Building bridges to nowhere - Why do so many conservatives have a problem with elites and elitism?

Palin is never embarrassed about her remarks.

She is extremely dangerous because she is ignorant and proud of it.

I hope that if she decides to run her fierce ignorance will be exposed, and she will get the ridicule that she deserves.

Do you know if she has been told of the importance of research with fruit flies?

No, but I’d assumed some of her advisers told her at some point. There must be at least one adviser having made it past 10th grade, right? The fruit fly bashing made news in Germany with international analysts asking whether high-profile American politicians are losing their marbles.

@mattbrowne It is a scary, scary business.

@marinelife – The least she could do is apologize to all the hard-working scientists.

@mattbrowne I think she would have to be publicly shamed into apologizing. Perhaps if bloggers picked up on the story and laid out the facts that you did about fruit fly research, the maintstream media would follow. It really was not reported in this country.

@mattbrowne It is not a matter of disdain for science research and development….it is all about providing a stoic image of fiscal responsibility in the wake of budget deficit and economic crisis. No fiscally responsible person in Congress would dream of supporting pork projects and wild-eyed research projects during these tough times. When the budget is balanced and there is surplus cash again, the Republicans will be the first in line at the CBO with their hands out to go back to cronyism and funding their bridges to now where projects. It will be business as usual.

This is old. Look at the date of the article. 10.31.08

She was stupid years ago.

@marinelife – Do you have contacts at www.moveon.org ? Maybe they can do something about it and expose the risks the American people are facing.

@Cruiser – But this was not about wild-eyed research projects.

That didn’t contribute to the discussion, so I editted it.

@Ilikerabits – Oh, I know. But at the time some people thought she would disappear after losing the election. Now she’s a candidate for the next primaries. And the anti-elitism fight seems to continue. We need to understand why so many conservatives have a problem with elites and elitism. What wrong with people able to cure Alzheimer’s and cancer? Shouldn’t we be proud of our elites? Without Tim-Berners Lee, we wouldn’t even have this conversation on the web like this right now. He was a scientist at CERN. Only top-notch scientists (part of an elite) get accepted at CERN.

Maybe anti-elitism folks should not use web browsers and phones.

I wonder if whether or not she is just targeting her costituency which seem to be faith based rather than science. And like a parrot she repeats what she hears, or…hmmmm.
I have to say that I’ve seen willful ignorance and intolerance on both sides of the fence. It seems to me that we have, most people, lost perspective. We are like spiders, waiting to pounce on the other side for a mis-step, rather than focusing on finding true solutions to problems in our country. We resort to name calling and superior attitudes which, after all, really are counter productive.
A couple months ago @laureth posted an excellent TED talk about what it would take for conservatives and liberals to get together. The resluting discussion made it clear that people of all beliefs are nothing if not rigid in holding on tho their own beliefs and values. Myself being neither a liberal nor a conservative but a “moderate” I am contiually appalled by the lack of willingness to find common ground by both sides.
@mattbrowne You raise an excellent point. This blind refusal to admit the validity and necessity for some studies is perhaps typical. Maybe you can be the person who comes up with the first part of a solution. Oh, I just read your last sentence.
Maybe not. That was a jab I did not expect from you.
Maybe I’ll just go live in Peru.

@Adirondackwannabe – Well, if at least all the Republican voters on Fluther backed an intellectual, well-educated Republican during the next primaries instead of Palin, it’d be a start. So there’s hope.

@Trillian – Of course, liberals are not perfect either. But I think they take criticism more seriously. What do you think?

@mattbrowne I think that many of the Liberals on this site are as rigid, unyielding and militant as any fundamenalist Christian. And the justification that I see time and time again is “Well, but I’m right!, they’re wong!” The tune sounds the same to me no matter who is singing it.
We, as a nation, spend entirely too much time to protecting “in-groups” and deriding “out-groups”. We draw lines of demarkation and throw up artificial barriers between ourselves as reflex. We learn that a person feels this or that way about something and immediately classify, categorize and file the entire person based on incomplete pieces of information. We then like or dislike that person based on that same small incomplete info. We would rather prove someone wrong about something than find commonality, and we set the detriment of the greater good at naught to be able to go home and tell our like minded friends “I guess I told him!”
I see liberals herejumping out of the woodwork for a chance to deride conservatives and Christianity every chance they get, attacking Christianity in blanket statements while making distinctions about Islam, saying tht it is only a few radicals ect, ect. The inability or willingness to extend that same understanding to their own countrymen speaks of a meanness of spirit which defeats me from even trying to engage in rational mitigating seech.
As I said, we’ve lost perspective and uniting the country for common good is no longer a goal. We want to stand with our collective foot on the throat of a thoroughly defeated enemy and open our collective throat in a primal scream.

