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Post by theropod on Mar 22, 2015 23:13:07 GMT 5
I thought we should have a thread for this. What factors lead to creationism (and how can you eliminate them)? Where are most creationists located, and more importantly, what are the reasons thereof? For example, why that discrepancy between Europe and America?  There’s a certain irony in that the US are closer to islamic countries (that they themselves criticise for being fundamentalistic) than to other "western" nations. How come there are so many evolution–deniers in the US? |
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Post by creature386 on Mar 22, 2015 23:35:00 GMT 5
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Post by theropod on Mar 23, 2015 3:11:52 GMT 5
^Sounds a lot like the kind of explanation a jihadist might give you, but that can hardly be how Americans themselves see it, can it?
And in the end, this fundamentalism produces similar results (high percentage of creationists, suppression of science, intolerance…).
I’m willing to buy that there really is such a high number of creationists in the US, but it doesn’t seem like on the whole Americans are that intolerant (and how could they be, being almost exclusively immigrants? Sure, there’s the occasional person shot by someone, but over the whole population these are isolated cases, certainly not comparable to what’s happening in Iraq right now), and if you look it up, you’ll notice that the US have both a far higher number of nobel prize winners in science than any other nation (or in fact, the next few strongest contenders combined) and are leading in terms of innovation in pretty much all disciplines. How does that fit together, that’s the question. Or, how can creationists even survive in such a country almost as well as they do in, say, Afganistan or Iraq.
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Post by creature386 on Mar 23, 2015 3:34:40 GMT 5
I always explained these apparent contradictions with the fact that America is the country of inequality. Just like it has extremely rich and extremely poor, it has among the most intelligent and among the dumbest people in the world.
But some quick points:
-There is quite a number of European countries that have more Nobel laureates per capita than the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita#Scientific_prizes ).
-Religion and intolerance on the basis of ethnicity (because you talked about immigrants) don't have to contradict each other. The doctrine of Christianity includes that everyone can join it. Also, I don't know if the fact that nearly everyone in America is an immigrant has a lot to do with the tolerance of non-immigrants (Native Americans)…
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Post by Vodmeister on Mar 23, 2015 4:48:38 GMT 5
Ironic that you posted a link straight to another thread in this website.  Anyway, slightly off-topic on the whole republican vs democrat debate, but have you heard of The Young Turks (TYT) before? Although I agree with them on some issues like gay marriage, they are by far the most leftist group I have ever came across. They are TOO liberal. As for this thread, I agree that religion and culture plays a big role here. Religious doctrine and the unshakable grounded belief that humans are unique from the rest of animal life, created by a personal God, suppresses a lot of education on evolution and Darwin's theories. |
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Post by creature386 on Mar 23, 2015 19:10:43 GMT 5
Ironic that you posted a link straight to another thread in this website. Yup, I thought that thread has some useful extra links. |
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Post by Vodmeister on Apr 24, 2015 5:00:26 GMT 5
Here's a global map of "the unbelievers" (atheists and agnostics).  |
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Post by creature386 on Jun 13, 2015 17:42:27 GMT 5
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Post by Vodmeister on Jun 29, 2015 13:37:05 GMT 5
Those numbers are surprising. I always thought that Britain was a lot more secular than USA.
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Post by creature386 on Jun 29, 2015 19:41:58 GMT 5
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Post by creature386 on Jul 5, 2015 21:57:39 GMT 5
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Post by creature386 on Nov 25, 2015 21:31:56 GMT 5
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Post by creature386 on Apr 18, 2016 1:39:23 GMT 5
Because Conservapedia loves telling everyone that evolution is only accepted by Westeners, let's look at what the PewResearchCenter has to say:  www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdfMost of them seem to be more "evolutionistic" than the US public (the global median of Muslims who accept evolution is 53%, the median in America is 48%, both according to Pew), Conservapedia fails yet again. EDIT: I nowadays think that these numbers are extremely unrealistic (the question "evolved over time" is very vague for example, it could simply mean that the first humans created by Allah were different from those we see today), I think these ones are better:  |
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Post by creature386 on Sept 20, 2016 3:03:16 GMT 5
A little update on Muslims and evolution, there seems to be an enormously high disparity between the Pew polls and pretty much everything else I can find. Consider this for example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_evolution#Muslim_society(It should be noted that this is the source which was also cited on Conservapedia) The numbers for Indonesia or Pakistan are less than half of what was reported in the Pew poll, for Malayans its just a third. Taking into account what I've recently read about anti-evolutionism in the Islamic world and that it is extremely hard to find Muslims who support evolution (there are a few here and there, mostly some liberal intellectuals), I can't take the Pew results seriously. An acceptance of evolution among 10-20% of the Muslims (as the 2007 study reports) sounds more realistic to me. So yeah… …Conservapedia still sucks. Fun fact: Some Muslims love boasting about their superiority in the Medieval Ages where the Near Eastern science was ahead of the European. These were also the times when they were most open to evolutionary ideas (Ancient Greek of course, since this was long before Lamarck and Darwin entered the stage)… |
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Post by creature386 on Jan 28, 2017 17:51:21 GMT 5
Turkey's Educational ministry has removed a chapter on evolution from a textbook because it is only a theory. Let's see what the education minister İsmet Yılmaz has to say: yournewswire.com/turkey-darwin-evolution-theory-schools/As you can see in this article, Turkey's education system is going to be a lot more propaganda oriented in general, not just with regards to science, but also to politics. |
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