Posted on 07/05/2014 8:16:26 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Do Americans understand the scientific consensus about issues like climate change and evolution?
At least for a substantial portion of the public, it seems like the answer is no. The Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 33 percent of the public believes “Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” and 26 percent think there is not “solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades.” Unsurprisingly, beliefs on both topics are divided along religious and partisan lines. For instance, 46 percent of Republicans said there is not solid evidence of global warming, compared with 11 percent of Democrats.
As a result of surveys like these, scientists and advocates have concluded that many people are not aware of the evidence on these issues and need to be provided with correct information. That’s the impulse behind efforts like the campaign to publicize the fact that 97 percent of climate scientists believe human activities are causing global warming.
In a new study, a Yale Law School professor, Dan Kahan, finds that the divide over belief in evolution between more and less religious people is wider among people who otherwise show familiarity with math and science, which suggests that the problem isn’t a lack of information. When he instead tested whether respondents knew the theory of evolution, omitting mention of belief, there was virtually no difference between more and less religious people with high scientific familiarity. In other words, religious people knew the science; they just weren’t willing to say that they believed in it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You are right but I think my argument still stands in that the Darwinian concept of natural selection in a Uniformitatarian construct is being discarded. I do Metaphysics not Physics so my terminology may be behind. You simply made the point better than I could in that we see species change when there is an external stressor that causes the environment to rapidly change and thus animals and plants to have to adapt or die not in a slow gradual process envisioned by Darwin.
Do moronic reporters from the Slime understand that consensus (if it were to actually exist) carries no weight in science?
Thanks SeekAndFind.
I just finished reading “Darwin’s Doubt” by Stephen Meyer. He completely dismantles Darwin as well as Gould and his punctuated equilibrium thesis which was to explain large changes in organisms.
Climate change is like Lysenkoism in that it is driven by ideology rather than science.
Lysenko had to appease Stalin and explain the crop failures that were causing wide spread famine and starvation. Lysenko created a baseless narrative for genetics and techniques in agriculture to cast blame on farmers so as to save his own skin and to promote collectives.
In much the same way today the Left and their ideology search for any narrative that fits the goal of controlling the atmosphere, regulating power plants and controlling the oceans. Their narrative is baseless and is designed to cast blame on industrialization and to promote environmentalism.
Both Lysenkoism and AGW were or are based on a lie to conform to a political ideology and to create a political control mechanism.
I guess the global warming scheme isn’t going so well and they are out once more trying to sell it
Unbelievable you say?
It is eminently believable.
Sin has redirected people’s ideas of the most important matter in existence to everywhere OTHER than God.
Since the idols are not the same for everybody, there is going to be a fundamental conflict and people will say about one another, “Unbelievable.”
The snottier the sales pitch, the less sales there will be, however. And question-begging condescension is about all they have left.
Be careful about ascribing theories to Charles Darwin personally which he never propounded. It makes one sound ignorant.
It might (actually, I would theologically expect that, but for sake of discussion I say “might”) never be possible for science-as-we-know-it to fathom some of the mysteries of creation or even how the world has been kept up. So I have to give an emphatic “maybe” to both the YEC and OEC crowds. They eventually both end up pushing into areas of dubious reasoning.
Scriptural accounting embraces a number of periods each having certain unique characteristics. Pre-Edenic, Edenic, pre-Flood, Flood, post-Flood, and (eschatologically) more.
Details aside, it is philosophically clear the present world is in fact “subject to frustration.” Our lives, with all their amazing capabilities, simply seem doomed to nothing, as inexorably as rot or as the death of the stars.
What theory are you assuming I’m ascribing to Darwin?
Wait a minit - the earth ain't flat? Then why are we not always either going up or down the hill?
Actually, I know it ain't flat - look at the mountains and the canyons - lots of bumps and crannies.
TRANSLATION: “We still have not brainwashed them enough yet.”
Science, a study of the observable, is clear concise and rather limited in scope. However, evolution, anthropogenic climate change etc is not science in that strict sense.
If an experiment is fraught with assumptions of the otherwise unobservable, then it is not science, but a mixture of assumptive belief and observable phenomenon. Not science. You cannot observe what was, only what is.
Example, If we assume that all carbon was of a uniform atomic number at the origin, then we can infer that so much time has passed since origin based on the observable amounts of isotopic carbon in nature compared to decay rates (assuming static rates of decay-see another wrench). However, if we assume that at origin, there were numerous isotopes of carbon, and or that decay rates may not remain constant) then we have no idea how much time has transpired since origin.
