder to the "Group A" crowd. Most of us in "Group B" would be pretty happy to coexist with y'all in "Group A", but if y'all actually win your little war and manage to wipe us out (despite your renunciation of nuclear physics, geology, biology, and genetic engineering), you're going to find yourself in a pretty serious vortex of suck when "Group C" comes a-knockin' on your door.
Just sayin'.
just anti-education. There is a following in the right wing of the USA politics that goes to something of the effect that if it is not in the bible then it is not true and right now those nuts run the country.
It's a funny thing, but with television, radio, imusic, internet, etc. etc. etc. you see people with less time they actually devote to thinking for themselves.
I'm some damn radical because I read books, which stir my imagination and inspire ideas, rather than having my ideas told to me.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Before you learn how to end it, you have to learn why people WANT to believe it.
Why would we want to end it? There's nothing inherently bad about believing in ID. If you want to think God did some stuff, go for it. Knock yourself out, man. Maybe you're right. All we have to do is convince them that teaching religion in science classes is counterproductive. And to that end, it is just as counterproductive to go around saying that we want to convince them that ID isn't true. It makes them cranky.
Unfortunately, the only way I know to teach them that you shouldn't teach religion in science classes is to get them to think that some time in the future it could just as easily be someone else's religion and it's a bad precedent. But Christians feel a little invincible at the moment, so that's not going to work.
He doesn't make a testable statement? Neither did Darwin.
Actually, Darwin did - that, as we found more fossils, we would start to find the transition forms between species. That didn't happen. The fossils we found seem to fit into identifiable species, which is quite different from what Darwin predicted.
As to your other questions: None of them seem particularly relevant to the question of intelligent design, which is whether the available evidence indicates that we could have arisen from chance.
. . . and more anti science comes from the Post-Modern left. When Harvard University President, Larry Summers, suggested that innate differences between men and women might have something to do with the underrepresentation of women in the hard sciences, he was reprimanded for expressing a politically incorrect opinion--science be damned. Some scientific perspective on the kerfuffle can be had here.
Anti-science, anti-intellectualism, anti-etc. all stem from people's inability to cope with the rapidly increasing rate of change. Those of us reading /. are those who to some degree have managed to accept change as an ordinary part of daily existence. For the vast majority of humanity, this state of constant uncertainty is scary as all hell. When you've lost your footing because your set of assumptions about the world turn out not to work in daily life anymore, there's nothing like sticking your head in the sand and resting upon the bedrock of ignorance to make you feel safe and secure.
The administration isn't "anti-science" it is simply a bunch of demagogues playing to the masses who are scared to hell of the future. If your world is only 5000 years old, it is easy to imagine things have always been this way. And if there's an all-bearded guy up in the sky who's got your back, you don't have to worry about that beared guy who's cooking up a batch of mutant atomic powered death robots somewhere in the SF Bay Area.
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/gm-food/d n7729
Researchers at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorset, UK, tested the herbicide glufosinate ammonium on plants in fields previously sowed with oilseed rape modified to carry a gene conferring resistance to the herbicide. But a single charlock plant carried on growing happily, raising fears that the gene for herbicide resistance had crossed over to the charlock and created a herbicide-resistant strain.
For a theory to be "scientific," it must provide the basis for testable hypotheses.
Here are two sides of this particular debate:
1) "There is no superweed and there never has been," echoes Brian Johnson, ecological geneticist at English Nature, the nature advisers to the British government. "It's more likely that herbicide resistance in charlock has evolved naturally."
or
2) But according to some media reports, genetic testing of the purported hybrid showed that it carries the same gene as the GM crop.
Why would anyone want to close their eyes and cover their ears and say "I can't hear you - there is only evolution - there is no intelligent design - I'm not listening to you"? When actual real scientists are creating organisms which other scientists cannot distinguish from similar species found in nature?
The study of science suffered greatly under the domination of the Catholic church (nobody expects the Inquisition). Those in power (the church) dictated what was a proper fact, and what was absurd, improper, and heretical.
While science is now free from domination by the church, it is now under an almost equally difficult master... the scientific community itself.
Consider the following examples...
Anyone who proposes alternate theories to any of the 'accepted' foundations of todays community, will suffer persecution in the form of inability to receive funding to explore alterative explanations, not to mention professional ridicule (heretics).
While the examples above provide the best theories regarding our current scientific observations, none of them have been proven conclusively to be true. If we are so sure we are right about everything, then science has limited its ability to advance because we refuse to explore the unknown.
As an example, lets look at a few examples that the best minds in the world have insisted were facts:
FWIW: Why is Pioneer strangely accelerating as it leaves our solar system? Scientists claim it must be a slow gas leak, since we are certain the universe could not possibly have unknown properties to explain this better...
----- "If I am the wisest man, it is because I alone know that I know nothing." --Socrates[[NOTE: I post anonymously, as a coward, for fear of persecution by my peers]]
There are plenty of European/Western scientists, that most would consider some of the greatest scientists in the world, believed in a Christian view of God
This is very true. Take Charlie Townes, the nobel laureate who invented the maser and essentially also the laser. He also recently won the 2005 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities (it's worth about $1.5 million).
Here's an interview with Professor Townes that discusses religion and intelligent design.
