This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Americans Are 'Different' From The Rest Of The World
In most wealthy countries, people tend to believe in evolution. But, as Vox.com notes, The US is an exceptional lonely dot far, far below the others, as this chart from the now-defunct webcomic Calamities of Nature shows:
How many Americans believe in evolution depends slightly upon how you frame the question. Tony Piro, who created this chart, used a question that refers to human beings developing "from earlier species of animals." Other polls that simply ask whether humans have evolved over time (without referring to animals) find a slightly higher percentage of Americans believing in evolution, around 60 percent. That would still make the US an outlier among rich countries, though.
»
- 65110 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
That still doesn't explain Dick Cheney or Rush Limpbaugh?
So... JC was a Starchild, with a dad in high places?
Friend, the only fool here is one that makes absolute statements such as yours.
I consider myself a critical, scientific thinker and am wholly non religious. Some parts of the theory evolution are 100% proven, such as genetic inheritance and natural selection. But taking those pieces and leaping to the conclusion that we can trace our ancestry back to single cell creatures requires a leap of faith no less extraordinary than the one taken by adherents of other faiths.
I personally find a lot of holes in the popular conception, and I am far more interested in hearing its critics and the thoughtful rebuttals of its proponents than the cheap throw away insults of the thoughtless.
As for the chart, Europe has been incapable of honest self evaluation since the Berlin wall fell. I would not be looking to it for leadership when it comes to critical thinking.
Finally a post that sums up my feelings on this subject. I was raised Baptist and went through an atheist phase, but the older I get the more I realize I don't care for either position. Philosophically, the West is stuck (deliberately trapped?) in some sort of empiricist rabbit hole of absolutism from which we cannot escape.
Maybe QE4, QE5 and QE6 might help
If I draw a line straight up from $35K straight through Finland and the UK I get three economically successful countries above the trend line and eight below it. So it seems that losers prefer evolution.
LOSERS? Please define. It's not always about money. What about gross domestic happiness in Bhutan?
On the moon landing, also.
If you look at a Harvest Moon, it is BIG , you think, as it pops up over the horizon, that its so close, its coming in for a landing.
Well, the photos taken from the Moon landing showing the Earth as nothing special, as it come up over the Moons horizon, EVEN THOUGHT it OVER 6 Times larger than the moon.
Me, I don't want to go down that path.
I just wonder how a 100 ton aluminum tin can commercial airliner can with wings thin as as a Toyota Prius door ( The door dramatically more dense and made of steel) cut through the outer columns, which each weight almost a much as the the whole aluminum can, on WTC1&2 on 911.,
I mean even the last two feet of the plane wing cut through 3 inch thick 14 inch deep boxed column.
90% of the plane, should have ended up raining down on the side walk below.
Take a look at the F4 Phantom sled test, at 500 mph, into a concrete .structure simulating a Nuc plant.
Not one piece over a 1/4 inch, and the plant , needed a new paint job.
They did not realize, if you have a lot of Neanderthal DNA, the blue pill does not work totally .
You're right, man! You cracked the case!
Neil Armstrong was such a fraud!
All of these years, I can't believe I thought the moon landing was real.
Wow, what else could there be?! Is this just the tip of the iceberg?!
what about iceberg lettuce? is it even real?
Theories have limits. Evolution fails in the realm of molecular biology. There are a great many examples.
Unless you provide a FACT, nobody believes you. It's how science works.
USSA - home of the bulltards.
I believe we live in a simulation. The idea of some personal creator doesn't really hold water with me and the idea everything just came from nothing also doesn't since there is too much order and "coincidence" with things which then leaves me with the simulation belief.
The theory of macro evolution has many flaws and stuff that doesn't make any sense at all so I find it interesting how believing in it and all its flaws and holes is seen as intelligent while believing in some form of a creator is seen as stupid.
I also don't see what correlation there is supposed to be between wealth and believing in a theory. If anything, the supposed more intelligent/sophisticated people are, the more they will blindly believe something they feel scientists or people of high standing tell them because they will think they are being sophisticated and intelligent to do so. Look at the global warming sham as proof of this. Too many poeple think scientists are infallible rather than they are human beings who most likley have an agenda/belief and they will look to confirm their belief and if that means stretching the rules of science then they will do it. It's simple human nature as most people hate being wrong. To further this, there are many things that scientists have said is fact along the way only to then have scientists later say things didn't go that way...so if something was said to be fact but then shown to not be fact years/decades later because of new evidence or process then why should I blindly trust the new supposed fact if I was supposed to blindly trust the earlier supposed fact? It's illogical.
