Gallup: Plurality of Americans skeptical about evolution

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

If you equate evolution with competition between organisms to ascertain which is the fittest, conservatives ought to love it as they tend to believe competition is good and challenges each member to be his best. An evolutionless world would look to many American conservatives as the biological equivalent of the government: no real competition.

While conservatives in the US largely believe in competition between individuals, that is because conservatism is here associated with laisse-faire capitalism and hence preserving that social order unchanged is part of the conservative ideal here.  However conservatism does not believe that such competition should lead to evolving social systems.  Rather conservatism believes that society ought to be static in its social structure.  Conservative dogma holds that if one were to take a random sample of people from 1014 and a second random sample of people from 2014, while each sample would have stronger and weaker individuals, then once controlled for the effects of a thousand years of technological development there would be no discernible differences between the two samples taken as a whole because the nature of man is unchanging.  Conservatism holds that society should be without evolution and that our current society (or perhaps a past version, if one is a reactionary conservative) is the best possible one and that any deviation from it inevitably leads not to evolution, but to degeneracy.

[dead0man]

Being anti-science is bad, but that's not only a conservative problem.  There are more than a few lefty types that hate fluoride in water and GM crops.

[politicus]

Being anti-science is bad, but that's not only a conservative problem.  There are more than a few lefty types that hate fluoride in water and GM crops.

The arguments against GM crops are not necessarily "anti-science", there are legitimate and rational concerns about this technology.

[dead0man]

Being anti-science is bad, but that's not only a conservative problem.  There are more than a few lefty types that hate fluoride in water and GM crops.

The arguments against GM crops are not necessarily "anti-science", there are legitimate concerns about this.

Are there?  'cause every time it comes up here (and elsewhere) I always hear the same sh**t.  "there are studies" when asked for a cite, nothing.  "Monsanto sucks" sure, but what's that got to do with anything?  Ranting nonsense about "monoagriculture" and "won't someone think of the seeds" hand wringing.

Being against GM crops IS anti-science, just like denying evolution.  But only one of those anti-science positions actually gets people killed.

[politicus]

Being anti-science is bad, but that's not only a conservative problem.  There are more than a few lefty types that hate fluoride in water and GM crops.

The arguments against GM crops are not necessarily "anti-science", there are legitimate concerns about this.

Are there?  'cause every time it comes up here (and elsewhere) I always hear the same sh**t.  "there are studies" when asked for a cite, nothing.  "Monsanto sucks" sure, but what's that got to do with anything?  Ranting nonsense about "monoagriculture" and "won't someone think of the seeds" hand wringing.

Being against GM crops IS anti-science, just like denying evolution.  But only one of those anti-science positions actually gets people killed.

There is no consensus on this, something is only anti-science if the vast majority of scientific evidence points in one direction. There may be near consensus in North America (but it's eroding and AFAIK there were always critical scientists), but not elsewhere.

A quick link. I haven't checkd up on his credentials, but his criticism is fairly standard in the European debate on this.

http://gmosummit.org/former-pro-gmo-scientist/#.UmgKApa6IdY.facebook

"Genetic engineering is 40 years old. It is based on the naive understanding of the genome based on the One Gene – one protein hypothesis of 70 years ago, that each gene codes for a single protein. The Human Genome project completed in 2002 showed that this hypothesis is wrong.

The whole paradigm of the genetic engineering technology is based on a misunderstanding. Every scientist now learns that any gene can give more than one protein and that inserting a gene anywhere in a plant eventually creates rogue proteins. Some of these proteins are obviously allergenic or toxic."

No matter what ones personal opinion is, this is an issue where there is a scientific debate going on, so being against GMO isn't in itself anti-science.

As a guide to the anti-GMO evidence there is this report "GMO myths and truth".

http://earthopensource.org/gmomythsandtruths/download/

[dead0man]

Where are the studies showing any harm?  Good luck, you're going to need it.

[politicus]

Where are the studies showing any harm?  Good luck, you're going to need it.

