America's Turn From Science, a Danger For Democracy 900
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."
U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:3, Interesting)
Now here's a crazy question to those of you believe in god. The whole world is full of lunatics, alcoholics, drug users and pathological liars, and has always been. Hell, it doesn't even have to be a "bad" thing. Many people have great amount of imagination. What makes you think those stories weren't made up by either drunk persons, someone who wanted to tell a story or someone who just wanted to play with people?
On that matter, stories always change when they are passed from people to people. This is like 1-2th grade stuff. I still remember when my first grade teacher demonstrated this by whispering something to a student, who then whispered it to next person and so on. After all of us in the class had passed it forward, the meaning was completely different with added "fun stuff" and things that didn't even make sense.
Why do you think the bible is a good representation of how things actually went? Why do you think it's even true at all? It could just as well be based on some old stories that have changed when going from people to people, or better yet, some drunk or drug using guy just wrote it 2000 years ago. Just think about it.
Re:Climate Change (Score:3, Interesting)
Here: Fact 1) The climate has changed and always will. Fact 2) We can't keep it in a solid sate (unchanging). Fact 3) Mankind directly affects the climate, and we KNOW this - we can see the Ozone hole above the poles. It was directly created by aerospray cans we created. Fact 4) Besides a static, unchanging thing, there is stomething called DYNAMIC STABILITY. Fact 5) Dynamic Stability can be achieved by careful monitoring and correcting of issues. Like say if we start pumping more C02 into the air, we can stop it.
Not saying that is what we have to do. Just saying that your logic is incredibally bad - you proved absolutely nothing but your own ignorance.
nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Here we go again with the "Climate Deniers" (Score:4, Interesting)
Natural climate fluctuation is pretty much indisputable, even with human historical periods (medieval warm period, Little Ice Age, etc). Likewise, the current warming trend is also indisputable, and it's fairly certain that even if it's NOT human caused, it's probably at least human exacerbated.
The US didn't ratify the Kyoto treaty because, if I recall correctly, China and India among others were exempt. The US would have taken an economic hit as a result of the treaty while China, which has only gotten bigger and bigger as a major industrial country in the years since Kyoto, would not have been saddled with the same regulations. This is a legitimate economic issue, but the political argument shifted away from the arena of economics, where perhaps it might have been a bit easier to arrive at an agreement or way forward. The political argument shifted instead to one about the scientific validity of the research. Skeptics deny the science as a way of trying to preempt the political conversation that necessarily follows. I think this is a disingenuous approach. If someone (or some organization) has an issue with the proposed political remedies -- as I sometimes, perhaps often, do -- then they should make THAT that their argument, not the underlying science.
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (not) (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:4, Interesting)
the onus is on the religious to provide infallible proof.
I believe the onus is on whoever states something as a fact. That, to me, implies that you somehow know something, and if you know something to be true, then you probably should have evidence to prove it. Otherwise, how could you know?
Re:Danger for which democracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Every single elected president - INCLUDING Barack Obama, has a genealogy related to President George Washington.
Note I did say Elected President. Gerald Ford is (as of yet), not known to be related to George Washington.
Barck Obama is George Washington's 9th cousin, 6 times removed. Yes, this is through his white mother.
From what I can tell, the least connected elected President was Martin Van Buren - 17th cousin thrice removed.
Also, President William Henry Harrison was related by marraige, not by blood.
my source [geni.com]
Conservatives in Power in Canada (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:5, Interesting)
Sciene/Religeon is a 'We' vs. 'Them' issue (Score:4, Interesting)
At the core of the religious and science differences is a very humanistic (and fallible) trait of 'we' vs. 'them'. It's what drives the whole diatribe of debate on both sides of the fence and what makes the problem irrational and unsolvable.
Neither science nor religion are based on 100% total fact. A scientific theory, (as is much religion), is based on what appears to be known about something from a given set of data. Can you explain Dark Matter with 100% certainty? No. Can you explain Intelligent Design with 100% certainty? No. You can make a lot of guesses but in the end those guesses are subjective.
Seems to me one set of weakly glued hypothesis and conjecture should not be insisted upon over another set of weakly glued hypothesis and conjecture. We are on one planet of zillions of galaxies. We have not seen all there is to see and cannot explain much of what we have.
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting digression: there never was division in the government about how to treat Native Americans.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee could not be evicted from their land. President Jackson simply did so anyway. Sounds like a disagreement to me.
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not believe in pink dragons that fart nerve gas, although this does not cause their existence to be a false premise. The testable evidence for both god and pink dragons that fart nerve gas is identical.
Nice one on the rational acceptance of the difference between your religious belief and whether or not your religious belief is factually correct. If the world is going to have religious people then it needs a higher percentage who think like you.
Re:Danger for which democracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not quite. Almost all of the military spending goes to producing the same products over and over again, a process contributing nothing to tech knowledge (and thus, science). As George Orwell explained in 1984, totalitarian states like big military, since it grabs a large portion of the state wealth while not improving the society's wellbeing (bombs cost money to produce, but all they can do is blow up). People that struggle to stay alive are obedient people.
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:2, Interesting)
Eventually perhaps you'll reason yourself back the other way, once you realize that religions deal with a problem domains which are important but not susceptible to the scientific method. Those religions were selected for by evolutionary pressure. That's why they're still around.
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:2, Interesting)
I doubt it'd work. It seems that most "Christians" in America these days believe that God hates poor people, and the more money you have, the more God loves you. The last thing they want is socialized health care or really anything that helps out the disadvantaged.
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:3, Interesting)
You are correct that the problem fundamentally is ignorance. However, religion promotes ignorance by encouraging people to believe without proof.
Re:U.S. is established on religion, so (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)