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America's Turn From Science, a Danger For Democracy
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Here's a good article about how playing politics with science puts our country at risk — a review of Shawn Otto's book Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America. Today's policy-makers, Otto shows, are increasingly unwilling to pursue many of the remedies science presents. They take one of two routes: deny the science, or pretend the problems don't exist."
Hmmm.....
- about 30% voter turnout ....
- Election looser becomes president (2000)
- You need a billion US$ campaign funds to have a chance
- Heriditary tendencies for seats in congress/senate
-
So not much left to endanger IMHO. Sorry!
"They take one of two routes: deny the science, or pretend the problems don't exist."
First, the analysis presented by the author is fraudulent, nonsensical, and just a creation of the liberal elite. Second, there's simply no issue with how politicians deal with scientific facts, I don't know why anyone would say something like that.
Here is the thing. Science is hard. Thinking is hard. Most people would rather live a comfortable lie than facing the cold, hard truth.
Actually this is a misnomer. The US was established on freedom of and from oppressive religion. Many of our founding fathers were atheists/Deists (For the pre-darwin time I would consider deism pretty close to atheism, considering they more or less believed that god takes no active part in the world today). In god we trust was added to our money, and "under god" was added to our pledge in the 1950's. Both spit in the face of what the founding fathers had intended with separation of church and state.
The Canadians walked away from Kyoto; shall we ask if they, too, are anti-science?
Your unspoken assumption that Canadians walked away from Kyoto for scientific reasons is a neat summary of all your other unspoken assumptions, and a neat proxy for how wrong you are on them as well. There's a nice summary of the actual situation here: http://www.politics.ubc.ca/fileadmin/user_upload/poli_sci/Faculty/harrison/Canada_US_august.pdf
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You are putting agnostics and atheists into one basket which makes as much sense as putting you in a basket with the fundies (you sound like a reasonable person). Even if you can't prove a negative, the onus is on the religious to provide infallible proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The whole U.S. is established on the idea of God and religion.
Sorry, this is just a myth. The founding fathers were deists, as secular as you could be in their day. The Constitution contains one reference to deity, in "the year of our lord". The Federalist Papers have equally few mentions of any sort of god.
You are falling for the revisionist history perpetuated by the very people you are afraid of. "Under God" wasn't even added to the pledge of allegiance until 1948. The real philosophical basis of the United States are the ideals of the Enlightenment, which we have progressively lost as we slip into a modern dark ages.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It was sputnik that that put science and math back in vogue in the US, and even then it has been touch and go. I don't imagine that many who read this can imagine how hard it is to actually set up an advance math of physics class is school that are controlled by ex cheerleaders and english majors. They cannot understand the importance or the complexity. They think that the computers just magically appeared one day. They don't know the physics and engineering that was required.
Some of this comes from the religious fanatics, and some of these believe that the US is a christian state. While it is somewhat true, the beliefs of our founding fathers were not necessarily the beliefs of the christian fundamentalists and terrorists that want to divert tax a money from the public good to funding their mansions and sports complexes and terrorists cells. One example of this difference is the Jefferson bible. This bible is used by many christians as it focuses on the teaching of Jesus for those who follows his ways and habits, rather than the mysticism which is often used to tell poor people that they are poor simply because they have no faith.
Our founding fathers understood that religion was used to oppress them, which is why the fought against the aristocracy of England. It was understood that the aristocracy was no more chosen by god than a CEO is chosen by god. It was understood that the work of a person, not the lineage, should determine if a person was successful. Just because one was born into a place or a family should not determine if one was blesse by god. The blessed were the ones who would have faith and work. So the US was built on faith, but not the idea that we in the US were more blessed than other simply because we were born in the US. We had to work for the blessing.
This then is problem with math and science. If we are simply blessed because we are born in the US, then we can simply stay on our sofas and watch TV. But if god demands that we act, that we honor the creation, the Math and physics takes on a much greater importance, and one is not blessed simply because one watches Joel Olsteen on a 42" tv in a mansion. It is then required that we take an active role in exploring and expanding the good that the creation can do, which means that we have to get our lazy asses off the sofa and produce something useful, the antithesis to what is taught in too many churches.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science. "
No, we don't; you just made those things up.
Gaining power is hard, too. Do you think that those who clawed their way to the top of the system have any interest in having their actions dictated by a bunch of nerds, beyond absolute unavoidable necessity?
Read up on the Manhattan Project and how the best minds in the world were treated by the military and the US Government. It should be instructive in understanding the "anti-science" attitude of the government today. The people changed, the mindset didn't. It isn't anti-science, it's anti ceding power.
