The fastest way to economic destruction is the debasement of the
engine of growth. In this country, that’s Science and Technology.
The godless central planning communists in China must be laughing
their arses off at the attempts here in the to introduce
non-science into the scientific curricula in the United States.
This is
a sure path to economic ruin.
In the marketplace of ideas, the strongest arguments should
(theoretically) triumph. Therefore, to help dispel the self destructive
campaign of dumbing down our scientific future, here is the Index to Creationist Claims.
Its an incredibly detailed point by point refutation of all the
failings, false statements and inaccuracies of the personal religous
belief system of Creationism and Intelligent Design.
UPDATE September 20, 2005 7:31pm
Here’s a 2nd resource: Things Creationists Hate
>
Sources:
Index to Creationist Claims
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
Things Creationists Hate
http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/thingscreationistshate.htm
This is an awesome resource. thanks! I’ve often told people the exact same sentiment that you have posted here: that the current devaluation and discounting of science in favor of religious fervor is downright dangerous to our status as a technological and economic world leader. Of course, the problem is that the people who buy the creationist world-view do not care about those “worldly” things, an dthe politicians who pander to them apparently value getting elected more than keeping our nation competitive.
If the Rapture is coming at any moment then who needs prosperity?
I’m hoping this is just one of those waves of obscurantism that has gone over the US three or four times before and not a permanent trend.
The islamic world was the most advanced in the world. They had universities and libraries while europeans were living in mud huts in the Middle Ages. Then the fundamentalists took over and it’s been steady, unrelenting decline into what we see today.
Brian, you said the Islamic world was the most highly devolped in the world. How could that be, if religion took them down? You want us to believe that the islamic world was not run by muslims? Nice try, dude!
Did you see the bit about “fundamentalists” in there? Religion isn’t incompatable with science. Fundamentalism is. If you think a book written by excitable middle eastern nomads thousands of years ago is literally the truth and the full extent of the truth then science becomes dangerous and must be supressed.
In terms of destroying the country, one could argue that economic ignorance is far more dangerous than scientific ignorance… we have more to fear from Lindsay Graham or Chuck Schumer than Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.
The Koreans are already taking over stem cell research.
Ran across this on Wired:
Glory for the Godless
02:00 AM Sep. 28, 2005 PT Life in God’s country may not be paradise on Earth, if a study published in the Journal of Religion and Society is to be believed. Religious practices don’t necessarily enhance a society’s moral and ethical fiber, according to the study, and in fact may prove deleterious. “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies,” said Gregory Paul, the study’s author.Looking at social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy, Paul concluded that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. And the worst offender? “The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so,” said Paul.
— Jenny McKeel
Then look at communist Russia where God was officially banned as part of Leninism. Hardly a successful economy or freedom. Nor is China’s constant imprisonment of Christians improving it’s economy or creating it a place where many would care to immigrate.
And athiestic Europe where the churches are empty, with 12% unemployment rampant in many places, is hardly a model to emulate either.
Ultimately what I’m looking for are people who live this life in fear of ultimate judgement after they are deceased. This has been one of the most consistent producers of good stewardship and leadership throughout history.
The athiest believes there is no ultimate judgement, and so can pillage and murder without fear of consequence, and when things go bad, take the easy way out with a bullet through the head –as did the cowards of Columbine. Likewise overly self-satisfied religious zealots are convinced that God backs them 100% no matter what they do, and that God works through their own personal hand –even when it’s holding the knife that beheads the defensiveless –is not a good leadership either.
The best governence is from the religious person that fears ultimate judgement by a higher power for their actions of this life, and is always trying to improve both themselves and their communities because they do not know how high the bar is. Leaders may become powerful enough to be beyond retribution upon this earth. We must encourage a fear of retribution beyond this earth’s.
If you look at the longest continuious civilization, the Egyptians, every single Pharaoh’s tomb has at its centerpiece a picture of the sins of the Pharaoh’s heart being weighed against a feather, with crocodiles set to devour it if it is more heavy.
Government imposed athiesm has created some of the modern eras largest deathpiles. Smug stupid religious nuts sure that God is on their side waiting with 72 virgins as a reward for murder have created others.
