Posted on 12/20/2010 7:19:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
If you're in a room of 100 people, odds are likely about 40 think God created humans about 10,000 years ago, part of a philosophy called creationism, according to a Gallup poll reported Friday (Dec. 17). That number is slightly lower than in years past and down from a high of 47 percent in both 1993 and 1999.
And 38 percent of Americans, the poll estimates, believe God guided the process that brought humans from "cavemen" to today's incarnation over millions of years, while 16 percent think humans evolved over millions of years, without any divine intervention.
This secular view, while a relatively small number, is up from 9 percent in 1982, according to Gallup.
Like most American attitudes, Gallup wrote, views on human origins have political consequences. For instance, debates and clashes over which explanations for human origins should be included in school textbooks have persisted for decades. And with 40 percent of Americans continuing to hold to an anti-evolutionary belief about the origin of humans, it is highly likely that these types of debates will continue, according to Gallup.
The findings also stand in stark contrast to another announcement Friday, this one by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The memo was issued to federal science agencies to guide them in making rules to ensure scientific integrity.
The Gallup results are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 10-12 with a random sample of 1,019 adults, ages 18 and older, living in the continental United States. The findings were weighted by gender, age, race, education, religion and phone lines to make the sample nationally representative.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
You’ve been scammed if you bought the plans for his “free power” generator!
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What the creationist view or “model” may be is PRECISELY the discussion, it is hardly irrelevant to it.
When I say the vast majority of creationists believe mutation is invariably bad and leads to a loss of information, it is not to say that the view is CORRECT (why would I be saying they are correct? That isn't even logical)- it is to say that this is what creationists believe and thus what the “creationist model” is.
You are so busted, so now you are reduced to repeating that unless I am saying someone is correct I cannot say what it is they accept to be true? That is hardly logical and it hardly follows.
Neiner neiner ha ha!
antiRepublicrat is some kind of propagandist.
Check his personal page, where he tries to soft-peddle “Net Nutrality” as something benign.
The commission approval today allows for total control of all phases of internet activity, from access, to speech.
Now we’re supposed to believe that “Spreading the Wealth” is appropriate to apply to the net. Those that have built the backbone are not going to be allowed to control it, so soon internet traffic jams will be like LA freeways: dead stop.
If you cannot profit from an investment, you’re not going to make it, so no more internet expansion.
Then it should be easy for you to avoid the fallacy of appeal to popular opinion.
"When I say the vast majority of creationists believe mutation is invariably bad and leads to a loss of information, it is not to say that the view is CORRECT (why would I be saying they are correct? That isn't even logical)- it is to say that this is what creationists believe and thus what the “creationist model” is."
When you say the 'vast majority', you are engaging in the fallacy of appeal to popular opinion.
"You are so busted, so now you are reduced to repeating that unless I am saying someone is correct I cannot say what it is they accept to be true? That is hardly logical and it hardly follows."
Actually, you are the one who has been busted repeatedly for relying on logical fallacy as 'argument'.
"Neiner neiner ha ha!"
Apparently you are quite proud of that one.
Humans and bananas are 50%. What evolutionary implication do you sense in this?
That he is most assuredly a banana head.
No, one only engages in the fallacy of appeal to popular opinion if they are claiming it is CORRECT because it is popular.
Your position is so idiotic!
First off, Creationism is NOT the most popular position, 40% is a minority. With most people I wouldn’t feel the need to point that out.
Secondly, duh, I am arguing AGAINST creationism.
Describing what creationists believe is NOT appealing to the popularity of the opinion, it is pointing out which opinion among creationists is most popular.
Do you think your inept attempts to play at logic impress anyone, or distract from your absolute scientific ignorance?
What barrier do you see towards a 2% genetic change accumulating between two separate populations over time?
Do you agree that mutations can find novel biological solutions to environmental problems?
I don't attribute sentience to mutations, allmendream, no more than I attribute speciation to inbreeding.