We have a special word - statesman - for politicians who stop feeding at the trough long enough to do something good for mankind, or at least their nation. This word is not used often about politicians for good reason.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Here's the one difference, the people concerned about Global Warming are actually quite diligent about providing evidence.
Of course, the anti-GW people refuse to even give them an iota of credit, and act as if they were proposing something without any shred of thought, logic, or evidence.
That is not true.
Actually this is a misnomer. The US was established on freedom of and from oppressive religion. Many of our founding fathers were atheists/Deists (For the pre-darwin time I would consider deism pretty close to atheism, considering they more or less believed that god takes no active part in the world today). In god we trust was added to our money, and "under god" was added to our pledge in the 1950's. Both spit in the face of what the founding fathers had intended with separation of church and state.
this post is 100% spot on. to claim a christian foundation for the USA is blatantly rewriting history
I don't think that the US is established on the idea of God and religion. The Religious Right wants to rewrite history and make the US a Christian nation, but we were founded on religious freedom. On the principle that the government shouldn't dictate to you which religion you practice (if any) and how you practice it (again, if any). A Catholic can go to Church at the same time as a Jew can go to Temple and a Muslim can attend services in a Mosque. Please don't confuse the Religious Right's agenda of turning the US into a theocracy with the normal religious person's agenda of practicing their religion without someone telling them that they can't because the government outlawed it.
For the record: Yes, I am religious. No, I don't want to push my religious views on anyone else and I just ask that others don't try to force their religious views - or lack thereof - on me. I'm fine with a friendly conversation on the merits and/or pitfalls of religion, but name-calling, insults or threats have no place there. (This goes both ways. I'd expect that religious folks talking with atheists refrain from any "You're going to burn in hell, heathen" talk. Not that the atheist would be scared, but it's just not polite.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
All good points. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into.
Agreed. Atheists can be very stubborn in their beliefs.
Oh, wait, did you mean...
Actually, the funny thing is no, it wasn't.
Most if not all of the founding fathers were very leery of religion ("a lighthouse is more useful than a Church"...).It's fascinating how the original, free-thinking US have been turned into such a bigotted a state that politicians have to fill stadiums with prayer meetings. And all the more so since the bible say that worshipping publicly is the devil's work, so not only bigotted, but in a false (the higher-ups) and idiotic (the lower-downs) way.
And the way out of this ess is not even to argue that logic and reason should win over religion, but that the politicized, public, for-pay version of religion that has evolved is evil per se, and denounced as thus in the bible.
Don't try to reason with a bigot. Scripture him into shame.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
This quote sums up all you need to know about religion:
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." – Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger).
Back then, the religions he spoke of were different to today's, the cultures of the people were different to today's, and the nature of education was different to today's, but nothing has changed. Not even the hypocrisy of the rulers/politicians.
BTW, regarding your extraordinarily generous assessment of statesmen:
"Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen." – Bob Edwards.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I also forgot to mention the extreme irony of the nickle. I think you would agree that the idea of writing "In god we trust", next to a picture of a man who took a bible and a pair of scissors, and cut out every mention of supernatural events and miracles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
Check your budget numbers first, fool. The US government gives huge amounts of cash to oil, coal and nuclear power - far more than we give to solar powers.
As for 'uncompetitive' solar power plants are only uncompetitive if we let people dump garbage into the air for free. Wind power is now the cheapest power - assuming we enforce existing pollution laws. Water and coal are the cheapest if we don't track pollution. If we charge every company HALF the price to clean up air pollution then Wind, Solar and Nuclear are the only competivie plants.
The question is not 'which is cheapest', but "how much are we going to charge them for the right to poison our air".
To make it even more complicated idiots in the midwest like to pollute the air and don't care that their pollution gets blown east by the wind into the East.
If you want to claim "I can live with the pollution" that's one thing. But to stand and insist "its the cheapest" is just plain STUPID.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It is actually quite a bit fewer the higher up and more educated they get if I recall the last numbers from the national academy of science showed about 93% as atheist, and if I recall that number goes up even further in the fields of geology, paleontology and microbiology.
Scareduck asserted:
"Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science. "
To which nomadic responded:
No, we don't; you just made those things up.
Actually, he didn't just make those things up - and he does read of those things "over and over."
The thing is, you and he read completely different sources: he reads anti-AGW blogs, and you read reasonably objective reports. So somebody else made those things up, and he reads them "over and over", because those fictions are endlessly repeated by the sources he reads.
It's something like a self-fulfilling prophecy, except it's more of a wingnut trope, instead.
I hope that clears up that little misunderstanding.
Check out my novel.