What works is people of faith, true believing, but in full belief that no matter how unreachable they may be in this life, that God ultimately will judge them after this life with a much larger consequence. And for them to be in considerable doubt of how they will be judged when they face God to tally the actions of their life, and how much really is “enough” to satisfy the divine.
it is amazing how people can read about the ove rreaching of FUNDAMENTALISM and associate that with communism and forced atheism. This country was built NOT on christianity but mostly by deists who believed that a god had sytarted the universe and then left it to run, like a clock. To fundamentalists, anything but what is written in their bible is sacriligeous (which is why fundamentalism inevitably returns the world to the age and morals of when their bible was written: you know, stone someone to death for planting crops on the sabbath, etc…). But, science is a method of discovering truth, and one of the first truths it discovers is that as soon as you claim absolute knowledge, you will be proven wrong. Science and technology are the ONLY things that set the western world apart and keep our standard of living above the wretched poor of the third world. I don’t need someone to judge me in some afterlife, i need to be able to look in the mirror, look in my children’s eyes, and know that i have done my best and tried to leave a better world for them.
Our “brand” as a nation is actually freedom more than it is science and technology.
It’s certainly not low-cost labor, and until our educational system is corrected – I think through vouchers or expansion of charter schools – others will be brainier.
We import most or much of our world-class competitive brains And why do the people possessing those brains bring them here?
Because it’s a free country.
It truly amazes me to see the lengths, and the level of animosity, at which non-religious persons or non-Christians go to to prove Christianity wrong. Christians do not try to prove anyone wrong…we try our best to emulate the self sacrificing life of our Savior and Lord. The FUNDAMENTAL (emphasis mine, to use Brian’s methods) basis of Christian belief is that we all have an eternal Creator, our eternal Father, that created us in His image to workship Him and be loved by Him, and because He loved us so much, he sent us the most perfect gift of his son, the earthly incarnation of the Creator, to demonstrate the most perfect gift of sacrificial love.
To show our love for Him, we work hard to understand how our Faith in His Word can live cooperatively and perfectly aligned with scientifc thought and reason. Do we understand it all? Absolutely not. Do we claim to know absolute Truth? Insofar as we claim that the Word of God is absolute Truth, then yes, we know it. But, being imperfect creatures, we don’t always have the ability to fully understand absolute Truth.
I agree with Seeker, anyone who claims to know absolute knowledge is destimed to be proven wrong. Christians do not claim to know absolute knowledge. We do claim to have had absolute Truth revealed to us…that we are imperfect and in need of redemption by a loving God.
I suggest that Barry be very careful with his own claim of absolute knowledge when he, in no uncertain terms believes in the “failings, false statements and inaccuracies of the personal religous belief system of Creationism and Intelligent Design.” Barry, as Seeker stated, your claim of absolute knowledge may just as well be proven wrong one day.
One cannot reject Christianity by saying they reject a belief an absolutism. You’ve just stated your own absolutist platform.
Don’t reject a loving God just because you disagree with organized religion or a few highly vocal extremists. God does love you all, and wants a relationship with you.
“Christians do not try to prove anyone wrong”
Yeah, and all those centuries of missionaries converting the ‘savage’ ‘heathens’ must be a figment of my imagination.
What Barry is getting at is the defunding of science and research in the U.S. due to the influence of fundamentalist lobby groups, in particular on the Republican party. Meanwhile Asian countries such as South Korea are investing heavily in R+D. If the trajectories continue to play out then the U.S. may very well lose the technological edge that has allowed it to remain at the forefront of an increasingly connected world economy.
Please leave the evangelizing out of your posts and focus on economics
The Road to Ruin?
Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture writes about the path to ruin: The fastest way to economic destruction is the debasement of the engine of growth. In this country, that’s Science and Technology. The godless central planning communists in China…
the above was directed at the comment above mine, not Barry
First let me point out that the vast, vast majority of Christians accept evolutionary theory. Even the Catholic Church has accepted evolution for almost a hundred years now. Most Christians today only take argument with “evolutionary theory gone bad”: Eugenics movements, programs for manadatory sterilzation of vast tracks of “undesirable” people, euthenasia and race superiority claims by different groups all come from Darwinism too. Go read Stephen Jay Gould if you want good criticism of these muddled-thinking evolutionists.
