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Britons Unconvinced on Evolution
pryonic writes "The BBC is reporting that more than half of Britons do not believe in evolution, with a further 40% advocating that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in school science classes. I'm a Brit myself, and I thought most people over here thought these views were outdated and lacked substance. None of my close friends give any credit to creationism or ID, but we're all well educated athiests so I guess that's to be expected. Maybe I've been blind to the views of the majority in this proudly secular country?"
The fact that the parent post has been modded up to 4 "interesting" (as of 0715PST) is prima facie evidence that plenty of idiots hang out here at slashdot...
The Theory of Evolution says nothing at all about the origins of life. The theory that life evolved from chemical reactions in non living matter is called Abiogenesis.
It cracks me up every time the discussion of creationism or ID comes up. The opponents inevitably use ad hominem attacks to shut down any debate. "We're too smart for that" is the most common form of attacking the individual and not the argument.
The idea of the church as "big business" and using ID and creationism as PR is equally laughable. First, the statement that church is big business in the U.S. is false. Church membership has dropped every year of every decade for several decades now. The rise of the megachurches that we see is at the expense of the small churches that have had to close their doors due to lack of attendance and giving by parishoners.
Lastly, trying to use science to disprove the existence of a God is pointless. You could just as easily use science to disprove the concepts of love, justice, compassion, and friendship. But yet we all know they exist. If you can't agree with me on that, then I truly pity you.
Evolution is believable G.W. Bush is the closest apparition of the missing link every one has been looking for. But then that cast doubts upon the theory of natural selection. This then puts us into the camp of Intelligent Design. Again our apparition is casting doubts and upsetting theory here also. AlienSlave
Thats great modding. Ha ha, really funny.
Newtonian physics are a good example of things that don't scale. They work for things between 1 cm and 100 km so shouldn't they work for very large and very small sizes?
Playing around with the concept of infinity (a number) require mathematical concepts that don't work with numbers between 1 and 100.
Human behave differently as individuals and in large groups.
Its sad when someone expresses an opinion on a scientific theory and the best thing anyone can come up with is mocking him with scientifically weak arguments. And it gets modded as funny.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Congratulations on obfuscating Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design is not Creationism. Unless you are okay with conflating atheism with evolution, and therefore getting it tossed out of the public schools on church-vs-state reasoning. I'm continually impressed by the argument that ID == Creationism, and therefore isn't science, and therefore I'm a rational genius for disagreeing with it. In logic fallacies, that's called a strawman argument.
You're like the OP--"I'm a highly educated atheist, and therefore I'm always right". It takes a special degree of self-important twat go even suggest such a thing.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
one important thing (in my experience) the UK doesn't have so much of is militant fundamentalism
Maybe not the UK, but your next-door neighboors seem to have/had a streak of that. The Troubles ring a bell?
basically I think the difference is that in America you have the very dangerous combination of
1. Churches are big businesses (much more so than elsewhere)
2. businesses can easily buy into politics
Churches are also not taxed, and if they do try to dabble in politics directly, they will lose their tax-exempt status. It has happened before. That doesn't prevent the religious from trying to inflict their will on politics, but you're wrong to imply it's "the churches."
Also, coming from someone who lives in an area where there's an official state religion, my right eyebrow is raised conspicuously high on my forehead.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
The general theory is hardly at issue. Everyone knows that a small amount of what is called "evolution" happens all the time. Whenever an evolutionist wants to prove his point, this is his response. However, no reasonable theory has ever been introduced which explains how major life forms developed, how "natural selection" can account for the variety of organisms we see today, and certainly not how the basic forms of life which evolution claims to have started with came into existence. There are a lot of hypotheses out there, but just because they are the best ones scientists can think of, doesn't mean that they all fit together into a scientifically sound theory. For all the education members of /. claim to have received, nobody seems to be well educated on the genetic studies of Mendel, who proved that there are genetic barriers that cannot be crossed, thus eliminating the possibility of evolution between species and even eliminating some evolution within a species. Noone seems to be educated on basic physical laws, such as the 2nd law which has been categorically proven to require an intelligent direction of energy in order to produce a more complex mechanism or use of energy. I happen to be educated enough myself that I can see through many of the arguments used to support evolution, yet I see that those with much higher education may just have that much more brainwashing.