In god we trust was added to our money, and "under god" was added to our pledge in the 1950's.
"In God We Trust" first appeared on the penny and 2 cent coins in 1864, as a result of religious sentiment around the Civil War. It was adopted as an official motto for the country in 1956.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Thank god there is no religion in china.
Sure, there is. The latest version has its own sacred scripture, known to us as Mao's Little Red Book. It's followed by China's current leaders about as well as the Bible is followed by America's oh-so-religious leaders.
Of course, China had (and still has) other religions before that. One derives from the writings of Kong Fuzi (Confucius). And older one derives from that Indian fellow that we call Buddha. None of these three writers considered themselves to be founders of a religion; they were all trying to teach people how to Live Right. As were many of the founders of Western religions.
But it's all to no avail. As someone else has already quoted: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. [Seneca]".
Hmmm ... I wonder if I punctuated that last sentence correctly. ;-) Anyway, China's leaders have been as good as European and American leaders at turning their wisdom into holy texts that are followed blindly and unthinkingly, often producing the opposite of what the religious "founders" were trying to achieve.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I reasoned myself in to atheism. I grew up as a Catholic.
Seriously, anyone with half a brain will realise that the religion they once believed in is full of inconsistencies as soon as they develop critical thinking skills. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen for everyone.
One side is pouring millions into research, the other side is pouring millions into PR "thinktanks" like the Heartland Institute.
Let's be very clear here. The oil companies are not doing AGW research. The closest they get to that is finding a few shills with degrees, a small number who may even in fact be experts (or more often, were experts) into fields related to climatology.
It's precisely the same scam that the Creationist organizations like the Discovery Institute have been pulling for decades.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1998 Science article of a survey of the members of the National Academy of Sciences
Belief in personal God
Personal belief: 7%
Personal disbelief: 72%
Agnostic: 21%
There was another more recent survey of the Royal Society that found similar results.
The fact of the matter is that the Founding Fathers were a mix of religious men, humanists and deists. For them the horrors of the Thirty Years War was just over a century old, and the abuses of the Test Acts and of the whole established Church of England still very much a reality. They realized that the very best way to guarantee a man his religious freedoms was to create a barrier between church and state (Jefferson's "wall of separation"). This idea foisted by some evangelicals that the First Amendment has been misinterpreted or that somehow the government being barred from advocating a particular religion is somehow an attack on religion is in complete defiance of what the Founding Fathers were intent upon, which was to make sure that the state could never persecute a man for his religious beliefs.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Thats not begging the question.
That seems to be a profoundly unscientific outlook. Science is making useful, falsifiable predictions about the likely outcome of future experiments and observations using some kind of formalized universal theory. You can do endless science about the orbits of planets, geology, evolution, genetics.
One example from your unscientific post was "can science explain how the world began?" and you claim no. Horribly wrong. A geologist can gin up some weird model of geological plate tectonics or the temperature of the earth vs depth of crust. Then you run the math, meanwhile a dude digs a hole and drops a thermometer in, and the math and the thermometer seem to match up... "We have not been able to falsify via experiment or observation that the earth congealed out of flying sphagetti or WTF" Furthermore after enough experiments and observations fail to disprove something, you may as well "believe" in it and expect all future experiments to fit the model.
It doesn't really matter in an abstract sense if "evolution is true" or not. All that matters is every time you apply the magic box of the theory of evolution in the future, it seems that each time, observations and experiments seem to result in experiment matching the magic boxes prediction.
What science aka falsifiable predictions about future experiments and observations can you do about christian creationism... Well I guess I could dare your god to strike me down with lightning, which certainly hasn't happened yet, or ... um... Seriously, can you run statistically relevant verifiable falsifiable experiments on religion? No.
Now that fact that religion is not science, doesn't mean its wrong or evil, in fact I'm kind of a distant fan of Christianity, at least in theory although not so much how its practiced by sinful people, and some of my best friends are christians which also predisposes me to like it, but being non-scientific merely means it has no relationship at all WRT.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's not particularly that scientists should make all the decisions, but rather, than we need an informed population and a very informed government in order to deal with modern problems.
In congress:
And quite a few are career politicians who moved up from state legislatures/etc.
In short, we're a nation run by lawyers and politicians, and have a tiny representation by engineers and scientists - people who have a demonstrated interest and capacity in how things actually work.
This is problematic because there simply isn't enough knowledge in congress to go around. Quite a few Americans, likewise, are voting from a position of complete ignorance and, instead of selecting a candidate who is very knowledgeable on the assumption that that candidate will make better decisions, quite a few Americans vehemently "vote their ignorance"; that is, they're looking specifically for a candidate who reflects their own biases and uninformed viewpoints.
