America dumbs down

[daws101]

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?


South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.


Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

The American public’s bias against established science doesn’t stop where the Bible leaves off, however. The same poll found that just 53 per cent of respondents were “extremely” or “very confident” that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. (Worldwide, the measles killed 120,000 people in 2012. In the United States, where a vaccine has been available since 1963, the last recorded measles death was in 2003.) When it comes to global warming, only 33 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence that it is “man made,” something the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared is all but certain. (The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent actually believe in DNA, and 82 per cent now agree that smoking causes cancer.)

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.

America dumbs down a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking

HINT: Science is NOT absolute. What ( some ) was thought to be true a century ago, has been revised since. And recently, new discoveries in outer space, has changed the way science looks at the universe. Science is always revising old concepts and what was once thought to be absolutes, or truisms. We are constantly learning about ourselves and the world and universe we live in. Science detects, examines, and does the best it can with the technology available at the time. But, as we all know, technology changes, and so does the methods and techniques used to prove and update scientific theories and discoveries.

It's not "dumb" to question anything. No one has all the answers, no one. Even science has been wrong in the past, and has corrected itself many times over the centuries. It's not ignorance or stubborn, it's questioning that which may or may not be absolute or that may not be fully explained to everyone's satisfaction. We learn every single day, all of us. What's made public today in the way of science, may be reclassified or updated tomorrow. Change happens, different views and understand present different sides, and science has its limits.

To call people crazy, ignorant, dumb, stupid, or any other slur, is totally uncalled for when considering that science changes, new evidence appears, and new technology enables new and improved ways of examining and proving theory.

why do you feel the need to justify the obvious wilful ignorance that the article is so deftly pointing up?

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

 

[daws101]

No one who's been to South Carolina should be surprised.

We're trying to get Georgia in on a project to saw it off and push it out into the Bermuda Triangle. Where it prolly came from.

Georgia would have to go too.
unless it's changed a lot since 1966..

 

[Sonny Clark]

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?


South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.


Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

The American public’s bias against established science doesn’t stop where the Bible leaves off, however. The same poll found that just 53 per cent of respondents were “extremely” or “very confident” that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. (Worldwide, the measles killed 120,000 people in 2012. In the United States, where a vaccine has been available since 1963, the last recorded measles death was in 2003.) When it comes to global warming, only 33 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence that it is “man made,” something the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared is all but certain. (The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent actually believe in DNA, and 82 per cent now agree that smoking causes cancer.)

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.

America dumbs down a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking

HINT: Science is NOT absolute. What ( some ) was thought to be true a century ago, has been revised since. And recently, new discoveries in outer space, has changed the way science looks at the universe. Science is always revising old concepts and what was once thought to be absolutes, or truisms. We are constantly learning about ourselves and the world and universe we live in. Science detects, examines, and does the best it can with the technology available at the time. But, as we all know, technology changes, and so does the methods and techniques used to prove and update scientific theories and discoveries.

It's not "dumb" to question anything. No one has all the answers, no one. Even science has been wrong in the past, and has corrected itself many times over the centuries. It's not ignorance or stubborn, it's questioning that which may or may not be absolute or that may not be fully explained to everyone's satisfaction. We learn every single day, all of us. What's made public today in the way of science, may be reclassified or updated tomorrow. Change happens, different views and understand present different sides, and science has its limits.

To call people crazy, ignorant, dumb, stupid, or any other slur, is totally uncalled for when considering that science changes, new evidence appears, and new technology enables new and improved ways of examining and proving theory.

why do you feel the need to justify the obvious wilful ignorance that the article is so deftly pointing up?

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

How so? Did you not mention in the article science? Did the article not include science as an opinion?

 

[Pogo]

No one who's been to South Carolina should be surprised.

We're trying to get Georgia in on a project to saw it off and push it out into the Bermuda Triangle. Where it prolly came from.

Georgia would have to go too.
unless it's changed a lot since 1966..

See, that's why Georgia won't cooperate. Sitting next to SC will make anybody look brilliant.
I keep tellin' 'em, "you'll still have Alabama". But I can see how it would be a step down...

 

[Pogo]

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?


South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.


Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

The American public’s bias against established science doesn’t stop where the Bible leaves off, however. The same poll found that just 53 per cent of respondents were “extremely” or “very confident” that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. (Worldwide, the measles killed 120,000 people in 2012. In the United States, where a vaccine has been available since 1963, the last recorded measles death was in 2003.) When it comes to global warming, only 33 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence that it is “man made,” something the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared is all but certain. (The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent actually believe in DNA, and 82 per cent now agree that smoking causes cancer.)

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.

America dumbs down a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking

HINT: Science is NOT absolute. What ( some ) was thought to be true a century ago, has been revised since. And recently, new discoveries in outer space, has changed the way science looks at the universe. Science is always revising old concepts and what was once thought to be absolutes, or truisms. We are constantly learning about ourselves and the world and universe we live in. Science detects, examines, and does the best it can with the technology available at the time. But, as we all know, technology changes, and so does the methods and techniques used to prove and update scientific theories and discoveries.

It's not "dumb" to question anything. No one has all the answers, no one. Even science has been wrong in the past, and has corrected itself many times over the centuries. It's not ignorance or stubborn, it's questioning that which may or may not be absolute or that may not be fully explained to everyone's satisfaction. We learn every single day, all of us. What's made public today in the way of science, may be reclassified or updated tomorrow. Change happens, different views and understand present different sides, and science has its limits.

To call people crazy, ignorant, dumb, stupid, or any other slur, is totally uncalled for when considering that science changes, new evidence appears, and new technology enables new and improved ways of examining and proving theory.

why do you feel the need to justify the obvious wilful ignorance that the article is so deftly pointing up?

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

Ah, settle down.

It's not "off topic", it's just "not well thought through" to imply that a band of nomadic primitives wandering the desert umpteen thousand years ago actually got it right when they came up with the childlike concept of a God-thing creating everything in a week. No doubt it sufficed to entertain the primitive undeveloped intellects of the time. But the idea that there are people in a state government in 2015 that have failed to develop past that point, that's alarming indeed, which I think is your point in posting this story.

 

[Sonny Clark]

No one who's been to South Carolina should be surprised.

We're trying to get Georgia in on a project to saw it off and push it out into the Bermuda Triangle. Where it prolly came from.

Georgia would have to go too.
unless it's changed a lot since 1966..

See, that's why Georgia won't cooperate. Sitting next to SC will make anybody look brilliant.
I keep tellin' 'em, "you'll still have Alabama". But I can see how it would be a step down...

I live in Georgia, and I'm originally from Alabama. Check to see how many well known intelligent people are from those two states. I think that you'll find that some of the brightest minds now, and in the past, have come from those two states. Do a little research and get back to me with your slurs and slams of the people in Georgia and Alabama. Oh, and while you're at it, please include a list of the brightest most intelligent people from your state, wherever it is. Thanks. I'm looking forward to the results of your research.

 

[MACAULAY]

I would say any anti-intellectual backlash comes more from a disgust with the loons and pinheads in the Northeast than anything. The highbrow snots who consider themselves the elites. Like Harvard fucks.

Experts: They know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

 

[Pogo]

No one who's been to South Carolina should be surprised.

We're trying to get Georgia in on a project to saw it off and push it out into the Bermuda Triangle. Where it prolly came from.

Georgia would have to go too.
unless it's changed a lot since 1966..

See, that's why Georgia won't cooperate. Sitting next to SC will make anybody look brilliant.
I keep tellin' 'em, "you'll still have Alabama". But I can see how it would be a step down...

I live in Georgia, and I'm originally from Alabama. Check to see how many well known intelligent people are from those two states. I think that you'll find that some of the brightest minds now, and in the past, have come from those two states. Do a little research and get back to me with your slurs and slams of the people in Georgia and Alabama. Oh, and while you're at it, please include a list of the brightest most intelligent people from your state, wherever it is. Thanks. I'm looking forward to the results of your research.

Oh lighten up. I'm joking.
I live in North Carolina -- that makes SC a bullseye. And they make it easy. When I lived in PA it was New Jersey. In France it was Belgium. Etc.

Actually I like Georgia. I wuz just playing along.

 

[Sonny Clark]

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?


South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.


Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

The American public’s bias against established science doesn’t stop where the Bible leaves off, however. The same poll found that just 53 per cent of respondents were “extremely” or “very confident” that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. (Worldwide, the measles killed 120,000 people in 2012. In the United States, where a vaccine has been available since 1963, the last recorded measles death was in 2003.) When it comes to global warming, only 33 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence that it is “man made,” something the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared is all but certain. (The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent actually believe in DNA, and 82 per cent now agree that smoking causes cancer.)

