US poll find majority of americans dont believe in evolution

DeusExMachina said:
America will prevail this. 50 years from now, most of the First world countries will be more secular. 200 years from now, the only beliefs will probably be Deism, Atheism/Agnosticism, and Eastern philosophies.
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If civilsation is maintained. But if civilisation takes a major kick in the nuts and the industrialised world collapses relgious ****ing morons will start owning society again with their retarded ignorant beliefs. "Dismember the scientists, they brought nothing but evil and destruction to us"

When most likely the leaders who brought about the destruction were extremely religious....and used God as a motivation/justification for for the destrcution.

Will America prevail? I don't know how deeply the fangs of the religious right are sunk into America but if it helps stagnate scientific innovation the economy will suffer. Breakthrough technologies will originate in other, more secular countries. New industrys will spawn in other countries as America slowly wittles to 3rd world country status. Being used as cheap labour by the rich countrys. They'll all be working in sweatshops making t-shirts to keep what's left of the economy going.


haha..no. ...keep voting in religious right presidents this might not be that far from the truth in 50 years.
 
Well hopefully Republicans see the mistake they made with Bush and let people like McCain and Guiliani run for President because it doesn't look like the Democrats are getting anyone good. But, I think it's naturally going to happen either way. If that poll is accurate, you'll notice the numbers are going down. 200 years ago, Enlightenment and the Great Awakening were happening all over the world. People were beginning to ask questions while the religious began to question their own motives and devices. A lot of people during that time were deists, believing a God did in fact exist, just one that wasn't anything like the religious Gods. He was, essentially, an utterly indifferent God. People during that time were more intelligent than people are now. I don't know what happened between then and now and why people stopped being so intelligent, but I refuse to believe people will stay stupid forever. In the future, the most popular belief will probably be things like Deism and Buddhism, with Atheism/Agnosticism a little bit behind. Judaism will be the only religion left in my mind.
 
The county next to me put "Evolution is a theory not a fact" stickers on their biology textbooks.
cobbdisclaimer0204rv2.jpg
 
DeusExMachina said:
Well hopefully Republicans see the mistake they made with Bush and let people like McCain and Guiliani run for President because it doesn't look like the Democrats are getting anyone good. But, I think it's naturally going to happen either way. If that poll is accurate, you'll notice the numbers are going down. 200 years ago, Enlightenment and the Great Awakening were happening all over the world. People were beginning to ask questions while the religious began to question their own motives and devices. A lot of people during that time were deists, believing a God did in fact exist, just one that wasn't anything like the religious Gods. He was, essentially, an utterly indifferent God. People during that time were more intelligent than people are now. I don't know what happened between then and now and why people stopped being so intelligent, but I refuse to believe people will stay stupid forever. In the future, the most popular belief will probably be things like Deism and Buddhism, with Atheism/Agnosticism a little bit behind. Judaism will be the only religion left in my mind.
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Don't forget new age thinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age
 
Ah yes, New Age thinking. That's another belief I think will hold the test of time. People will realize they don't need God to be spiritual or religion to believe in God.
 
Exactly. I said the same thing to my friends...in a hundred years or so (if we don't wipe ourselves out or the whole jesus will come back thing doesn't happen) many religions in general will be in a sense, dead and part of history. Like the old norse religions and paganism in general.
 
Consider five wildly different hypotheses that Daniel Dennett reports commonly hearing from people:
Daniel C. Dennett said:
1. The Enlightenment is long gone; the creeping “secularization” of modern societies that has been anticipated for two centuries is evaporating before our eyes. The tide is turning and religion is becoming more important than ever. In this scenario, religion soon resumes something like the dominant social role it had before the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century. As people recover from their infatuation with technology and material comforts, spiritual identity becomes a persons most valued attribute, and populations become ever more sharply divided among Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and a few other major multinational religious organizations. Eventually—it might take another millennium, or might be hastened by catastrophe—one major faith sweeps the planet.