As Isaac Asimov said:
The problem is that the christians (ESPECIALLY evangelicals) don't want tolerance, they want to control everything. They have a huge majority in the USA and yet they still claim persecution every time someone stands up to them. The fundies have this bizarre chip on their shoulders where they think the world is evil and everyone else is out to get them because of their faith.
Full disclosure: I'm an ex-christian so I know how it is on both sides of the issue. There are lots of us out there.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
This quote sums up all you need to know about religion: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." – Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger). Back then, the religions he spoke of were different to today's, the cultures of the people were different to today's, and the nature of education was different to today's, but nothing has changed. Not even the hypocrisy of the rulers/politicians.
BTW, regarding your extraordinarily generous assessment of statesmen: "Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen." – Bob Edwards.
Religion or spiritual belief is fine when it's individual and personal. Like with so many other insanities of mankind, the problem kicks in when it becomes an organized corporate activity. Then it appeals to the need that insecure, weak people have to feel like a member of something greater than themselves because they do not have the courage to be individuals. Or you could say that courageous people satisfy the same need by being in this vast Universe; they can handle the vastness and the unanswered questions and do not need membership in a club of like-minded sycophants to give them self-worth.
Either way, that weakness and neediness is the exploitable vulnerability that rulers (cloth or crown, and lately media) have always exploited. I know some of you hate the term "sheeple" and for those I say, suck it up and learn to deal with it. Print it out and read it a few times until you desensitize yourself if that's what it takes. When you can handle a simple term, even one you wouldn't use yourself (the horror!) like a calm dispassionate adult, read the rest of this.
They are sheeple not because they join a group. They are sheeple not because they happen to do what others happen to do. They are sheeple because they need other people to define their reality for them, to give them a framework within which to interpret their own lives. That's how fundamental this is. It's about levels of consciousness arranged by framing of information. The need for this is so strong that almost any framework will do. It may be organized religion, it may be professional prestige, or nationalism, it may be hatred of a rival sports team, or it may be presented in terms like rich and poor, black and white, left and right. It doesn't matter -- they are all interchangeable flavors different prepackaged flavors appeal to different people who share this sick need.
It takes real strength to actually think for yourself, to not be deceived into falsely believing you know what that means, and to truly know the difference. It takes a certain kind of real purpose to observe all the frameworks and -isms, learn what you can from them, accept the tiny kernel of truth they often contain without hating them for the way they mislead, and move on without ever getting stuck in one.
The people with that unhealthy need get stuck as soon as they find one they like. The promise of acceptance and affirmation and fellowship lulls them into a slumber. They now have a loyalty and an interpretation to which everything else must be related no matter how much of a forced fit it requires. Almost everyone is so compromised. You could call it Satan or a thousand other names. I personally explain that it is to mind what viruses are to DNA. Either way, it's nothing less than the single principle which is wrong with the entire world.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I'd imagine it was modded troll because it was a complete fallacy, designed to get an emotional response i.e. a troll. Pretty much every atheist I know has at least some logical backing for why they're an atheist, and is more than willing to discuss evidence to the contrary.
When it comes to Creationism vs Evolution, it's really a battle of religions, because Evolution is a religion.
From a fellow Christian, please take this as nicely as possible:
Please stop trying to defend us; you are making it worse. Spend some time actually understanding your opponent's views (you've mischaracterized both science and the evolutionary process while demonstrating some pretty poor logic.) You sound like you've been reading a Bob Jones University biology textbook as your sole source of understanding of evolutionary process. I know this because I've been there before.
Bullshit. I have Ph.D in physics and I am observing Muslim. The dichotomy is false and its enough that your Christian right-wing crazies are perpetuating it. Don't join the bandwagon from the science side.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I should point one thing out to you: debates are not the medium that science uses to advance knowledge. The reason is simple: I can say enough bullshit in one minute that will take you a life time to refute.
Now, if you are using the word "debate" in a broad sense to mean something like the scientific process used to reach a consensus (or at least to advance the science) then going on the Internet, news or "hiring" a politician is not a "scientific debate". I would like to see published peer-reviewed studies as evidence for their claims. I haven't seen any and I've looked for it.
Probably you will claim that there are no publications (or very few) because AGW proponents don't let the skeptics publish. Or maybe they don't let the skeptics have access to any funds that will allow them to prove their point (now there is a new problem: if they can't do any research why are the skeptics so sure of their claims?).
This sounds more and more like a conspiracy theory where any evidence against the conspiracy is another proof of foul play.
