Science, Religion and Politics

[tcpip]

It is common to mock the lack of scientific literacy in allegedly educated countries; well, Australia itself can join in with a bit of navel-gazing. The Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies have conducted a survey on scientific literacy. The results were not pretty; three in ten Australians believe that the earliest humans co-existed with dinosaurs, and almost the same claimed that it takes but a day for the earth to travel around the sun. Fortunately 80% say that science education is essential or very important to the Australian economy.

Despite sufferin a headache that plagued me throughout the weekend managed to stumble my way through giving an address at the Unitarians on Faith, Deeds and Salvation, where I concluded with a progressive version of these oft-reactionary concepts. People apparently liked it, however I found it very tiring. I had to cut huge swathes from the work which dealt with minor and often slightly odd doctrinal differences from Protestant sects and I felt I didn't discuss the East Asian approaches sufficiently (especially Taoistic religions). After the service was the Unitarian Philosophy Forum where Rick Barker - from my prompting - provided an entertaining discussion on the draft sequence of the Neaderthal genome which suggests that there is admixture between Homo Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens - but not the sub-Saharan African clines.

Had a prior booking after the Forum meeting (namely, another episode of GURPS Krononauts) and as such couldn't attend the second meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby, which has initiated its second campaign, this one in favour of ending the National Schools Chaplaincy Program (your tax dollars at work). There is a fear among religious conservatives that the NSCP may be "secularised" when Labor is re-elected, and with some coalition MPs expressing concern. Less than 2.5% of chaplains have appropriate qualifications in counselling or social work and the Australian Psychological Association has some strong words on the subject. On a related topic - and getting back to the first paragraph; religious fundamentalists conducting religious instruction classes in Queensland in state schools have come out with predictable results.

Comments

[anivair.livejournal.com]

You did better than Americans. These polls generally just prove that people are, by and large, not very bright. Or that they are not very educated. OTOH, I'd like to have seen a list of correct answers for comparison. I had to look up the percentage of fresh water (and 4% is not that far off from 2.75% which is about the actual number).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, the actual questions are available as well, and you're right - the United States did somewhat worse.

Although the survey was done last year. So maybe the skippies read up on the answers or a morphogenic wave swept from the north pacific and hit the east coast of 'stralia.

I didn't know the percentage of fresh water either, but I was in the general ballpark..

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I personally think that 4% is in the general ballpark. If you manage to get withing 1% on a 100 point scale, that seems fine to me.

[must-sew-faster.livejournal.com]

And then there's this:
http://creationmuseum.org/

Which pisses me off to no end. Instead of believing that dinosaurs bones were buried to test people's faith, now they are touting that they coexisted harmoniously with humans in the Garden of Eden. Somehow, I'd have thought getting a raptor on the Ark to be tricky in the least.

My biggest issue with this is that dinosaurs are a really cool 'gateway drug' to science with little kids. It gets them thinking about a world bigger than themselves. You can use dinos to not only teach evolution, but geology and physics and astronomy as well. So to just lump them in with 'on the sixth day, God created chickens and KFC...', well, that just irritates the crap out of me. =P

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Dragons. Apparently it all comes down to dragon mythology now. All historical recordings of dragons were actually recordings of dinosaurs.

Never mind that people may have found.. oh, dinosaur bones.. and imagined.

(What on earth are creationists in the future going to think of our science fiction movies!)

[must-sew-faster.livejournal.com]

The other theory, I heard, regarding dragons, is that they embody every beasty that may have gone after humans when we were still far from the top of the food chain:
wings like the large coastal eagles that would carry off little kids,
claws and teeth like bears, predatory cats and wolves that would carry off little kids,
and breathing fire? Well, that's just a bonus scare tactic, I guess.

[amazinggoatgirl.livejournal.com]

I'm astounded that the creation museum isn't in Branson or Gatlinburg.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Now, you know I had to look those places up... Perhaps the Creation Museum could be housed inside the Titanic Museum?

[amazinggoatgirl.livejournal.com]

Aw, I looked those things up now that you said that. The internet somehow paints less hilarious picture of those places than is actually the case.

I was thinking that it would be adjacent to The Miracle Theater, which is also adjacent to a Tony Roma's (barbecue place) I went to with my cousin and her kid. At the end of that video, there is a video billboard, which I saw across the giant parking lot. I swear upon everything I love, and I can't fathom why it's not in the promotional video, but there were angels fighting each other with flaming swords. Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, is of course also home to Dollywood, Dolly Parton's theme park. Dolly Parton is the shit, of course, because she fights hillbilly witches with pie (3:23-6:00).

Seriously, though, this is bothering me. The confederate flags plastered all over Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge are missing from the internet. They must have a team of people working on suppressing the sheer ridiculousness of the place, which is weird because that's why people go there.