I am in my post-doc (chemistry) phase at the moment, and agree with you 100%. Salaries are low, jobs are hard to find, and I will probably be 32 years old the first time my total gross income exceeds $30,000 in a single year. In the meantime, my friends who went to law school after graduation from my old college have been making $80k for five years now. They have houses, nice cars, husbands/wives, babies, etc.
I specifically chose a post-doc overseas where the work expectations are lower. The difference between working 50h/week and 70h/week is amazing. I had almost forgotten the pleasures of "weekends", "travel" and "dating" as I slogged through graduate school.
I can't believe I wasted over five years of my life for a degree which leads to a mediocre job that is likely to be exported to China next week anyway.
"One of the fundamental issues is that a lot of christians believe humans have a soul and that animals do not."
I'm a Christian and I believe animals have a soul, too. Only theirs is pure.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
A "theory", as used in science, is a collection of facts strung together with a set of guiding principals that explains how those facts are related. This is a *completely* different definition of the word 'theory' than is typically used by the general public. I'm appalled by the number of people who think they have an understanding of the Theory of Evolution, yet clearly don't even know what the word theory means in this context or even bother to look it up.
In fact, just looking in my email programs dictionary shows the different definitions.
For example, it is "fact" that gravity exists and causes apples to fall from trees to the ground. Newton's "Theory of Gravity" did a pretty reasonable job of explaining this, but was after all, "just a theory". Along came Einstein and replaced Newton's theory with "General Relativity", another "theory".
The "fact" that gravity exists and causes apples to fall from trees is "true".
Newton's theory of gravity can be regarded as being "true" in the sense that it does a reasonable job of explaining what gravity is and seems to be right most of the time.
Einstein's theory of gravity is even more "true" because not only does it explain everything Newton's theory did, but explains even more.
When scientists call something a theory, is the highest honor it can be given. People don't seem to doubt "Electromagnetic theory" or the "Theory of Gravity" -- the fact that they doubt the theory of evolution is curious indeed.
Die Menschen verhoehnen was sie nicht verstehen. -- Goethe.
The first thing that occurred to me was the "only in america" things we hear.
like "only in america can an ordinary man go apeshit and kill his entire family, and then say GOD TOLD ME TO DO IT"
have to say from a non USA viewpoint you gotta question which is better?
a/ raghead crazed islamic fundamentalist
b/ redneck crazed xtian fundamentalist
I have a feeling the crazed islamic fundamentalist of probably slightly more honest and open about his beliefs 12 months before he makes the 6 o clock news.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
The real issue is that there needs to be an acknowledgement in a systematic search for truth. I am a firm believer that one needs to treat science as a form of systematic philosophy. After all that is what it is and aside from the uninformed who think that data implies theory, all theory is inherently philosophical in nature (see "Physics and Philosophy" by Werner Heisenberg for more on this link).
But part of the problem is that revealled religions are inherently opposed to such approaches. After all what good is systematic philosophy when the Bible is your ultimate authority? Because of the fact that systematic philosophy, where nothing is beyond questioning/revisiting, will always exist in opposition to authority-based religion, where the basic tenants of the religion are expected to be taken on the basis of faith.
This tension is what most of these arguments about intelligent design, etc. are really about. Science is a darned good methodology as far as it goes, but most of the questions as to the nature of spirituality are really beyond it. This is because science as a general rule, in attempting to ascertain those truths useful in engineering fields, does not admit to the study of the human condition in its entirity. I.e. science does not imply materialism, though such trends are common in our modernistic way of thinking.
The question few people want to have asked is "can systematic processes be used to determine religious or spiritual truth?" People who hold one book (whether the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, or something else) as the unquestionable authority on these matters are threatened by this because they are afraid of being wrong. And yet, throughout some periods in history, such methodologies were used by many in this area.
For example, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe (and before that in the Islamic world, though this fell out of fashion there in the 13th century), such attempts were made. The basic framework in both these areas was based on the writings of Plato and commentary of later writers. They sought to find the unifying principles behind all religions (Henry Agrippa discusses Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Classical beliefs in his De Occulta Philosophia, though most of his Islamic sources were heavily influenced by Classical philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato). The fundamental idea that we are religious beings was so self-evident to them that they didn't bother to question it. Such philosophers of this sort included Theostratus Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, H.C. Agrippa, Albumassar, and many others.
Personally though I think that they got the model wrong in many areas I think that they did show that it is possible to take such an approach however, and personally I think that such discussion would ultimately help everyone, especially once one makes the leap from the sort of attempt at a universal theology that those such as Agrippa attempted to create to something more along the lines of structuralism in Linguistics.
But in the end, science belongs in science classes, and areas that are beyond science (including intelligent design) could be tought I guess in philosophy or theology classes.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If we were stuck on a mountain together, and I get really hungry, and kill and eat one of our mountaineering group members out of necessity, would you still characterize my soul as pure? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
the "higher creator" introduces additional, unneeded, complexity to the system and simply begs the question of "Where did we come from" because additional complexity must be explained. Just because an individual is smarter than you in one field doesn't mean they're any more or less immune to the mental compartmentalization process required to become religious than you. Religion is a strongly neurochemically addictive entity as it evokes "joyful feelings" which are your positive-reward-neurotransmitters which you are naturally addicted to. Addictive drugs emulate/cause the release of these and that's one of the reasons why they are addictive. Most religious individuals I have argued with follow the same exact pattern of argument as drug addicts in my not-so-small expirience.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
There are few things more addictive and difficult to argue with than religion, because you're not talking about sense or reality or science or rational thought.