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.

America dumbs down a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking

HINT: Science is NOT absolute. What ( some ) was thought to be true a century ago, has been revised since. And recently, new discoveries in outer space, has changed the way science looks at the universe. Science is always revising old concepts and what was once thought to be absolutes, or truisms. We are constantly learning about ourselves and the world and universe we live in. Science detects, examines, and does the best it can with the technology available at the time. But, as we all know, technology changes, and so does the methods and techniques used to prove and update scientific theories and discoveries.

It's not "dumb" to question anything. No one has all the answers, no one. Even science has been wrong in the past, and has corrected itself many times over the centuries. It's not ignorance or stubborn, it's questioning that which may or may not be absolute or that may not be fully explained to everyone's satisfaction. We learn every single day, all of us. What's made public today in the way of science, may be reclassified or updated tomorrow. Change happens, different views and understand present different sides, and science has its limits.

To call people crazy, ignorant, dumb, stupid, or any other slur, is totally uncalled for when considering that science changes, new evidence appears, and new technology enables new and improved ways of examining and proving theory.

why do you feel the need to justify the obvious wilful ignorance that the article is so deftly pointing up?

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

Ah, settle down.

It's not "off topic", it's just "not well thought through" to imply that a band of nomadic primitives wandering the desert umpteen thousand years ago actually got it right when they came up with the childlike concept of a God-thing creating everything in a week. No doubt it sufficed to entertain the primitive undeveloped intellects of the time. But the idea that there are people in a state government in 2015 that have failed to develop past that point, that's alarming indeed, which I think is your point in posting this story.

Just curious, can you prove without any doubt that GOD didn't create everything? Do you know that for a fact, and can prove it? HINT: No one has ever been able to prove that there is no GOD, or that GOD doesn't exist. No one has ever proven that GOD did not do it all. Serious question, where did everything come from? What was there in the beginning? Remember, you can't get something from nothing. So, there had to be something first before there could've been anything. Go ahead, give it your best shot. Not just your opinion, but proof beyond any doubt. Thanks. Looking forward to your answer on that subject.

 

[TheOldSchool]

No one who's been to South Carolina should be surprised.

We're trying to get Georgia in on a project to saw it off and push it out into the Bermuda Triangle. Where it prolly came from.

Georgia would have to go too.
unless it's changed a lot since 1966..

See, that's why Georgia won't cooperate. Sitting next to SC will make anybody look brilliant.
I keep tellin' 'em, "you'll still have Alabama". But I can see how it would be a step down...

I live in Georgia, and I'm originally from Alabama. Check to see how many well known intelligent people are from those two states. I think that you'll find that some of the brightest minds now, and in the past, have come from those two states. Do a little research and get back to me with your slurs and slams of the people in Georgia and Alabama. Oh, and while you're at it, please include a list of the brightest most intelligent people from your state, wherever it is. Thanks. I'm looking forward to the results of your research.

Alabama is regularly ranked in the top 3 worst states for education. They reject science and minorities. The best thing any parent in Alabama can do for their child is get them out of Alabama.

 

[daws101]

I would say any anti-intellectual backlash comes more from a disgust with the loons and pinheads in the Northeast than anything. The highbrow snots who consider themselves the elites. Like Harvard fucks.

Experts: They know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

thanks for proving the article correct.

 

[daws101]

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?


South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.


Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

The American public’s bias against established science doesn’t stop where the Bible leaves off, however. The same poll found that just 53 per cent of respondents were “extremely” or “very confident” that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. (Worldwide, the measles killed 120,000 people in 2012. In the United States, where a vaccine has been available since 1963, the last recorded measles death was in 2003.) When it comes to global warming, only 33 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence that it is “man made,” something the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared is all but certain. (The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent actually believe in DNA, and 82 per cent now agree that smoking causes cancer.)

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.

America dumbs down a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking

HINT: Science is NOT absolute. What ( some ) was thought to be true a century ago, has been revised since. And recently, new discoveries in outer space, has changed the way science looks at the universe. Science is always revising old concepts and what was once thought to be absolutes, or truisms. We are constantly learning about ourselves and the world and universe we live in. Science detects, examines, and does the best it can with the technology available at the time. But, as we all know, technology changes, and so does the methods and techniques used to prove and update scientific theories and discoveries.

