Surviving A Post Truth World - Fighting A War Between Reason And Superstition
The aeons long war between logic and superstition has escalated in recent years, however something I have read recently tells me that we are at a crucial stage in this silent conflict, and logic, and empirical evidence are in trouble, and they need our help.
Land Of The Free
Despite the wishes of the founding fathers, America is a Christian nation. The mention of religious freedom in the Declaration of Independence, highlights the fact that no one religion should be dominant in American society.
This of course is not the case today, emblazoned on all American currency today, are the words; In God We Trust, changed from E pluribus unum in 1956 by the deeply religious, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Today there are a few voices pointing out that the change was unconstitutional, and that it breaks the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. However in various polls in recent years, the In God We Trust motto is supported by around 90% of Americans.
Post-Truth Manipulation
Imagine for a second, that you bump into me on the street, and I scream in your face "The sun's a ball of ice!"
In that scenario, depending on where you were, you would walk past me, or simply back away slowly whilst smiling and not breaking eye contact.
Now imagine that you are going shopping for groceries, and just as you are about to go into the store, you notice a small group of people, who start to scream at you; *"Wake up! The sun is a ball of ice."
Hmm, you are beginning to wonder what is going on, however you have managed to avoid me and my nutty friends, so no harm done.
Then later that night, you settle down in front of the TV and you hear on the news that they want to start teaching children that the sun is a ball of ice. The newsreader says that campaigners for the theory, say that it should be taught alongside the theory that the sun is in fact a ball of helium and hydrogen, along with a few other trace elements.
God Needs To Lose The Midterm
In 1998 a bunch of Republican candidates were asked if they believed in the theory of evolution. Just under half said they did. They asked the same candidates four years later, and the number had fallen to just a few.
By 2002 only Jeb Bush would publicly admit that he believed in the theory, but added a caveat that it shouldn't be taught in schools. He later amended his statement to say that opposing world views should be taught.
Let me pause here briefly, to state that I have absolutely no problem with anyone believing whatever they want, I would rather people went on evidence and logic, but hey, I'm not going to talk anyone down for being religious.
However the very definition of faith, which even most religious people adhere to. Is that you are believing in something that is completely non-provable (as opposed to not yet proven), using reason, critical thinking, and the scientific process in general; fair enough.
Schools; and education in a wider sense, should surely be about the passing on of provable facts. By doing so, we equip the generation after us with the right tools to create their own discoveries and inventions.
Imagine if there were two schools of thought for how electricity worked; one whereby you believed the empirical evidence regarding the movement of electrons, voltage, electromagnetism and so on. The other school of thought, believed that there were little tiny planets in wires, and that receiving electric shocks were all about your state of mind.
Obviously natural selection would take care of the second group, however you get my point, we couldn't let the wire planet people influence how we taught students, yet we tolerate a similar scenario within biology.
The worst thing about this, is that the Republican candidates 'beliefs', do not actually represent the nation's. Around a third of Americans accept the theory without question, although more than half of those feel it must have had a divine helping hand (small steps).
Put Up Or Shut Up
It is time for America (for I know no other nation where such a situation exists), to just come out and say it. The theory of evolution is scientific fact, it is as sound as the theory of relativity, thermodynamics or any other you care to mention; and that is what we will teach in schools.
We respect your belief in the bible story of creation; however until that can be shown to be provable in any way shape or form, we will not be teaching it in schools.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHOULD RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS BE LEFT OUT OF THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM? MORE TO THE POINT, DO YOU BELIEVE CREATIONISM SHOULD BE TAUGHT AS AN EQUAL THEORETICAL POSSIBILITY AS EVOLUTION?
AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
As parents, we can teach our children about evolution. What is taught in school need not be all that one learns. The scientific method and empirical evidence definitely should be taught in schools. The study of religions and comparative analysis is healthy as well. The best we can hope for is equip people with knowledge and information so that they can discern truth from fiction.
The theory of evolution only makes sense after whatever occurred to make the Universe a reality happened. It isn't scientific fact that all life on earth came from a single celled organism.
The theory of evolution only applies (as far as I can see) once you already have the different genus'. Interspecies evolution is perfectly believable and I would agree that it has pretty much been proven scientifically but to me, believing that everything we see on earth originated from a single source that just appeared out of nowhere as Darwin seemed to suggest requires as much faith as believing that some sort of god or creator was responsible. Nobody knows yet you ask most school children and they will say they 'know' based on what they were taught in school.
Both evolution and the idea that a god or creator was responsible should both be taught as being a possibility. This isn't happening now in my opinion.
Thanks for this post, I can understand micro-evolution, for instance a certain shade of fur being harder for predators to find, but can you walk me through macro-evolution? If birds had not evolved yet, and say there was a mouse like creature that would evolve into a bird... The only time a wing could develop (in my mind) would be during fetal development. Imagining a mouse would give birth to a bird is ridiculous. So let's say we get a mouse who has a chromosomal defect that gives him two little wing stubs on his back. While he has these, he is at a disadvantage against predators, they slow him down and get caught on things. Supposing he survives to maturity and mates, what are the chances that his defect is passed down to his descendents? If it does, his line would have to survive and thrive through thousands of generations and thousands of defects that form the beak, feathers, hollow bones etc. What are your thoughts?