You can apply that to some ateists as well. Moust of them belives evolution is proved and the missing link is found.
You can't scientifically argue with people who only can respond with "well, there must be a creator, because I feel it in my bones"
My faith is based on data. One part of it (the Bible), as you can find it in King James, can you have a copy of. Perhaps also a list of events to come so you can be convinced when they happend. But my observations I can't share with you, since you will not belive what I have experienced.
or people who can't possibly conceive that evolution doesn't in any way rule out there still being a creator. I don't care if evolution don't rule out a creator, because it rules out The Creator.
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
I'm not a Christian, but I grew up in a Christian family, and I can't understand why anyone would think souls exist. Is there a single behavior which humans exist that cannot be explained as the result of either a biologically-ingrained process (instinct, genetics, etc) or as something that is entirely consistent with what the individual's internal logic dictates as a purely economic decision? When you "choose" to do something, you're only doing what your prior experience indicates is the optimal thing to do. It may be completely illogical from an external viewpoint, but it's always internally consistent.
Consider the choice to try smoking- people can be told how it's bad for them and addictive, and that it will kill them, but for some people the novelty value, or the perceived increase in social status, or some other factor outweighs the negatives and they end up trying it. After trying it a while, the physical addiction can kick in, further tipping the internal scales in the direction of smoking. Often it is not until a heart attack, a cancer scare, emphysema, the birth of a child, or some significant amount of new information comes along that the scales finally get tipped back the other way. So is smoking an indicator of moral deficiency? If the Bible said it was a sin, would smokers be sinners? Does one really "choose" to smoke?
I posit that all human activities boil down to basic economic decisions that are determined by the individual's biology informed by their individual experience. There's no room for a "soul" there. We don't make our decisions, our decisions make us.
And that's looking at a macrosocopic level- if we look at the particle level, we see that human activity is the result of basic, deterministic chemical interactions. Sure, they are chaotic and thus impossible to predict on any usable scale, but that does not mean that they are not deterministic. If there is a soul in there, it would have to interact with the physical body on the level of quarks or something. I just don't see it, and I think the burden of proof really lies with those who believe.
Science does not disprove God, but it does make God redundant as an explanatory principle. There are also certain physical consequences that one might expect to find if there were a supreme being behind it all--answers to prayers, certain paranormal or supernatural events, etc. All "evidence" of God has been explained via purely naturalistic causes. If there is a God, He has left no trace, and that's pretty odd considering how big He's supposed to be. God is neither verifiable nor falsifiable, but by the criteria of science, that makes God a bad theory. He falls, not by disproof, but by Ockam's Razor. God adds nothing to our understanding of the universe; indeed, the addition of an unknown and unknowable factor in the physical world actually interferes with the progress of knowledge by discouraging further inquiry.
And this is where strident atheists, like Richard Dawkins, take their starting point. Religion now discourages the entire scientific enterprise, and has done so ever since it became abundantly clear that science provides physical explanations with no need of the divine. As a biologist specializing in evolutionary theory, Dawkins has no doubt encountered no end of people who take offense at his work for no other reason than superstitious bias. To any scientist dedicated to free and open enquiry, this is profoundly disturbing.
Carl Sagan called science "a candle in the dark" dispelling the shadows of the "demon haunted world." It is that darkness that gave the Dark Ages their name. The purpose of ID isn't just to challenge evolution, but to initiate a campaign to undermine the materialistic worldview and replace it with a magical worldview. ID proponents call this strategy "The Wedge." Darwin is only the beginning; their goal is nothing less than the destruction of the entire scientific worldview, and they have stated this quite clearly. This is a long term strategy, embarked on decades ago. It is not a response to militant atheists. Militant atheism is a response to an existing offensive.
We simply cannot support this many people on the planet, nor meet the challenges now facing us, without science. The consequences of this flight into fantasy will be the deaths of billions of people, and quite possibly, the extinction of humanity. This attempted retreat into a childlike world of magic and supersition is nothing less than a wholesale attack on truth, and upon the very means by which truth may be discovered.
The prophets and philosophers on whose visions we have built our culture had a word for such an attack on truth. They called it evil.
The left have the elitist attitude?
The right spews that accusation to divert the public's outrage from the real cause of trouble.
I don't see the left adopting the "for your own good" elitist mindset the right does. The right is the side which legislates morality because "their" moral codes are apparently better than mine, gives huge cash and power grabs to the corporate elite, starts wars to wrest control of resources from their indigenous populations for the sake of corporate greed, and declares war on the middle class, taking away the working poor's "boostraps" (basic welfare and medical provisions) and robbing them of that tiny piece of mind necessary to let them focus on bettering their condition, all because they believe in this pseudo-economic fallacy that the standard of living will be made better if the rich somehow become "rich enough".
(this voodoo economics comes from a theoretical situation in which moral hazard does not exist.. in that case decreasing expenses to the suppliers results in greater public good as they pass that savings on to their customers as higher wages and lower prices.. but moral hazard DOES exist, and the right completely ignores that fact because we peeon economists just don't know as much as their elite selves apparently)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
.....but it is a theory, and more, it is a scientific theory...