If people can show me good, legit evidence throughout time to prove macro evolution or if they can develop a time machine so I can go and see for myself it is true like stated then I'll believe it. Until then, it's just a theory to me that may or may not be true. At the end of the day though I couldn't care less if it is or isn't as trying to explain the origins and development of life is both impossible and pointless and it's in the same stupid futile category of human time wasting as people who try and argue which athlete is the "best ever" in their respective sport which can't be done seeing as eras change and there are many other variables that factor in. All this type of stuff does is try and feed the egos of those who take part in it as they want to be seen as correct even if they never can be since the stuff they argue about can't ever be proven one way or the other.
Really, what difference does it make to the present or future of how life came to be? If people wish to believe there is a personal god that has mainly created different species then great, all the power to them. If people wish to believe the universe just poof, came to be from nothing and life just poof, came to be be from some chemicals or goo and believe in all things macro evolution then great for them as well. It makes zero difference to me as long as either isn't pushed in my face and people imply I should take their belief as fact.
The only thing I do know is when it comes to belieiivng in some higher power, agnosticism is the true logical stance to have as nobody can ever prove if there is or isn't a god so ti makes no sense to state as certainty you know there is or isn't one.
.....If people can show me good, legit evidence throughout time to prove macro evolution or if they can develop a time machine so I can go and see for myself it is true like stated then I'll believe it. Until then, it's just a theory to me that may or may not be true.....
It's just a theory to the scientists as well. That's why they call it "the theory of evolution" You may study it when you get to high school (if you make it that far)
Travelling "backward" in time is likely impossible as conflicting with the theory of conservation of mass and energy. Travelling "forward" in time (one way only), has been demonstrated. We are close to a real understanding of why the fully-powered clock on the spaceship "slows down" and ends up registering a time behind a formerly synchronized clock left on earth. It has to do with energy density. I wish I knew what energy really is.
amen sibling...but....evolutionists, by defintion, believe in progress while religions believe in no change, just adherence to what someone says they should be...
some bastard turned on the switch, but since then, life IS the evolution of collisions...
may not be "progress" in terms defined by humans, but it sure as shit is going to happen and it will result in change
maybe you can explain it with a religious "epiphany" that requires no evolution because we are perfectly equipped to deal with whatever could possibly be
or maybe you can just acknowledge that we are here to evolve as the reason why we are here..to get "smarter"
pays your money and you makes your choice...
me..i think religion is part of evolution and needs to just move on and stop producing child molesters and men who lock up women in huts because they have menstrual cycles...
philosophy has effects as well as causes
:)
just saying
You can't truely " know" anything unless you know everything. Or the One who knows everything tells you . Epistomology - the theory of what can be known.
ah hah!! but does "knowledge" evolve or is it sedentary or limited..and can you evolve to being smarter than you were if you had some magical "dogma" or didn't have it?
I did not believe in God until 2008.
When Mooc and the Meissia showed up in the white house ( Not as MO Tea sir? ) that I knew the devil was real.
Just never had looked for him, as I was a Borg.
I don't know who's worse. You or the fucks that up voted this trash.
if the history of human understanding has taught us anything, it is that you should never believe in anything 100%. Just think of how many "facts" we'll change over the next 50 years. I have as little respect for the man putting his whole belief magic super powers as I do for the man putting his whole belief in a fact "proved" by science with primative instruments (in 50 years today's instruments will be primative).
There is nothig wrong with choosing a direction, or having a specific ethics...but goddman at least open your mind to the fact some of what you believe could be wrong. or even better, some of what the opposition believes is true? We'd probably fix 90% of problems if we did that.
What's fascinating, is that no one discusses the chart anomaly itself.
Takeaway from chart:
1. People in affluent countries tend to accept Evolution over Religion -- except for the US.
2. People in poor countries tend to lack education but abundant in unproven Belief.
Conclusion: I assume that the US anomaly is not sustainable. In which case... the question is: Will the US become more atheistic/Darwinian, or lose its affluence? My guess is the latter.