It is cynical populist pandering—no different from how she has ever been. Although, in her case, she may be stupid enough to believe her own rhetoric. She’s a performer. She knows how to sell the applause lines. People listen to the tone of her words, and feel her charisma, and they stop thinking—well, those who ever started thinking stop.

So fuck! I’m one of the people they’d call elite. They scorn me and I have equal scorn for them. Maybe even more so. It’s a scorn storm.

Of course, what @Cruiser said is right on target. It’s the Republican theme of cutting spending by getting rid of “pork.” This is probably one of the most cynical things they do. “Pork” amounts to, oh, about 0.0001 percent of the federal budget. Big whoop. Let’s cut some pork, pat ourselves on the back, and go hang out at the country club and drink some Single Malt Scotch while the masseuse works out the kinds in our shoulders due to all that difficult battling in Congress. Sheesh! (Oh, and look how we managed to sneak in an amendment in the middle of the night that preserves pork for agricultural districts and oil districts.)

It’s populism, pure and simple. Why working folk buy it, I don’t know. They’re the ones who have to pay for it. Oh wait. They don’t have enough education to understand, the way the elite do. The elite are against this? Well I’m for it. I’ll show them!

People don’t trust what they don’t understand. The world is complex. The Republican Populists make it simple, and do it in an entertaining way. The working class people fuck themselves and are grateful for the privilege.

No, I’m not bitter. Not a bit.

@Trillian – I agree with you. Liberals should not be militant either. So I guess we are both in favor of two moderate presidential candidates in 2012. Do you have a Republican nominee in mind?

@mattbrowne No. I hold out no hope. I would prefer a person who wants to put the good of the country first, throw out special interest groups, simplify the process of passing legislation and get rid of “riders” and other sneaky shit. But I don’t know of anyone who fits that particular profile.

I think that part of the problem is that there is so much news and information – so much that we become a sound-bite culture. Senator Kennedy touched on the problem when he discussed that Fox News and MSNBC caused so much chatter that politicians had to dumb down the political debate, so much that they should arguably be taken off the air (a great discussion is located in another fluther question here).

I think that a lot of the problem is that the elite do very, very little to make themselves seen anything other then, well…elite. Scientists are particularly guilty of this, and seem to have made very little effort (or at least progress) in talking, not necessarily down to, but in a down-to-earth manner to the public. The fact that scientists seem inapproachable, argumentative, and dismissive themselves is a debate both within and outside the scientific community (part of the example can be found in discussion of the book Don’t Be Such a Scientist).

The problem comes a lot of the time in situations where scientists use definitive terms that have a specific scientific jargon meaning that may mean very different things in real-world situations. Words like “fact” and “theory” are perhaps the most notorious. When scientists say “Evolution is a fact” and the layman, particularly those with a religious bend, hear that there are things that evolution does not yet have evidence for, and these gaps are described as “holes”, they begin to think along the lines of “Well, it’s just a theory.” However, a scientist hears this, and responds “Of course it’s a theory! So is gravity!” and the laymen feels like they’re being played because to them theory means, essentially, a guess – maybe a best guess, but a guess. So people are talking back and forth, using the same words, but speaking a different language.

What the scientific and general “elite” community needs to learn to do is talk the culture. They can’t try to bring people up to their level of discourse – they must understand to speak in a sound bite culture. Otherwise, rhetoric becomes an exponentially more powerful weapon against them.

Ideas are as much about style as substance in popular culture. It’s sad, but scientists could learn a thing or two from Sarah Palin on this front.

@mattbrowne I used the term wild-eyed perhaps a bit too loosely….either way it would consume tax dollars that right now don’t exist so borrowing money for that kind of discretionary research right now would be political suicide for the Congressman who supported that “kind” of project.

@iamthemob GA. Well spoken. Thank you,

There are so many things wrong with this that I scarce know where to begin!
* Palin probably had more of a problem with the “Paris” location than with the research itself.
* Science and research are a vital, necessary aspect of society.
* The reason so many people are anti-intellectul is that so many intellectuals are apparently contemptuous of the rest of us. It’s almost axiomatic that the more you consider yourself an “intellectual,” the less concerned you are about “mere mortals!”
* People who refer to themselves as “intellectuals” seem almost to be contemptuous of democracy.