2. Religion is in its death throws; today’s outbursts of fervor and fanaticism are but a brief and awkward transition to a truly modern society in which religion plays at most a ceremonial role. In this scenario although there may be some local and temporary revivals and even some violent catastrophe, the major religions of the world soon go just as extinct as the hundred of minor religions vanishing faster than anthropologist can record them. Within the lifetimes of our grandchildren, Vatican City becomes the European Museum of Roman Catholicism and Mecca is turned into Disney’s Magic Kingdom of Allah.

3. Religions transform themselves into institutions unlike anything seen before on the planet: basically creedless associations selling self-help and enabling moral teamwork, using ceremony and tradition to cement relationships and build “long-term fan loyalty.” In this scenario, being a member of a religion becomes more and more like a Boston Red Sox fan, or a Dallas Cowboys fan. Different colors, different songs and cheers, different symbols, and vigorous competition—would you want your daughter to marry a Yankees fan?—but aside from a rabid few, everybody appreciates the importance of peaceful coexistence in a Global League of Religions. Religious art and music flourish, and friendly rivalry leads to a degree of specialization, with one religion priding itself on its environmental stewardship while another becomes duly famous for its concerted defense of social justice and economic equality.

4. Religion diminishes in prestige and visibility, rather like smoking; it is tolerated, since there are those who say they can’t live without it, but it is discouraged, and teaching religion to impressionable young children is frowned upon in most societies and actually outlawed in others. In this scenario, politicians who still practice religion can be elected if they prove themselves worthy in other regards, but few would advertise their religious affiliation—or affliction, as the politically incorrect insist on calling it. It is considered as rude to draw attention to the religion of somebody as it is to comment in public about his sexuality or whether she has been divorced.

5. Judgment Day arrives. The blessed ascend bodily into heaven, and the rest are left behind to suffer the agonies of the damned, as the Anti-christ is vanquished. As the Bible prophecies foretold, the rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948 and the ongoing conflict over Palestine are clear signs of the End Times, when the Second Coming of Christ sweeps all other hypothesis into oblivion.

Other possibilities are describable, of course, but these five hypotheses highlight the extremes that are taken seriously. What is remarkable about the set is that just about anybody would find at least one of them preposterous, or troubling, or even deeply offensive, but every one of them is not just anticipated but yearned for.
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15357 said:
God, I hate how religion spreads. One time, the words "Believe in god and you will be saved, and non-believers shall writh in agony eternally." was actually written on with blue ink on my 5000 won bill, when I recieved it as change. I proceeded to look through my wallet, and 2 more bills came out with similiar words.


And now I have orders to confiscate Yu-Gi-Oh cards from other students because the religious teachers think it demonic.

Wtf is wrong with this world?
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Did your country ban the DaVinci Code movie because of "Anti-Christian" Bias?
 
I hope scenario 4 comes to pass, I think that would be the most acceptable. That way, religion is still used, but is not powerful...

because let's face it, religion with political power is very very dangerous.

...korea is mostly buddhist right? I've never heard of buddhists doing things like that.
 
Christianity is really big in Korea, at least compared to other Eastern countries. Acording to wikipedia: About 46% of South Korean citizens profess to follow no particular religion. Of the remainder, Christians account for 27.3% of the population and Buddhists 25.3%
 
theotherguy said:
I hope scenario 4 comes to pass, I think that would be the most acceptable. That way, religion is still used, but is not powerful...

because let's face it, religion with political power is very very dangerous.

...korea is mostly buddhist right? I've never heard of buddhists doing things like that.
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#4 has long been my thoughts on the future of religion. I believe there will still be enough children who have been influenced enough to stick with their religion into the next generation or two.

However seeing as the ones who stuck with religion would be the minority they would be frowned upon (as society always does). Not to mention there always are a few people who will keep doing something no matter what the circumstances or others views on the subject are.
 