Good point.
think about how much money usans could make if they believed in evolution.
I can't believe how many people who read and comment here think evolution does not enjoy massive evidence compared to creationism - by definition - or who think that a theory which can not explain everything is therefore false.
It is amazing - not so much because evolutionary science has not perhaps proven everything beyond any 'conceivable' doubt, but because this provides an excuse to doubt all of it and cling to absurd myths generated by people who thought disease was caused by evil spirits.
Theories do not "prove" anything. Theories allow us to make predictions that can be tested by observation. Observations, facts, contradict theories, in which case they are disproven, or they do not, in which case the theory remains current. Aristotle's theory of four elements - earth, air, fire, and water - has been disproven by the work of countless scientists such as Dalton, Lavoisier, and Mendeleev. The new theory of elements, reduced to a handy Periodic Table by Mendeleev, is one of the most useful theories in science today because it has not been disproven...yet.
It isn't any different than the Muslims who freak the fuck out over a goddamn drawing.
For some reason, and I don't know,some people have a hard time rationalizing the fact (not theory) that they aren't the end all be all in the universe.
So they fill their head with nonsense.
Again, what's different now in today's America is that we have to fight battles that we thought were decided long ago. Like evolution.
Hopefully gravity isn't next.
They're also different because they're a bunch of dumb fuckers.
Check out "The Principle" (opening in Orange and Burbank, CA, and Spokane, WA Friday January 23rd). It is not about evolution, but addresses some of these interesting questions to top scientists:
http://www.theprinciplemovie.com/
It si one of the most controversial films ever made (so much so, some of the scientists freaked out when the trailer went up- and they interviewed for it!). Everyone who has seen it says its a great film.
Yes, but what came first? The chicken or the egg??
What we would call an egg came before what we would call a chicken.
a chegg or an ecken..it might look like soemthing we know...maybe facial features of a lawyer or a politician :)
Politicians are not as smart as chickens... or as brave.
the rooster?
"Evolution" is not settled science. "The laws of Physics are not settled science" " the laws of thermodynamics are not settled science".
Yet we are all here, evolved, and living in a world driven by thermodynamics, governed by the laws of physics.
Some see the two as not incompatable.
I see it as predictable. Religion is always stronger than reality, reality is too cold and blunt, it does not offer us salvation. The gods promise salvation, from what I don't know, but there it is.
Takes courage to see the world for what it is. Most don't have it.
Excellent observation and analysis!
The computer you are typing on is settled science. Monsanto would not be modifying plant genes if the idea of evolution was not science.
The first quote was sarc, meant as a lead in to my second quote. Then my post makes sense?
Your computer is magic, supernatural
The opiate of the masses.
Nice one Jack. This explains why vast numbers of people spend their lives living in denial and believing in religion. It offers them comfort.
Jack Nicholson shouting to a bunch of politicals: "You can't handle the truth"
Opiate of the people.
Marquis de Sade... And Marx.
Curve assumes that at a per-capita GDP of $9250, zero percent of the population would believe in evolution. That makes no sense whatsoever, but the data speakes for itself. There is clearly a correlation and the US is far off the trend.
So is Turkey, which appears to be about to step out onto the world stage. Now that's scary!
It's more than likely that 80% of the production of any given country is done by 20% of the population. Hell, nearly 60% of the US doesn't work. So who gives a shit what half the population thinks? Ask them if they believe in ghosts or magic.
Your observation raises an interesting question :
If the Poor in the US are like people on other countries, i.e. Religious, and the US does have many millions from these poor countries (Latin America), then it suggests that the Top 20% account for 80% of the GDP, while the Bottom 80% account for the high levels of religious faith.
And then, all of a sudden, everything falls into place.
See, this is why we have this blog... to hopefully have information and dialog that increases our knowledge via constructive debate, rather than just having WWF showboat fights that merely help the click count.
Evolution? What a joke,just like that damn walking ape poster. Evolution is complete BS, unless you are speaking about individual evolution which is species centric. If evolution was real, than how the hell are there still apes? What am I missing? The very nature of evolution means that one species evolves, leaving behind a prior imprint that for some reason is no longer useful, thus eliminating that prior genetic makeup. So if this evolution from ape to cave man to present day Human was real than Apes simply would no longer exist, thus natural selection would simply eliminate the "weaker" prior genetics. But if this was the case than the world would be dominated by very few species and not a million.