>Yeah, and all those centuries of missionaries >converting the ‘savage’ ‘heathens’ must be a figment >of my imagination.
Historicly are there savages improved by contact with Christianity? Sure there are. The Romans would be the most famous case. Only through the influence of Christianity were their public blood sport gladiator games put to a stop.
Likewise Central and South America were ran under a state religion based on cannibalism, blood sacrifice and removing people’s heart’s from their chest. Christianity has vastly made their lives safer, less violent, and longer in duration.
Some of the historical benefits of Christianity are obvious and easy to point to: The hospital movement, the founding of schools, the encouragement of writing, painting, sculpture and other arts. Other benefits are less direct: The training of scholars in Greek to be able to read the New Testatment in its original form, which lead to preserving many other Greek documents of both scientific and historical value; the creation and maintenance of observatories and astronomers to maintain the calendar; the invention of double entry accounting to run the finances of monastaries in efficent a way as possible to reserve more time for prayer.
While certainly not flawless –all institutions staffed by men and women will suffer when compared to an imaginary ideal ran by immortal angels –in the balance humanity has been improved by Christianity.
Athiests, by contrast, have founded no hospitals, no schools, no universities, no colleges, run no relief missions, no charities, no orphanages, no medical missions. I do not see an athiest Meals-On-Wheels program bringing food to the immoble and sick. I do not see athiests working with those with AIDS, but I do see quite a few nuns doing so.
The truth is athiests see no one higher than themselves. To be that short sighted usually requires being an asshole to the core, as five minutes with Michael Newdow quickly shows.
Athiests, by contrast, have founded no hospitals, no schools, no universities, no colleges, run no relief missions, no charities, no orphanages, no medical missions. I do not see an athiest Meals-On-Wheels program bringing food to the immoble and sick. I do not see athiests working with those with AIDS, but I do see quite a few nuns doing so.
The truth is athiests see no one higher than themselves. To be that short sighted usually requires being an asshole to the core, as five minutes with Michael Newdow quickly shows.
Your ignorance is astounding. How about Thomas Jefferson? He and many of the founders of american democracy were atheists (or Deists at best; regardless they were not motivated by an irrational fear of damnation). No charities? No medical missions? How about Bill Gates? His foundation is a leader in the development of relief of disease in the poorest nations. Atheists who do good to humanity don’t wear their beliefs on their sleeve. They simply don’t care about religion because it isn’t important to them. It’s another fairy tale that has no bearing on what is right or wrong. They do what is right because that is part of their character. I am and I know many atheists. They’re generous, honest good people who care deeply about humanity. We sickened by the terrible things that militant religion and irrational belief have done to human progress.
Civilization has been improved by Christianity? One can point to almost any period in the past 2000 years to find a way to show this claim is utterly false. Just look over the past decades and the tens of thousands of children who were abused by men of God, aided and abetted by the institution of the church.
Who are the atheists in our society? You might be surprised. Look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists
or here
http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
or search Google for more.
Certainly the list includes some great and some awful people. There is no connection between belief in God and moral character. Steven Weinberg put it best: “Good people are going to do good, and bad people are going to do bad. To make good people do bad things, now that takes religion”.
I think the kids will be alright. They’re mostly waiting for that bell to ring, anyway.
The adults however, as evidenced by the above posts, are seriously f*cked up.
Science + Technology = Growth = Jobs.
I’m against anything that interferes with that formula . . .
If you want a point-by-point refutation of evolutionary theory go to the best creationist website, IMHO, http://answersingenesis.org/ It’s run by many PhD scientists and worth a look if you’re really interested in understanding another scientific point-of-view. Or maybe you would rather just have one side of the argument…
We creationists don’t argue with any facts, just the interpretation of those facts.
One can, therefore, only pray fervently for the creationists to triumph…The rest of us will be fascinated as we watch this interesting experiment.