... billions and billions of years.
/second. In simple terms, half of the historic measurements should have been higher and half should be lower.
Exactly what determines whether a theory is scientific or not?
The theory of evolution requires unfathomable lengths of time - eons
Even with all that time, it's still hard to imagine how complex biochemicals such as hemoglobin or chlorophyll self assembled in the primordial goo. But to those of who question the process, the answer is always the same. Time. More time than you can grasp - timespans so vast that anything is possible, even chance combinations of random chemicals to form the stunning complexities of reproducing life.
Modern physics is now considering a theory that could throw into confusion virtually all of the accepted temporal paradigms of 20th-century science, including the age of the universe and the billions of years necessary for evolution. The theory is deceptively simple: The speed of light is not constant, as we've been taught since the early 1930s, but has been steadily slowing since the first instance of time. If true, virtually all aspects of traditional physics are affected, including the presumed steady state of radioactive decay used to measure geologic time.
It's an intriguing story - and like many revolutions in science, it begins with observations that just don't fit currently accepted scientific dogma.
Early in 1979, an Australian undergraduate student named Barry Setterfield, thought it would be interesting to chart all of the measurements of the speed of light since a Dutch astronomer named Olaf Roemer first measured light speed in the late 17th century. Setterfield acquired data on over 163 measurements using 16 different methods over 300 years.
The early measurements typically tracked the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter when the planet was near the Earth and compared it with observations when then planet was farther away. These observations were standard, simple and repeatable, and have been measured by astronomers since the invention of the telescope. These are demonstrated to astronomy students even today. The early astronomers kept meticulous notes and sketches, many of which are still available.
Setterfield expected to see the recorded speeds grouped around the accepted value for light speed, roughly 299,792 kilometers
What he found defied belief: The derived light speeds from the early measurements were significantly faster than today. Even more intriguing, the older the observation, the faster the speed of light. It would be easy to dismiss two relatively unknown researchers if theirs were the only voices in this wilderness and the historic data was the only anomaly. They are not. Forefront researchers from Russia, Australia, Great Britain and the United States have published papers in prestigious journals questioning the constancy of the speed of light.
Within the last 24 months, Dr. Joao Magueijo, a physicist at Imperial College in London, Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge, Dr. Andy Albrecht of the University of California at Davis and Dr. John Moffat of the University of Toronto have all published work advocating their belief that light speed was much higher - as much as 10 to the 10th power faster - in the early stages of the "Big Bang" than it is today. Dr. Magueijo recently stated that the debate should not be why and how could the speed of light could vary, but what combination of irrefutable theories demands that it be constant at all.
There are at least four other major observed anomalies consistent with a slowing speed of light:
1. quantized red-shift observations from other galaxies,
2. measured changes in atomic masses over time,
3. measured changes in Planck's Constant over time,
4. and differences between time as measured by the atomic clock, and time as measured by the orbits of the planets in our solar system.
Pe
All theory is gray
I've been thinking...
I've decided that if there is this push to "teach the controversy" surrounding ID vs Evolution in Science classes, why aren't people pushing to "teach the controversy" between the Bible and Science in Theology or Religious classes?
I can see it now...
"And then Moses parted the sea. At this point I must mention that there is very little scientific proof that Moses, indeed any man, has the ability to part a sea. In fact it is almost universally accepted that it is not possible for any man, now or ever, to have been able to part any sea without some form of construction works. If you would like any further information on this you can read almost any science book ever written."
We should also push for stickers to be placed on the cover of every bible that reads "There is controversy over the content of this book. For further information see...."
After all, if we don't teach kids the controversy, we are doing them a disservice and failing them in their education.
Shitdrummer
Alright, I think some people may have a very narrow view of science. Let's do some time travel, perhaps. Was Newton studying science per se since he happened to believe that God created the world? No, apparently, science began once Darwin came along. I've heard current philosophers/scientists bash pre-Darwinian science and what it accomplished, but with some of the technical shortcomings, political problems, and religious wars, it's really quite amazing to see what people came up with in an era where (surprise) most people believed in a Creator God.
;) Conversely, how many of you can coherently explain and refute some of Dembski's arguments?
I'd like to mention that I'm quite intellectual and yet I could be correctly labeled an evangelical Christian. I'm not sure how many posters above have met bona fide evangelical Christians who are also intellectuals - I hope we have a reputation for being selfless and considerate while at the same time zealous to learn. If anything, understanding that life has purpose and that universe is ordered makes it an amazing logical puzzle that challenges me to solve it...unlocking genetic codes and transfering them into genetic algorithms, discovering the amazing beauty and order in our human bodies, and so much more.
I've been fortunate to have had a mentor who's a genius in CS (Princeton grad, worked at Goldman Sachs, etc.), has a brilliant logical mind, and has a totally rational basis for his Christian faith. He's very down-to-earth, selfless, and a pleasure to be around and now sacrifices the $$ he could be making to teach in my old high school. I guess my love for learning came from his influence although my entire family has a love for education. I have a BS and MS degree in CS as well as a philosophy minor (and four siblings currently in college). However, I can promise you that my philosophy classes with this Christian philosopher/high-school teacher were better than all the other classes combined for my Philosophy minor by so-called experts in Philosophy. I've wondered why sometimes...