I don't think religion should necessarily be discouraged or frowned upon. Religion has done as many good things as its done bad things in the world and I believe people should have the right to believe in whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm or infringe on other people's beliefs. But, Christianity has it coming. They ended Paganism, something else will end Christianity. Hopefully its mankind and not another religion.

Or, we could have a complete 180 and the Church become as powerful as they were long ago.
 
christianity didn't end paganism, seeing as paganism is defined as anything non-christian
 
Huh? Paganism was people worshipping Zeus and the like and belief in magic. When the Romans adopted Christianity as their official religion, they discouraged Paganism and eventually everyone stopped believing in it.
 
No, that was just Roman religion, not all of paganism.

from wikipedia:
Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "a country dweller" or "civilian") is a blanket term which has come to connote a broad set of western spiritual or religious beliefs and practices of natural or polytheistic religions, as opposed to the Abrahamic monotheistic religions. "Pagan" is the usual translation of the Islamic term mushrik, which refers to 'one who worships something other than God'

So all of the major world religions have gone towards destroying polytheism, but not paganism. Paganism is just a blanket term used to apply to all polytheistic religion, which includes hinduism, in which there are millions upon millions of followers.
 
Actually, hinduism is more monotheistic. There are many gods but all are tied to Brahman as he is represented in different forms.
 
Don’t confuse a specific priestly philosophical tradition with the many many varieties of Hinduism practiced by locals.
Wiki:
1. According to the philosophy of Mīmāṃsā, all the devas and devīs are the sovereign rulers of the forces of nature, and there is no one Supreme Īshvara as their Lord. To do a desired action, humans must please each or several of these devas by worshiping them with proper rituals. This view could be regarded as purely polytheistic. Although the later Mīmāṃsakās retracted this view and accepted Īshvara, many Hindus today still hold it.
2. According to the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta, all the devas are simply mundane manifestations of the Supreme Lord (Īshvara) in the human mind and hence, ultimately, different manifestations of the One Brahman that the human mind conceives. Advaita philosophy holds that in order to worship the formless Īshvara, the devotee conceives a physical form of God in his mind for the sake of worshiping Him with love (bhakti).
3. According to the philosophies of Nyāya, Vaisheṣhika, and Yoga, the Vaishnavite schools, and certain schools of Shaivite thought, the devas are those celestial beings who are subservient to the Supreme Lord Īshvara but are above human beings. Thus they preside over the forces of nature and act as a link between God and the mortal world. They all derive their power from God, under whose control they always work.
 
If you believe the universe formed in a random pattern that created you and the effect of thought, how can you trust your logic? That's like splattering milk on the floor and hoping to get a correct map of New York.
 
Geogaddi said:
If you believe the universe formed in a random pattern that created you and the effect of thought, how can you trust your logic? That's like splattering milk on the floor and hoping to get a correct map of New York.
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That's really dumbing down the concept. The universe did not form randomly.
 
I’m not sure why people tend to think that evolution has anything to do with the origin of the universe. Evolution is a theory about how biological systems came to be in an already existent universe. Atheists like to argue that evolution “could” extend out further to the creation of the universe… but that’s pure speculation… The scientific theory of evolution has nothing to do with the origin the universe. Although on the question of whether or not a mind designed the universe to function as it does (evolution and all) one must wonder how something so complicated as the designer's mind came into being itself considering that it couldn’t have been designed without recourse to a metadesigner ad infinitum.
 
There are countries in the world where people still believe in Witchcraft....
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There are countries in the world where people still believe in god....
 