Bob,
LOL! Don’t you mean EdD’s and PHDs in fields other than biology? Give me a break. How many creationists have read a book on evolution? Probably 1% or less. I say if you can’t tell me the difference between a genotype and a phenotype without looking it up, you shouldn’t run your mouth about such things.
I heard Dr. Gary Parker say, on a creationist video, that the fact we are 98% similar to chimpanzees means nothing. He said that we are 95% water, and so are jellyfish, but no one is saying we are evolutionary cousins of the jellyfish. I guess while working on his doctorate he didn’t learn the difference between measuring volume and measuring similarity in the genetic code.
The gladiator games were stopped when the “Barbarians” conquered Rome.
Thomas Jefferson an atheist?
Firmly denied by himself and in his own words.
Bill Gates an atheist?
Again, he denies this in every interview he’s been asked this. He himself is generally too busy and off in a different distant part of the world each day to attend mass. Meanwhile His wife is Catholic and regularly attends Sunday mass. (source, Time magazine interview)
Bob – Answers in Genesis? The ones who say:
They are a jury which has declared its verdict before the trial begins, a doctor whose diagnosis preceeds hearing the symptoms. They are well-known to the folks who contribute to talkorigins.org, and are listed at least four times in the Index to Creationist Claims.
By all means, everyone should take a look at Answers in Genesis. As “the best creationist website” it amply demonstrates the intellectual vacuum that is creationism.
My background is twofold:
In colege, I was an applied mathematics and physics major — I switched in my senior year to philosophy and poli sci — then went to Law Shcool, where I focused on (!) Anti-trust, economics, and corporate regs.
I am very much in favor of teaching philosophy, civics, ethics, comparative religon, etc. in high school — I believe these are vital areas that all citizens need to know to be equipped to particpate in a democracy.
However, in science classes, what is taught must pass scientific muster — END OF STORY. Does a subject follow the scientific method? Are its principles verifiable? Can it be proven via experiments, and reproduced? Is it scientific? etc etc etc
I find anything that does not pass these very basic smell tests has no business being taught in a science class — I leave no room to debate this either.
Either its science, or its something else.
There are things that reasonable people can disagree about. (Abortion, Iraq, etc.)
This isn’t one of them.
“Historicly are there savages improved by contact with Christianity? Sure there are. ”
google “the requiremento” with regards to the genocide of the native americans on this continent to start with. If you bring in a culture (such as christianity) into another culture, then use superior force to kill off any people or aspects of the culture that are incompatable with the new one (christianity), OF COURSE, all that is left has benefited, because you have destroyed everything that wasn’t!
morality and religion have little to do with each other, organized religion even less. As for evolution, let me ask you a question.According to the bible (the little i admit I know of it) , people were told to go forth and procreate. Now, as far as I know, god doesn’t actually PUT a baby in the female uterus, but rather created a system where a male places a sperm in the vicinity of the female egg, and fertilization leads to a new life ( at whatever point you wish to say that life has begun).
Now, if god is willing to place such a system in order for humans to procreate, then why WOULDN’T he place a system in place (like evolution)that would begin with the building blocks of life , amino acids, and have them evolve into the humanity he supposedly desires?
What about this system (besides being different from the story of adam and eve) is inconsistent with belief in god? And to take it a step further, if you accept the story of adam and eve, then you accept that god REQUIRED incest in order to “go forth and multiply!”
Is it your position that god believes incest to be an acceptable form for mankind to go forth and multiply? Did he “sanctify” the marriage of brother and sister? Just some questions for which i do not know the answers but for which i am disturbed by the possible conclusions logically consistent with a fundamentalist reading of the bible.
OK. Here’s the deal. I am a Muslim living in US. My wife is Irish-American. I quit a PhD program in engineering because I don’t believe in it (technically all I need to do is write up my dissertation). Worked on Air Force projects… the foreigners did all the work and the American students were put in because the govt. required for an American. I work with old American engineers. They all say that they are not impressed with the new generation of American engineers. I am not as well. They are all spoiled. They like things easy. They like the easy grades. The only people working on improving the technology for the US are foreigners.
