"Putin33, the fact that you hold a bias against Christians make you ineligible to talk with. Also, I can't deal with your silly assumptions."

I hold a bias against all religions (didn't you hear? I'm also a "bigot" against Muslims). And I suppose you're not biased against atheists. Sure. Talk to me when your people stop banning atheists from holding office.

Hey Mafia, you know what correlates BEST with atheism though? IQ.

http://davesource.com/Fringe/Fringe/Religion/Average-intelligence-predicts-atheism-rates-across-137-nations-Lynn-et-al.pdf

sorry cheap shot, and Semck I'll talk with you more tomorrow.

Well I shouldn't say all religions, Isis worship seems reasonable.

Semck writes, "Of course, there certainly are Christian children who are turned against science with extremely unreasonable teachings, just as there are atheist children who are taught lies about religion."

Very good point.

"Of course, there certainly are Christian children who are turned against science with extremely unreasonable teachings, just as there are atheist children who are taught lies about religion." - Yeah, are we going to portray these things as equally common, and like, equally problematic? Cause that's misleading.

I would say they are about as equally common. the problem is the "news" media (and I use the term "news" in the most liberal sense) likes to report on the religious extremes that don't conform to the norms of religion. the second largest protestant denomination (ELCA) teaches that the Bible is serious, but not to be taken completely literally. That evolution and science in general are very much how God works in the world and that we should seek answers in both the spiritual and physical realms. through prayer and through scientific research. That's more than 5 million members in the US alone.

But the media would rather report on Westboro Baptist and their 40-50 members and somehow try to make them out as representative of mainstream Christianity. Or they look to the Pope as being the Catholic Church in America, when most Catholic's in America pay lip service to much of the bullshit from Rome, only taking to heart certain sometimes controversial issues (like birth control and abortion).

So, yeah, I think the number of kids brainwashed by the extreme right into thinking science and particularly evolution is the work of the devil trying to deceive us and the number of kids brainwashed by athiests into thinking all Christians believe they are actually eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood are pretty close to the same.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/four-americans-believe-strict-creationism.aspx

So 4 in Ten Americans have been conditioned to be hardline antitheists Draugnar? I doubt it.

And where did they take that poll? Random phone sampling. So depending on the time of day, they got stay at home moms (many of whom are stay at home for religious reasons) who actually answered the phone as the rest of us were at work. Random phone polls are inherently skewed by the fact that time of day seriously affects who you reach.

The Westboro Baptist Church has done one good thing for the christian community at least. It's allowed any other kind of christian, now matter how fundamentalist, or evangelical or otherwise theologically conservative to claim that any extreme belief held by any number of christians is only a thing for the WBC, which can then be dismissed because it's tiny, and crazy. Umm, no, the belief that god created humans sometime in the last 10000 years is by any survey, and any measure a mainstream christian belief in America, it's not something only the WBC teaches.

That poll clearly shows that the mix between creationistic and guided evolution are about 50/50. 44% to 38% +/- 4% according to their info. With a +/-4% differenc, 6% separation emans they are effectively even. So it is *not* the dominant view in Christianity in America. but then neither is guided evolution.

And you didn't even adress the fact that I pointed out the inhernet fallacy of using phone polls and who they tend to reach is potentially scewed based on beliefs.

Two points.

First of all, I would think percentage would be the fair thing to look at. There are far more Christians than atheists in America. Expecting the absolute numbers of brainwashed children to be the same in each camp is probably unfair.

Second, I don't really accept that belief in YEC is a good proxy for a child's mind being "severely bias[ed] ... against science." True, it means that a person is willing to accept a position that an overwhelming majority of scientists believe is wrong. All that means, though, is that their worldview/belief system is primarily based on something else. To be severely biased against science, the child would have to actually believe that science is generically bad, untrustworthy, a poor way to find things out, etc. In fact, this is typically not the case. I realize any atheist will rage against using this as a proxy, but it's just not a good one. I've known a decent number of YECs, and most of them had very positive opinions of science generally. They privilege revelation over it when there's tension, sure, but that doesn't mean they dislike science.

Ummm, so what you're saying is that because of that sampling error, a percentage of the population that should have been 0.000015% of the population (40 or 50 people), was skewed upward to appear to represent around 40% of the population (about 120 million people). Now that's what I call a sampling error.

Even if I do accept that the sampling error exists to a significant degree, how much of that result are you expecting to explain away. 4 in 10 Draugnar, 40% of the people surveyed answered that. I mean, a really really drastic error like that would, maybe, MAYBE double the response. So 20%. That's still more people who don't believe in evolution than people who are non-religious. And not everyone in the "non-religious" category is a militant anti-theist.