We are cousins to the great apes. They evolved alongside humans.
You misunderstand the theories. Natural selection does not predict that when a new trait appears, all individuals not having that trait will disappear. Natural selection merely predicts that a successful new trait will survive multiple generations. Sometimes, appearance of a successful new trait will accompany disappearance of all individuals not having that trait, but in other cases, appearance of a successful new trait represents creation of a new species that co-exists with the old species.
A trait will continue to exist, given that the organism in which it occurs also continues, as long as its actions are stronger than the forces working against it.
Not a bad statement of the Theory of Natural Selection.
Thanks.
Have you never heard of "forks"?
Humans and modern apes are both descendants of some precursor.
And we are in the process of eliminating all other apes. We work at a much shorter timescale than genes.
Just fodder for science to spend more money on CERN discovering or trying to prove the existance of something that is unquantifiable, but in reality their quest to discover dark matter will only lead them to believe that yes, something else does exist and does impact things, we just cant quantify it.
There is not a single human being on this planet who can provide evidence and prove how the human race, all the species, in short life as we know it and the universe came to being, if it ever 'came' to being, maybe it is eternal, which is beyond the scope of understanding for many.
I am not refering to religious works, that cannot be proved either.
If a human has the answer, would you please step up and let us know who, what, where, why and when.
Sorry. Science cannot give you the certainty you seek. Only theories, and the facts that support them. I can tell you that it is rational to believe theories that are supported by ample facts, and to disbelieve those theories that are not. You get to choose what you believe.
Intelligent Energy.
Energy can't be created or destroyed. -God
Knows everything because it is everything.
Just a thought. ........not truth or fact.
Exactly, energy is conscious and that consciousness is God, we are all simply a part of it.
It seems egotistical to think there should be a "why?"
"Why" implies an intelligent god. You have already answered the question in the question itself.
Ironically, the why is probably because the one consciousness wants to evolve. How does one do that if you are the only thing that exists? Supervenient evolution by projecting yourself and experiencing subjectively so that individualities can learn and come together again, then do that perpetually.
so, are we suppose to believe that specie of apes, more or less remainig as ape for more than 6 million years, suddenly "evolved" into language using, tool-making, art-making, modern humans 100k years ago? evolution is a complete bull shit ... of course i'm not saying some "god" made humans and others ... but much more than evolution, or creation, it seem the agent of change is mutation!
ah hah! so you don't believe in survivorship bias in stock market indices then either? only the survivors count - just because the crocodile hasn't evolved over 2 million years does not mean it is a perfect being or an imperfect one..just that it hasn't needed to evolve over 2 million years...
that's the point of evolving..you change to soemthing that suits an environment, whether that is good or bad...no values..it just happens
and if the "system" can tolerate a variety of the full of gamut of no change or evolution..how do you define a "winner"
the answer is of course, you don't define winners and losers in terms of one species or another...
yu simply can do more or less things
the mind is a wonderful thing.. perhaps crocodiles are more sentient than we are ...in their terms...but they don't make shoes, belts or sandwiches!
get me a crocodile sandwich and make it snappy is only a human joke...the croc isn't laughing (or crying crocodile tears)
They also don't have the concepts of debt, fiat money or central banks. Maybe they are more sentient than we are.
yep..but if we do actually get round to evolving...we will reject false values...the croc will still live in a swamp and detroit might just be the latest "renewal" made from free energy food and health...
i am not betting on the croc .but then i'm human and want things to improve..the croc could give two shits...it just is
Not suddenly, but gradually over a long time. And there were no "modern humans" around 100,000 years ago. For example, no human had a gene for malaria resistance 100,000 years ago, or a gene for lactase expression through adulthood (these are genes modern humans have today and developed recently). Regarding mutation, you are correct. Mutation is the agent of change. And, guess what! That's the Theory of Evolution.
I can show you my ape can you show me your God?
Mutation is the mechanism.
Alien intervention
So sick of the jahovatheists.
Go tell it to Jesus.