It's not "dumb" to question anything. No one has all the answers, no one. Even science has been wrong in the past, and has corrected itself many times over the centuries. It's not ignorance or stubborn, it's questioning that which may or may not be absolute or that may not be fully explained to everyone's satisfaction. We learn every single day, all of us. What's made public today in the way of science, may be reclassified or updated tomorrow. Change happens, different views and understand present different sides, and science has its limits.

To call people crazy, ignorant, dumb, stupid, or any other slur, is totally uncalled for when considering that science changes, new evidence appears, and new technology enables new and improved ways of examining and proving theory.

why do you feel the need to justify the obvious wilful ignorance that the article is so deftly pointing up?

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

How so? Did you not mention in the article science? Did the article not include science as an opinion?

sorry I was a little harsh.

 

[Liminal]

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?


South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.


Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

The American public’s bias against established science doesn’t stop where the Bible leaves off, however. The same poll found that just 53 per cent of respondents were “extremely” or “very confident” that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. (Worldwide, the measles killed 120,000 people in 2012. In the United States, where a vaccine has been available since 1963, the last recorded measles death was in 2003.) When it comes to global warming, only 33 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence that it is “man made,” something the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared is all but certain. (The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent actually believe in DNA, and 82 per cent now agree that smoking causes cancer.)

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.

America dumbs down a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking

HINT: Science is NOT absolute. What ( some ) was thought to be true a century ago, has been revised since. And recently, new discoveries in outer space, has changed the way science looks at the universe. Science is always revising old concepts and what was once thought to be absolutes, or truisms. We are constantly learning about ourselves and the world and universe we live in. Science detects, examines, and does the best it can with the technology available at the time. But, as we all know, technology changes, and so does the methods and techniques used to prove and update scientific theories and discoveries.

It's not "dumb" to question anything. No one has all the answers, no one. Even science has been wrong in the past, and has corrected itself many times over the centuries. It's not ignorance or stubborn, it's questioning that which may or may not be absolute or that may not be fully explained to everyone's satisfaction. We learn every single day, all of us. What's made public today in the way of science, may be reclassified or updated tomorrow. Change happens, different views and understand present different sides, and science has its limits.

To call people crazy, ignorant, dumb, stupid, or any other slur, is totally uncalled for when considering that science changes, new evidence appears, and new technology enables new and improved ways of examining and proving theory.

Very true, science is constantly being revised with new information. It has never been revised with Bronze Age legends.

 

[Hossfly]

I thought this was going to be about Affirmative Action.

You'd be the first republican I've seen in a long time who's thought anything at all then.

thinking with most republicans is a relative term....recent event is DC confirm that.

Every time a libtard starts thinking this country loses a little more. Retards.

Besides that, when a Lib starts thinking, he's apt to strain a muscle.

 

[Sonny Clark]

No one who's been to South Carolina should be surprised.

We're trying to get Georgia in on a project to saw it off and push it out into the Bermuda Triangle. Where it prolly came from.

Georgia would have to go too.
unless it's changed a lot since 1966..

See, that's why Georgia won't cooperate. Sitting next to SC will make anybody look brilliant.
I keep tellin' 'em, "you'll still have Alabama". But I can see how it would be a step down...

I live in Georgia, and I'm originally from Alabama. Check to see how many well known intelligent people are from those two states. I think that you'll find that some of the brightest minds now, and in the past, have come from those two states. Do a little research and get back to me with your slurs and slams of the people in Georgia and Alabama. Oh, and while you're at it, please include a list of the brightest most intelligent people from your state, wherever it is. Thanks. I'm looking forward to the results of your research.

Alabama is regularly ranked in the top 3 worst states for education. They reject science and minorities. The best thing any parent in Alabama can do for their child is get them out of Alabama.

Very funny. By the way, check to see what the people ( Alabama ) have done that are in all areas of science and technology. Do some research and get back to me, please. I'm very interested as to what your research reveals. Oh, and those slurs towards Alabama, it wouldn't happen to be from jealousy, would it? Nah, no way, right? Hey, you can start your research by looking us what the folks that have graduated from the different colleges in Alabama have accomplished, some of which has furthered science and technology. Try the medical field and the folks that work for NASA to start, then go from there. Thanks.