I could go on, but I have learned from hard experience that this is a futile exercise.

I could go on, but I have learned from hard experience that this is a futile exercise.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what many people, including myself, have learned from interactions with members of the scientific communities. One of my undergrad majors was heavily based on neuro- and cognitive-science, so I am sympathetic to the community generally – but still in discussions can’t help but thinking “Christ, what an asshole” much of the time.

Eventually, you get exhausted…and get the inevitable and dangerous “Well, we’ll just agree to disagree” response.

@mattbrowne – the scientific community suffers from the same rhetorical dilemmas that you see in the aggresive atheism styled argument. You actually might look to your own critique of the aggressive atheists there as I think it will enlighten you as to how people react to the majority of the (at least public) scientific community.

Fascinating! : )

@iamthemob – Maybe, we need another science communicator like Carl Sagan.

Oh my GOD yes we do.

I agree. And another thing that would help is a rather large dose of humility.

@CaptainHarley – No, it’s not almost axiomatic that the more you consider yourself an intellectual, the less concerned you are about mere mortals! There are dozens of examples. Here’s one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus

who won the Nobel Peace Prize for developing the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. These loans are given to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Or take

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo

who is a Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist who called for democratic reforms and the end of communist one-party rule in Mainland China and very concerned for all the mere mortals in China who fight for clean air and clean water for example.

Great intellectuals indeed.

@mattbrowne – I think that is is almost axiomatic, though. I don’t think that it’s necessary for something to be axiomatic and also objectively true – it’s axiomatic if there is a general perception that it’s true – the fact that it’s just accepted shows that people don’t really look into whether or not it’s actually accurate.

And the fact that it might actually be axiomatic is, I believe, evidence of the marketing problem that science, scientific information, and scientists have…

@mattbrowne

Take note that both examples are from countries other than the US.

Well, these were more recent examples. So here we go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

Intellectual. Interested in mere mortals.

And here’s another one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell

even conservatives can relate to I hope.

We seem to think that if you can get a title of ‘Scientist’ or ‘Research’ then they must know what they’re talking about. They’re smart. Unfortunately every single research grant can be justified with possible breakthroughs or expanded knowledge that could change our lives. Isn’t that great!

So we fund research into pigeons and songbirds, research into fruit flies and the dating habits of college students, who knows we may learn something. Understanding the effects of cocaine on rats could have immeasurable benefits. Who knows where the research on the socio-political climate in Nepal could lead.

In case you haven’t heard, we have a budget crisis. We have to make choices. And having about 150 research project on the cognitive ability of pigeons and songbirds, may be a bit over the top. You feel the research into Fruit Flies is the most important research we could be doing, and I’m sure that’s important. Somehow, I suspect the inner-city kid that just wants a job, may have a different take on it. But then again, why ask him? He’s just stupid.

What does this have to do with elitism?

Hey, you know, I participated in neurological/aggression studies on fruit flies. We cut off their heads and mashed them up to determine the presence, absence, concentration of certain chemical markers. If Palin says we should stop doing that, we could always use brains of real people!

@tigress3681 – could you use the brain of Sarah Palin?

Oh…real people. Nevermind.

(sorry…couldn’t resist. Only a joke…)

@Whitsoxdude

Stimulus was supposed to create jobs. I know it wasn’t stated but most of us thought it meant jobs here in the states. But of course the elite would be quick to tell us that it is good regardless of where it’s done. Hell they don’t care, they’ve got thier grant and of course a job. The rest of us are just too stupid to see it. I find it interesting that the elite on this site seem to revere Carl Sagan. He was primarily interested in extraterrestrial life and exploration. Ya know, the stuff that got cut.

@Jaxk How are you defining the “elite” on this site?

I truly don’t understand how and when being intellectual became a bad thing. I also don’t understand why “intellectual” and “elite” have come to mean one and the same thing.