The average person who believes himself to be reasonably educated in the sciences would probably be dumbfounded at just how uncertain things that are taken as articles of scientific faith actually are.
For example, black holes. We've never actually seen one and don't know for sure that they actually exist. They make no physical sense and are derived from mathematics that themselves describe a universe we are light years from fully understanding. Yet people talk about them as if they are a fact, when they're nowhere near a fact.
I have noticed a tendency of professional scientists to systematically omit the actual level of uncertainty in their fields, using "is", where "may be" or "according to our best guess" would be more truthful. Medicine and cosmology are particularly egregious offenders in this regard.
Evolution is our best guess. But the world has repeatedly proven over the ages to be a lot more interesting than we guessed at, so if you "believe" evolution to be an established fact, then the truth is that you are just as much of a religious nut as any sand-eating camel humper.
Oh man, you are quite the little scientist!
I mean comparing the theory of evolution wih black holes? Jesus dude.
That's like comparing a pond to an ocean.
Let me try to make this simpler for you.
Your average science-educated Joe believes that general relativity is correct.
He also believes that standard models of quantum mechanics are correct.
However, general relativity is incompatible with the standard model of quantum mechanics. They cannot both be true. One or both is erroneous in some fundamental way.
A truthful scientist would tell you that both these theories are our best guesses but that they can't both be right. You'll almost never hear this from the cults that have arisen around popular scientific theories.
Is there an alternate but equally compelling competitor to evolutionary theory?
Yes.
To quote George Carlin," The God excuse. The last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument. It came from God. Anything you can't describe, must've come from God."
Simple answers come from simple people. In other words "Stupid is as stupid does™
Whether a competing theory exists or not, or has validity or not, has absolutely no bearing on whether any particular theory is true. Truth stands on its own merit and is not relative to anything else.
Theories by themselves are not absolute truth, only approximations. Evolution is the best approximation to reality in that it fits the evidence best.
That's just what I said in the first post in this chain.
When it comes to evolution, however, there are problems not present in theories of gravity or quantum mechanics. We can use the theory of gravity to successfully hurl probes out of the solar system and to orbit satellites and to do a million other things. We can use quantum mechanics to blow up cities or make super-fast computers and so on.
What can we use the theory of evolution for? It has no practical use whatsoever. Unlike well-demonstrated and well-tested theories, there's no machine we can make that relies on evolution, no system that we can put together to utilize it. In this respect, evolution is really a hypothesis, at best.
In addition, even though general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible and can't both be accurate, each can still be used to do something useful. Let's say evidence to actually prove the evolution hypothesis beyond a reasonable doubt was found - to what use could it be put? Only thing I can think of is to justify eugenics - which I suspect is the true underlying motive for the prominence of an in-practice otherwise useless hypothesis. The point of the theory of evolution appears to be to form the ideological basis for declaring some forms of life higher than others to rationalize the destruction of the latter.
Really? WTF do you think you eat every day?
We've been using evolutionary theory whether we knew it or not for millenia. Literally tens of thousands of years. Selective breeding is as old as we are. We breed plants and animals for specific traits. We have been directing evolution ourselves even though we didn't understand the specifics we understood that evolution as a concept existed.
Evolutionary theory proposed the gene. Then DNA became the mechanism of transfer for the gene. Then we started modifying specific genes in organisms rather than breeding selectively.
Now we can make glow in the dark fish should we want to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSkRz0O9ZJ0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GloFish
why is it so hard to accept the possibility that both phenomenon have been involved in producing the current form. eternity is a long time.
One therory may be more completely proved than the other at some point in time since one may have been derived from the other. I.e. You can believe in one strongly and the other could be evolving. Kind of like some peoples brain.
You used the words "correct" and "true" as if they mean the same thing. They do not mean the same thing.
Sanity I understand, perhaps incorrectly that it's not that they both can't be right as much as scientists have yet to find the way to unify the theories. That just tells me there's much we don't yet understand.
It's not just that they are not unified, they are outright incompatible - general relativity requires positional certainty/continuity and quantum mechanics relies on a lack thereof.
For extra credit, try to explain what happens to a pair of entangled particles if you stuff one of the pair into a black hole. You may want to stock up on headache relief first.
Pretty much any scientist will tell you that both are models, and they are both useful models.