The former assumption is what is used in the “science” of time today, the latter is what skeptics of that first assumptive timeline outcome question. Since no observation can be made as to the actual condition of carbon at origin, then the whole of the output is questionable.
The best answer to this question is “we don’t know” what the characteristic of carbon was at origin; unfortunately, that leaves the output of “how much time” has transpired since origin (creation) has passed. For secularists, that poses a problem, for the faithful, it is irrelevant.
RE: I believe ALGORE invented global warming to get rich.
This man is so versatile that he also invented the internet... :)
Writers at the New York Times know everything.
Hmmm. They have to start a campaign to prove a belief? Sounds sort of Crusade-ish. Seriously, would they have done this before discovering the world wasn't really flat?
Evolution is science, in any sense. As a process, it is quite well documented with millions of observations and tested by countless controlled experiments. If you have noticed that children are not identical to their parents, you have observed evolution in action. Evolution impacts just about all of life science. As a theory, it does everything a theory is supposed to do: provide a framework that unites all known facts and allows for the formulation of working hypotheses that scientists use to design experiments to reveal new facts.
If an experiment is fraught with assumptions of the otherwise unobservable, then it is not science, but a mixture of assumptive belief and observable phenomenon. Not science. You cannot observe what was, only what is.
In that case, forensics must not be a science, but is just a guessing game, since determining what happened at a crime scene depends completely on what was, not what is. Although you cannot observe directly the process of evolution as it happened thousands or millions of years ago, you can look at the evidence left behind, both in the paleontologic record and in phylogenetic analyses of current and recent living species. And you absolutely can look at the process of evolution as it shapes currently living species, since it is an on-going process.
Example, If we assume that all carbon was of a uniform atomic number at the origin, then we can infer that so much time has passed since origin based on the observable amounts of isotopic carbon in nature compared to decay rates (assuming static rates of decay-see another wrench). However, if we assume that at origin, there were numerous isotopes of carbon, and or that decay rates may not remain constant) then we have no idea how much time has transpired since origin.
The atomic number of carbon is invariable. Carbon is an atom with the atomic number of 6, meaning that it has 6 protons in the nucleus. If the atomic number is not 6, then the atom is not carbon. The atomic mass of an atom is the number of protons plus the number of neutrons. Most carbon atoms have 6 neutrons, but small fractions of carbon have 7 or 8 neutrons, making the average atomic mass slightly more than 12. The ratio of higher atomic mass carbon (C-13 and C-14) to C-12 is fairly constant, and is a reflection of solar activity since carbon isotopes are created when solar radiation interacts with carbon. The decay rate of isotopes is absolutely constant; the only people who have tried to say that decay rates can be random or variable are non-scientists, usually those running pseudoscience scam sites like Answers in Genesis, and their target audience are those who know nothing about real science.
The former assumption is what is used in the “science” of time today, the latter is what skeptics of that first assumptive timeline outcome question. Since no observation can be made as to the actual condition of carbon at origin, then the whole of the output is questionable.
The best answer to this question is “we don’t know” what the characteristic of carbon was at origin; unfortunately, that leaves the output of “how much time” has transpired since origin (creation) has passed. For secularists, that poses a problem, for the faithful, it is irrelevant.
I'll be blunt--these last two paragraphs don't make any sense.
The truly faithful should not have to try to discredit science or call scientists liars to maintain their faith. I would question the strength of faith of anyone whose faith is threatened by the fact that the evidence is that the universe and life have been evolving for billions of years, and that everything did not just spring into existence some 6,000 (+/-) years ago.
Metaphysics is not science, and any terminology associated with it is not applicable to science. Whatever "Uniformitatarian" means, it is not a scientific term.
Also, strictly speaking, there is no adaptive evolution. Whenever reproduction occurs, mutations occur--the accumulation of DNA mutations is the mechanism of evolution. Either an organism with its specific set of mutations (all organisms have mutations in their genetic material) can survive and reproduce in a specific environment, or it can't. If it cannot survive, its mutations will not remain in the population. If it can survive, its mutations might remain in the population. If its specific mutations give it a survival advantage in that environment, then its mutations will probably spread throughout the population. Not all mutations are lethal, or even have much of an effect. Some mutations have a survival disadvantage in one environment, and advantage in another. In any case, whatever the effect (if any) is of a mutation, it is not adaptive.
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