Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 29, 2012 - 06:41pm PT
Latest Gallup Poll shows that:
47% of Americans believe in creationism
32% believe in thiestic evolution.....now there is an interesting concept
and only 15% believe in evolution without divine intervention
My question is, if those believing in creation are ignorant, what do you call,, Budhists, Muslims, all those wonderfull peeps you speak of in your travels JD??
It isn't like this stuff isn't taught in Universities.
There is ignorance and there is willful ignorance.
The former is understandable, but almost non-applicable to Americans.
The latter is unforgiveable, and applicable to most Americans. I bring this up on the religion vs. science thread, but it has become a Christian vs. Science thread since Largo got hurt.
Ignorance: Sadaam Hussein was harboring Al Qaida. Truth: This was totally false, as well as the yellowcake Uranium and every other lie that Colin Powell told the United Nations.
Ignorance: Mt. St. Helens released more CO2 than a hundred years worth of cars:
30 second google search will lead you to the United States Geological Survey which turns that statement to dirt. I'll even post it so the other willfully ignorant people will see it.
Truth:
Do the Earth’s volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, “No.” Human activities, responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO2 emissions in 2010 (Friedlingstein et al., 2010), release an amount of CO2 that dwarfs the annual CO2 emissions of all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2011).
The published estimates of the global CO2 emission rate for all degassing subaerial (on land) and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 0.13 gigaton to 0.44 gigaton per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998). The preferred global estimates of the authors of these studies range from about 0.15 to 0.26 gigaton per year. The 35-gigaton projected anthropogenic CO2 emission for 2010 is about 80 to 270 times larger than the respective maximum and minimum annual global volcanic CO2 emission estimates. It is 135 times larger than the highest preferred global volcanic CO2 estimate of 0.26 gigaton per year (Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998).
In recent times, about 70 volcanoes are normally active each year on the Earth’s subaerial terrain. One of these is Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii, which has an annual baseline CO2 output of about 0.0031 gigatons per year [Gerlach et al., 2002]. It would take a huge addition of volcanoes to the subaerial landscape—the equivalent of an extra 11,200 Kīlauea volcanoes—to scale up the global volcanic CO2 emission rate to the anthropogenic CO2 emission rate. Similarly, scaling up the volcanic rate to the current anthropogenic rate by adding more submarine volcanoes would require an addition of about 360 more mid-ocean ridge systems to the sea floor, based on mid-ocean ridge CO2 estimates of Marty and Tolstikhin (1998).
There continues to be efforts to reduce uncertainties and improve estimates of present-day global volcanic CO2 emissions, but there is little doubt among volcanic gas scientists that the anthropogenic CO2 emissions dwarf global volcanic CO2 emissions.
Ten minutes from now this will be forgotten. Too many big words or something.
i certainly accept hard factual evidence of evolving. I also know even my ancient tribe members believed. Similar to Far Eastern beliefs actually in many ways. That and observance of things lets me know there is something beyond, that we cant see, or explain. So i simply made sense from the two. Simple really, and all are satisfied. Meeting in the middle as it were.
It's a really strange dichotomy. For much of twentieth century, the US led the world in science. Young people from everywhere else lined up to get into US universities because that was where the best science was.
And yet, somehow, at the same time, the US also led the first world in ignorance. It's almost as if there are two entirely separate USAs that have somehow become mixed up in this universe.
Most of you on this forum have lived your entire lives in the US, and can have no idea what it is like to come to your country from pretty much any other first-world country. How does someone who is surrounded by -- whose entire life is based on -- the wonders of science believe that a supernatural magic being created the world in seven days? Or any of the other crazy sh#t?
How can they turn on a light switch and still believe what they believe?
Let us know!