OK. If you want to talk about what you know "for sure", that is precisely nothing. You do not even know "for sure" that you exist, much less black holes. Everything you "know" is inferred from evidence perceived using your senses. Electric impulses are transmitted to your brain, from which you perceive your environment. Those impulses paint your brain with information collected from your surroundings by your senses. That's all there is. Buzzing neurons. You can't know anything at all "for sure".
While that's true, it's not a terribly useful position for living your life. There are some fundamental "assumptions" that we all operate within:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism
For those people where these assumptions do not hold true, we have a name. Psychosis. They have great difficulty functioning in our society.
Correct. The most useful way to deal with the fundmental uncertainty of perceiving rather than "knowing" is to formulate theories that successfully explain your perceptions and predict future perceptions, and then to use those theories to plan actions. To do this, we define a hypothesis, test the hypothesis against the available facts, which are merely repeatable perceptions (if I do X, I observe Y repeatedly), and reject those hypotheses that do not match the available facts. This is the scientific method, and it is a rational way of life.
Not just bankers are being offed. http://blessings.buzz/2015/01/19/video-anti-government-filmmaker-and-fam...
David Crowley being interview about his film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK-F72mnygA#t=98
Intelligent Design, bitchez. Anthropic principle. Our world is a petri dish for "somebody". Oh, and I have been a believer in evolution for 40+ years. Until I finally started thinking for myself, reading about molecular biology and checking out actual probability numbers. Evolution is BS. But a very convenient one, as otherwise masses tend to flock to religion, which arguable is much worse.
Where were you reading about molecular biology? The Readers Digest?
The higher up you go, the more likely you will default as a nation...
More divide and conquer shit.
Seems the greatest importance in this debate is buying into one to try and convince the other.
We'll all be long dead before it's solved.
It is solved. It's been solved. It's over. It's done with. If you wanna keep believing the earth is flat, go right ahead.
For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals
Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination
We learned to talk
Pink Floyd 'Keep Talking'
This graph proves what we've known all along: Americans truly are exceptional!
They make a decent wage and don't fall for the phony "science" of evolution!
I think you mean exceptional like bugs.
You are very special.
Long Hesienberg
Here's an interesting hypothesis for how humans came to be: http://www.macroevolution.net/
That about sums it all up. Thanks?
That poor little red dot is now an island, apart, alone, adrift. Why is it that they're always in everybody's face?
If you have ever doubted evolution go to the Smithsonian institute in D.C. and they have a sequential exhibit of actual human sculls. You will never doubt evolution again.
Nut job response: no, that's just a bunch of atheist, liberal propaganda.
They have a inane retort for everything.
Dude! Your idea of God just needs to evolve. Mine has.
No need for Smithsonian. A visit to the US is enough to make one stop believing in evolution.
A visit to the US is enough to make one believe evolution has stopped.
Fixed.
a visit to the usa is enough to make one believe evolution has reversed. fixed.
evolution does not equate to progress...
Two oddities here. First, that no country approaches 100%. Second wtf is going on with Turkey?
— Charles Bukowski
Romania has the smartest people and they're paid the least. It makes me feel good about my long-term purchase of VPN from Cyberghost.
Religion sucks. Btw keep your foreskin it gives you moar pleasure. Scientific fact.
Damn ... I wish I knew that, I would have bitched a little longer when I was 5 days old ... all I remember is that it hurt like hell.
This is a graph drawn in crayon in 2011 and reported by Vox, a sad parody of a news site. Much ado about nothing.
And the fact that you/they have to say that you "Believe" in Evolution is the first clue that it's a theory, when applied to our species, and not a fact.
I don't "believe" in science. It's either proven or it isn't. In the case of evolution and our species, it isn't wholly proven. In the case of creation aka genetic inception and modification of life forms, it isn't a belief. It is proven science. We can grow organs now. We genetically create most of our food. To say that it can be applied to every life form on Earth, and not to humans is a "belief" that I don't believe in.
I BELIEVE evolution is possible. But I KNOW creation is possible. The two paths are not mutually exclusive. Both can be true without conflict. If you think evidence for evolution alone explains why no melanin having hairless mammals walk upright and have formed complex language and can be torn apart by their nearest "evolutionary cousin", then you aren't paying attention.