I hesitate to say this, but I consider myself an intellectual. I honestly do not understand what on Earth is wrong with that.
—————————————————————————-
From Merriam-Webster:
Intellectual

1
a : of or relating to the intellect or its use
b : developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience : rational
c : requiring use of the intellect
2
a : given to study, reflection, and speculation
b : engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect
——————————————————————————
I do not consider myself a member of the elite, especially in the sense it seems to be used in these cases.
——————————————————————————-
Elite

c: the socially superior part of society
d : a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence <members of the ruling elite>
——————————————————————————-
So, I’m relatively smart, and concerned with matters of the mind. What a horrible monster I must be. I’m also poor as dirt, and have no power over anyone but my children. What an elite I am! I care an enormous amount about issues that affect people… not just “my people”, all people. Including “mere mortals” (like myself).

You think you have power over your children? They totally have you fooled. ;-)

@Dr_Dredd

I define the elite as those that consider themselves superior to the rest of society. Those that feel they should be making the decisions on how people should be living their lives. It becomes entangled with the ‘intellectuals’ when they proffer their solutions based on theories. Try running a business model in college and then take it out in the world and see how it works. The model is only a starting point. There’s a good reason that value is placed on experience. I have no problem with intelligence and education. It provides a good platform for learning.

@augustlan Its like being in school again and being diliked of for bein the smart kid…

@mattbrowne

I loved listening to Carl Sagan, and I admire General Powell so much that I wrote him a letter almost begging him to run for President, and promising I would work to help him win until I fell, exhausted, in my tracks. ( He was very kind and thanked me, but said that he didn’t want to subject his family to that, which only made me admire him even more. )

So NOW what??

The term “intellectual,” like the terms “proletariate” and “bourgeois,” serves only to define people by some sort of esoteric “class” to which they belong. I refuse to submit to such pigeonholing.

@mattbrowne Read Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason_. It covers how anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism grew to be such a force in America. It’s pretty amazing, given that our Founding Fathers were all men of the Age of Enlightenment and, while some were virtually self educated, all were men of letters and intellectual achievement. But Ms. Jacoby does a wonderful job of tracing the many cultural pressures that came to make us what we are today in America. And there are far too many to cover here. It took her an entire book. :-)

I think a better title would have been “The Age of Unlightenment.” ;-)

@CaptainHarley – They all do seem to be terms that one side or the other will use to make people think of whatever idea the pundit is speaking about wrong because it comes from “Them.”

“Unlightenment?” Heh!

Yes, that’s certainly one abuse of it.

@CaptainHarley – I read Powell’s book “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell” and I was really impressed. If people like him would run at the Republican primaries a lot of our worries would go away.

@Jaxk – I have no issue with smart politicians saying that in times of a budget crisis, science funding has to be cut by X % (although I think even during a crisis, investments into the future are important, for example education). And smart politician would rely on science advisers, who can determine the priorities. But picking fruit flies and honestly thinking intellectuals are wasting money on purpose, therefore Sarah Palin who knows better coming to their rescue, is truly absurd. The problem of course is that if people reject evolution, they also reject fruit flies, because they don’t see the connection.

I think www.moveon.org should tell the American public how people like Palin think and use the fruit flies as an example. And how her attitude will endanger the hopes of finding better treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s patients. If we truly want to help children suffering from cancer we should not build Creationism Museums in Kentucky. We should continue to study fruit flies.

@mattbrowne

I think America was the loser when Powell decided to not run. So few people like him ever get to high station anymore that it often seems as if the inmates are running the asylum. He is a truly honest, intelligent and honorable man, a great rarity in public life in these sad times.

Ah. Sad times indeed when passing ruffians can say “Ni” at will to old women.

@Trillian

The only reason they still say “Ni!” is because they can’t remember the other damned thing! : )

Silly French person! : D

@mattbrowne

You may be right but doesn’t it seem a bit strange to study fruit flies in FRANCE on our stimulus money. I have no doubt that Moveon will denigrate Palin at every opportunity. Hell they go after her family as well. Did you even read the article about the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)? It talks about all the things they think are appropriate to invest in for mental health, that includes Alzheimer’s.

I understand that Palin picked on one of your personal favorites and you are righteously outraged. Nonetheless, every research project I see describes how they may find a cure for Alzheimer’s, or Cancer or Birth Defects or etc, etc. All these guys tell us that with just a little more money they can do miracles. Unfortunately the well is dry. Maybe instead of 10 fruit fly research projects, we’ll have to make do with one.

@Jaxk – Science is very dear to me. We need good science and good technology so our small planet can accommodate 9 billion people in 2050. And any person who thinks that both creationism and evolution should be taught at school is not qualified to lead the (still) most powerful country on Earth.