{Thinking aloud...}maybe it's the problem with the presupposition that "Science and dogma don't mix very well at all." Yeah, it sounds good because maybe your professor or mentor told you that (or you've said it enough times), but could you actually argue that Science and Postmodernist relativism mix better? I've seen a Postmo professor laud science, but sometimes I wonder why he can even assume that MUST be true when after all, how can we really know anything for sure? I find David Hume to be a very interesting philosopher, but for some reason, I don't see him as a cutting-edge scientist. I'd see an absolutist being a scientist much more readily than a relativist...even if only for the motivation to continue through all that painstaking effort if you know that the truth is indeed out there!
However, I'm not happy, when evangelicals (or naturalists for that matter) stop valuing learning and education and develop an escapist attitude. So, yeah, I can quote most of the recent evolutionary theories of how life originated (I hear it's down to a science now, but so far it's not been reproducable ).
Now, I know I will probably get modded down...because I actually don't bash evangelicals. But maybe you might wish to hear from one for a change...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
...just something they ignored.
People still believe in the literal 6 days of creation, when you only have to go back 3 translations from NIV to Latin to find a version that describes them as "periods" or "eras" instead of days. This, to me, is powerful evidence that creation was believed to have been something that happened on a "godly" scale of time as opposed to a human one.
Yet the number one reason Christians discount this when I talk to them is that they believe no version of the Bible before KJV is accurate. In other words, they choose, in their wealth of wisdom, to ignore it. Now, maybe it's not important in the grand scheme of things. But that's the sort of philosophical question that splits sects - not that I really believe that any Christian church should be fighting about Genesis when the whole point of the religion is the message of Christ's life and death, but that's just me.
In any case, it isn't about undermining or supporting your theology - it's about the truth. Do you mind?
Well...a good point is that when we read papers from long ago claiming that the Sun revolves around the Earth, we're not supposed to take it on faith that "well, even if that's not the case now, during that time it must have been true, since it is written here".
When a Christian reads the Bible, he's supposed to take what's written in it as fact. When a scientist reads a paper, he's supposed to try to find holes in that theory. The simplest theory with no show-stopping holes is the currently accepted theory, but no one claims a better one won't later be found. Completely different method here.
Not that I really have a problem with religion itself, I just have a problem when religious people try to force scientists to include their religion in the theory...that's just not possible in science. I'm a bit Catholic myself (not a very religious person, but I'm Catholic by family and hold one or two beliefs which I don't expect anyone else to hold, nor do I *ever* argue for them, because it's impossible to argue for something which can't be proven true or false). I do, however, recognize where science applies and where religion applies. Religion applies in my own personal life and nowhere else. Since it depends on faith (which by definition means that something must be believed in, even in the face of evidence against it), it's not very useful when I'm looking for physical interpretations of how things work. So, when developing a theory as to how complex life was formed, choosing to include something which I have to take for granted and can in no way later falsify is obviously the wrong approach. That means intelligent design shouldn't be held as a scientific theory and shouldn't be taught in science classrooms. If you want it taught to your kids in Sunday School, I have no problem with that.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
The overall point which drives anti-intellectualism is the fact that intellectual's knowledge gives them power which only comes from understanding, and people despise when others may have power over their lives.
In part, yes. But there's also a part of the anti-intellectualism that actually is somewhat rational... the part that is essentially rebellion against the ivory tower mindset.
Here's an example. I just read a small book called "A Mathematician's Apology", by G. H. Hardy. If you're a mathematician, you've heard of him. If not, well, he was one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century, an extremely intelligent man even among his peers in Cambridge. The book (an essay, actually) attempts to explain what mathematicians do and why they do it. As someone who loves mathematics and has done a little myself, I thought it would be fascinating.
I was disappointed.
Not because his discussion of mathematics was disappointing (though it was a little more elementary than I expected... my mistake, the book was for laypeople) but because of what else came through. Hardy wrote that essay near the end of his life, at the age of 53. I would have thought that a brilliant mathematician and thinker of that age, who had spent his life surrounded by brilliant thinkers of various types, would have some valuable insights.
What I found was that he was terribly naive in many, many ways. He understood so little of life and of people, even by the time he died. It made me sad.
In retrospect, though, I should have expected it. This was a man who entered Trinity College at Cambridge at the age of 18 (IIRC) and basically stayed there his whole life. Other than an occasional taxi ride to visit someone or an occasional trip for a conference, he lived his life, 24x7 within a few square blocks, surrounded by a few similarly cloistered people. How could he not be naive? When and where could he possible have learned anything about the world?
Anti-intellectualism is a huge problem, and it's very damaging to our society, but intellectuals have to accept some of the blame. When you have a great deal of education in a narrow field, and are constantly reminded of your own brilliance, it's easy to presume that you know how others should live their lives, even though you really have no idea.
Actually, I think intellectual society *has* tried to cope with this issue over the last few decades. Among intellectuals it has become improper to express any intolerance toward any sort of lifestyle, or behavior. The problem is that that, too, has been taken too far in typical, extremist, ivory tower fashion, and those extreme ideas are now being pushed on the rest of society, again because "we're smart and we know best". The commonsensical reaction to total moral relativism is rejection, which simply heightens anti-intellectual sentiment.
Anyway, I've rambled enough for now, so I'll stop here.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
....If there is a soul in there, it would have to interact with the physical body on the level of quarks or something....
