Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science? (1 Viewer)

[CowboysFromHell]

I don't think many reasonable people doubt science. I think many reasonable people doubt the infallibility of scientific findings. It's sort of the same thing with the medical community. Reasonable people don't doubt medicine, but they doubt the idea that doctors have all the answers to the exclusion of everything else.

That's fine, but why do they make up their own, seemingly random, alternative answers?

Well, I can only speak for Christians and most of the Christians I know are educated, thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't know a single Christian who believes the earth is 5,000 years old. I don't know a single person who denies shared genetics between species. I think the differences of opinion are a lot more reasonable than you think.

depending on the poll you look at, 35%-40% of the U.S adult population rejects evolution and common ancestry.

I think it depends on how you phrase the question. "Evolution" covers a pretty broad spectrum. And once you eliminate really old people and the ignorant I think you'll find very few young earthers out there.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspxWhat?

So 42% of us are ignorant. How many of those are really old vs have-no-excuse-for-it?

More importantly, how many of them vote?

Enough to make all GOP candidates deny basic science.

yeah... all those people being bussed to the polls on election day by the democrat machine are brilliant.

Bell curve, my friend. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.

 

[jhib]

This seems like as good of a place as any to throw this in

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/20158-global-warming-skeptics-know-more-climate-science-study-shows

Seems to me that if you failed a pretty basic test on the subject (whether you got a 46% or 50%) then it's an indicator that your knowledge about it is limited and it's pretty rational to listen to the 95% of experts rather than the other 5%.

 

[FreeBaGeL]

I will say that I think that it's weird that conservatives tend to get branded as a anti-science more than liberals. It's like evolution and global warming are the litmus tests for science as a whole.

But on the Left, there are plenty of major issues where a large number of lefties are in conflict with science. Stuff like GMO food, vaccines, nuclear energy, the science around the Keystone pipeline, holistic medicine, etc. all have a much larger and more immediate impact than whether someone is wrong about evolution or not. If someone is wrong about evolution, it really changes nothing. But politicians being wrong about that other stuff has serious societal costs.

Wait, is the vaccine thing really a liberal thing? I realize there were some hippies in California making a push early on but now that it's gone "mainstream" it seems to have latched on far more with the right than the left. Heck, the leading republican presidential candidate said he thinks vaccines cause autism and his poll numbers went UP afterwards. I'm pretty sure saying that would be a dealbreaker for a democratic candidate.

Then you also have to consider how prevalent this stuff really is on each side. Holistic medicine is reserved for the leftyist of the left hippies, but climate change denial is pretty much SOP among even otherwise rational conservatives. Even something as bizarre as creationism. Ben Carson says he thinks the Earth is 6000 years old and that the pyramids were grain silos and he soars into 2nd place in the Republican polls. If Bernie Sanders said he thinks we should get rid of doctors and replace them when tree healers his campaign would be over the minute he said it.