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Originally posted by M. Spector:
What are you doing for Darwin Day?

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Originally posted by unionist:

I thought I'd just see how things evolve.

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I agree with completely with this quote by philosopher Daniel Dennett:

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If I were to give a prize for the single best idea anybody ever had, I'd give it to Darwin for the idea of natural selection – ahead of Newton, ahead of Einstein. Because his idea unites the two most disparate features of our universe: The world of purposeless, meaningless matter-in-motion, on the one side, and the world of meaning, and purpose, and design on the other. He understood that what he was proposing was a truly revolutionary idea.

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Originally posted by Trevormkidd:
But ironically enough I am I reading the second volume of Janet Browne's biography on Darwin (The first was Charles Darwin: Voyaging; the second in Charles Darwin: The Power of Place)

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By the time of his death...Darwin was fêted as a great scientific celebrity, a grand old man of science, someone who had looked further and seen more than others, of an intellectual rank as great as Newton, and certainly deserving to be honoured in the country's primary commemorative setting. Professors, churchmen, politicians, medical luminaries, aristocrats and members of the public crowded [Westminster] Abbey to see him to the grave. "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom" sang the choir. [p.118]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
It's Abe's birthday. It's a close relative's birthday. It's the anniversary of another close relative's death. And now I find out it's also Charles Darwin's birthday.

Eventful day!

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More than you think. According to current world population figures, today is the birthday of (approximately) 18,590,195 people - that's besides all the dead ones.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
And I'm reading her much more compact and accessible Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography, in which she remarks:

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The widespread American skepticism about evolution is a phenomenon unique in the developed world, as is the controversy over whether evolution or religious theories of creation should be taught in public school science classes. The usual explanation for this anomaly is the equally anomalous (again, in developed countries) persistence of fundamentalist religion in the United States. But that explanation is too simplistic and leaves out what may well be more important - the American public’s low level of scientific knowledge, independent of religious beliefs and completely at odds with America’s image of itself as a world leader in education, science and technology.

In 2006, a Gallup Poll found that only 30 percent of Americans continue to believe in the literal truth of the Bible, with its six days of creation - a 10 percent decline over the last three decades. It is difficult to reconcile that finding with the results of a 2005 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, indicating that only 48 percent of American adults accept evolution (even if guided by God) and only 26 percent are convinced of the validity of Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection. If only 30 percent believe that the Bible is literally true, why do so many more Americans reject the evolutionary theory considered settled science in the rest of the developed world?

The answer is ignorance - and Americans may be no more ignorant about evolution than they are about other aspects of science. According to surveys conducted for the National Science Foundation over the past two decades, more than two-thirds of adults are unable to identify DNA as the key to heredity. Nine out of 10 Americans - nearly 63 years after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima - do not understand what radiation is or its effects on the body. One in 5 believes that the sun revolves around the Earth.

This knowledge deficit has nothing to do with religion, but it does point to a stunning failure of American public schooling at the elementary and secondary level. One should not have to be an intellectual or, for that matter, a college graduate to understand that DNA contains the basic biological instructions that make each of us a unique human being or that the Earth is not the center of the solar system.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
What are you doing for Darwin Day?

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
The answer is ignorance - and Americans may be no more ignorant about evolution than they are about other aspects of science. According to surveys conducted for the National Science Foundation over the past two decades, more than two-thirds of adults are unable to identify DNA as the key to heredity. Nine out of 10 Americans - nearly 63 years after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima - do not understand what radiation is or its effects on the body. One in 5 believes that the sun revolves around the Earth.

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Ignorance? Not complete loss of faith in authority figures, and a concurrent loss of interest in what it is they have to teach, valid or otherwise?

I would say the era of science was ushered in as the great tool that would salvage mankind. At this time interest in science, and the authority that it imbued, both in those who taught it, and those who followed its teaching. Science, and rationalism have failed to provide, and what results is a great deal of cynicism, nor does education, in and of itself, necessarily guarantee an improvement in the daily life of the individual.

To say that people don't know a lot about evolutionary theory because they are ignorant of evolutionary theory (more or less the thesis of the above quoted statement) is essentially tautological.

My view is that people have lost faith in authority, both scientific, and faith, per se.

[ 17 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I suggest, that even when you include the increase in the number of people who are religious who believe in non-Christian religious teachings that this means that the number of "believers" is probably static, in a statistical sense, throughout the population.

I suggest that your assertion that people in the US are just as convinced of Christian teachings, now as they were 30 years ago is false and the appearance to the contrary is probably due to the powerful position the Christian church holds within the establishment, and its consequent ability to promote itself so that they can create the appearance of dominance.

Appearing dominant is fundamental to propogating conformity.

[ 17 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

The mistake is intellectual lazyness and BELIEVING those false authorities who misrepresent truth and claim that their OPINION is TRUTH. There is a very large difference between rejecting those wielding false authority and the truth they misrepresent.

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Originally posted by rabbelious:
The truth is the ONLY AUTHORITY is what is proven by fact, observation and reason in the area of action leading to consequence per the laws of nature or "creation" for the religiously inclined.

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The mistake is intellectual lazyness

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and BELIEVING those false authorities who misrepresent truth and claim that their OPINION is TRUTH.

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There is a very large difference between rejecting those wielding false authority and the truth they misrepresent.

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I call this EXPERTITIS - a deadly social disease.

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Originally posted by rabbelious:
The truth is the ONLY AUTHORITY is what is proven by fact, observation and reason in the area of action leading to consequence per the laws of nature or "creation" for the religiously inclined.

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Originally posted by Cueball:

Ignorance? Not complete loss of faith in authority figures, and a concurrent loss of interest in what it is they have to teach, valid or otherwise?

I would say the era of science was ushered in as the great tool that would salvage mankind. At this time interest in science, and the authority that it imbued, both in those who taught it, and those who followed its teaching. Science, and rationalism have failed to provide, and what results is a great deal of cynicism, nor does education, in and of itself, necessarily guarantee an improvement in the daily life of the individual.

To say that people don't know a lot about evolutionary theory because they are ignorant of evolutionary theory (more or less the thesis of the above quoted statement) is essentially tautological.

My view is that people have lost faith in authority, both scientific, and faith, per se.

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