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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.
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Will Ferrell's character in the movie "The Other Guys" posited a similar theory. He became a tuna hell bent on revenge against tuna eating lions. The tuna adapted to breathe air and move on land to capture and kill the lions. I believe this process is going on as we speak.
Pigs too, no doubt.
You just described the evolution of dolphins. Where "time" is a very large number of generations of the lives of the dolphin's precursors.
Seriously? This is even a question?
WTF?
First of all. To set the basics.
Atheism is not the "belief" that there is no god. It is not a belief at all.
Atheism is the philisophical position that for something to be true or real, there must be some observable evidence for it. It is the position that in order to understand reality, you have to begin from nothing and build on observations about reality. If your observations conflict with the reality you have modeled so far then your built model must be re-built.
From this point of view, both religious belief and agnosticism are the same because they are both about belief. The position of both is that in order to understand reality, it is not necessary start from nothing.
Science then, is the tool we can use to observe reality and build models about reality. Evolution is one of those models. All scientific models are theories. All only continue to survive because observations about reality continue to match with the model. Sometimes we keep a model because it matches observable reality most of the time, but we are completely aware there are exceptions to it. Newtonian physics for example. Newtonian phyiscs is a theory that matches our observable reality almost all the time. It absolutely does not though when you get to physical extremes like the very small, or the very dense.
Evolution is a scientific theory which matches observable reality. It is not necessary to believe anything.
Nice try. After reading that I think I'm going to throw up from laughing so hard. A positive disbelief is a belief. This is from Oxfords dictionary of logic and philosophy. This little game you just played is critical to pulling off your little deductive error. Here is why: An absense of belief in God is a belief that God is absent.
You guys and your BS.
So is love true and real? If yes, prove it. Bet you can't so does that mean there is no basis for love? Or let's talk about reality. Life is here. How did it get here? Nobody knows so does that mean you don't believe in life? Er. sorry, you are absent belief in life?
How about this, you tell me how life began, and you can give me the facts or your beliefs.
Go right ahead and tell me.
Absence of belief is not disbelief.
Disbelief is a specific positive belief in a negative of belief. You are correct disbelief is a belief. However, as you are completely aware from my grandparent post. This is entirely different from the simple absence of belief.
No, absence of belief is not a belief at all. It's like the difference between 0, 1 and -1. 1 is belief, -1 is disbelief and the absence of belief is 0.
So absence of belief in god is not a belief that god is absent. It is a position that for god to exist within our reality, there must be some evidence for god.
As to how life began, I don't know. There are some theories.
I didn't say "Absence of belief is not disbelief." I said an "absense of belief in God is a belief that God is absent."
Please do tell me where i can observe evolution. Also that is not the definition of Atheism, my sister is an atheist (she dis-believes in the existance of any God or gods) yet she believes that unicorns are in abundance somewhere in the universe.
Evolution by definition, can be observed everywhere there is life.
Different people have different definitions. As an atheist myself, you can attempt to apply your definition to me if you like, but that's your problem not mine. I've already given you my definition.
From wikipedia:
Atheism is based on "non belief" of metaphysical truths from wherever they come.
As those metaphysical truths impinge on the material world for POLITICAL and SOCIAL reasons as History has proven time and again both in East as in West.
Does not mean that atheists do not believe in after life nor in origin of the universe. But to them, as rationalists, it's just a theory, a creationist mythology (for the ABrahamic meme) that has no bearing to this material life except as an irrational crutch for the beilevers to lean on.
If Arsitotle and Plato created the "open software" of rational belief system based on primacy of Fact and "Occam's razor" during the scholastic "dark ages" then disqualified all hypothetical type of "what if" irrationality that was concocted by Thomas Aquinas and his Summa-- which integrated some logic into christian dogma PROVIDED "the light of God" dominated UNQUESTIONABLY Arsitotle's contribution-- the Enlightenment put Creationism in the dustbin of rational thought.
But...wIthout disqualifying creationist mythology as LIES. As Aristotle himself said : By definition what is beyond the material world, aka divine eternal life; aka christianty's after-life meme; is beyond rational logic.
Just like the origin of the universe today. We don't really know what that means. So atheists are neutral on that score but VIRULENt when creationist logic impinges on the material world to form social norms.