There is a big assumption (faith) in that statement. It limits the existence of the soul to this time-space dimensions and the laws of physics. The physical body is analagous in certain ways to the hardware of a computer and the soul is the software. Software is not subject to some of the known laws of physics. Unlike physical things, it has no mass and can travel at the speed of light. Only the carrier is subject to the laws of entropy, but not the software itself. The same software can exist in and operate in may places at the same time. Software, not hardware determines the functions of a computer. Virtual PC and other emulators clearly demonstrate this. Minutely examining the hardware of a computer tells you nothing about its software.
In the same way, the soul, the immaterial part, loaded and resident in a physical body determines the personality, the mind if you will of a human. Exactly how and where the interaction of the soul/mind occurs in our physical bodies is still largely shrouded in mystery, although there are some tantalizing clues. Denying the existence of the soul is akin to denying the existence of the software in a computer.
All theory is gray
I think he's spot on. Since atheists don't believe in 'God', they can't fight 'It'. I can't say that I fight for, or against the Invisible Pink Unicorn, since I have no way to know if She exists and leads our lives :).
However I will fight against crackpots that try to shove words up my years hoping those words'll come out my mouth. And when (and if) I have kids, I'll damn well fight against their 'salvation' to a system of self-deceit and wishfull-thinking.
Well, this isn't my area of expertise, but I do have the advantage of being somewhat intelligent and rational.
As I stated, I can not cite a reputable scientist in the field as I don't know any though I'm sure you could find plenty of relevent info if you google.
I can, however, see obvious trends in cells and related biological formations TODAY that seem to me as relevant examples of a feasible evolutionary map in general cellular design.
The argument you make is, I presume, based not only the complexity of a complex animal cell but also on those parts of the cell that are also claimed to be irreducably complex like the mitochondria. Let's look at a generic animal cell first. Cell wall, mitochondria, nucleus.. lots of complex stuff in there and it's all wrapped up in a package that just works. Intelligent no?
What about a red blood cell. It's not actually a cell, it's really called a leukocyte as I recall because though it is a self-contained 'cell' it lacks a proper nucleus. In the human body, there are various 'cells' of varying function and complexity.. some more complex than other.
Now pull back to all 'life'. There are other examples of much more remedial cells. Anaerobic organisms often don't posses typical mitochondria since mitochondria are required for aerobic energy metabolism.
I'll have to once again admit my lack of expertise here so I'll skip other intermediaries. We can, however, just jump to the end example.
What about viruses? They are self-contained 'living' units much like cells. Some of them are quite structurally complex with dna injecting mechanisms. They are, however, so simple compared to the typical animal cell that some biologists hesitate to call them alive.
The point I'm trying to make is that, although individual cells are too fragile to be found intact in the fossil record, there are presently a wide variety of cells and sub-cell organisms/organic packages that span a great range of complexity. Personally, though I don't have a full record of every cellular missing link, I don't find it shocking to believe that simple organisms evolved into more complex organism even if those organisms began as little more than replicating and self-replicating protiens (aka. Viruses)
There is a difference between this line of reasoning and faith however. This process, cellular evolution, is currently being studied and it has been for some time. We know WAY more about how cells have or may have evolved into complex structures now than we ever have before. In by know I mean we can build models on our theories and prove them by direct inspection or experimentation. Some models will undoubtedly fail. This is SCIENCE. You throw things at the wall and keep what sticks.
Faith is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT though. You don't throw hypothesis and theory at the wall to see what sticks with Faith. Faith REQUIRES you to belive you know what will stick to the wall without doing the throwing. By definition, if you test the targets of your faith and prove those positions, it is no longer faith it's hard fact. Faith is no longer required at that point. My dictionary tells me that Faith is based on spiritual apprehension RATHER THAN PROOF. That's just the way Faith works.
Science isn't faith. There is hypothesis and theory but there are really very few laws in science. Science is based on the ability to test and disprove any aspect of science. This is just the way science works. If you can't potentially disprove it, it isn't science it's faith. This is especially true of hypothesis and theory. Attempts to disprove hypothesis and theory are every bit as important or even more so than attempts to 'prove' hypothesis and theory. It is, after all, much easier to find one case where a theory fails than to find every possible case (possibly an infinite number) where a theory succeeds. Modern theorys, as a result, become more accurate as exceptions are found an theories evolve to account for those exceptions.
ffakr.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
alas, i digress. i apologize. virology is rooted in micro-evolution. tiny minute changes in an organisms makeup. virology has as much to do with evolutionary biology (Darwin evolution) as your personal check book has to do with the stock market. small vs. unbelievably complex.
I know, coward, I'm wasting my time on you... but it just takes a second to point out that virology is talking about minute changes in organism that can occur in the space of A FEW DAYS. These have about as much to do with the large changes that occur gradually over millenia as balancing your checkbook has to do with... well, something bigger than the stock market, anyway.
Memento mori. Remember you must die. But also remember that not everything dies with you. Mountains turn to sand if you wait long enough. If you've lived on a mountain, this is almost impossible to imagine, but it happens nonetheless. Goo turns to you, if you wait long enough. Amazing, for sure, but there's no avoiding it if you can just wrap your brain around it. Nothing else makes sense.
