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1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

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Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#91

Post by lutusp »

GhotiFish wrote: post #85
antocv wrote: post #11

Who cares about these studies? I too would answer that the Earth orbits the moon if a sciency guy approached me in any kind of test and asked this question.

You might have to explain that one to me.

These sorts of arguments all fail the most basic principle of relativity -- that any viewpoint is relative. One can argue that the earth orbits the moon or the reverse, but the best way to think about it is that the earth and moon orbit their common center of mass. And that common center of mass orbits the sun -- or, if you prefer, the earth/moon common center of mass and the sun' center of mass have another common center of mass, around which they mutually orbit.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#92

Post by carsongross »

lutusp wrote: post #90
carsongross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for this? In my experience people with largely religious principles tempered by compassion are just as reliable as self-identified rationalists. There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years...

> Do you have any evidence for this? The history of religion? The Inquisition, as just one example among many? Being absolutely sure that God is on your side is a powerful drug. > There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years ... Yes, but it can't compare to the well-established historical connection between religion and war. One example -- try to imagine recent Indian history without the eff…

Sure, the Inquisition was bad. But so was the gulag. Seems like the 'tempered by compassion' thing is more important than the left hand side, doesn't it?

There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war. From http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/06/god_and_the...

"Moreover, the chief complaint against religion -- that it is history's prime instigator of intergroup conflict -- does not withstand scrutiny. Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A BBC-sponsored "God and War" audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on a 0-to-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars = 0, Crusades = 5), found that more than 60 percent had no religious motivation. Less than 7 percent earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history's most lethal century of international bloodshed."

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#93

Post by carsongross »

wonderzombie wrote: post #89
carsongross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for this? In my experience people with largely religious principles tempered by compassion are just as reliable as self-identified rationalists. There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years...

What worries me more is people who believe the world is going to end in their lifetimes. How can we plan for the long-term future, as a species, with that kind of worldview?

Sure, those people worry me too. Even the ones that think a "Singularity" is going to zap them up to techno-heaven.

The people who don't believe in objective right and wrong also worry me.

It's a long list.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#94

Post by Houshalter »

piyush_soni wrote: post #63
jsdalton wrote: post #28

While true, the actual data presents a different picture: http://i.imgur.com/FXMlOZB.png [source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07.... ] So actually, the U.S. had the second highest score on that question, behind South Korea. Furthermore, the U.S. consistently performed on par or higher vs. the other countries/regions for the remaining questions. The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey…

Does that mean around 1 out of 2 Americans doesn't believe in evolution? That's scary.

Why? The vast majority are religious as well.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#95

Post by lutusp »

carsongross wrote: post #92
lutusp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have any evidence for this? The history of religion? The Inquisition, as just one example among many? Being absolutely sure that God is on your side is a powerful drug. > There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years ... Yes, but it can't compare to the well-established historical connection between religion and war. One example -- try to imagine recent Indian history without the eff…

Sure, the Inquisition was bad. But so was the gulag. Seems like the 'tempered by compassion' thing is more important than the left hand side, doesn't it? There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war. From http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/06/god_and_the... "Moreover, the chief complaint against religion -- that it is history's prime instigator of intergroup conflict -- does not wi…

> There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war.

Absolutely false -- you have grossly overstated your claim and even contradicted your own sources. You have posted statistics that say either 7% or 40% (depending on source) of wars are caused by religion, and then blithely made a claim that contradicts your own evidence.

If your claim were true, having religious beliefs would produce a reduction in warlike tendencies and violence in religious believers, a claim that is obviously false. If you want to argue that religion doesn't lead to violence in and of itself, you have to ignore India, 9/11, every bombed abortion clinic, and dozens of other examples from the recent past, to say nothing of history. You would have to live in perpetual denial of reality.

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

I can't meaningfully quote from the above article -- every line contradicts your claim.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#96

Post by Houshalter »

wonderzombie wrote: post #89
carsongross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for this? In my experience people with largely religious principles tempered by compassion are just as reliable as self-identified rationalists. There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years...

What worries me more is people who believe the world is going to end in their lifetimes. How can we plan for the long-term future, as a species, with that kind of worldview?

I think the world will end in our lifetimes. We are only a generation away from strong AI at most.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#97

Post by tzs »

jsdalton wrote: post #28

While true, the actual data presents a different picture: http://i.imgur.com/FXMlOZB.png [source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07.... ] So actually, the U.S. had the second highest score on that question, behind South Korea. Furthermore, the U.S. consistently performed on par or higher vs. the other countries/regions for the remaining questions. The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey…

On the question of whether or not the universe began with a huge explosion, they say the correct answer is "true".

Is that actually correct? This was before cosmic inflation, so the whole universe was very small at the instant of the Big Bang, and so wasn't it actually a small explosion?

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#98

Post by lutusp »

tzs wrote: post #97
jsdalton wrote: post #28

While true, the actual data presents a different picture: http://i.imgur.com/FXMlOZB.png [source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07.... ] So actually, the U.S. had the second highest score on that question, behind South Korea. Furthermore, the U.S. consistently performed on par or higher vs. the other countries/regions for the remaining questions. The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey…

On the question of whether or not the universe began with a huge explosion, they say the correct answer is "true". Is that actually correct? This was before cosmic inflation, so the whole universe was very small at the instant of the Big Bang, and so wasn't it actually a small explosion?

Cosmic inflation changed the expansion rate of the "explosion", but this doesn't mean there wasn't an explosion.

Cosmic inflation changed the density ratio between spacetime and mass/energy, but the entirety of the universe's mass/energy came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. So yes, some explosion that.

Remember about this particular explosion that it wasn't an explosion of mass/energy into the empty space of a pre-existing universe, but an explosion of mass/energy and spacetime into nothing -- the Big Bang was space, time and mass/energy.

In other words, there was no "before" before the Big Bang, and there was no "outside" outside the Big Bang. The Big Bang was everything.

More detail here: http://arachnoid.com/gravity

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#99

Post by dennisgorelik »

lutusp wrote: post #90
carsongross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for this? In my experience people with largely religious principles tempered by compassion are just as reliable as self-identified rationalists. There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years...

> Do you have any evidence for this? The history of religion? The Inquisition, as just one example among many? Being absolutely sure that God is on your side is a powerful drug. > There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years ... Yes, but it can't compare to the well-established historical connection between religion and war. One example -- try to imagine recent Indian history without the eff…

9/11 was an attack mostly fueled by Saudi Arabians pissed off by US involvement in the Middle East in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular.

Blaming it on Islam is missing the point.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#100

Post by dennisgorelik »

lutusp wrote: post #95
carsongross wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the Inquisition was bad. But so was the gulag. Seems like the 'tempered by compassion' thing is more important than the left hand side, doesn't it? There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war. From http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/06/god_and_the... "Moreover, the chief complaint against religion -- that it is history's prime instigator of intergroup conflict -- does not wi…

> There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war. Absolutely false -- you have grossly overstated your claim and even contradicted your own sources. You have posted statistics that say either 7% or 40% (depending on source) of wars are caused by religion, and then blithely made a claim that contradicts your own evidence. If your claim were true, having religious beliefs would produce a reductio…

If anything, atheism has stronger correlation with wars and violence than religion has (after controlling for the age of civilization).

Consider WW2: it was not backed up by religion. USSR was an atheist state and Germany was only mildly religious.

How about Cambodian Civil War: what was Pol Pot's religion?

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