I am not talking sentience, but a programed biological response that creates variation by expressing an error prone DNA polymerase instead of the usual high fidelity one.
Why would a bacteria have such a thing, and why would it be expressed in times of cellular stress?
A programed response in biology means that one thing leads to another biochemically. If you think that such complexity implies design that is a different subject.
And that doesn’t mean that THIS design is not built to make the normal rate of evolutionary change increase in response to stress.
Thus the design is to CHANGE the design, especially during stress.
So what is going to STOP the change, if the design is to seek out change?
Change in DNA of a population is evolution. A bacteria has a response to stress that increases its changes in DNA, thus increasing its evolution.
Why would a bacteria want to increase its evolution rate during stress?
Why would bacteria that respond by increasing their rate of evolution during stress survive better than bacteria that did not?
Welcome to thread hijacking. That's there so I can cut and paste against the lies.
Now we’re supposed to believe that “Spreading the Wealth” is appropriate to apply to the net.
First example: Net neutrality has nothing to do about spreading the wealth.
The commission approval today allows for total control of all phases of internet activity, from access, to speech.
That is an absolute lie. The rules DO NOT cover the behavior of content providers, web site hosts, or Internet users.
Those that have built the backbone are not going to be allowed to control it
While net neutrality technically covers the backbone providers, they are already operating under net neutrality so there is no change to their operations. The rules are targeted at consumer ISPs, which have started trying to put blocks on the Internet. A logical conclusion of their path is to, for example, require Free Republic to pay them in order to reach their customers, which is us. I'm sure advertising sites with deep pocket donors like DU can afford to pay. What about FR?
If you cannot profit from an investment, you’re not going to make it, so no more internet expansion.
The rules make no statement as to how much ISPs can charge their customers.
Seriously, are you going for a record on the number of lies and distortions you can pack into one post?
What you describe is popularly attributed to Saul Alinsky, but it was developed, in its modern form, by Joseph Goebbels, who deserves more credit than he gets modernly.
I did a piece on Goebbels a ways back, and here’s a bit of it:
Goebbels’ brilliance resides in his grasp of the essential truth that the most successful propaganda is to be applied in the simplest of terms within the fewest basic concepts possible.
#1 The BIG LIE: Keep it simple. Tell it often. Tell it at every opportunity, in every venue possible. Poison the public well with the BIG LIE until it becomes axiomatic, buried deeply in the public subconscious. The bigger the lie, the easier it is to sell.
#2 Select the few facts that support your case; discard the others, or simply indulge in a brazen reversal of their contents. Distort the facts that don’t quite fit without some creative reshaping. From that base add inference and conjecture. And, follow the techniques of the BIG LIE to drive the point home.
#3 Control the Press (today we call them the MSM). For Goebbels this was easy. Anyone who did not follow orders, found himself on extended vacation in one of the many “resorts” scattered about Germany, or in the basement of a government building with a bullet in his head. From time to time something will slip out, but an occasional faux pas can be buried under the BIG LIE, but for some reason, those who are simultaneously attracted to the BIG LIE and to militant advocacy, also tend to be attracted to “journalism.”
#4 Accuse your opponent of the very activity in which you are engaged (guess we know where Alinsky got his ideas).
#5 Bury any opponent, who rises in protest, under a mountain of slander, invective and vilification. This technique serves two purposes: it drowns out what the target has to say, and it warns away others who might otherwise entertain the same thoughts.
#6 Build up a firestorm of hatred to divide people. For Goebbels (and the modern Arab/Islamic terrorist, and 0bamatrons), this provides a target upon which the disaffected can vent their rage, while precluding any possibility of reasoned debate. For Democrat/Socialists it has the added benefit of building coalitions of voting blocs for the aggrandizement and maintenance of political power.