@mattbrowne

I’m afraid that all smart people are not necessarily atheists. Nor are all atheists smart people. You criteria for who can or can not be president eliminates way too many people, about 70% of the population that has some belief in god. And of course you eliminate out of hand, any chance that a Muslim would ever be able to serve. Maybe you and few of your friends and that’s about it.

As for science and research, let’s not confuse what you learn in school or the lab, with what you learn in the real world through experience. Assume you need a heart transplant and you’re choosing the doctor to do it. You have the bright young surgeon that just finished school where learned all the latest techniques, he’s younger, stronger, faster, has more dexterity, better eye sight, more stamina but hasn’t yet done a transplant. On the other hand, you have the older, slower, doctor with glasses that graduated over thirty years ago but he’s done over 400 hundred transplants. Who do you choose? Personally, I like the guy that’s been there. Same with the guy that should write the procedures for doing it. There’s simply no substitute for experience.

The intellectual elite that people are talking about are the guys that have spent their whole life in academia. The college professors that have never done anything else but have a shitload of degrees. Now they are telling us how to run our lives, how to regulate industry, what we should want or what should be available to us. All based on thier education and theory. If you want to ween us off carbon, invent a substitute first. Don’t give me that crap that if we make it expensive enough, we’ll invent a solution. If we can cripple the economy, we’ll figure a way out. All theory and no substance.

I’m afraid that all smart people are not necessarily atheists. Nor are all atheists smart people. You criteria for who can or can not be president eliminates way too many people, about 70% of the population that has some belief in god.

@Jaxk – I don’t understand how @mattbrowne‘s statement leads to the counter that not all smart people are atheists/not all atheists are smart people. I thought he said that he thought creationism shouldn’t be taught alongside evolution. Creationism has nothing to do with a belief in God – I’m pretty sure that @mattbrowne, who I believe is a Christian himself, is a profound example of just that.

Maybe I’m misinterpreting you, so let me know. But that statement seems to come out of nowhere.

About the lab v. experience argument – well, nobody said it was an either/or choice. I wouldn’t listen to anyone who never studied something about what we should do about that thing. I might listen to someone who only studied it. But those who practice can’t disregard theorists simply because they are theorists.

It’s like your carbon argument. You say, invent a substitute. I say, we already have some, and that’s not weening – it’s replacing. Slowly switching to wind energy as a partial substitute helps develop wind energy so that it works better and better. But those in energy will say “Wind can’t replace carbon.” So, we don’t even ween. That’s the problem when you ignore the intellectual elites (who I believe, generally, encompass a whole bunch of people beyond who you argue it includes for the general population).

@iamthemob

Here’s the rub. Even @mattbrowne admits there are holes or gaps in the evolution theory. So if one person chooses to explain them by saying ’ we just haven’t found the evidence yet’, I have no problem with that. If another person wants to explain the gaps by saying’ there must have been divine intervention’, I have no problem with that either. Hell I don’t even know what divine intervention means. Or what god means for that matter. Is it just someone smarter than us, maybe better technology?

The problem I have is with someone that says ‘I can prove some of my stuff, you can’t prove your stuff’. Then goes further to say they’re stupid or incompetent. Disagreement does not equal stupidity. I always have problems with the stupidity argument and the liar argument. People have different ways of explaining the inconsistencies in the universe. If you disagree with me, that doesn’t make you stupid.

As for the windmill argument. That’s a stupid argument :-) Seriously, windmills won’t solve our problem nor are they cost competitive. We lose up to 50% of the power in transmission loss over long distances. And wind power is not where we need the energy (big cities). We’re trying to move to a less efficient technology that consumes massive land mass with a massive transmission network, that won’t solve the problem and is manufactured mostly overseas. Sorry, I just can’t jump onto that bandwagon.

@Jaxk – You’re missing the point of whether certain things belong in a science class, though, as to @mattbrowne‘s comment. First, public school is a government entity, and therefore subject to the church/state division of the Establishment Clause. Second, science is a class meant to teach people about the natural world. Third, it is about the natural world as it has been explained through theories which have been subjected to the scientific method. Finally, the scientific method requires that any theory be objectively falsifiable.

