Entries associated with the tag "Evolution":

Last week I got to hear U of C professor Jerry Coyne talk about evolution at the Graham School of General Studies. Coyne showed the accompanying graph, originally from a Science article by former Chicagoan Jon Miller (who was mentioned in this blog last August) comparing different countries on the percentage of their populations who believe evolution is a fact. (Coyne thoroughly established that it is, if you're wondering, but that's another story.) The United States ranks next to last, with about 40% knowing this, just ahead of Turkey; Iceland was first with close to 80%.

But it was a member of the audience who blew my mind. Afterwards she asked, which countries do Americans think we're most like? Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden? Or Latvia, Cyprus, and Turkey? Chances are the Scandos would win that vote -- but in fact, on this central concept of biology, Americans think like the second trio. I was too flabbergasted to take notes, but her point was, "We aren't who we think we are -- we don't think like we think we think."

Where had I heard something like that before recently? It's precisely what happens when you come down with Alzheimer's disease. You think you can drive, not recalling the times you've run into other cars. You think you can live alone, not recalling how you filled the house with smoke from a burned-off pan of food. You think you can pay your bills, even as the dunning notices pile up on the table. Your self-image is frozen in past time, and has less and less to do with what you actually do, or can do, now.

Hmmm...an empire that claims to spread liberty...a country where most people don't believe the fact of evolution but identify with countries where most people do...a country where we're sure that "anyone who wants to work can make it" as wages for work actually decline (PDF). Do we have a diagnosis?

Somewhere along the way, I lost the bad habit of Newsweek without picking up the good habit of the Economist. So a hat tip to Jim Krohe, who calls attention to the Economist's alarming reportage on anti-Darwinian extremism on the march not just in the U.S., especially Kentucky, but in Russia, Turkey, the Vatican -- even Kenya, where

"there is a bitter controversy over plans to put on display the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human being ever found, a figure known as Turkana Boy—along with a collection of fossils, some of which may be as much as 200m years old. Bishop Boniface Adoyo, an evangelical leader who claims to speak for 35 denominations and 10m believers, has denounced the proposed exhibit, asserting that: 'I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it.'

"Richard Leakey, the palaeontologist who unearthed both the skeleton and the fossils in northern Kenya, is adamant that the show must go on. 'Whether the bishop likes it or not, Turkana Boy is a distant relation of his,' Mr Leakey has insisted. Local Catholics have backed him."

As this excerpt hints and the whole article makes clear, this isn't religion vs. atheism. This is knowledge vs. militant ignorance, not to mention freedom vs. theocracy, with religious believers on both sides.

Not to get all ironic about it, but the world the militant ignorant would usher in has already been described by Matthew Arnold, although he meant to be talking about something else: a world with "neither joy, nor love, nor light,/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain..."

Bloggers who aren't navel gazers are supposed to be up to the millisecond, but it just ain't so. Strange Maps just put up a five-year-old map of how different states do in setting standards for teaching evolution, lifted from a May 2002 antievolution Web site, which lifted it from the March 2002 issue of Scientific American (text available here).

I liked the old map, because it was in color, it had funny comments, and it allowed for piquant observations about Indiana's doing a much better job than Illinois (at least in statewide standards -- what happens in the classroom stays in the classroom). But the author of all this information -- Laurence S. Lerner, a University of Chicago alum and an emeritus prof at California State University, Long Beach -- hasn't stopped tracking the subject. A year ago January he published an update in Freethought Today on state science standards in general (Illinois scored a B, Indiana an A, 15 states got Fs) and evolution standards in particular (Illinois and Indiana both scored well; the worst states include Wisconsin, Mississippi, and Connecticut). The associated map is in shades of gray.

And Lerner's accompany article is fun as well as informative. He writes, "As creationism has evolved under the selective pressure of a series of court decisions ..."

If you find value in religion, or Republicanism, be sure to let your friends and family know that you nevertheless don't countenance ignorance and abortion. Yes, it's gotten that bad.

Hello, Tom? Mammon here. Talk To Action continues its run of stunning investigative reports, reminding us of a hellhole parcel of U.S. territory on the Marianas Islands in the Pacific where where "thousands of garment workers--most of them young Chinese women--labor in indentured servitude, live in labor camps run by members of the Chinese Communist Party, and submit to forced abortions if they become pregnant. Human rights worker Eric Gregoire told ABC News, 'With 11,000 Chinese workers here, I have never seen a Chinese garment factory worker have a baby.'"

What satanic creature would countenance such conditions--and protect them by using his power in Congress?  Recently indicted Republican Tom DeLay, that's who---the darling of the Family Research Council, Concerned Women of America, Focus on the Family, and many other stalwarts of the religious right.

Making America safe for stupidity.  Americans are the second most ignorant country on the subject of evolution, narrowly edging out Turkey. That's the news from political scientist Jon D. Miller--formerly of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and Northwestern University, now at Michigan State--in a paper published in the August 11 issue of Science. The original is behind a pay wall, but reasonable summaries are here and here (more spice). Oh, here's the one-sentence abstract:

"The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States."

Miller is no alarmist and no sound-bite artist (as I learned when writing up his work on scientific literacy for the Reader November 18, 1994), so when he starts talking like this I pay attention.

He and his coauthors found that "individuals who hold a strong belief in a personal God and who pray frequently were significantly less likely to view evolution as probably or definitely true," and this effect was stronger in the United States, presumably because of political pandering (my word, not theirs):

"The conservative wing of the Republican Party has adopted creationism as a part of a platform designed to consolidate their support in southern and midwestern states—the 'red' states. In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in seven states included explicit demands for the teaching of 'creation science.' There is no major political party in Europe or Japan that uses opposition to evolution as a part of its political platform."

The percentage of Americans who disbelieve or doubt one of the best-established scientific frameworks for understanding our world has actually risen--from 55 to 60 percent in the last 20 years.

Photo and video links, some with more attitude than others:

• How far can you see from 500 miles above Chicago? See for yourself. 
  

• There are more weird statues in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (Hat tip to those weirdos at Slog.)

• Remember when a bumper sticker was just a bumper sticker? Visit the freeway blogger and see the entry for August 3 for some, er, carblogging.

• From the Hummer humpers' manifesto: "Those who see our actions merely as amorous displays toward a monolithic machine of our age are not looking closely enough." A variety of homemade videos.

• If you think that's offensive, stay away from this archive of old ads, a site which finds it necessary to include the following disclaimer: "This site includes historical materials that may contain negative stereotypes or language reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as part of the historical record."

• And if you think that's offensive, this is for those who, like myself, see way too much MSM and way too little Jon Stewart: an unadorned report on the roots of the Middle Eastern conflict.