I was going to leave aside the foolishness of a question about "belief" in evolution (which merely demonstrates a profound ignorance on the part of the questioner regarding the practice of science), but the apparently-quite-bright Anthropologist interviewed in the article said it better than I would have, anyway:
"Religion gives people a way of explaining the world," Prof. Willoughby said. "We're not in the belief business, we're in the science business."
Right. Stop bugging me about your beliefs and talk about something interesting, please.
Hat tip to Peter Watts
12 comments:
Dude, are there really that many fundies bothering you with their religious beliefs on any given day?
Fuck, man, that's making me depressed. Then again, I always figured that most people around here are complete idiots, so I guess these results show it.
Speaking of that, yesterday I was a gigantic idiot. I'll post about that tonight.
Dude, are there really that many fundies bothering you with their religious beliefs on any given day?
No, I haven't met any fundies here, yet. I spend most of my time hiding in the basement of the Ivory Tower, though, so I don't get much exposure.
The survey doesn't break the data down further than by province, so I don't know the relative proportions / probability of encountering a fundie for Guelph. The big churches in town are a Catholic and an Anglican cathedral, though I know there are several other churches around. I ignore them, and so far they've been ignoring me. Basement living means I get essentially zero door-to-door of any kind.
The thought that about 1 in 2 randomly-selected Onterriblians is a fool is disconcerting, though.
When I lived in a basement I did get door-to-door evangelizing twice. I guess the nutjobs in Guelph are lazy compared to the ones where I went to school.
Oh man, there was a guy at Gore Park (here in Hamilton) who was playing Christian piano-music stuff EXTREMELY loudly a couple of weekends ago. It completely ruined my shopping experience...
here in Hamilton
12:05 PM, June 24, 2007
You're not in Hamilton right now, you're in Halifax. But point taken - I'm not at all surprised that such happens in 'the Hammer'. It probably happens here, too, but I haven't seen it yet. So far, the only loud music in public I've met has been a garage band set up on two Saturdays downtown playing covers of Led Zepplin and Eric Clapton songs.
When I lived in a basement I did get door-to-door evangelizing twice.
Weird. I've only been here 6 months, so maybe it just hasn't happened yet. My door is one of three at the back of the house (pizza guy was so confused; he was knocking on the back door to the garage); was your door at the front or side?
You all seem to be forgetting that ~20% of the Province's population is a visible minority (as of 2001), many of whom are recent immigrants. The GTA absorbs about 40% of the immigrants to Canada which translates to about 100,000 immigrants into the GTA, nevermind the rest of Ontario. many of these immigrants are from South Asia (inclusing Pakistan) and Africa and may have cultural predispositions to creationism. I would also include those of Chinese origin who may not have a theistic opposition to evlution, but are very superstitious and reject science in favour of explanations involving ghosts.
Call me un-PC in this department but rexcently (last five years) I've begun to feel that an excessively liberal immigration policy can have detrimental effects to the cultural/economic/political stability of our country.
Call me un-PC in this department but rexcently (last five years) I've begun to feel that an excessively liberal immigration policy can have detrimental effects to the cultural/economic/political stability of our country.
This actually raises several interesting issues about immigration and "liberal" values.
It's a widespread observation that the people who tend to most support immigration (besides recent immigrants themselves) tend to be politically somewhat leftish (NB: yes, the whole left-right thing is dumb). But the immigrants themselves are often politically much more rightish, though they may consitute the more liberal segment of the society they left. So, while the happy smiley people who greet newcomer strangers at the airport and help them find jobs and so on tend to have a set of opinions that include such attitudes as support for abortion rights, gay marriage, etc, the recent immigrants often have a set of opinions centred on traditional religious views (I'll include the superstitions of those arriving from officially atheistic communist countries in this category). Conflict follows, of course.
For the record, I'm in favour of increased immigration, and streamlined processes for such things as transfer of certification and skilled labour. I'm also always happy when I see that, once again, Canada scores as a xenophilic country on surveys of attitudes, in contrast to generally slight or wide-spread negative feelings towards immigrants and immigration.
The newcomers can hardly be stupider than what we grow domestically, can they?
Furthermore, the immigration-bias explanation does not account for the Quebec results - Montreal is also a major immigrant attractor, as is Vancouver, and both Quebec and B.C. scored much higher on this national I.Q. test.
The door was on the side, kind of recessed, almost like a cellar. There was an outer door that was unlocked and an inner door that was locked. I was always amazed that there were never any hobos living in there.
By liberal I meant free or without regulation...not left-right.
I like to think of myself as a liberal thinker in this regard. :)
I'm certainly in favour of more immigrants to fill ur labour needs, etc. Hey, I was there...or more preceisely, my folks.
Regardless of what you might want to think, many of the recent immigrants to our country are skeptical of science as a whole. When teaching in north/western TO, (read Rexdale) many of the kids were of Somali/Ethiopian decent.
Now where's the question: how will you convince them that evolution is a plausible explanation for the diversity of life on earth when you can't convince them that clitordectomies (FGM-female genital mutialtion) are unethical?
We're dealing with a clash of cultures here, it's not a mere ideological dispute.
Also,
Furthermore, the immigration-bias explanation does not account for the Quebec results - Montreal is also a major immigrant attractor, as is Vancouver, and both Quebec and B.C. scored much higher on this national I.Q. test.
Read the link. Ontario has 19.1% visible minorities, Quebec has 7%. Ontario and BC have about 20% visible minorities though I would suggest that Ontario and BC have very different compositions of ethnicities from different parts of the globe and different ideologies. Nevertheless you'll find that Ontario and BC are roughly equal in regard to who 'beleives' in evolution but Quebec is about 3 times lower...and low and behold so is their precentage of visible minorities!
...wow, this is sounding unintentionally racist. I think my point is that if one has a large number of immigrants of strict Muslim belief from countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, or from North Eastern Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, etc), one would expect a greater number of antievolutionist sentiment in said province. That’s all. It has nothing to do with education/race but much to do with belief.
It has nothing to do with education/race but much to do with belief.
Fair enough, I thought your comments were pretty clear on that, and I didn't take them as racist.
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