I figure about 25% of all Americans truly respect science and about 5% probably have a good understanding of the fundamentals. The problem is point of disassociation from the facts. Despite, cars, computers, transit systems, archetecture, nuclear weapons and all the myriad wonders of industrial, post industrial and information technology, there are people that so fundamentally don't understand their world that they can only reject things that they feel they don't have the capacity to understand. Religion is a sickness, information is the cure. But just like any vaccine there are those that don't want to take there medicine. Hence redundant crap like "bible scholars". It has been a contradiction in terms since Hegel.
The Bush Administration has found a great base of support among many of these regressives. It has with pure nihilism tried to render the progress of western science moot strictly for political ends. Global Warming going to potentially make the Oil Company your on the board of have to be responsible to the environment? I know, lets dig up a quack, or make it look like scientists are uncertain because there are some that believe it has cataclysmic consequences, or some that believe they would only be devastating.
Scientists are a united community but they don't want to play politics. In general, they are ethical, inquisitive, impassioned, and in age that seems to despise it, level headed and reasonable. Therefore since they aren't single minded ditto heads this government thinks they must weak, liberal, foolish and misguided. And so we see science being subverted and used as yet another political tool against a populus that has become all too weary of its governments machinations.
Hopefully the world will realize that while Americans at there worst are myopic and solopsistic, those people are NOT representative of ALL of us. There are those of us in the U.S. that still believe in our potential as a nation and a people. I don't think we are going to wait to long until we shake this miasma from governmental system and replace it with something better. Its as simple as making sure that people understand a little about the world around them, and not letting them slip in this cynical, foolish, morose far right wing view of the world
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I figure about 25% of all Americans truly respect science and about 5% probably have a good understanding of the fundamentals. The problem is point of disassociation from the facts. Despite, cars, computers, transit systems, archetecture, nuclear weapons and all the myriad wonders of industrial, post industrial and information technology, there are people that so fundamentally don't understand their world that they can only reject things that they feel they don't have the capacity to understand. Religion is a sickness, information is the cure. But just like any vaccine there are those that don't want to take there medicine. Hence redundant crap like "bible scholars". It has been a contradiction in terms since Hegel. The Bush Administration has found a great base of support among many of these regressives. It has with pure nihilism tried to render the progress of western science moot strictly for political ends. Global Warming going to potentially make the Oil Company your on the board of have to be responsible to the environment? I know, lets dig up a quack, or make it look like scientists are uncertain because there are some that believe it has cataclysmic consequences, or some that believe they would only be devastating. Scientists are a united community but they don't want to play politics. In general, they are ethical, inquisitive, impassioned, and in age that seems to despise it, level headed and reasonable. Therefore since they aren't single minded ditto heads this government thinks they must weak, liberal, foolish and misguided. And so we see science being subverted and used as yet another political tool against a populus that has become all too weary of its governments machinations. Hopefully the world will realize that while Americans at there worst are myopic and solopsistic, those people are NOT representative of ALL of us. There are those of us in the U.S. that still believe in our potential as a nation and a people. I don't think we are going to wait to long until we shake this miasma from governmental system and replace it with something better. Its as simple as making sure that people understand a little about the world around them, and not letting them slip in this cynical, foolish, morose far right wing view of the world