Although i am not hindu, a friend of mine is. I asked him if hinduism is polytheistic and he considered it monotheistic. I think that people practice different forms of hinduism but generally, hinduism is more of a mix of monotheism and polytheism.
Here is a quote from wiki:
But it is incorrect to say that Hinduism has 330 million Gods, which are more correctly devas, or celestial beings. Hinduism is considered a "polymorphic monotheistic" religion, meaning one god, the all powerful Brahman, takes different forms.
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Hinduism is a broad set of beliefs. Lumping it all under one banner is almost (but not quite) as absurd as lumping Christianity, Islam, and Judaism under one heading. Looking at the so called “primitive” groups in India you would find something practiced that was well nigh indistinguishable from polytheism… although the more “civilized” areas are likely to have adherents influence by the Brahmans. Some Hindus think that all is Brahman where others think that Brahman created this universe but himself sits on a lotus growing from Vishnu’s navel.
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/4320/vlcsnap847417af8.png
 
Geogaddi said:
If you believe the universe formed in a random pattern that created you and the effect of thought, how can you trust your logic? That's like splattering milk on the floor and hoping to get a correct map of New York.
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I heard a minor rebuttal to this argument once that went something like this:

Imagine you have a million alphabet blocks, the kind that young children play with. (They're six-sided building blocks with a letter of the English alphabet printed on each face.) Take all of these blocks and throw them high into the air; this produces a system like our early universe. Now, when the blocks fall, there is a substantial probability that some sets of blocks will produce words, even simple sentences.
 
Delirious said:
Although i am not hindu, a friend of mine is. I asked him if hinduism is polytheistic and he considered it monotheistic. I think that people practice different forms of hinduism but generally, hinduism is more of a mix of monotheism and polytheism.
Here is a quote from wiki:
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only polythesim

Hinduism recognizes this fundamental truth about God in letter and spirit. For the Hindus the whole universe is sacred, permeated by His presence, radiating His glory, sustained by Him and manifested by Him. Every thing in it and every aspect of it, without an exception, is sacred and worthy of worship. If God is to be found only in the heavens, nowhere else, sitting on a throne and ruling the worlds or dispensing justice, then He cannot be God but just an aspect of Him. If God favors only those who worship Him in a particular manner, calling Him by a particular name, and declares that every one else who does not follow those percepts will go to Hell, then He cannot be God, but an inferior aspect of Him.

Hindus worship God according to their level of understanding. Some worship the highest God, some worship the village deities. Some worship a personal god believing him to be the Highest God. Some worship many gods simultaneously, with the belief that they all are the different manifestations of the same God. Some people worship Him in the form of images. Some worship His name by chanting His name or writing it a million or ten million times. Some make Him offerings of food and money. Some offer themselves completely. Some do not offer Him anything, but just worship Him either out of fear or want. Some do not worship Him at all, but still remain within the fold of Hinduism.
 
Raeven0 said:
I heard a minor rebuttal to this argument once that went something like this:

Imagine you have a million alphabet blocks, the kind that young children play with. (They're six-sided building blocks with a letter of the English alphabet printed on each face.) Take all of these blocks and throw them high into the air; this produces a system like our early universe. Now, when the blocks fall, there is a substantial probability that some sets of blocks will produce words, even simple sentences.
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Not to mention that postulating an Intelligent Designer doesn’t solve the problem of being able to trust your own logic either. We all acknowledge that humans do not think perfectly. If only we did! If only he made us with an obvious truth detector. But then… could you trust the truth detector? If the Intelligent designer designed us this way we have to wonder if
A. He is incompetent and failed to design us properly. (now we can’t trust the fruits of his bad work)
Or
B. He purposefully denied us understanding. He either designed us this way because he is malevolent or because he has intentions for us that he wishes to hide from our understanding. (now we cant trust our logic because he designed us faulty on purpose)

You might even say that an incomplete mind that is not perfect, but will do... is exactly what you would expect evolution to make…

If you are going to question your own logic… no argument of logic will ever dissuade you from questioning your own logic because that argument used logic (which you don’t trust) in the first place.

There is no way to prove that Descartes demon isn’t secretly deceiving you about everything other than Cogito Ergo Sum… There is no way to prove that super intelligent aliens, so advanced that we cannot detect them, are not controlling the white house either… I don’t bother to worry about it.

Edit:
If you are really interested in how to root out incorrect belief see this link.
 
