I'm Afraid Of Americans

(Is it that Frederick Crews piece? I haven't read that yet, not least cuz I somewhat despise Crews, and do not really consider HIM qualified to judge the rationality of others.)

68% favored teaching creationism alongside evolution? 40% supported teaching creationism only?

But according to this, from People For The American Way, the "teach both" figure is that high because a lot of people don't see a conflict between the two. That's gotta be because the majority of Americans don't understand one or both theories.

Crews (for it is he, click link in question to read the article) discusses the logical tangle the 'Intelligent Design' people (Creationists with degrees) get themselves into trying to reconcile theology with science.

I don't know what Crews did to arouse your wrath, Mark, but the article is worth reading.

So while it could possibly be true, but I'm inclined to think that it was just a flawed poll. I hope so, anyway...

If, as I did, you went to a school where the church was shown the door and science was taught well, you got Evolution. The lone 'well, what about the Bible?' plant in class was told to take it up with a Sunday school teacher ON SUNDAY as this was SCIENCE class.

And also, when I was about 10 I undertook what I'll call a Religious Survey and went to a couple of different Sunday schools just to see what was happening in them. As I am something of a Modern Medical Miracle, I thought it would be fun to hide this fact when I went to see the Christian Scientists (who don't do doctors). An otherwise intelligent and rational person could not explain Creation theory or her avoidance of MDs, apart from to believe in something else was verboten. Sorry, Because It's Against The Rules has never worked for me.

OK, well I just now take another look at the cover of Dean's book (pub.1998), and the lead saucer is hovering directly over the World Trade Centre... Dean asks why do many (more) Americans believe in aliens, and links it to the HUGE increase in distrust in eg govt organs, established education, the Man, etc.

Prescient Spice says Jodi wuz on the money here not Crews.

A awful lotta Americans cling desperately to eg homespun Xtianity as the last bulwark AGAINST Naked and Rapacious Free Market godless rational Ayn Randian capitalism. But THAT'S not the kind of fight Crews is ever prepared to get into (he's kind of an old-form Popperite, isn't he?): for him it's just SCIENCE vs STUPIDITY. And he's wrong. Actually it's one version of the Marriage of Science and Intuition vs another version of ditto.

I actually only haven't read it cuz I'm "ill": I did glance already. I do wish it was by someone who had a more sympathetic grasp of the reasons why people wrap themselves in goofy belief systems — not least because one of the interesting things abt this situation is that "educated" US Creationism is apparently now very much feeling the need to ground itself absolutely securely scientifically. Which is its first dialetical step into self-dissolution , of course.

They want full-blown intellectual respect = They are descended from monkeys

The system seems to work fairly well. itsm homecoming this week and as much as I hate American football I should go out and see last years grads at the game.

Frank is right of course abt lazy use of the word "irrational": I consider Crews to be irrational in his uncritical assumptions about there being a safe centre to established knowledge, which the political mainstream is uncomplicatedly associated with. Hence Harvard psychologist John Mack is a heretic for believing alien abduction stories, so Crews goes for the jugular; but turn to the "science" that feeds into physicist Hermann Kahn's winnable first- strike nuclear assaults, or the games-theory derived policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, and Crews (plus CSICOP and — here I'm guessing — the Skeptical Enquirer) is nowhere to be found.

"Blind Idiot God": that's lovecraft, isn't it?

1. People were created circa 4000 BC by a supernatural deity

2. People descend from other life-forms over millions of years

-- it's still clear, as Crews points out, that one of these myths accords with geology, paleontology, history, ethnography, carbon dating of bones and just about every other 'rational' academic activity whereas the other accords only with theology (and, to be fair, our dearest human wishes for benign direction and protection, for moral guidance and eternal life).

That only 44% go with explanation 2 as corroborated by all these different disciplines bespeaks, at the very least, a colossal level of anti-intellectualism in the American people. The same trait which makes them approve any action, no matter how counter-productive, over any reflection, no matter how wise.

It annoys, maddens and sickens me that people don't know basic history or basic facts about the US government - easy stuff like constitutional components, legal precedents and the like. I think we are living in very selfish, cocksure times if these simple things are not common knowledge. And I fear we are going to find out the real cost of so much ignorance shortly, just as I felt that nine or 10 months ago The Cheque Arrived. Now we are being asked to pay it.

But I think you make a mistake in assuming that the leap of faith required to embrace Evolutionism is of the same order as the leap of faith required to embrace Creationism. Once you've made the fairly obvious point that all explanations are imperfect, you have admit that some are more whimsical and narcissistic than others.