@cryptogee Well how can you explain then the creation of the Universe? How possible is it that the earth just has embedded in it, all the tools we mankind has ever needed and will ever need. Will you say that the Big Bang was a scientific coincidence and that the Universe in all its beauty and grand design doesn't have an all intelligent being responsible for it. Or that the cells in our bodies just happened to assemble themselves in an organized pattern? I believe in science but it's not everything science can explain. Human knowledge is greatly limited and there is alot we can explain and secrets we don't know
@cryptogee,
Thank you.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@quillfire/cryptogee-thank-you
You're Beautiful
Who me?
Oh, my, god. Or should I say: "Oh, my, evolution"?
And I thought that we in Serbia have a problem with religion. : )
It's really hard for me to comprehend that in a nation as developed as the U.S. the majority of politicians can give up on the theory of evolution and say that it shouldn't be taught in schools. What a prime example of superstition and populism winning over basic reason and progress!
We have some problems like manipulation with statistics - during censuses, the persons who conduct them often have a tendency of inducing the answer "Orthodox Christian" by, after receiving an answer "I am a Serbian", asking "Orthodox, right?" instead of asking "What is your religious view?" or something like that.
That said, the theory of evolution is taught in our schools in an unquestionable way and religion is optional - students get to choose between having a subject "civil education" or a subject "religious education" once per week.
I love your parallel with the the sun's a ball of ice. :D
I think that in order for this to change (before the sentient AIs take over) a couple of U.S. influences (politicians, celebrities, etc.) need to be brave enough to sacrifice their popularity by coming up and saying "Wake up! We're in the XXI century, the inquisition is over and the science is here!"
Cheers! : )
I prefer to think that 21st century society is post-trust, rather than post-truth.
As any philosopher will tell you, truth is a fraught concept. But for the average non-philosopher, trust is a pretty good tool to determine truth. For example, I can’t personally test every single claim put forward by physicists, so I trust that the community of physicists does their due diligence during the peer review process.
In other words, our perception of the truth of a statement that we cannot directly verify boils down to our perception of the trustworthiness of the person or institution making the statement.
Exactly so when children are taught in school that everything they see in the world can be explained by the big bang and evolution, they trust they are being told the truth when in fact they are not because nobody can possibly 'know'. Darwinism has had the effect of stopping people from even exploring other possibilities becuause they are taught the big bang and darwinian evolution as fact.
If you wanted to go down a rabbit hole you could say the same about other things that are taught in schools such as the events that occurred in Germany between 1939-45. Things are being taught as fact so that people won't even think about questioning it and this is very damaging to society in my opinion.
Incorrect, we do know, 100% that the theory of evolution is fact, seriously, just reading Darwin's book will show you that.
With any theory we say is correct, obviously we leave room for modification, so a great example is Newton's theory of gravity, being amended to Einsteins theory of relativity, and that will one day be amended to fit the quantum mechanics model into it.
However the theory of gravity is right; sure you can point to the discrepancies between macro gravity and quantum gravity, but what you can't do is say we will find that gravity has nothing to do with relativity or any of Newton's findings.
@kouba01 says that:
In other words, our perception of the truth of a statement that we cannot directly verify boils down to our perception of the trustworthiness of the person or institution making the statement.
However I disagree with this statement; sure, you can't test most quantum principles without a degree in physics and a powerful computer, you can though test lots of theories yourself with little or no equipment.
Lest we not forget that the whole point of a theory is that it will make predictions, and so we can test these predictions.
So when somebody says to you that oxygen is needed for fire to burn, you don't have to take their word for it. You can put a candle under a jar where no oxygen can get in, you can then watch it go out. Afterwards you can determine more experiments to make sure that your candle didn't go out for another reason.
This is why we invented the scientific process, to make sure that we are not fooling ourselves. At some point in our history, people thought that dancing, or killing animals or even humans would make it rain and their crops go.
It's easy now to laugh and say they were ignorant, but we could be having this conversation in that time; and you could be trying to convince me that there was no way to know that the dance didn't do anything, and I would be saying well lets put that theory to the test using the scientific process.
So yes, trust must exist, however we only need to trust the process, and even then, we can test the process ourselves without the need for trust.
Cg
The US undeniably has a christian majority and those of us who aren't within are quite aware of it! I am still stunned to hear
This is nutty, kooky, bizarre to me but surprises me less than it would have
2 years ago given the last election which threw out the window any of my previous notions about who my fellow americans are. It's a disturbing state of affairs and worries me daily.
And more to the point, I too wholeheartedly believe that creationism has no place in school curriculum.
Thanks as always for tackling tough issues with such grace, clarity and humor.
Totally madness! Of course those candidates didn't change their beliefs, they felt that that is what they had to say in order to get elected/appease party donors. I feel it is more likely party donors, as the rest of America does not reflect their 'beliefs'.
Cg
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