[ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of Max More
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party

 

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:45 PM, James Clement <clementlawyer at gmail.com>
wrote:

 

>. "Numerically speaking,
<http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/four-americans-believe-strict-creationism
.aspx> according to Gallup, only a marginally higher percentage of
Republicans reject evolution completely than do Democrats. Yes, an
embarrassing half of Republicans believe the earth is only 10,000 years
old-but so do more than a third of Democrats.James

 

 

Ja.  I have a hard time taking seriously these kinds of studies however, for
the direction of US education (and for that matter the sizeable portion of
the rest of the world which is following our common core standards) takes
the attitude that if something is not going to be covered on the evaluation
tests, don't even mention it in class, for that would be taking time away
from that which will help the student and the school to better assessment
scores. 

 

Regarding politicians and their views on creation, we fool ourselves if we
think we can get at their actual views.  Anything any politician utters on
the topic of evolution has extremely nothing to do with evolution or science
in general, even if we recognize the awkwardness of the term "extremely
nothing."  A representative's job is to represent.  Most politicians are
lawyers.  A defense lawyers own personal views of a client's guilt or
innocence is irrelevant to that lawyer's task.  You cannot learn what a
politician believes on evolution merely by asking.  You can only learn which
views they perceive will get them the most votes.  We cannot say that a
self-proclaimed creationist politician believes in creationism, and
therefore is stupid.  If they managed to get elected, they are smarter than
their evolutionist opponent, regardless of either's views on the topic (if
any.)

 

Regarding the citizen's views on evolution, even that is mostly out of
reach.  We are seeing currently a proposed takeover of most school curricula
by the Federal Government.  If that means introducing evolution into the
classroom in a meaningful way, this would be a benefit to a plan mostly
filled with detriments, the most important one being it takes away control
from the state level and hands it down to the Federal level.

 

Ron Numbers has shown that the views of the citizens on evolution vs
creationism cannot be determined from multiple choice surveys, for most of
the surveys contain answers that are mutually contradictory.  Numbers did a
study in which the self-contradictory surveys were eliminated.  The
remaining surveys showed an overwhelming understanding of, and firm belief
in evolution (see Numbers, The Creationists, 1992:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Numbers )

 

Currently we in the USA face bigger problems than ever regarding creationism
in the public schools.  If evolution is not introduced in school, there is
little chance proles will ever come to any significant appreciation of the
topic.  We have evolution being neglected as a component of Common Core, we
have states' rights issues all mixed up in there, we have the concept of
evolution coming under fire from both ends of the political spectrum and
several points in between, for reasons having nothing to do with science:
the notion that evolution fights religion, that evolution promotes
immorality, that it promotes racism, that it's teachings result in
homosexuality (not kidding on this last bit, there are those who claim
that.)  These are political notions, for nature cares not how we humans deal
with her ways.

 

spike

 

 

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