 

[daws101]

HINT: Science is NOT absolute. What ( some ) was thought to be true a century ago, has been revised since. And recently, new discoveries in outer space, has changed the way science looks at the universe. Science is always revising old concepts and what was once thought to be absolutes, or truisms. We are constantly learning about ourselves and the world and universe we live in. Science detects, examines, and does the best it can with the technology available at the time. But, as we all know, technology changes, and so does the methods and techniques used to prove and update scientific theories and discoveries.

It's not "dumb" to question anything. No one has all the answers, no one. Even science has been wrong in the past, and has corrected itself many times over the centuries. It's not ignorance or stubborn, it's questioning that which may or may not be absolute or that may not be fully explained to everyone's satisfaction. We learn every single day, all of us. What's made public today in the way of science, may be reclassified or updated tomorrow. Change happens, different views and understand present different sides, and science has its limits.

To call people crazy, ignorant, dumb, stupid, or any other slur, is totally uncalled for when considering that science changes, new evidence appears, and new technology enables new and improved ways of examining and proving theory.

why do you feel the need to justify the obvious wilful ignorance that the article is so deftly pointing up?

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

Ah, settle down.

It's not "off topic", it's just "not well thought through" to imply that a band of nomadic primitives wandering the desert umpteen thousand years ago actually got it right when they came up with the childlike concept of a God-thing creating everything in a week. No doubt it sufficed to entertain the primitive undeveloped intellects of the time. But the idea that there are people in a state government in 2015 that have failed to develop past that point, that's alarming indeed, which I think is your point in posting this story.

Just curious, can you prove without any doubt that GOD didn't create everything? Do you know that for a fact, and can prove it? HINT: No one has ever been able to prove that there is no GOD, or that GOD doesn't exist. No one has ever proven that GOD did not do it all. Serious question, where did everything come from? What was there in the beginning? Remember, you can't get something from nothing. So, there had to be something first before there could've been anything. Go ahead, give it your best shot. Not just your opinion, but proof beyond any doubt. Thanks. Looking forward to your answer on that subject.

the answer lies in the statement and the correct one goes like this " there is no evidence supporting the existence of god conversely there is no evidence disproving the existence of god.
most believers will interpret that as meaning since there is no proof proving god does not exist then he must.
that is an assumption. with no basis in fact.
what the statement means is there is no evidence for either....

 

[daws101]

I thought this was going to be about Affirmative Action.

You'd be the first republican I've seen in a long time who's thought anything at all then.

thinking with most republicans is a relative term....recent event is DC confirm that.

Every time a libtard starts thinking this country loses a little more. Retards.

Besides that, when a Lib starts thinking, he's apt to strain a muscle.

lol!

 

[Sonny Clark]

why do you feel the need to justify the obvious wilful ignorance that the article is so deftly pointing up?

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

Ah, settle down.

It's not "off topic", it's just "not well thought through" to imply that a band of nomadic primitives wandering the desert umpteen thousand years ago actually got it right when they came up with the childlike concept of a God-thing creating everything in a week. No doubt it sufficed to entertain the primitive undeveloped intellects of the time. But the idea that there are people in a state government in 2015 that have failed to develop past that point, that's alarming indeed, which I think is your point in posting this story.

Just curious, can you prove without any doubt that GOD didn't create everything? Do you know that for a fact, and can prove it? HINT: No one has ever been able to prove that there is no GOD, or that GOD doesn't exist. No one has ever proven that GOD did not do it all. Serious question, where did everything come from? What was there in the beginning? Remember, you can't get something from nothing. So, there had to be something first before there could've been anything. Go ahead, give it your best shot. Not just your opinion, but proof beyond any doubt. Thanks. Looking forward to your answer on that subject.

the answer lies in the statement and the correct one goes like this " there is no evidence supporting the existence of god conversely there is no evidence disproving the existence of god.
most believers will interpret that as meaning since there is no proof proving god does not exist then he must.
that is an assumption. with no basis in fact.
what the statement means is there is no evidence for either....

HINT: There is no evidence that says otherwise either. People have been trying to disprove the existence of GOD for centuries, some are considered to be the sharpest brightest minds ever known. Their results, NO PROOF !!! So, you can throw slurs at those that do believe there is a GOD all day long, but can you disprove there is NO GOD? Waiting to hear your proof, thanks.

 

[Pogo]

HINT: Science is NOT absolute. What ( some ) was thought to be true a century ago, has been revised since. And recently, new discoveries in outer space, has changed the way science looks at the universe. Science is always revising old concepts and what was once thought to be absolutes, or truisms. We are constantly learning about ourselves and the world and universe we live in. Science detects, examines, and does the best it can with the technology available at the time. But, as we all know, technology changes, and so does the methods and techniques used to prove and update scientific theories and discoveries.