It's ironic that you're using the methodology of rationality (skepticism) to undermine its real value, which is its ability to provide good, sound, corroborated explanations for natural phenomena. Your rationality (like that of the Intelligent Design people Crews talks about, or deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida) undermines itself quite quickly, leaving us at the mercy of Billy Graham and the X Files, with nothing to refute them.

Derrida got invoked again? Look, does anyone want me to capture the guy when he's here next spring and pickle him in a jar or something?

In my school, evolution is mentioned in Earth Science and Biology. In Earth Science the word was written in one page of notes that the teacher told us to skip; a girl stood up and started shouting at the top of her lungs about how first there was God and then there was Jesus and next came the world and monkeys were not involved, and the teacher told her that he wasn't giving an opinion one way or another. For our end-of-the-year projects, a Jehovah's Witness did a study of evolution vs. creation because she thought our class didn't cover either well enough; she believed in creation, but she wasn't militant about it. In biology the concept was explained and no one protested.

Am I using the "methodology of rationality (skepticism) to undermine its real value, which is its ability to provide good, sound, corroborated explanations for natural phenomena": no I'm not. I'm saying that "Trust Me I'm a Doctor" and "It's in Genesis" are neither of them useful contributions to such corroboration. Your panic attack is the Momus of equivalent of Now-Is-the-Time- for-Unity, in the face of the mindless anti- intellectual masses and fundamentalist terrorism. But rationality isn't access to a big ole pile of received facts, as you seem to believe, it's a mode of argument. Many of those facts are true: some aren't.

Belief in alien abduction isn't corroboration of the existence of aliens: but it still tells at least one very interesting story, which is that faith and scepticism are very closely linked in our funny monkey heads, that they grow out of one another, and weave back in.

Some of the foax in that poll — foax who resolutely disbelieve in Darwin — are nevertheless lively, sceptical, rational people: that's FAITH on my part, obviously. It would be fun to corroborate, not hard and politically valuable (I kinda feel Kerry's contribution is the start-point of the corroboration). Neat the way you've slicked your blithe trust in a single poll in among the Heights of Unimpeachable Hard-Earned Human Wisdom that I'm busy overthrowing — Crews I notice doesn't even DATE it, the sly fucker, let alone, oh, tell us who carried it out or what the polled population was (y'know, the actual concrete solid mathematical stuff we'd need to corroboate iut). Poll science is very largely rubbish science, and not just compared to Darwinism. My argt up-thread, which you also seem to have overlooked, is that Creationist Science exposes and (ha) deconstructs itself the more it is allowed to enter INTO scientific argt.

ppl getting all hackly keeping stuff distant and far (IIRC Crews was arguing that Mack and Dean be expelled from Harvard and Cornell respectively) are doing quite enuff on their own to undermine what's been achieved — because essentially like you they DON'T actually ultimately trust its effectiveness, and BOY does this lack of trust travel farther and faster than any concrete argt they may have for the demolition of the rogue theories. X-Files world arises from the question, "What are they so FRIGHTENED of?"

They lack faith, you could say.

I'll let Alex T put you right on Derrida.

Now we're talking. I recommend Darrell Huff's brief but most useful book How to Lie With Statistics, which is a required text in one of our campus' biggest econ classes, one of those ones that nearly everyone takes. The details *about* polls and how they were carried out are never to be taken lightly, while data can be endlessly fiddled with and easily used/abused by opposing sides.

2. People are being rather unfair to the geezer Momus.

3. I agree with Kogan re. threads (in *general*) and Derrida - BUT

4. my view = Derrida is dud ['for me', if you like] not cos he's Irrational (that's a silly stereotype) but cos he's dull and uninspiring - he doesn't *take* me anywhere. (Yes, I have said this before.)

1) he's the old French guy looking suave I see wandering around UCI every spring pondering the universe while wearing dashing outfits

2) the English/Comp Lit department is in such thrall to him that it's neat being an iconoclast without having to try very hard

I actually like what I've read of his, because I think he takes everything less seriously than those who follow him all too closely.

(x-post)

65daysofstatic? more like 65daysofrubbish.

65 days of detention without charge

how could Momus be so insensitive to God's Country, in this post-9/11 world

god invented 9/11

i like the cut of Free Peace Sweet!'s jib.

Did Momus do that "I'm Afraid Some Americans I Don't Know Are Trying to Kill Me" song?

You can't have A students without C students.

xpost

god i'd forgotten that. his biggest hit to date.

Surely his biggest hit to date was (lazy libellous comment about his sexual preferences)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jHa--6aS_AE/UTd6Oo08duI/AAAAAAAAMBA/OJ7RzHOLMOw/s1600/militiagraph.jpg

huh, i wonder what happened in 2009 that would cause a dramatic rise in militias?

(the report, if you're curious: http://www.splcenter.org/home/2013/spring/the-year-in-hate-and-extremism)