Evolution is thus the sum of the historical rational process that has developed in the West and is based on scientific rationality whose BEDROCK is empiricism, not belief systems (theory).
That debate is now clearly front page since Khomeiny launched his Fatwa against Salam Rushdie in name of Blasphemy.
As it resurges again in the current "Je suis Charlie" rage that is being vented all accross muslim countries.
The West does not bridle free speech against blasphemy (at least in France)...But making Atheism into a RELIgION and absolutist meme which DEcrieS all creationsit logic is maybe ONE STEP too far... into the metaphysical unknown.
Rationalists cannot create an atheistic meme which is MORE dogmatic than the irrational creationist meme.
That is the blow back we seem to be getting in this current conundrum.
ZH is right to bring up this question of how the rationalists will confront the believers of blind faith in religion in the coming years, but to essentially consider how to integrate the fall out of the unknown unknowns of after life or universe origin in our socio-political systems. As the rest is now old hash.
What the current stand-off is making clear is that the West cannot accept a religious fatwa to condemn to death a human being for expressing his non beliefs. That is part of the rational material world meme.
We've been here before. For thousands of years atheists have been murdered by believers for their non belief.
It is of course just an excuse. Belief is used by the leadership to determine those who are most suseptible to arbitrary commands. If you will believe in something bizarre then you will probably also for example murder someone at the command of the leadership based on that belief. We see this with militant islam and historically with militant christianity, and before that with the various paganistic belief systems.
The rational atheist then just says "I believe", or "I convert" when the gun is pointed at them. Then go on their merry way not believing.
Atheism is a relatively new phenomenon brought on by abundant leisure time allowed by not fighting for survival every minute of the day.
Agnostic belief however..............
.
Religion - the other recreational drug.
Lol, are you even coherent? My defintion of an Atheist matches the wiki definition, you started waffling it being the process of observing reality.
Now you say "evolution by definition, can be observed everywhere there is life", that is a ridiculous statement, firstly you haven't defined what evolution you are talking about, and second if you are refering to macro evolution, the gradual change of a species over time, this by definition can not be observed.
However if i were to show you a painting, from that observation you would conclude that there was a painter. So when you observe this creation, surely logic dictates there is a creator.
Observe the flu virus.
"If your observations conflict with the reality you have modeled so far then your built model must be re-built."
Please let 0bama and the rest of the leftists, communists and fascist know about this fact.
Let Bush and Chaney know too.
Unfortunately, what is reality?
Something we can feel, smell, hear or see? Often times we discover our senses may be decieved.
We do not know whether we are 'real' or not. We think we are and believe the environment we live in is 'real'.
Does reality exist? Only in the minds of those who believe in reality.
Those are profound thoughts, and I believe they are close to truth.
Agnostics are smarter than atheists. Atheists have anger and authority issues.
The nice thing about this chart is if you simply project left, you can see exactly where the US is going to lie on the world's wealth chart after the US dollar hegemony dies.
Not all but most American's = loud, arrogant and over confident.
That pretty much covers it.
Not all but most leftsts in American's = loud, arrogant and over confident.
Fixed it for you
Wow, so if this graph has anything to do with reality if the US is the second highest GDP/capita in the world with only 40% believing in evolution imagine how the GDP/capita would soar if we could get up to 50% believing . Let me extrapolate that at 50% believing rate the GDP/capita would go to 85-90K .
There we go recession solved.
Other take home messages the US evolution believers must be a hell of a lot more productive than believers in other nations.
What does "believe in evolution" mean?
Something changed over time?
Origin of all life?
More money makes people more stupid?
Something to feel smug about?
Does it really matter if most people don't "believe" in evolution? Evolution doesn't care whether you do or not. Would some supreme being really care whether you believed in him/her/it? What possible difference would it make outside of the stories already written about fire and brimstone and mass destruction. Religion is not opposed to evolution – it has its own political and economic agenda, and its so-called leaders are amassing fortunes, sometimes killing people and oftentimes ignorant of the world they live in. Welcome to the planet.
It provides valuable information about America's "exceptionalism." Exceptionally what, is the question? It's also why American is known as "Jesusland": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesusland_map
This guy, God, cracks me up. He "creates" the universe and gazillions of galaxies and associated stuff. Now he is worried about the dietary and sexual habits of some bipeds who have evolved on a rock somewhere.
