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Originally Posted by willravel
It's more than one, and that's too many.
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I certainly won't fault you for your idealism, will.
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You act like the school thing is the only problem. It's not. It's everything from museums to churches.
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What portion of those 50% that don't believe in evolution are trying to actively subvert science or force you to agree with them? If you don't know, then it's a red herring because you're trying to claim a correlation between not believing in evolution and exercising religious intolerance without actually having any evidence of a correlation. I mean, it seems like a plausible correlation, I guess, but a lot of things that seem plausible don't stand up to scrutiny. It's bad science to assume something is true without actually trying to prove it is. It isn't bad theology necessarily, but it is bad science.
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I couldn't care less whether religion is bigger or smaller now. The point is that not believing in evolution is dangerous.
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How is it dangerous? People didn't believe in evolution for most of human history. I think that the theory of evolution is irrelevant to most people. I know that if you were to surgically remove any concept of evolution from my brain whilst leaving everything else intact absolutely nothing would change about the way I look at the world, and I believe in evolution. It's just that as far as theories that play an active role in shaping my world view go it ranks somewhere near geology-- it's trivia.
Given that many people have problems wrapping their heads around basic math, chemistry and physics it doesn't seem that out of the question that there would be a lot of people who have trouble wrapping their heads around the concept of evolution. And since knowledge of evolution doesn't really matter all that much in the day to day activities of most people, including most scientists, it doesn't surprise me that a lot of people don't seem to care about it, or understand enough of it to see how much sense it makes. It certainly doesn't scare me, anymore than the fact that Bush got elected to a second term scares me. It's par for the course as far as humanity goes.
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A god that controls facts at will that creates a universe in which facts exist that contradict his own religious teachings either is trying to test people or doesn't exist, but again that's not relevant. What is relevant is that evolution is as real as gravity, and ID is championed by dangerous people.
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I won't disagree with this. I just don't think that it's as dramatic as you and Mr. Missile think it is. Maybe that has more to do with the fact that I live in a really liberal place where religious intolerance is generally viewed with contempt (by lots of people who also happen to be religious) and so it doesn't often have the chance to get much momentum.
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You could start with "Oh, you're right. Science doesn't have anything to do with meaning. That's philsoohpy. Silly me!"
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I wasn't talking about meaning, I was talking about making sense of reality, something which is the cornerstone of scientific inquiry. And if you think that philosophy and science aren't closely related you should do more science. It's like pig once said, and I hope he'll forgive me if I'm misappropriating his words for evil ends: there's a reason that the highest degrees offered in most scientific fields is a doctor of philosophy. Science is philosophy.