Re: 61% of Americans believe what?

From: Kaz (KazVorpal_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 01/28/05 

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 16:44:01 -0600

"Michael Clark" <biteme@spammer.com> wrote in message
news:f4mdnW3PZM5G2HPcRVnyhQ@skypoint.com...
> These statistics are fun. I saw another somewhere that said
> some bizarre figure (way past 50%) of respondants in a survey
> were convinced that the sun orbited the earth exactly ~once a day~.
>
> People are *stupid*, folks.

Actually, this demonstrates the stupidity of the poll-takers and journalists
as much as anything else. Ironically, if you polled the same group of people
as in the 61% biblical creation response, and asked them if they believed in
dinosaurs, you'd probably get an 80% yes response. But dinosaurs didn't
exist in the Bible. Why's this? Because many of that 61% weren't thinking
about evolution vs creation, they were simply thinking "sure, I believe in
the Bible". A competent poll maker would have made the actual question
clearer...unless he was looking to sell a sensational poll result. Or, as
the case may be, a competent journalist wouldn't interpret a vague question
as evidence that 61% of people think the planet is 6K years old, unless HE
was looking for sensation (or to bash the red states).

> It's the reason we have GW for
> president and

The reason we have W as president is that our joke of a two party oligopoly
didn't present us with any viable alternative. Two guys who BOTH claimed
Iraq should be attacked, for example. Or a guy who wanted to raise taxes vs
a guy who kept passing fake tax cuts which are comprised mainly of "refunds"
(more a cash handout than a tax cut) and "tax credits" (which are,
literally, nothing more than a form of welfare).

> it's the reason Marco et al can pass unnoticed on
> our streets. It isn't that they have an argument, it's that they don't
> have an audience that thinks.
>
> And Algis, dear heart, you're right in the middle of it.

Unfortunately, that same governmental system which produced the last four
"lesser of two evils" presidential elections has also moulded an academic
system in which blind defense of the existing consensus of preconceptions
seems inevitable. Government funding and regulation is to modern science
what the Church was to science in the day of Galileo.

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