It’s a good idea to turn a blind eye to untruth, no matter how confidently you spout it. The facts you posted confirm that the number has been lessening.
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This is wrong. Look at the numbers again.
The whole Nader-style “both parties are the same” thing may have made some sense in the Clinton years, but it is just completely untenable today. Because of the radicalization of the right.
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Half-hearted wimps. I don’t believe in GRAVITY. Come join me, my free-floating brethren!
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A hypothesis must be both consistent with available evidence and testable. Leaving aside the first issue, it most certainly isn’t, as you say, the second. So “God” is not even a hypothesis.
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The problem with religion is it has been politicized and used to attack evolution pretty-much-anything-one-cares-to-name, by some people.
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The whole Nader-style “both parties are the same” thing may have made some sense in the Clinton years, but it is just completely untenable today. Because of the radicalization of the right.
That’s just partisan rhetoric. The right is just as radical as they have always been just as the left is just as radical as they have always been. It’s only the center that is not radical… that’s why they are the center.
I’ve seen various numbers, from about a quarter to about half of Americans being labeled Creationists, depending on the poll and the questions asked. However, the most detailed poll I’ve seen asked numerous, overlapping questions in various ways and had people agree or disagree with them. Questions such as, “The Universe (or the Earth) was created less than 10,000 years ago” and “Fossils are the remains of animals that lived on Earth millions of years ago.” They broke down what percentage of people agreed with each question, and after seeing the results, I have no idea what percentage of Americans are Creationists. This is because, based on the responses, some significant percentage of Americans agreed with completely contradictory statements such that they believe, if they answered honestly, that the Earth is both less than 10K years old, but also contains remains of creatures millions of years old older than the universe/Earth itself; that creatures were created in their present form, unchanged, but have also changed in form over time. In other words, a good percentage of Americans may or may not be Creationists, but they’re definitely idiots.
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Are you sure you’re trying to have logical discussion? Sounds like an emotional appeal to me.
So, please tell me, republicans tend to think of themselves as the ___________ party. If you’re making a distinction, please specify the difference you’re pointing out.
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Turned them into Birds? Fly free little Republican! Free yourself of the shackles of healthcare and social safety nets!
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I thought he pulled those out of his own bunghole?
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Quite right and my mistake. Since I’ve made it, I’ll indulge in continuing the line.
I find it also sad that republicans tend to think of themselves as the morality party while turning a blind eye to the immoral actions of its policies.
All evidence seems to point to two parties who are neither particularly intelligent or moral.
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Thanks for the correction. Quite right. I read those numbers too hastily. Happily it appears the Dems have lost about 3% from the denier pool. That’s good for everyone.
Well, then, you said it very oddly by only mentioning the one way as if it were the whole issue. But then you still run into the problem that way is largely hypothetical; as I said, there doesn’t seem to be any good indication that rejection of evolution has actually grown in in response to vocal criticism of religion.
That happens a lot across the board, sure, but there are also problems with denying funding needing for research, muzzling scientists, and even mocking the basic idea of research.
For instance there’s a special contempt you saw when Palin was out ridiculing the idea of studying flies, as if our whole conception of genetics and developmental biology didn’t come from that. That was her playing to some group of supporters, and I don’t recall anything similar in the other party; but let me be unusually fair and say it’s possible I missed something.
The muzzling of research, though, seems to have been something peculiarly high to the Bush administration. There are lots of normally politically-quiet scientists who complained of it, especially in fields like climate science. The opposite case - let’s say GMO research being stifled, or something like that - does not seem to have happened before or since.
People like to say so, and it’s probably true if you’re talking about people who aren’t in power. But if you are talking about them, well, some of us were paying attention when a Democratic president passed a primarily Republican-based health care plan as a compromise, and the other party shut down the government over it. Nor is that an isolated example.
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I read this as a sly reference to the No true Scotsman fallacy, which makes the rest of the post pleasingly ironic.
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If you scroll up to my first comment on the thread and read past the first sentence you will see:
We also watched as the other side won an election promising transparency, the closure of Guantanamo Bay, whistleblower protection, on and on. Now, the dems control the military and are killing people without trial or hearing. They drop bombs on buildings where they suspect an associate of a known terrorist is located killing the innocent bystanders inside. They are going after people who provide evidence of governmental criminal activity. Both sides are quite radical. The problem is that when you affiliate yourself with a political party, you tend to ignore your own parties insanity.
You call shutting down a corrupt government over a political point radical - and it is. But I also think the extrajudicial execution of U.S. citizens is pretty radical as well.
Absolutely true. It’s called trolling. A recent study found that conservatives are willing to spend less if a product is labeled “Organic” or “Save the Earth.”
Yeah, it’s a shame we didn’t get Romney, he would have shut down all of those programs lickety split…
This is a big black eye for the Obama administration IMHO. He’s been far to willing to let the status quo remain, despite campaigning on Change. He hasn’t had the balls to stand up to the experts and say “No, even though you say this will let the terrorists bomb us again, it’s a horrible invasion of privacy and doesn’t seem to be working, you can’t do it anymore.”
One thing I can’t blame him on is Gitmo. That was pure congressional dickery at its finest to make sure it stayed open.
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So I see you mentioning some people rejecting evolution because of the ones using it to attack religion, and some people accepting it because of the ones who promote it. That’s still the same thing; it doesn’t show the slightest hint that opponents of evolution might have had anything to do with politicizing it. So yeah, if that was part of your point, you said it very oddly.
And to repeat: there doesn’t seem to be any good indication that rejection of evolution has actually grown in in response to vocal criticism of religion. That’s a hypothetical; that fundamentalists have been attacking teaching of evolution for the last century is history.
I agree with all that you’re saying. I’m disagreeing with the idea that both sides are just as radical as they’ve ever been. There has been a shift in the Overton window, to the point where somebody like Nixon would probably fit better in the new Democratic party, in addition to a common rise in all the crap you mention.
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