Inherit the Flatulence?
Here are the results of a new poll by Zogby measuring the public's views on Teaching the Controversy v. Darwinian Totalitarianism. The Evo News post is here. What I find most striking is the clear progression when looking at age demographics. Support for teaching the controversy is as follows:
Age //Support
18-24 // 83.9%
25-34 // 79.6%
35-54 // 70.5%
55-69 // 61.1%
70+ // 51.2%
This does not bode well for the future of Darwinian Totalitarianism.
My theory of why this is the case? I call those over 60 or so the "Inherit the Wind Generation." The mythology promulgated by that play and movie permeates that generation's thinking, and provides most of what it "knows" about the Scopes trial. Of course, Inherit the Wind is nothing close to an accurate portrayal of the actual Scopes trial, and the cultural dynamics have dramatically changed since 1925. However, the fact remains that at one point it was an incredibly powerful piece of propaganda.
Younger generations are not as familiar with the play or movie, and are more aware of the current efforts by some members of the scientific community and federal judiciary to stifle or crush (often by means of misrepresentation) any attempts to question Darwinian orthodoxy. They are also likely to have heard about some of the problems with macroevolutionary theory, and may be curious to know more.
I also got a good chuckle out of another tidbit: the education demographic where the Darwinistas do best is the group with less than a high school diploma.
posted by Lawrence Selden @ 2:10 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Children are raised by the mall and grow up in a culture of vapid evangelicalism and unfiltered information. They're also fascinated by the notion of the man behind the curtain.
One could have asked the Hitler youth if they wanted to learn about challenges to Judaism and gotten a similar response. It's meaningless. Whims of the majority are just that, and science shouldn't be made to bend to them.
Is this next for you people? Maybe we should teach challenges to the idea that the Earth moves around the Sun, as this learned book asserts. We should teach the controversy, right? I'd say this sure is one hell of a controversy. I bet the author has a doctorate and everything.
We'd have people [evangelical christians] complaining about georelativist fundamentalism, and how they're afraid to speak up in colleges about their belief that the Earth doesn't revolve around the Sun, for fear of reprisal or persecution.
But, we should teach the controversy.
http://www.fixedearth.com/old_format.html
The old heliocentrism saw, Stewie? Surely you didn't just blindly believe something someone told you because they were saying things you wanted to hear. That's something those Bible-thumpers do.
Terracentrism remained in Western thought not because of the Bible, but because of Aristotle.
Aristotelian scientists back in Copernicus' and Galileo's day were the equivalent of the evolutionist crowd today - the entrenched establishment, jealous of their position and willing to accuse potential usurpers of heresy to stay put.
Did you love your hamster, Stewie?
Let me correct something before the pedants get a chance to. I meant to say:
Aristotelian scientists back in Copernicus' and Galileo's day were the equivalent of the fundamentalist Darwinian evolutionist crowd today
It's a pain in the posterior to type all that out, but it is unfortunately necessary when one is dealing with the sophists I've usually seen responding to blogs like these.
Actually, IDers are more analogous to the Catholic Church in Galileo's time than any other analogy... you know, that whole "God did it" thing. It is utterly unnecessary to relive that.
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