Please, don't trust me -- go find out for yourself. The nice thing about science is that you don't have to trust anybody. Certainly not what some people who died thousands of years ago supposedly said... you can check the evidence for yourself. It's OVERWHELMING.
In Christian theology God is verifiable. My friends which are christians tell me they can feel His Divine Presence, His actions, His existence. I guess that if one believes something hard enough, they can see proof of it anywhere.
But for an agnostic or atheist, God (as defined in Christian theology - omnipotent, omniscient, etc.) is not verifiable. Here's why: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - A.C.Clarke
If 'God' comes out of the sky, in a blaze of glory, in front of a human, that human would have absolutely no way of verifying whether the 'person' in front of him is indeed omnipotent or is just sufficiently potent as to appear omnipotent, or is indeed omniscient or is, likewise, sufficiently knowledgeable to seem omniscient. In other words, we limited humans have no way of knowing if something has no limits or if it has finite limits, greater than our capacity to observe such limits.
Then again, I could be wrong. I don't know for sure if Christian Theology defines God as omnipotent, etc. or simply waaay better than us puny mortals, but not infinitely potent/scient.
I think you must be talking about consciousness, not intelligence. Intelligence (what the psychometricians call g, the general ability to solve problems) is perfectly measureable, but it is also clearly a property of anything above the level of a cockroach. Mice and crows and humans are all intelligent, but humans are a lot smarter than crows or mice. Few people doubt that a general-purpose responsive computer program will be written someday that can be assigned an intelligence, although it might be not much smarter than a frog.
Consciousness is the real trick, huh? People draw a lot of mystical meaning from that one deep gut "feeling" we have and can't or won't explain.
that's what most people call a trump card. as I've told people before, if you encapsulate yourself in those arguments, you will never lose because you cannot be argued with.
and of course, one can give evidence for why god is like the aether(when those arguments are invoked). Sure, you can suppose he does exist. and if you want, you can credit him/her/whatever with the creation of eveything. But in the end, you can't prove it one way or the other because the existence doesn't change a single thing about how the world works. It just keeps trucking along seeming following extremely well defined rules. So for the same reasons scientists reject the existence of the aether on the basis that it isn't needed to explain the propogation of light, the existence of god is rejected by many scientists, though it doesn't have to be. the aether can be postulated in such a way as to never show itself. unfortunately, that means its existence has no meaning. kind of like god in a lot of ways.
1- I am a naturalized US citizen and I no longer live in the US.
2- I am not a Christian (or any other Abrahamic), nor do I hold an Abrahamic world view.
Having said that, I think if you wish to understand why there is a predominately anti-christian sentiment with those who are interested in, or study, evolution you must understand a few things about American christians and the tactics the far religious right employ to further their own minority agenda. This whole ID thing is one more issue in a long, long list why it's rational to be anti-christian.
Oh and I think it would be fair to say that generally there is a decline in the interest of sciences in those not specifically employed in scientific endeavors... which is not to say there are significantly less American scientists. But maybe that's because I had to move out of the country to continue to work in my field.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
But that's exactly why Catholicism is so close to paganism. Catholicism is, as you say, the original Christian religion that spread across Europe during the declining years of the Empire. In doing so, it co-opted a lot of pagan belief structures into itself. For instance, AFAIK there's no reason to think Jesus was born in December at all - Christmas is a rebranded pagan solstice festival. Easter? Take pagan springtime rituals focussed on the rebirth of the dead world, add the resurrection of Christ, cook at gas mark 8 for forty minutes or until well done. And as for the elevated importance of Mary in Catholicism: well, she combines the traditionally separate roles of nurturing mother goddess and chaste virgin goddess into a single icon.
Not to mention that a lot of Catholics in the English-speaking world are descendants of the Irish. The Church in Ireland went its own way for a long time before Rome finally managed to assert its authority there, and a lot of relics of the old Celtic Christian church still survive.
So your roommate was partly right. Catholicism is very close to paganism, and ironically, the fossils of ancient paganism that survive in Christianised form in Catholicism are probably still more authentic than what passes for paganism among the teenage-witch crowd.
And if one wishes to make a nasty retort to people who point out the Church's pagan heritage and think they've somehow scored points by doing so, it's quite easy to draw up an argument comparing fundamentalists to Pharisees, and literalists (who seem to worship the text more than the deity) to idolaters...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Unfortunately, in speaking of the design of the human eye you don't actually understand how it works, any nore than the people you got this idea from. It is indeed true that the nerves go across the front of the retina, and the blood vessels are behind. If it were reversed, the huge blood supply needed to keep the eye operating at peak efficiency would block light to the receptors, whereas the nerves are almost transparent. The blind spot is 15 degrees off the focal point, which means that it has no practical effect on our vision. All design is a compromise between different objectives, and the design of the eye is similarly constrained, but it is as close to perfection as can be achieved.
Here is an interviews with Dr George Marshall, Sir Jules Thorn Lecturer in Ophthalmic Science at the University of Strathclyde, demolishing this particular anti-design idea and here is another by a retired consultant opthalmologist. Both these, incidentally, demonstrate that there are top-class scientists who do not accept Darwinism. They also demonstrate that creationists tend to produce facts whereas evolutionists tend to produce rhetoric.
Arguments about the perfection of design are irrelevant to the Intelligent Design theory, which does not attempt to identify the designer. The fact that something is designed does not necessitate that the design is perfect. If you tried to do it, the result would be a lot worse, wouldn't it? Nevertheless, what you produced would still be designed.