Scientific studies are rarely published online, but here are some examples.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/04/08/10-scientific-studies-proving-gmos-can-be-harmful-to-human-health/

[dead0man]

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and from wiki

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From Academics Review

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(I really hope I'm not wasting my time here, but I'll go on)

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and from the Savvy Celiac

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(seriously, this isn't easy, but it's not exactly hard either....if a person really cares what goes into their body, they can use Google just as good as me....ok, maybe not as good as me as my Google Fu is quite strong, but no Google Fu has been required so far.  Admittedly the alarmists have so far been outnumbering the good science by a factor of about 10:1, but the science has always been on the first page)

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I was wondering when <scary voice>Rat Tumors</voice> was going to show up and here it is at number 4!  I'm not even going to bother with that one.

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From wiki

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Should I do the last 5?  I can't imagine they would put their best "gotcha" that high on the list.....

[politicus]

Dead0man, the point here isn't who are right or wrong about GMO, but that there is a scientific debate going on, which means that it is not anti-science to be sceptical about GMO technology.

My own reasons to be sceptical about GMO has none to do with any direct health risk and all to do with the kind of pesticide based agriculture this approach is promoting and the risk of modified genes spreading to other non-modified plants.

So yes, you are wasting your time - because you are missing the point - which is that there is objectively a scientific debate going on about those issues.
 

[dead0man]

In the same way as there is objectively a scientific debate going on about vaccines.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Believe it or not, I believe in both creation and evolution, and I find it laughable that so many Christians feel threatened by evolutionary theory.  If anything, evolution complements and affirms the truth of Genesis and the biblical account of creation.  Conservative Christians do themselves (and God) a tremendous disservice by refusing to accept evolution.  Just because some elements of Darwin's theory may contradict Scripture doesn't mean the whole theory is false; it just means that those parts of it are.  Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, we should be embracing the elements of evolution that affirm God as creator.

[Famous Mortimer]

Believe it or not, I believe in both creation and evolution, and I find it laughable that so many Christians feel threatened by evolutionary theory.  If anything, evolution complements and affirms the truth of Genesis and the biblical account of creation.  Conservative Christians do themselves (and God) a tremendous disservice by refusing to accept evolution.  Just because some elements of Darwin's theory may contradict Scripture doesn't mean the whole theory is false; it just means that those parts of it are.  Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, we should be embracing the elements of evolution that affirm God as creator.

What about parts of scripture that contridict other parts of scripture? Like what day of the week Jesus was crucified on?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Literal evolution on the part of chimps, seems to be suspect of most people. But, dwarfism, ice age neatherthals that replaced the continental drift and extinction of the dinosaurs is documented by fossils.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Looks like 50% evolution 42% creationism to me.

And 19% for atheistic evolution is some serious movement, even though the gains are mainly shifts within the evolution crowd and no conversions.

The fact that more and more evolution rationalists are making the jump to atheism is splendid news!

A good number of those people are the sorts who probably characterize themselves as deists if they're familiar with the term.

And a large number of deists are going to get to atheism, eventually.  Deists are largely people that have looked at the world on a, how do I say, somewhat more superficial, everyday level and have seen that lack of a need for god/gods.  What happens when these people get into physics, astronomy, and Big Bang cosmology?  There are not a lot of bonafide facts when it comes to the origin of our universe, but what is a fact is that more and more and more aspects of existence and the nature of the cosmos that are being discovered that show no need for the supernatural.  Science has taken us through the natural progression of being able to explain things here on Earth, but in the last 40-50 years we've taken gigantic steps in understanding the cosmos.  Even the age old "How can something come from nothing?" isn't even relevant anymore, because we observe particles blipping in and out of existence everyday, as well as more mathematical proofs (and I'm not stupid enough to claim that I thoroughly understand these equations) that show a relation to the total estimated energy in our universe, Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle, and the fact that the total amount of energy that can be contained in one cubic Planck length (the smallest possible volume) correlates exactly with the amount of energy that Einstein's equations predict can suddenly come into and out of existence in a vacuum.  Simply put, that sphere of our understanding where much had to be the work of the supernatural is shrinking and shrinking.  It can never go away, of course, but I wouldn't be playing smaller and smaller odds at casino for eternity, either.