It’s true the Islamic world was the most advanced at one time. Up till the end of reneissance (probably misspelled – but irrelevant to the topic) Islamic world enjoyed significant progress and scientific discovery. While the medivial europe was butchering each other, scholars in the Islamic world (mixture Christians, Jews, and Muslims) were out making discoveries, i.e. astronomy.
It is very unfortunate that the religious right (I am quite religious) has hijacked the US politics. They have stifled all sorts of research. Already, companies are moving their research on biotech to europe and Korea. When are we going to wake up?
This is a great country and needs to do better.
The view that Intelligent Design coursework is undermining the US Economy is overwrought. In fact, it is silly.
Doesn’t anybody remember the Monkey Trial of the 1920’s?? The American economy grew in leaps and bounds from the Civil War to the late 1920s, a time when Darwinism was banned or ignored and at best co-taught with Creationism. Americans collected tons of Nobel Prizes.
This website should stick to it usual serious commentary and analysis, not gratuitous attacks against straw man issues. It’s easy to make fun of fervent religious believers; don’t match them in irrational behavior.
Are you comparing the relative economic of impact of technology (semiconductors, Software, RFID, biotech, nanotech, etc.) with 1920s?
Puh-leeze.
I see. So intelligent design will devestate todays high tech economy, but it couldn’t ruin the economy of the 1920s? That’s your theory??
You are making no sense. Show me some facts about the relation betwen ID and the economy, rather than hostility fueled speculation.
Show me some Science in the religous theory of Intelligent Design, and we can have a discussion about what to teach in Science classes.
Until then, I’ll stick with the Pastafarianism Flying Spaghetti Monster
Manny,
In the 1920s, the rest of the world was as dumb as we were. That’s not true now.
How to Destroy the US Economy
Anti-science ideology pushed by the GOP will hurt us economically.
Barry,
Your trackback ping for this entry is timing out (has been all day).
fyi,
MD
A hard copy version of the Index to Creationist Claims was recently published. It’s a wonderful resource for refuting ID “arguments” and I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the facts and research on which evolution is based.
“In terms of destroying the country, one could argue that economic ignorance is far more dangerous than scientific ignorance… we have more to fear from Lindsay Graham or Chuck Schumer than Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.”
Preach it, brother!
The greatest amount of ignorance comes not from the pulpit or talk radio, but from the informed chattering classes who promulgate – still – the lies of Socialism, Deconstructivism, and post-modernism. They do it in academia, in the media, and among our cultural elites (hollywood, etc.)… Their bad ideas make ID to be but a pipsqueak.
This mindless fear of creationist ideas, a topic that has little relevence to how to run a modern country, is not consistent with this belief in a ‘marketplace of ideas’; let is stand or fall on the merits.
ID is merely an response to a purely materialist view of events that happened millions of years ago (or DIDNT happen if you are on the creationist side). One’s views of those events dont dictate much in the way of either public policy or economic behavior.
(And please, let’s now worry about High schools, when I for one was taught the Bohr model of the atom as ‘correct’ and not told about quantum mechanics at all, that is about as wrong as ID is with respect to atomic physics; it didnt kill me. I think it is reasonable to present ID solely as an opinion/viewpoint in conjunction with explaining evolutionary theory. No harm in that, and there is no harm in explaining also that ID is more philosophy/religion than science.)
The rub is this:
Universities dont tolerate creationists in Biology departments for valid reasons. But a College tolerated a fraud like Ward Churchill for almost 2 decades. Economics departments tolerate marxists in their departments, which has only only 100 million dead and dozens of broken economies to show for its theories. Keep trying guys, maybe you’ll get it right.
The fact is that marxist and socialist economics has done 1,000 TIMES THE DAMAGE of ID (for example, look at the poverty in India, undoubtably worsened by decades of Indian adoption of over-regulation and socialism), and yet the perps have yet to be called on the carpet, and the carriers of the diseased ideologies continue spreading the virus of bad ideas and wrong thought. Worrying about ID, something that is already on the ‘cutout’ rack of the marketplace of idea, is completely misplaced priorities. The BIG DEAL is the presense of fraudulent radical, Marxist, “ethnic studies”, Socialist, profs and cultural leaders, all trying to spin webs of lies in our culture.