Posted on 04/19/2006 3:57:51 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A new article in PLoS Biology (April 18, 2006) discusses the state of scientific literacy in the United States, with especial attention to the survey research of Jon D. Miller, who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School.
To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%), as has the proportion who accept it (45% to 40%). Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.In international surveys, the article reports, "[n]o other country has so many people who are absolutely committed to rejecting the concept of evolution," quoting Miller as saying, "We are truly out on a limb by ourselves."
The "partisan takeover" of the title refers to the embrace of antievolutionism by what the article describes as "the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party," noting, "In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science." NCSE is currently aware of eight state Republican parties that have antievolutionism embedded in their official platforms or policies: those of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Four of them -- those of Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas -- call for teaching forms of creationism in addition to evolution; the remaining three call only for referring the decision whether to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts.
A sidebar to the article, entitled "Evolution under Attack," discusses the role of NCSE and its executive director Eugenie C. Scott in defending the teaching of evolution. Scott explained the current spate of antievolution activity as due in part to the rise of state science standards: "for the first time in many states, school districts are faced with the prospect of needing to teach evolution. ... If you don't want evolution to be taught, you need to attack the standards." Commenting on the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Scott told PLoS Biology, "Intelligent design may be dead as a legal strategy but that does not mean it is dead as a popular social movement," urging and educators to continue to resist to the onslaught of the antievolution movement. "It's got legs," she quipped. "It will evolve."
I'd say there is more biblical "illiteracy" than scientific in this country.
(Shouldn't these terms be ilbibliocy and ilscientficy?)
Or something like that...
[Psst... we've REALLY got innumerancy down pat in this country, as well!]
It's really just a timing thing.
We'll ALL get to see God.
AndrewC, an interesting and stimulating point, for which I thank you. Now that we are in the 'Smoky Backroom,' perhaps I may be permitted to expand a bit on my original--and necessarily truncated--post.
I think it an error to assume 'communication' as some sort of teleological 'goal' of language, for several reasons. Of course, 'communication' is its primary function, and no language that did not fulfill the basic function of communication could arise, or survive if it could (indeed, can scarcely be imagined). But that basic functional requirement can be and is performed by a number of other channels in nature, from pheromones and plummage to gestures and auditory signals. A pack of wild dogs can communicate perfectly effectively while conducting a co-ordinated hunt (but no one supposes they discuss Heidegger and Kant in their lair). In other words, communication may be a functional requirement of a number of organisms, and it could be stated language is one of the many channels that have evolved that meet this requirement, but that does not explain why language should continue to evolve once that 'goal' of functional fulfillment had been achieved. I think that is Doctor Stochastic's point in post #1117:
The goal of language isn't to change things like Latin into French.
Precisely. If one states "Language has a goal, namely communication," then we have failed to explain the observed phenomenon of the development of new languages from previous ones: Latin is not one jot less 'communicative' than Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian etc.
But I think your point well illustrates, by analogy, the teleological fallacies I have often seen applied as crticism to biological ToE. There are many variants, e.g. "what good would 'half-an-eye' be" (assuming a "goal" of eyes as we know them), or "the mathematical odds are astronomical against homo sapiens evolving by gradual stages of variations in allele frequency" (assuming a "goal" of mankind). Such objections can and are easily and decisively answered--but they persist, I suspect, because of the teleogical fallacy.
[AndrewC] Well, I think that linguistics as you have described it here is a poor analogy.
I'm not endeavouring to argue one comprehensive analogy, simply to point out several interesting (to me, at least) points of similarity--with my previously stated caveat firmly in place (to wit, no analogy here is intended to argue for biological ToE, but rather to illustrate examples of similar processes elsewhere to better illustrate some of the weaknesses in some of the objections to biological ToE):
[1] One possible analogy here is between speciation (which was, after all, the phenomenon Darwin set out to understand) and the emergence of new languages: both entail the issue of 'transitional forms.' In the language analogy, the question might be stated, at what precise date did English arise? Or, who was the very first person to speak English? Nonsense questions, of course. Parts of the house in which I currently dwell are a little over 400 years old; were it possible (let's dream up a convenient time machine here) to travel back and meet the builders of this home, we could speak with them without too much difficulty, their English sounding somewhat provincial and 'Shakesperian' to us, ours sounding a tad peculiar to them in about the same measure. Just down the road is The Lamb and Flag, which dates from circa 1320; it would be more of a stretch to understand the Chaucerian Middle English of its builders, though we'd eventually get our ear in and manage ok. And the local parish church was founded before the Conquest, in 948: understanding the Old English of its founders would be very difficult indeed. And so on, back to the first Anglo-Saxon settlers--some of whose relatives who did not migrate, but spoke the same language, are the ancestors of today's speakers of German.