Creationists often use the "watch" analogy to try and disprove evoltuion (that is, if you had a bunch of watch parts inside a washing machine for a billion years, they wouldn't form a watch)

But there is a major difference between inanimate things like milk, blocks and watchparts as there are to biological compounds. Biological compounds bind to each other naturally, they can change and reproduce, they're in a constant state of change and motion which makes evolution possible

If you took the block analogy into this light, imagine you threw a bunch of blocks up into the air, and when they all landed you looked at all the blocks that formed words, and you paired them off to the side, and then the ones that did not have words you threw into the air again, and when they land the ones that form words are paired off again, and you repeat the process infinatley until you have a set of words.

Imagine then, that all of the letters coherentley bound together to form words, as if they were taped together. After you have a set made entirely out of words, then throw all of the words as a whole up into the air, and when they land pair off the ones that form coherent sentences. Repeat this process until you have a set made entirely out of sentences.

This is much more like natural selection, where more coherent genes are selected by nature and eventually the whole becomes coherent and seemingly predesigned. Nature is the one throwing the blocks, not a designer, its just how the system works, and the results are not fully random at all, but selected by the system.
 
theotherguy said:
Creationists often use the "watch" analogy to try and disprove evoltuion (that is, if you had a bunch of watch parts inside a washing machine for a billion years, they wouldn't form a watch)

But there is a major difference between inanimate things like milk, blocks and watchparts as there are to biological compounds. Biological compounds bind to each other naturally, they can change and reproduce, they're in a constant state of change and motion which makes evolution possible

If you took the block analogy into this light, imagine you threw a bunch of blocks up into the air, and when they all landed you looked at all the blocks that formed words, and you paired them off to the side, and then the ones that did not have words you threw into the air again, and when they land the ones that form words are paired off again, and you repeat the process infinatley until you have a set of words.

Imagine then, that all of the letters coherentley bound together to form words, as if they were taped together. After you have a set made entirely out of words, then throw all of the words as a whole up into the air, and when they land pair off the ones that form coherent sentences. Repeat this process until you have a set made entirely out of sentences.

This is much more like natural selection, where more coherent genes are selected by nature and eventually the whole becomes coherent and seemingly predesigned. Nature is the one throwing the blocks, not a designer, its just how the system works, and the results are not fully random at all, but selected by the system.
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creationist response to above post: ......ummm this is a banana ...case closed!
 
heh, "Green: too early, black: too late, yellow: just right!"

oh, and for the milk analogy, for it to be more like biological systems think of it like this:

You pour milk on the ground. There are magnetic diodies under the ground which respond to milk touching them. If a milk droplet lands on a spot that does not correspond to a map of new york, the diode activates and evaporates the milk molecule, if the milk droplet lands on a portion that corresponds with a map of new york, it is allowed to stay, or "live"

Thus, with a pattern of undesireable milk particles being evaporated and desireable ones remaining, you would get a map of new york made out of milk in no time.

The point is, the "live/die" function of life doesnt allow for undesireable traits to exist, and thus what life evolves must work well to survive. Because if you're pouring milk randomly on the floor, some if it is bound to be in the correct position and some of it isn't. The difference in nature is that the things that aren't in the right position die; leaving only a living, working system.
 
The whole devide on this issue boggles my mind. Why can't some people just accept evolution as a functional output of reality and still have the belief that there is some possible intelligence at work in the input into reality that allows evolution to work and take place.

Within the boundaries of known science i.e (Virtual Input) virtual particles, zero point energy > Quantum state behaviour (electron spin, particles, nuclei) > Atom behaviour, configuration, communication, and interaction > Macroscopic natural evolutional process (observable output)
 
You can't prove something by analogy. You can only clarify or posit a deeper understanding of a concept by analogy.
 
you're right. But you can prove something using an experimental model, which is almost like an analogy. And this has been done for evolution countless times using computer models.

But you can't truly "prove" evolution without observational data from the past few millions of years.
 
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