Also if you read the survey the did account for that kind of error: "Each sample includes a minimum quota of 150 cell phone-only respondents and 850 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday."

@Mafia - 40% is less thanhalf. Let's just run with that. How does less than half equal mroe than half? "That's still more people who don't believe in evolution than people who are non-religious." would indicate that you think 40% is more than potentially 60%.

Now, I grant that another 40% of respondents (roguhly) said it was guided by God. but in *that* group, the pole clearly states some indicated they were not religious or had no religious preference, so we have no concrete basis for saying how many of the evolutionary respondents were religious or not.

and just as you point out that not all the pure evolution/no God involvement group isn't 100% militant athiests, neither are the creationists 100% militant anti-science. they choose to believe one specific aspect of religion over what they perceive as a conflict with science, but some of them work in the tech and science sectors (I would say many, but define "many": it doesn't mean a majority, just a number greater than a few and less than most).

"First of all, I would think percentage would be the fair thing to look at. There are far more Christians than atheists in America. Expecting the absolute numbers of brainwashed children to be the same in each camp is probably unfair." - But that's exactly my point. The argument that irreligious people are poisoning kids minds against religion, and religious parents are poisoning kids minds against science, so you know, neither side has the high ground, is a misleading one, specifically because there are more Christians, a lot more Christians, and Christians are the group here with the relative advantage in social power.

Your second point is a fair one, I suppose, but at the same time, the ability to reject empirical evidence at all, even if it's only for one issue, isn't exactly fostering a science positive outlook. Science is the belief that the way the world works can be determined through empirical observation. If you think that only applies sometimes, that's not really a scientific outlook. But then we also have to apply a similarly rigorous standard to what counts as anti-theist indoctrination.

"40% is less thanhalf. Let's just run with that. How does less than half equal mroe than half? "That's still more people who don't believe in evolution than people who are non-religious."" You miss my point. My point is half of 40%; 20% still represents a larger section of the total population, than is represented by the entire category "non-religious people". Non-religious people make up around 15% of the population. Less than half the number of people who answered that they believe that human beings were created in their present state less than 10,000 years ago. And you'd have to be a non-religious person to be guilty of indoctrinating your kids to be anti-religious.

No, you are missing the point. Another 40% believes it took millions of years but God guided it. Of that 40%, a significant number claimed no religious affiliation. They are what you would most likely call agnostics.

But I'll agree to the fact that in sheer number of kids, fewer get indoctrinated as anti-religious than anti-science. But accept that not creationists are hardcore antiscience just as not all athiests and agnostics are hardcore anti-religion. You make a bad assumption by assuming half the creationists are anti-science. I would ask you to back that up with more than "gut feeling". I know you can't, so why make that assertion?

Also, 40% of americans claim to be young earth creationists.
16.1% of Americans identify as atheist, agnostic, or report "no religion" on surveys. Think about that. Only 16% of the population even seriously considers the possibility that god might not exist, compared with 40% of the population who are YECs and here you are arguing that really, the problem of anti-religious indoctrination is as serious as the problem of anti-science indoctrination. Think about that.

"You make a bad assumption by assuming half the creationists are anti-science." - I never claimed that. I came with half, to account for your supposed sampling error.

"Another 40% believes it took millions of years but God guided it." - What do they have to do with anything? I'm not counting them in the category of people who are indoctrinated against science. Yes, I grant the point, some people aren't indoctrinated against science...but that doesn't mean that nobody is. There's a pretty strong case to be made that the 40% YEC group is at least not totally on science's side all the time.

"But I'll agree to the fact that in sheer number of kids, fewer get indoctrinated as anti-religious than anti-science." - That was exactly my point. And you said the exact opposite of that a few posts ago, and that's the notion I wanted to disabuse you of. You said that the number of hard core anti-science people, and the number of hard core anti-theists was around the same. I simply wanted to argue that because of the sheer number of Christians with generally anti-science views, compared to the comparatively small numbers of people who are irreligious in the US, there was no way that could possibly be true.

Eliminate the sampling error. I don't care about that. Being a creationists does not equal being anti-science. It is a difference on one specific scientific view, that of things that happened long in the past. It means nothing about science moving forward and their views towards it.

By the way, don't in any way interpret my statements defedning their right to believe without be slammed as crazy anti-scientists in any way as me being a creationist. I believ Genesis is a nice fairy tale told to man in a way he could understand so that the first morailty parable could be relayed. that is, don't try to be God. the second, don't kill your fellow man, follows close behind.

