Re: paleonet Moral Values Means Anti-Science

["John F Bratton" <jbratton@xxxxxxxx>]

Lisa Park wrote:

>>The time is now for all of us to come together and realize what is
happening.  One THIRD of Americans are evangelical Christians.  They
interpret the Bible literally, which means that they do not believe Earth
is >>4.6 billion years old, but do believe that the Flood caused the Grand
Canyon.  What was once thought of as a "fringe" element in American society
has become the majority and, as witnessed on Tuesday, they >>VOTE.


>>The question is?..what are we going to do?  To borrow from two recent
campaign ads: there ARE wolves lurking in the forest?are we going to bury
our heads in the sand?

Richard Dawkins has said, "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet
somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant,
stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."


Nice.


According to Barna (
http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Topic&TopicID=11) only 8% of
Americans were evangelical Christians in 2000, but 43% of Americans are
regular churchgoers.


Equating opposition to abortion and gay marriage with being anti-science is
a gross mischaracterization.  For example, Catholics make up about 24% of
the U.S. population.  Well over half voted for Bush, even though Kerry is
Catholic, particularly because of abortion, gay-marriage, and stem cell
differences.  The Catholic church has no problem with evolution, and
insists only on the special creation of the human soul.  Continuing to
sweep all religious people into a "fringe" fundamentalist bin and
demonizing them as the enemies of science and reason only perpetuates the
faulty warfare description of the relationship between science and
religion.  Over 50% of Americans believe evolution happened, and 75% of
those believe in God.  Abstracts of some of the presentations from a GSA
session last year on the topic may be informative [see
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/finalprogram/session_9703.htm ]

Damnant quod non intelligunt cuts both ways.


-John Bratton