Evolution, as the example, is the best theory that we have from a scientific standpoint to explain how we got where we are. That doesn’t mean that it’s perfect, or that somehow it might be proven wrong. It can be. Creationism, as that’s the contrary we’re talking about, cannot be proven wrong, and therefore has no place in the classroom. A class about religion and it’s explanation of how the world works, totally. But not alongside religion. Intelligent design has legally been called Creationism in science’s clothing – but regardless, ID is not a theory at all, it is a critique of the theory of evolution. It’s not saying anything is stupid or wrong, it’s saying that in the classroom, the answer should be limited to one that does not bring religious beliefs into it. Outside of that, anyone can say anything they want. “We don’t know.” That’s it. Alternative explanations of consistencies have to be falsifiable, or else they’re not science.

And again, you focus on solving the whole problem. Wind is part of the solution, combined with others. When you say that we need something that will replace carbon fuels as a whole, then you will never get it, more than likely. This is because we need to build infrastructure for anything that would replace it, where carbon already has one. So, when you say “well, if you’re going to ween us off carbon, invent something to replace it,” you’re asking for the impossible, as weening is mutually exclusive from replacing. You ween in order to, eventually, displace or replace. A wholesale replacement would, in fact, be economically devastating – gas stations, deserted. Entire manufacturing plants closed permanently or to be upgraded. Planes grounded. People’s cars useless. Sorry, I just can’t jump onto that bandwagon.

A couple of points since we’re looking to be accurate here. The establishment clause says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. The separation of church and state was an invention of the courts. Also whether the creationism or divine intervention are taught does nothing to establish a state religion. I must be missing something because you seem to assume that the presence or absence of a divinity of some sort, that may or may not have had a hand in our in our evolutionary process, can not now nor ever, be proven nor dis-proven. I’m just not sure that’s true.

To be quite honest, I can’t buy into the whole religion thing myself. I have friends that are both quite intelligent and quite religious. And as chance would have it, believe much of what is written in the bible. They haven’t convinced me but I don’t discredit either their sincerity nor their intelligence.

As for windmills, I’m lost on your reasoning here. Windmills have absolutely nothing to do with gas stations. We could erect a billion windmills and it won’t change the volume of gas nor the number of gas stations. Just for the record, we use coal primarily for electric generation (about 50% of the power is generated by coal, about 1% is generated by oil).

I think you’re splitting hairs when talking about weening vs replacing. The end game is the same. An alternative energy source. The problem with windmills is that they get you no closer to the end game. As I said, they require massive land use, long distance transmission, massive investment in an energy grid, and massive subsidies to make them viable. And let’s not forget the possible health hazards from electromagnetic energy from the transmission lines. Not to mention that they are primarily manufactured overseas. Let me see, what have I forgotten. Even if we erect these thousands of windmills, they will be obsolete when we do move to an affordable energy source, but remain as giant monoliths. Testimony to our lack of foresight.

I have no problem with reasonable alternatives. If you want to argue solar, I could get on board. It has the advantage of being local, you can put it on your roof and not have to build a transmission network (at incredible cost). The problem I see here is the cost/benefit isn’t quite there yet. Maybe a little research in that area and we wouldn’t be arguing.

There are lots of ways to solve our energy problems both short term and long term. Windmills just aren’t one of them. They aren’t a bridge to get us anywhere, they are a pit stop. Sure we’re using less carbon but we aren’t going anywhere. We’re just wasting time (and money).

@Jaxk There are, as you note, a few missing spots in the fossil record of exactly how we evolved to where we are today. However the evidence is scientifically convincing. This has been a settled matter for a century with mainstream sceinces focused on the evidence. To believe in young earth creationism, which seems to be what the Christian right wants taught in schools, you have to reject a great deal of all the scientific evidence that underpins geology, cosmology, and biology. Hence, it is a belief system, and has nothing remotely like science behind it. Applying the scientific method makes an utter mockery of it. We certainly don’t want science classes in the US teaching that the scientific method is invalid.

@ETpro

Certainly not. But I think we may be arguing the grey areas here. Just out of curiosity, are you saying that any attempt to suggest that something outside of our known (theoretical) evolutionary path may have contributed or altered our evolution, is impossible?

Could a meteor have landed with microbes that blended with the microbes here or the animals here and altered or accelerated our DNA makeup? Or could an alien life form have actually visited and altered our DNA? Or could an apparently godlike being have played a role in the apparent jumps in our development. I’m not suggesting any of this happened, just wondering if you feel it is impossible and scientifically invalid.