For a Christian, the imperfections in the world are the result of the curse that is on the whole creation as a result of sin. So again, problems in nature are not evidence of bad design but of the curse.
As for vitamin C, we are designed to eat fruit (Gen 1:29) and our present omnivorous diet is a later change (Gen 9). Still, no one suffers scurvy unless for some reason they are deprived of greens, either by misfortune or by poor diet, which is usually the result of ignorance or oppression. So this problem is a result of the curse combined with human actions or misfortune.
Finally, there is a huge amount of supporting evidence for creationism. It is just the same data that evolutionists use to support evolution. However, since your world view excludes God you cannot interpret it correctly. There is no profitable argument between world views; all that can be done is to compare them fully and then decide which makes better sense. That is the reason for presenting both sides of the debate in school and elsewhere.
Correct; this is called inductive logic and it relies on the idea that the world is consistent and that previously observed behaviour will be repeated. That is the foundation of the scientific method.
Where does that idea come from? It comes from biblical Christianity. Our first scientists knew that God is consistent in the way that he manages the world and that it was therefore worthwhile to investigate how it works. Without him, there is no foundation for science, because there would be no logical reason to expect the world to act consistently.
Incidentally, C14 dating is only good for 60,000 years or so, because of the short half-life of C14. None at all should be present in anything older than that. It is interesting that C14 is apparently found in all carbon on earth, including coal deposits and even diamonds that are supposedly millions of years old.
No, I can't possibly know as well what it's like to do science in other places of the world as would someone who's lived in them all. So if you find a scientist on /. who has lived and worked for five years each in the United States, three or four European countries, Japan and China, then I highly recommend you take his opinion more seriously than mine.
/. perhaps because young people might be the loudest and quickest with memorably sharp comments, think again.) Have you not merely assumed that I lack data, since I neither offered any nor admitted to its lack in my post? In which case, should you be making such firm statements about the worth of my opinion "without the data," so to speak?
/. wouldn't be as common in the US as they are. All of the topics discussed here have experts (or "experts"), and very frequently a /. article introducing a discussion is by one of them. The fact that there's a perfect willingness to jump in and question all aspects of any expert's opinion, test them vigorously by our own logic, and vet them against our own experience -- this is a good thing, is it not? Because we believe the truly valuable and correct expert's opinion should be able to "take the heat" but the flimsy opinion will crumple. And usually that's so, but sometimes -- and here's the rub! -- it isn't, because the expert's opinion is contrary to "common sense" and deals in matters far outside common experience. Then amateurism becomes the problem it is when we discuss evolution and global warming. But it is not and I did not say it was an unmixed curse.
I don't want to say that the USA is a bad place for a scientist to live and work in - but I don't want to say that it's a good place, either, because I simply don't have enough experience to compare it with other countries in the world. And without that data, neither should you.
Sound logic, with which I fully agree. Now let's invert it slightly: in fact, you know nothing about me, or on what personal experience ("the data") I might be basing my positive opinion about working as a scientist in the US. I could be a 23-year-old first-year grad student or I could be a 55-year-old ex-chairman of a department spending a year in Washington running a division at NSF. (And if you think only young people read
Your trivia questions are fun! Let me try:
Countries in Africa: Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Chad, Kenya, Zaire, Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nigeria, Mali, Liberia, Niger, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Botswana, Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Lesotho, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Swaziland, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda.
Hmm, that's all I can remember right now. Assuming no mistakes, I got 30 out of the 50 you say there are. Do you suppose the generic African can name 30 out of 50 of the United States? Just curious.
Name and title of the head of state of Uraguay. Bzzt. Don't know. Can I use a lifeline?
If I give you a map of the world without any borders etc. drawn on it, would you be able to show me the location and shape of Myanmar? No problem. I had a graduate student who fled Burma after her father was killed in the street by government thugs.
What's really ironic about this, of course, is that you are exhibiting exactly the same kind of behaviour that you decry in other US-Americans...
First of all, duh. I'm American. Second, I didn't decry it. I merely explained it. Like any personality trait, it's got its benefits and drawbacks. American amateurism is a pain when they distrust experts they shouldn't, yes. But it's an advantage when they distrust experts they should.
Look at it this way: if Americans were not as willing to entertain the opinion of reg'lar joes as much as the opinion of "experts," discussion fora like
Think about it...
Dude, not only have I already thought about, but if you read the last line of my post you'll see I made an ironic self-deprecating joke about it. Sheesh.
Um, does this remind anyone of any community in particular? Say, an on-line discussion group?
At least on slashdot the consistant idiots quikly lose karma and start posting at 0, and anyone who is even minamally constructive in posting is quickly able to post at 2.
I have a proposal. Congress critters who vote through laws later struck down as unconstitutional lose karma, and lose too much carma and their voting power drops to 0. And while we're at it, I'd say the 40% of Alabama voters who voted in 200 to *retain* their old law prohibiting interracial marriage also have thier base vote value droped to zero for that troll/flamebait stupidity.
I'm not sure exactly hiow to work it, but both the general public voters and congressional voting should somehow earn karma credit when they are +1 Interesting, +1 Informative, or +1 Insightful, and eventually earn a base 2 voting power.
Grin.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.