[Winstonm]

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazi...-02/st_thompson

Quote

Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?

You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven't. Among Republicans, belief in anthropogenic global warming declined from 52 percent to 42 percent between 2003 and 2008. Just days before the election, nearly a quarter of respondents in one Texas poll were convinced that Obama is a Muslim. And the proportion of Americans who believe God did not guide evolution? It's 14 percent today, a two-point decline since the '90s, according to Gallup.

Quote

"But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not."

[TimG]

Winstonm, on Jan 21 2009, 04:41 PM, said:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazi...-02/st_thompson

Quote

Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?

You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven't. Among Republicans, belief in anthropogenic global warming declined from 52 percent to 42 percent between 2003 and 2008. Just days before the election, nearly a quarter of respondents in one Texas poll were convinced that Obama is a Muslim. And the proportion of Americans who believe God did not guide evolution? It's 14 percent today, a two-point decline since the '90s, according to Gallup.

Believing in evolution and believing god has no hand in evolution would seem to be two very different things.

[helene_t]

yes, I don't find this particularly shocking, it is already known that most Americans believe in God. I suppose most theists would say that God guides events that atheists would call either accidents or events with (until now) unknown causes.

[Winstonm]

helene_t, on Jan 21 2009, 04:55 PM, said:

yes, I don't find this particularely shocking, it is already known that most americans believe in God.

I left out an important quote from the article - the point being that much of this disinformation is intentionally pushed to confuse and obfuscate.

[helene_t]

Of course it is. It's not like the anti-scientists intended to spread genuine information but accidentally made some typos that distort their messages.

[jdonn]

I'll say it. Winston you need to find new topics to post about. For the sake of humanity.

[Winstonm]

jdonn, on Jan 21 2009, 05:26 PM, said:

I'll say it. Winston you need to find new topics to post about. For the sake of humanity.

LOL

Actually, I thought this was different. It is supposed to be about the purposeful hiding or confusing of facts that makes the world today a much different place than it was 40 years ago.

As the article mentions, we no longer debate the meaning of the facts but instead argue which set of facts are true.

Maybe I screwed up posting it the way I did. Probably got my facts wrong.