@Jaxk No, I am not saying that we can rule out external influences. You can even make a rational, though not scientifically supportable, argument for Intelligent Design. You can say, sure we see evidence of evolution. That is the tool God used, guiding natural selection divinely. What you can’t say without completely rejecting the value of scientific observation is that the Genesis story is literal, days mean 24 hour days, the Begats give us a historical time-line up to ancient Israel’s establishment, and therefore the Universe is about 6,000 years old and dinosaurs were on the ark with Noah.

You can’t teach meteorites full of DNA or ancient extraterrestrials visiting Earth and tweaking DNA or God as the Intelligent Designer as science, because none of them are provable by science, or even falsifiable by it. Science needs to be confined to what we can discern using the scientific method. We recognize that it isn’t perfect. Newton’s Gravity was held in high esteem for a long time, but eventually had to change slightly because Einstein’s General Relativity explains the motion of objects in space just slightly better. But things determined by the scientific method are a whole lot more likely to be true than things determined by ancient legends or personal hypothesis.

@ETpro

I think your trying too hard to make your case. I haven’t heard the 24 hour day theory in quite some time. Even by the most devoted followers. Hell if you not here on earth the 24 hour day doesn’t exist. Some place even as close as Venus has a day that lasts almost a year of our time. I’m not sure why you’re using that argument unless you have nothing better.

@Jaxk I think you just obnubilate until any disagreement with right wing ideology is so far off track it is no longer meaningful. Here is a Creationist arguing that his solid scientific research (consisting of surveys of public opinion) proves we should teach Creationism in public schools alongside evolution. Competing and equal theories. In case you truly are unaware of the Creationists efforts from the religious right, here’s a list of recent pushes and actions state by state.

The Supreme Court has held this is rubbish.

@Jaxk – Immanuel Kant once said: “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”

For almost two millennia until the 19th century a lot of experienced doctors applied a procedure called bloodletting, which is not effective for most diseases. Indeed it is mostly harmful, since it can weaken the patient and facilitate infections.

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable, to predict future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Evolution is no longer a hypothesis. It has become a full-fledged theory. Of course both hypotheses and theories can be refuted and there are many examples. Just take Newtons theory of gravitation. As of November, 22, 2010 there is not a single scientist on our planet who has been able to refute evolution.

Creationism is not a science because their supporters are neither (good) scientists nor do they apply scientific method. In fact, they fail to interpret Genesis properly. So here comes one of my famous quotes:

“Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life—birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science.”—Michael Shermer

Barack Obama and Colin Powell do understand the difference between myths and science while Sarah Palin obviously does not.

Like Kenneth Miller I’m a scientist and a Christian who believes in God. Evolution is a scientific theory, not an atheistic theory. I think this interview might help you understand what I mean.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/defense-evolution.html

“I think one of the reasons why evolution is such a contentious issue, quite frankly, is the same reason you can go into a bar and start a fight by saying something about somebody’s mother.”

One more thing: Evolution is about the development of life, not the origin of life. For the latter scientists have not yet found an accepted theory, only a few competing hypotheses, for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Clay_theory

@mattbrowne – I think we should start all discussions about evolution and creationism like the “yo mama” jokes from now on.

Like, “Yo evolution’s is so fat, when it sits around the house, it really sits around the house.”

“Oh yeah, well yo creationism’s so fat that it fell and broke it’s leg, and gravy poured out.”

@mattbrowne

Ah yes, the primordial soup hypothesis. I kinda like that one. I find the surveys however to be a bit ambiguous. If I was asked whether I believed in evolution or creationism in some sort, I’m not sure how I’d answer. If I was asked if I was taught creationism, likewise, I’m not sure how I’d answer. I certainly think people should know what creationism is all about. It’s had way too much impact on history to totally ignore it. But I think maybe @iamthemob has the right idea.

Yo, evolution is so fat, it’s high school picture was an aerial photograph.

@Jaxk – Evolution and science in general is not about beliefs. It’s about support or rejection. Until scientists can clearly refute evolution, we should all support it, because it’s the best theory we got. If we don’t, believe me this kind of thinking endangers our future. Without science and technology our planet can support a few dozen million people at most. Not 6.7 billion. And certainly not 9 billion. And this is where we are headed. Brainwashing kids with creationism is gross negligence to say the least. We need all the talent we can get. We need plenty of new ideas to deal with the resource and energy crisis. There’s a lot at stake and many still don’t realize it.