#7 Assemble an SA (such as the SEIU, ACORN, or campus hooligans). Although not employed in such a brutal fashion (yet), they are used for much the same purposes as were Röhm’s SA.
#8 The difficulty the BIG LIE presents its target is that in order to disprove the slander, the target is obliged to prove a negative. To prove a negative (a virtually impossible task) requires a good deal of explanation, involving the summoning of a number of facts (many of which may be arguable, and all of which are subject themselves to other BIG LIES), and extensive use of logical reasoning. The BIG LIE, conversely, can be uttered in but a few seconds or written in a sentence or two. So, while Truth is marshaling its forces and ordering its counter arguments, the BIG LIE can be told and retold, and spread far and wide. The most effective BIG LIE is one that comes the closest to the truth without ever quite touching it.
#9 Change the subject.
Compounding Truth’s difficulties, the BIG LIE fits perfectly the eight second sound bite for much of what passes with the news pukes today as reporting, while the response, if mentioned at all, will be reported only as a brief summary. That is why the BIG LIE is called what it is, the BIG LIE. It is BIG in its spectacular scandalousness, and it is BIG in its impact when used in a format friendly to its structure.
Again, if you are not claiming it is correct, it is irrelevant to the discussion. There is no point in posting it if you are not claiming it is correct.
"Your position is so idiotic!"
You either post irrelevant statements or engage in the fallacy of appeal to popular opinion. Neither helps your position.
"First off, Creationism is NOT the most popular position, 40% is a minority. With most people I wouldn’t feel the need to point that out."
Then it is pointless for you to use the term "...vast majority of creationists...". If you are not using it as an argument for accuracy, there is no point in posting it. You either post irrelevant statements or you are engaging in the fallacy of appeal to popular opinion.
"Secondly, duh, I am arguing AGAINST creationism."
Then there is no point is your use of the term "...vast majority of creationists...". You either use it as if this "...vast majority of creationists..." that you imagine is correct or you engage in the fallacy of appeal to popular opinion.
"Describing what creationists believe is NOT appealing to the popularity of the opinion, it is pointing out which opinion among creationists is most popular."
Pointing out which opinion is 'most popular' among creationists is the fallacy of appeal to popular opinion.
"Do you think your inept attempts to play at logic impress anyone, or distract from your absolute scientific ignorance?"
Do you think your inept attempts to use fallacy as argument impress anyone, or distract from your absolute scientific ignorance?
Well, no.
First off, let's just shed the hotbutton word "evolution" and agree to limit ourselves to the use of "adaptation," shall we? We both agree upon the presence of adaptation, setting the attribution of wildly differing implications of that adaptation aside for the moment.
Now that we're dealing with a term agreeable to us both, let's just boil that previously assumption-loaded question down to a less freighted essence, and that would be:
"Why would bacteria that respond by adapting to stress survive better than bacteria that did not adapt to stress?"
The answer is rather evident, wouldn't you say? They adapted in order to survive. There's that purpose bugaboo again, one with which I have no issue, but one that makes your position untenable.
Then, there's the aftermath of such adaptation to stress and all the tortured meaning attributed to that. At this point, we part ways. You have no evidence of speciation due to environmental stress, any more than you have evidence of inbreeding leading to speciation.
Therefore, my position is actually the more logical of the two, since I'm relying upon facts in evidence, and you're speculating.
Then it is Darwin's theory of adaptation through natural selection of genetic variation; and this is an elegant example of it, and in this case variation is increased during stress by inducing mutation that allows for a greater rate of adaptation.
So if this adaptation is such a great mechanism to solve biological problems presented by the environment, what is going to prevent the DNA from diverging in separate populations until it accumulates to as much as say, between a mouse and a rat?
You have no evidence of this “solving mechanism” (there’s that language of design again) ever having led to speciation, allmendream.
What you do have is an apparent degree of commonality that is also explained just as well by design. You say common descent, I say common architecture. Either way, what has been documented is degree of genetic similarity.
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