You've obviously never created anything or you would understand.
"It was Aliens!"
~ crazy hair guy on History Channel
I don't like using the words stupid or ignorant as it implies I may be more intelligent or well informed than others on this thread. I am not that intelligent or well informed and I know it, so I have respect for other souls who share my timeline on this planet.
For those of you who are smarter and better informed than myself on this blog, I know as there are those who called me stupid and ignorant enough times as they do not agree with my opinion, don't worry, what goes around comes around.
That is one thing about life that I find more believable than evolution, the Ethic of Reciprocity, something many Americans do not know of or participate in, thet is why they are so condonng of torture and murder and so on so they can be the best and safest on this planet.
The fact that evolution is pushed in the states indoctrination centers, some call them schools, should cause most with any brain waves to at least pause and approach the topic a little more objectively.
Evolution by example
evolution of mobile phones
http://sagamer.co.za/img/evolution-phone.jpg
evolution of iphone
http://gizlogy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/apple-iphones-evolution.jpg
Better check the fossil record... or lack thereof.
You have to be near brain dead to believe in evolution just based on common sense alone thinking something like a human being could come about over time from some non-intelligence series of events.
For those who state there is no scientific evidence of a Creator I would make the following scientific observations: The moon is perfectly in place to allow the ebb and flow of the oceans. Our atmosphere contains our oxygen while blocking the deadly radioactivity from the sun. Jupiter acts as a space debris collector for bodies that could easily destroy us. Our planet is perfectly positioned from the sun to allow life to exist. The four forces we observe we know that allow this universe to exist, gravity, electromagnetic, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force, are so perfect in their design that if any one of them were more than a trillionth off of what they are the universe could not form.
What are the odds of that? How can you define creation without a Creator?
Who created the creator?
Then go ask your creator to give you a brain.
True. But the most stunning example by far, imho, is that shoes are always sold by two, just as the number of feet of the average human. Mere statistic coincidence, or a proof of the existence of a Creator ?
Release your emotional tie from the past - religion, evolution; there is no past.
There is only now, what you do now will effect tomorrow.
There is no spoon
plus one.
all "past" is merely thought held in the mind, present moment.
all "future" is merely thought held in the mind, present moment.
filtering the memory of actions and projecting a future based on memory, which itself is unique to the perspective, even "memorised facts" others have presented the mind with - all chosen to believe in the ever-present mind.
no time like the present. and the present is all we have. proved fact.
All past... No it isnt. If you don't believe me, just watch the films "The Third Man or "Casablanca," or any photo of the past. The past is also held outside the mind. That's what recorded history is about. It's more difficult to record the future.
I think the US might have the optimal mix of smart people and stupid people.
You don't wan't too many stupid people in your country or else you will end up lik Yemen. And you don't want too many smart people in your country or else you will end up like the EU. Just the right amount of smart people (say 10% to 20% of the population) controlling the dumb masses seems like the right mix for a Superpower. Too many smart people (over 50%) and you end up with Analysis Paralysis - just like the EU.
Yeah, but if you have a whole country of stupid, gun-wielding, ignorant, backward people, then you end up just like the US.
You left out Trolls.
The religious do seem to be easily controlled.
Been to Europe? Get away from the cities and you see just as many mutants as here. Maybe more.
Smart people in the EU? Ha ha. Thats what your "teachers" told you huh? Well, think lightbulb, airplane, automobile, telephone, telegraph, steam engine, cotton gin, television, radio, computer, cell phone, atomic bomb!!.....al made in USA. So what's so fucking smart about europe? They are a bunch of lazy asses who take about 3 months of the year off while we stand guard to protect their phony faggot socialistic lifestyle. ....which at the current moment is runnin on borrowed fumes from the keynesian gas tank. Real fucking smart. I am assuming that is a typo or you are a big frucking fetard. The europeans are what fill our universities with theory and no real experience. The result, our current monetary and political system are a train wreck. Europeans are dumbasses at the greater than 90% level..
Just an observation, people who question the "science" behind evolution are not automatically creationists. That's a false argument used to keep the discussion politically correct and controlled.
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.
Everyone? Really?