Well, all this is interesting to me, anyway, and that's what matters here. The Internet is a terrible thing for someone like me, who finds almost everything interesting.
Pages
▼
Saturday, March 8, 2014
The ignorance of creationists
This is Scott Clifton, aka Theoretical Bullshit. I understand his frustration with creationists.
I'm not a biologist. Indeed, I'm not a scientist of any kind. I have a layman's understanding of evolution, no more than that. But creationists don't seem to have even a grade school level understanding of evolution, and they're just everywhere in America.
It would be easy to educate themselves, if they actually wanted to be educated. Evolution, after all, is the foundation of modern biology, and it's been that way for a good century, at least. How could anyone past the age of ten or twelve be so ignorant about such a basic fact of science? It's like a third of Americans believing that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
If you're that ignorant, there's nothing to debate. Read a fifth grade biology text, and then maybe you'll understand why I roll my eyes at your arguments.
How a country expects to stay on top with half of its population turning away from the most basic scientific knowledge I don't know.
ReplyDeleteIf your religion leads you to wilful igorance in these areas it's probably going to impact on other aspects as well. And when you have such a huge percentage of a supposedly educated country like this... well.
The one thing right-wingers care about is our military. Economic conservatives love it for the money spent on defense contractors. Social conservatives love it because they're sure the rest of the world is out to get them.
DeleteFor both, that's the only thing they want to spend money on. We only spend as much as the next thirteen nations combined? Not enough. It's never enough.
So I have to wonder how they think America will stay on top militarily without science?
Of course, they're faith-based, not evidence-based. They think we're God's favorite. Who needs knowledge when you've got God on your side, huh?
And given that many of them think Jesus is going to return in the next 40 years or so (40% of Americans in general, but nearly 60% of white evangelical Christians), why should they worry?
Sure, it's crazy, but it doesn't affect them directly, so they're free to believe whatever loony stuff they want. Unfortunately, it does affect our society as a whole - especially when it comes to what we're teaching children.