No I don't think you're a creationist. Don't worry. I still take issue with the idea that its possible to be both a YEC and pro-science. But I'm willing to grant that point.

I was really just trying to do a Q&D thought experiment to demonstrate that the numbers just don't work for anti-religious indoctrination to be as serious a problem in the US as anti-science indoctrination. That's all.

I guess I don't think either are that big a problem. The big "anti-science" indoctrinators are typically backwoods hicks with a world view about as big as the world view in the time of the Romans. If asked where Jerusalem (one of their own holy cities) was on a globe they would be searching for hours.

That study also showed an increase in pure evolution and a comparable decrease in pure creatonism over years past. The guided evolutionists stayed about the same. So it's slwoly on the decline. One day the two will probably balance and the largest segment will be the guided evolution.

""First of all, I would think percentage would be the fair thing to look at. There are far more Christians than atheists in America. Expecting the absolute numbers of brainwashed children to be the same in each camp is probably unfair.""

"But that's exactly my point. The argument that irreligious people are poisoning kids minds against religion, and religious parents are poisoning kids minds against science, so you know, neither side has the high ground, is a misleading one,"

Then your point is terrible. We were talking about the effect of religion on persons, and how it had bad effects. If the alternative has bad effects in the same or higher percentages, then there's no advantage to the alternative. Any numerical advantage it may have is an artifact of demographics and should not be considered. Your argument boils down to, "Christianity is bad because a majority of people are Christians."

Now note that, as per point 2, I don't actually grant that your numbers are right anyway. My intuition is that, PERCENTAGE-wise, a somewhat higher number of atheists believe lies about religion than the number of religious people who dislike science -- so, while the latter number may still be higher due to the overwhelmingly higher number of Christians, I'm not sure it's all that much higher.

But, I have no statistics to prove my case (just as you don't have any statistics that I'll agree are sufficiently relevant, to prove yours).

Overall, Draug's points here seem reasonable.

This thread has left me in the dust. Thankfully my game has started again so it's too stressful to maintain that and this, so hope you all don't mind if I reduce myself to trolling for a while.

In that spirit:

"Christianity is bad because a majority of people are Christians."

NOW you're starting to understand, Semck!

But semck the point is, as the institution with power and a greater degree of influence, chrsitanity has a responsibility to be self reflexive and careful about it's effects on society, to a greater degree than anti-theism (which is a minority fringe view) does. It's just basic social power dynamics. The group with the ability to do the most damage needs to be the most careful.

"My intuition is that, PERCENTAGE-wise, a somewhat higher number of atheists believe lies about religion than the number of religious people who dislike science" - But you have no evidence for this whatsoever, and my intuition is the opposite. Being an atheist myself I know a fair number of atheists as well, and I don't find that to be the case at all. I do find however that a large number of religious people don't really understand science.

I'm really tired of religious people saying that atheists all believe lies about religion. It's not lies about religion that makes atheists and irreligious people irreligious. What makes people irreligious is the fact that they just don't actually think god is real.

Mafia,

Two quick points, and then I think we can more or less agree to disagree (well, unless, you want to say something more).

"I'm really tired of religious people saying that atheists all believe lies about religion. It's not lies about religion that makes atheists and irreligious people irreligious."

I'm sorry, I did not mean to suggest that you disbelieved because of lies about religion, or that anybody necessarily did. My point was just that many atheists do, in fact, believe and propogate false things about religion and the religious (not that these are the reasons for their disbelief).

"But you have no evidence for this whatsoever, and my intuition is the opposite."

Indeed, as I meant to imply. And neither of our intuitions counts as evidence. I was merely stating what my intuition was.

"But semck the point is, as the institution with power and a greater degree of influence, chrsitanity has a responsibility to be self reflexive and careful about it's effects on society, to a greater degree than anti-theism (which is a minority fringe view) does."

Well, that may be your point, but I had never allowed that, and it wasn't related to what I was arguing in the first place with my initial point.

My point was always just that you can't blame Christianity as a whole for what a few of its followers do, anymore than you can blame atheism as a whole for what a few of ITS ... followers? adherents? whatever, do. And I'm sorry if it offends you that we don't do anything about it, but we don't have any way to. There's no pope anymore. (Well, I mean, there IS, but.... you know what I mean).

"My point was always just that you can't blame Christianity as a whole for what a few of its followers do, anymore than you can blame atheism as a whole for what a few of ITS ... followers? adherents?"

And by 'a few' you mean 40%.

If False Equivalence is a sport in the London Games, Semck would win a gold medal.