No life form evolves on this planet, or any planet(I "believe"), if it can't survive the elements. And we can't survive the elements. We were not made for this place. No chimp wears a jacket or builds a house or grows it's own food. Secondly, the case they make to cover their disjointed evolutionary timeline of homo sapiens are that we are 3% away from a chimapnzee. Well, we are also 6% away from a dolphin and 8% away from plant life. When you are counting a trillion codons, 3% is the difference between species. In any case, when science becomes a religion or a cult and not proving that something is repeatable, then it has failed. Don't perpetuate stupid. You aren't serving anyone but a mob of idiots.
I BELIEVE evolution is possible. But I KNOW creation is possible.
----------------
that is some mighty lol!
google spontaneous generation. i think the guy's name was priestly.
Any non-scientific approach is the work of the Devil. Missa saying.
Wow - there are some seriously fucking stupid people here.
yep...
americans are excepcional
by some comments I read here...
excepcionaly stupid, god bless them
Why should god bless Americans? And what is "god"? I haven't seen it, nor even the slightest evidence of its existence.
what is "god"? I haven't seen it, nor even the slightest evidence of its existence...
God would be the self-existent being that requires nothing, not even the belief of a pitiful human in order to be. The closest the Bible (in English), can get to describe the otherliness of this being is in the name God is known to be called, “I Am the I Am".
It's not by accident that God remains "invisible". Many, if not most of the attributes of God are terms used to negate a human quality, i.e. "not visible". God's self-existence is reflected in the term aseity, which in essence describe a being that needs or is dependent on nothing else in order to be.
The message of the Bible is an invitation by this Being to share in these attributes in exchange for the recognition of the futility of trying to wrest these qualities on our own.
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” -- Friedrich Nietzsche
What I find amazing in this self-indictment is the presence of Guilt. If man were indeed nothing more than an animated protoplasmic slug, why are there pangs of conscience in any one of us? Even the vilest of us must deal with conscience in some manner, though denial is obviously the most favored tack.
jmo.
I would put that on the entire human race.
Given the opportunity humans can do some marvelous things and some marvelously stupid things.
Just because someone says they are exceptional really doesn't mean shit - Nancy Pelosi for example.
Romans 1:22-23:
22Professing to be wise, they became fools,23and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzqTFNfeDnE That's my King
and His signature is in the cell
http://www.signatureinthecell.com/
60%+ don't believe in evolution ... this is utter BS. I don't know one person who doesn't believe in evolution ... and I have some pretty dumb friends ... Unless they don't know what 'evolution' means since after all Obama's position on gay marriage 'evolved' (even I don't believe in that kind of 'evolution')
There are some very different definitions of evolution. 'Changes in successive generations within a species' all the way to 'we all evolved from a common cell.' Some of it is proven, most of it is not.
how about 'Belief in Evolution' and 'National Health' or 'the price of Oranges' or consummation of drugs or republican/democrat or... or....
google 'belief in evolution vs'. knock yourself out.
must have been an exceptional american that dreamed this one up. lol
A people will believe anything you tell them if you repeat it enough or imply the proper threat.
Thus the real lack of independent thought and the effectiveness of targeted propaganda.
I used to know a quantum physicist looking for the unifying theory. When this fucker talked about quantum physics it was eactly Exactly like the mystics talk about God/love/the inneffable.
I tried to reverse engineer this phenomenon. It led me to believe that all disciplines are one. All laws are one. Nothing 'matters' in the literal sense, ie; matter is easily manipulated, unimaginably so.
I'm a layman, and a Catholic, and we're ok with evolution.
But I think that truth you seek to prove is way deeper than you care to look, it's in the opposite direction and it's multi dimensional.
The problem is not the seeking, rather the limiting.
The Tao of Physics. Many physicists 'lose' it because they can't explain what they witness and they are awed. How can you explain that a particle can exist somewhere else at the same time (or previous or future time), how particles at one side of the world start copying the same behaviour that physicists are manipulating other particles with at the other side of the world? It is all interconnected, much in line with old mystical philosophies. Way too much for me to understand. I think that realization taps into one's part of the brain that give you a religious feeling, dopamin and all that.
big plus Joe, it's our pitiful childish attempts to define it with a crayon when we need a Mozart or a Moses who can hear the music.