Someone might argue that the system is so skewed that this conspiracy is not only possible but likely. But the idea of AGW grew slowly before any economic interests were important: a possibility in 1960, a few guys working on it in in 1970, small groups doing lots of work in 1980, large percentage of researchers in 1990 and consensus in 2000-2005.
I'm sorry but the only attribute of a skeptic that these AGW "skeptics" have is using the word "skeptic". They sure sound like 911 truthers or alien conspiracy theorists.
Ah Catholics... I never quite understood why adulterers (a man that remarries when his first wife still lives is adultery under ancient Jewish law and biblical law, which share the same source, but the modern meaning of the word adultery has changed) are excommunicated, but thieves and murderers are not. Murderers are even blessed by a priest and have their final rites read to them before they get executed.
I realize "classical" adultery was one of the worst sins in biblical times, punishable by stoning to death (I remember it by "marriage or stoning... it's a death sentence either way," which was a Bible school joke).
their God, Science
Science isn't a god, it's knowledge combined a method for increasing knowledge. Believers try to claim that it's a god, so that they can oppose it the way they oppose competitors for whatever god they adhere to.
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
When a better term is provided for people who don't believe in a god or gods but feel the need to go around telling themselves of the fact is invented we will use that term.
I propose "antitheist", or "debunker".
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There's a number of problems with this straw-man argument:
1. Religon does not have monopoly on morality, in fact the vast majority of the moral philosophers don't invoke religous ideas whatsoever.
2. Religon does not have a monopoly on breeding. The birth rate in Australia mirrors that of the USA, however only a minority of people there subscribe to religon.
3. Religon does not have a monopoly on good parenting.
I think, in part, some of the intolerance towards challenges to faith (and especially towards atheists) comes from how effective social pressure is at passing religious ideas in to new hosts. Treating those who reject your faith as, for example, failing in their social obligations and being a disappointing embarrassment within the community is part of that social pressure. And if it's effective at getting a religion passed on then religious beliefs that do it will outcompete those that don't, at least as far as that particular community's bonds go. Maybe not everyone cares so much about pushing their religion on to others, but some do. Challenging the most evangelicals' ability to exert that pressure, either directly or by creating an environment in which it's easier to resist without feeling cast out, is a direct challenge to their ability to do something they regard as their moral and social duty.
Atheists are generally much less arrogant than the religious. Most religious people will tell you their beliefs are the only truth and way. Any evidence to the contrary is ignored. The complete lack of evidence for the existence of any gods is also ignored.
Atheists on the other hand often are knowledgeable not only about the religion they grew up with, but many others. They generally are willing to admit that they could be wrong, you just have to find some strong evidence and they will change their mind.
Anarchists never rule
If you post an argument in favor of religion, it does not get discussed. It gets mocked and downmodded
That's because the argument in question seldom deserves more than mockery. There are no good arguments in favor of the truth of religion (please feel free to provide any, if you can), or there would be no atheists. Even many organized religions are aware of that, which is why they insist so much on faith.
Philosophers have devised, over the years, a number of relatively complex arguments for the existence of God. None of them is unarguably true, and, unfortunately, the usual pro-religion post on Slashdot seldom rises to that intellectual level. The usual pro-religion post is a rant, or is completely and utterly subjective, or is riddled with obvious logical errors (and often all three). When somebody posts such a thing, they shouldn't be surprised so many respond with mockery.
Philosophers have devised, over the years, a number of relatively complex arguments for the existence of God. None of them is unarguably true...
I'd like to really emphasize this point by noting that in contemporary philosophy of religion, the pro-theist side of things isn't even trying to argue that God must exist. They're not even trying to argue that God *could* exist. The strongest point any practicing philosopher attempts to prove these days is that it's not irrational to consider that it might be possible that God exists; that, even though it might actually be false that God exists, even though it might even by physically or even metaphysically impossible that God exists, it is at the least not completely logically impossible that God exists, and so atheists can't win the debate a priori.
It's the equivalent of saying "Look, I'm not saying that I can prove there's a tea kettle orbiting the Earth one mile above my house; I'm not saying the evidence is in favor of the position that there's a tea kettle orbiting the Earth one mile above my house; I'm not saying I have any evidence at all that there's a tea kettle orbiting the Earth one mile above my house; I'm not saying that there *is* a tea kettle orbiting the Earth one mile above my house; I'm not even saying that there physically could be a tea kettle orbiting the Earth a mile above my house; but you can't prove with logic alone that there isn't one there, so it's not completely crazy to believe there is."
The debate is no longer between "God exists" vs "God does not exist"; it's between "We can conclusively prove that God as you construe him does not exist", and "N-not *conclusively*!"
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."