This process seems to me very closely analogous to the biological concept of speciation. There are a number of other analogies that can be drawn from linguistics, and I'd be happy to kick this or others around if anyone here is interested--but at the moment, my lunch hour is drawing to a close and, as one of the Roman inhabitants of this village might have said, labor me vocat.
Headquarters in SLC thinks so!
Kinda makes ME wonder how all the EROSION occured BEFORE the trees showed up!
Ireland must be a wonderful place in which to grow up.
It has two advantages. There are fewer cultist eejits, and they teach you to read.
No, it's because the Watts absorbed are primarily dependent on the Watts radiated, which in turn depend approximately on the fourth power of the surface temperature.
They taught us basic physics in Ireland too, and I do believe we also covered the subject of how it's hot in Africa and Arabia. Maybe you were sick the day your school covered those?
So, was that just a consciously-employed straw man on his part, or can he really not tell the difference between criticizing someone's action and expressing a wish to prevent it by force?
Life was much better before medicine, when a high percentage of women died in childbirth and nearly every family lost a child or two to disease.
This is one area where the fundamentalists and radical environmentalists seem to agree. The world would be better off if occasional plagues decimated the population.
RunningWolf: Parents engage the death of their children every day... Abortion what about it? I say no
Interesting, RW. You oppose one form of child-killing (abortion), and you endorse another (religious-based treatment abstinence).
I guess some people truly DO care about others, and some just about belligerent faith-clubbing.
A common dogmatist tactic. Crticize an action and they extrapolate a desire to use the government to enforce or suppress said action. They are so accustomed to outsourcing morality that they assume that is the way of everyone else. The concept of "personal accountability" is alien to them.
I never take anything from him personally or seriously....he seems unable to actually debate anything at all, so he just shouts insults, and calls people names...it seems to me to be quite pathetic, and to be pitied...but if acting in such a way, makes him oh so happy, let him have his little fun...
Organ transplants save lives.
I had not pondered such a thought as you wrote in your post #1170...excellent...(of course, I had not thought to bring abortion into this discussion either)..
Yes, indeed, organ transplants save many lives...
Another type of transplant that saves lives, are bone marrow transplants, and in that case, the bone marrow, is willingly donated by a live donor, who has some of his marrow drawn under anesthesia...they docs take just enough marrow for the infusion for the patient...the donors own remaining marrow, being healthy, will replenish itself in a very short time, and the donor seldom suffers any ill effects, just has really sore hips for a while(the hip is where they usually draw the marrow from)
The recipient will receive the marrow, just like a blood transfusion, and this new marrow may very well save someones life...
My husband and myself, and our younger son, were all tested for our bone marrow compatibility, with our older son...since the testing was already done, we all three have since become registered on the bone marrow registry...tho we were not able to save our older son, the chance always does exist, that sometime in the future, we may find ourselves being asked to donate marrow for someone else...its not likely, few people are ever called, but we would consider it an honor, if we were someday called to donate marrow...
As the father of four, I couldn't agree more.
Rhyme unintended.
You're a poet, and didnt know it...(this rhymes as well)
I've noticed that there often seems to be a correlation between people who believe in young-earth creationism and medical quackery, for example. On some anti-evolution sites there are links to questionable medical practices and conspiricy theories. Same thing with holocaust denial. Anti-semitic sites often have links to other conspiracy theories and anti-medicine sites. (For the itchy trigger fingers among us, please note I am not connecting belief in the bible with holocaust denial.) I think it boils down to something like, if somebody is fooled by one bill of goods, then they're likely to be fooled by another.
That's why we hear things on these threads like "oh, you scientists think you know everything!" and stuff like that. They've been reading propaganda. No scientist or engineering or doctor ever says this. Most doctors are very good about explaining what they're sure about and what they're iffy about. Sure, I've met a doctor with bad bedside manner, we all have. But that doesn't mean the whole profession are arrogant know-it-alls.
Organ donors save lives.
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