When you think of life, the universe and everything in it then it is not strange to be awed. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth (that is just an analogy to point out that the universe is really really big). According to the hitchhiker's guid to the universe the population size of beings in the universe is 0 because there is an infinite number of worlds of which only a finite number is inhabitable. Finite divided by infinite gives near zero. I think the guide is wrong. It is an infinite number of worlds but the number of inhabitble worlds is infinite minus one.
What does infinite minus one divided by infinite give?
I need a drink now and something for headache.
Anyway, it is important to be awed in life every once in a while!
That is a non sequitur. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is undistiguishable from magic!" (Arthur C. Clarke). Replace techonology with natural phenomenon and magic with religion and you get the point. Just because even our brightest physicists cannot explain something does not imply there has to be a God.
That's right. Something is bigger than we can comprehend but that does not imply the existence of a 'higher' being. Although it is nice to be awed. Magic after all is a magical thing.
This is the difference between philosophy and science. Science requires evidence. Some things which look like science from the outside (and even the inside) are in fact philosophy, not science.
Yes - Global Warming 'science' is a good example.
The USA per capita is so high.. merely because we have perfected the art of making our people so stupid that they will believe anything we tell them to believe. Such is a prerequisite for ensuring we can ensnare them in economic servitude, and increase the wealth aggregation at the top percentiles ... per capita notwithstanding.
No offense, but I read what you wrote here, and you should speak for yourself. Your writing ability reveals a 5th grade level--at best.
That is the technique and a major tenant of the communists.
Stupefy and they will follow.
First of all, this does not seem to have hurt the USA in any way. In fact, this chart may serve as a lesson to all those dying countries who are too smart for God. Second, there are far too may people who have taken a modest and provable theory, that evolution is changes in successive generations of the the same species, and they have taken a giant leap of faith to say that evolution means we all evolved from a common cell.
Nonetheless, the code of DNA is a fantastic and complex design that brings the elements to life. It's creation has not been explained, observed, or repeated. Nobody knows how we got here or how life came to be. They may have their beliefs but nobody knows.
What is even more fascinating is that the line of logic being followed is; Life is here=>science will explain it someday==>it will not be God. This is deductive error fallacy at its' finest. Great for selling books and bringing fame to washed up scientists looking to retire in luxury, but it offers no real truth.
Same goes for:
Error in bible = No God
No Santa Claus = No God
All deductive error fallacy designed to sell books. Ironic that there is no logic to the Atheist religious revival going on.
We can all agree that those 'stupid god-fearing' people built the most wealthy and powerful country the world has ever seen. And they watched in horror how their "enlightened" baby boomer children who were too smart to believe in God and dove head first into the Euro-intelligencia models of society have almost ruined this country by any measure you could imagine.
I live pretty close to a major aerospace facility employing thousands of physicists and engineers. This place designs everything from space vehicles to nuclear missiles. I see phd's in physics in church every Sunday.
Oh well, fuck off Atheists. You guys are becoming worse than Mormons with all the preaching. You know jack shit.
two up votes for that, welcome to ZH comments section...
Anyway, scientists have won against religion the day the churches were equipped with lightning rods...
'There are no atheists in foxholes' seems apt here.
That is the stupidest comment I have ever read. Do you think churches deny the existence of lightning? My electrician was introduced to me at church. He installs among other things, lightning rods. My Doctor is a Christian. WTF is your point? The director of the human genome project converted from life-long atheism to Christianity because the more he knew, his thought was there is no way that DNA was created by happenstance in nature. Newsweek put this story on their cover.
Google Francis Collins. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/FINDING-MY-RELIGION-Leader-of-the-Human-Genome-3299361.php
Hold the presses! Intelligence + Education + Common sense = Prosperity + 1 outlier
So, if I walk into the water with a large number of people. Over time we learn to eat, survive in the water. Some die, the weak swimmers and the ones whole cannot hunt. Then eventually my offspring will loose their hair, develop fins, a blow hole, and gain 50,000 lbs.......Sweet!
there is a very well documented example of the eagle and the turtle. The eagles take turtles, fly up, and then let it drop on a rock so that their shell break and they can eat the inside. But one day, a turtle will learn to fly.
Or
Evolutionary changes tend to be small individually, rather than large and spontaneous.