It's not "dumb" to question anything. No one has all the answers, no one. Even science has been wrong in the past, and has corrected itself many times over the centuries. It's not ignorance or stubborn, it's questioning that which may or may not be absolute or that may not be fully explained to everyone's satisfaction. We learn every single day, all of us. What's made public today in the way of science, may be reclassified or updated tomorrow. Change happens, different views and understand present different sides, and science has its limits.

To call people crazy, ignorant, dumb, stupid, or any other slur, is totally uncalled for when considering that science changes, new evidence appears, and new technology enables new and improved ways of examining and proving theory.

why do you feel the need to justify the obvious wilful ignorance that the article is so deftly pointing up?

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

Ah, settle down.

It's not "off topic", it's just "not well thought through" to imply that a band of nomadic primitives wandering the desert umpteen thousand years ago actually got it right when they came up with the childlike concept of a God-thing creating everything in a week. No doubt it sufficed to entertain the primitive undeveloped intellects of the time. But the idea that there are people in a state government in 2015 that have failed to develop past that point, that's alarming indeed, which I think is your point in posting this story.

Just curious, can you prove without any doubt that GOD didn't create everything? Do you know that for a fact, and can prove it? HINT: No one has ever been able to prove that there is no GOD, or that GOD doesn't exist. No one has ever proven that GOD did not do it all. Serious question, where did everything come from? What was there in the beginning? Remember, you can't get something from nothing. So, there had to be something first before there could've been anything. Go ahead, give it your best shot. Not just your opinion, but proof beyond any doubt. Thanks. Looking forward to your answer on that subject.

That can't be done; it would be proving a negative. But theism isn't science anyway; it's a matter of faith. And faith in that sort of thing starts with what "feels" right. And the idea of the planet being 4400 years old yet carrying fossils and minerals many times older explained on the basis that "well, God's a practical joker" -- just doesn't pass the logical smell test.

I'm not an "atheist". It would be as arrogant to purport to know that as it would to proclaim theism as a fact. So I have no intention of proving or disproving something I don't claim.

 

[daws101]

I wasn't justifying anything, nor was I attempting to. I was merely giving my opinion, stating what I thought of the article, and nothing more. Did you not post it to get others' opinions and views? Was I wrong to respond to your article and give an opinion? If you didn't want opinions on your piece, then why did you post it?

your opining is off topic.

Ah, settle down.

It's not "off topic", it's just "not well thought through" to imply that a band of nomadic primitives wandering the desert umpteen thousand years ago actually got it right when they came up with the childlike concept of a God-thing creating everything in a week. No doubt it sufficed to entertain the primitive undeveloped intellects of the time. But the idea that there are people in a state government in 2015 that have failed to develop past that point, that's alarming indeed, which I think is your point in posting this story.

Just curious, can you prove without any doubt that GOD didn't create everything? Do you know that for a fact, and can prove it? HINT: No one has ever been able to prove that there is no GOD, or that GOD doesn't exist. No one has ever proven that GOD did not do it all. Serious question, where did everything come from? What was there in the beginning? Remember, you can't get something from nothing. So, there had to be something first before there could've been anything. Go ahead, give it your best shot. Not just your opinion, but proof beyond any doubt. Thanks. Looking forward to your answer on that subject.

the answer lies in the statement and the correct one goes like this " there is no evidence supporting the existence of god conversely there is no evidence disproving the existence of god.
most believers will interpret that as meaning since there is no proof proving god does not exist then he must.
that is an assumption. with no basis in fact.
what the statement means is there is no evidence for either....

HINT: There is no evidence that says otherwise either. People have been trying to disprove the existence of GOD for centuries, some are considered to be the sharpest brightest minds ever known. Their results, NO PROOF !!! So, you can throw slurs at those that do believe there is a GOD all day long, but can you disprove there is NO GOD? Waiting to hear your proof, thanks.

you really must learn to read "
the answer lies in the statement and the correct one goes like this " there is no evidence supporting the existence of god conversely there is no evidence disproving the existence of god.
most believers will interpret that as meaning since there is no proof proving god does not exist then he must.
that is an assumption. with no basis in fact.
what the statement means is there is no evidence for either...