Re: [asa] Jerry Coyne sides with Dawkins and Hitchens

The article Mike mentions also provides us with a clue, it's not
scientific literacy but a combination of low literacy rates and strong
personal religious beliefs being exploited politically and
religiously.

"It's not that Americans are rejecting science per se, Miller
maintains, but longstanding conflicts between personal religious
beliefs and selected life-science issues has been exploited to an
unprecedented degree by the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the
Republican Party. In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in
Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all
included demands for teaching creation science. Such platforms
wouldn't pass muster in the election, Miller says, but in the
activist-dominated primaries, they drive out moderate Republicans,
making evolution a political litmus test. Come November, the
Republican candidate represents a fundamentalist agenda without making
it an explicit part of the campaign. Last year, Miller points out,
former Senator John Danforth, a moderate Missouri Republican, wrote in
a New York Times opinion piece that for the first time in American
history a political party has become an arm of a religious
organization. The United States is the only country in the world where
a political party has taken a position on evolution.. "

The problem as I see it is that a well informed middle class, while
inherently necessary for a strong democracy, also becomes a
politically savvy population and an activist population, not dummed
down by fake 'controversies' about the lives of celebrities is a
politically 'dangerous' population. Give them food and games...
Distract them. Megachurches, YEC, all rely on a willing population,
both to accept the teachings as well as to give in tithes. It's an
industry of faith and there is little interest in actually educating
these people.

Such trends, which I believe are very clear in the United States are
worrisome if not threatening to a democracy.

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 4:37 AM, Nucacids <nucacids@wowway.com> wrote:
> Hi Rich,
>
>
>
> You wrote:
>
>
>
> "The why is Coyne's graph at the end of the speech. Many of us have been
> telling the atheists don't worry we will get the facts out and since
> religious people are reasonable they can change their minds. The atheists
> are calling our bluff. We said that we could preserve American religiosity
> while improving the state of science education. (This the "move the curve
> upward" in Jerry's speech.) But, as Genie readily admitted, this has gone
> nowhere in the U.S. As long as evangelical lay people remain blinded with
> respect to the facts we really don't have a good rebuttal to Jerry's
> proposal of moving the curve to the left."
>
>
>
> Coyne left out two important points of context.
>
>
>
> 1. What is the freq of acceptance of evolution in the United States as a
> function of time? Coyne only mentions that things have not changed in the
> last 20 years, but has the freq of acceptance EVER been higher in this
> country? To turn religion into a problem, he needs to make the case that
> things are getting worse rather than discover how things have always been.
> In fact, I'd bet that the freq of acceptance of evolution in the USA is at a
> historic high.
>
>
>
> 2. To turn religion into a problem, Coyne does not mention that rates of
> science literacy in America are no different than they are in Canada,
> Europe, or Japan (the nations that make up his graph). In fact, they appear
> to be higher:
>
> "As disgracefully low as the rate of adult scientific literacy in the United
> States may be, Miller found even lower rates in Canada, Europe, and Japan—a
> result he attributes primarily to lower university enrollments."
>
> From:
> http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040167&ct=1
>
>
>
> -Mike Gene
>
>

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Received on Tue May 27 13:33:01 2008