The Glade 4.0

Are *REALLY* **** stupid.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolut ... esign.aspx



I had no idea there were that many literal creationists out there.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It's largely a function of education and literacy. You first have to recognize that certain demographics have very poor educational backgrounds, and religion thrives on that. Hispanics and blacks are often uneducated, and tend to believe whatever they've heard in church. While both are minority populations, the sheer volume of them that know nothing else but what their minister has told them probably accounts for about half of the literal creationists.

Simply put, you wouldn't know there were that many literal creationists out there if you don't know many people who aren't white.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

That's a pretty reasonable explanation.

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Holy shitsnacks!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity

Blacks are 12.6%, while hispanics are 16.4%. That's 29% of the population. Suppose 3/4 of them are literal creationists. That would be 21.75% of the total population.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Do you have any actual, you know, facts to back up those assertions? I haven't seen a racial breakdown of the creationist numbers, but on the education point at least, according to this Census report, the educational attainment levels aren't nearly as disparate as you're suggesting (except possibly at the college level as between whites and hispanics).


Even using your own hypothetical numbers, the majority of creationists would still be white.

Personally, I think geography is a better heuristic for this than race. Simply put, you wouldn't know there were that many literal creationists out there if you don't know many people who are from the South. After all, Southerners are often uneducated and tend to believe whatever they've heard in church. Of course, I don't have any actual data to support any of that, but I'll just throw it out there anyway.

Awww, did the white liberal get offended by what he perceived as a racist remark?

Go digging for data. You'll find various polls to support whatever argument you want to make. As for the educational background of minorities, as well as their economic status, if you'd like to argue against it go ahead. It is the fundamental underpinning behind every policy your party pushes, however.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

So...no?

Regarding intelligence,
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx



Doesn't speak to the level of education, but I think we should all be able to agree that if whites and asians didn't have a leg-up there, we wouldn't have things like affirmative action.

You can probably find plenty of your own articles correlating religiosity and IQ.

I'm going to have to disagree pretty strongly with that one, Lenas, unless that's the "secret" reason for AA. I've always been under the impression that the purported underpinnings of AA are the various methods of "holding down" minorities (specifically blacks) due to our country's history of racial inequality. If the reason for AA is that "some folks are less intelligent than others therefore we need to legislate that they have an easier time getting X", oh boy I really must have my head in the sand because I missed the outrage spawned.
Now mind you, I might not be privy to what the "real" reasons for AA are...

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

You don't think that AA supporters believe that without it, whites and asians would have an "unfair advantage" in schools and the workplace? Isn't that the whole point of it?

I don't doubt that AA supporters would say that, but I think their reason for the "unfair advantage" wouldn't be lower intelligence (for example), it would be "societal prejudice/racism".

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Ah, I meant to imply that AA was created [in part] because of inequalities in the educational system, not because of differences in intelligence. I could have written that better.

Ahh.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I'll just go ahead and toss this out there:

You aren't ever going to win them over to your way of thinking by calling them stupid.

Furthermore, I don't think you'd at all enjoy the results were just under 50% of the US population to suddenly discard the underpinnings of their personal moral codes.

Just sayin'

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Astute readers may note that I used the words education and uneducated, rather than intelligence and stupid. That was intentional.

I also mentioned literacy. Adult illiteracy is very disturbing among the black community. Even more disturbing is the number of functionally illiterate, which is to say those for whom Facebook shorthand represents the full extent of their written communication skills.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I'm not him, but I didn't get the impression he had any hope of winning them over. In fact, I'd say it's most likely impossible to win over anyone that dumb, that has been indoctrinated into an irrational belief.

As to your second point, that's assuming they have some sort of good moral codes they live by. Saying you believe in the 10 commandments, and actually living by them are two different things. I believe that most of the people in prison claim to be "religious".

But I would like to add, if a person that isn't going out and raping, stealing, and murdering feels the only reason to not do so, is a book told them such......by all means, keep believing in your religion. I'd say it's a sad state of affairs that would be the case, but it is probably true for some people.

If they educated their ignorant asses, it probably would be a good thing.

The 32% that think "Well, yeah, evolution, but God helped it along" are *less* ignorant, and easier to deal with than someone that believes in a *literal* interpretation of creation.

You just can't argue against that kind of willful ignorance.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Oh good, another anti-religious troll thread. Didn't we just have one of these last week?

Aside from the fact you disagree, how does it really effect you? I imagine there must be more important things about being up in arms. Also I would imagine the ways that it affects people's outlooks are at least neutral to society.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

One could ask the same about those that believe in a flat earth; about 9/11 "truthers"; those who believe in astrology or psychics -- the list could go on.

Even if harmless, it's frustrating. It's difficult to have faith in your fellow humans when they exhibit such willful ignorance, and such a lack of adherence to logic or reason. There's an irony here, in that it lends even more credence to evolution - we're not nearly as far above our other primate cousins as we would like to believe. As I am not significantly more intelligent than people who would choose to believe such things, it insults my own sense of intelligence that my fellow humans choose to continue believing superstition and legend rather than trust investigation and logic and the scientific process.

Sadly, I do not believe it is harmless. Religion has done incalculable harm to the human species over time. Whatever evolutionary purpose it once served, it has long since stopped helping, and is, instead, some vestigial legacy code-bloat in our DNA that weighs us down and slows progress. What's worse, this now-useless artifact of our evolutionary past is susceptible to some of the most horrible social cancers humans can contract.

I pray hope that it is something we are overcoming. Perhaps I am just impatient. Human lifespans are so short, and evolution works so slowly, maybe there's hope for us yet. I'd like to see unlimited human potential. Maybe we can still eventually rise to become the gods we have created.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Fixed for reality.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Also simplistic.

let's put it another way:

People would have done a lot less harm to each other and human society without this organized superstition. Religion is a net negative...and the balance sheet isn't even close. For every minor bit of good it does, it causes far more damage. People without religion are better off than people with religion. Religion is an evolutionary disease. Whatever purpose it once served in helping humans survive their hostile world, it now drags us down, inhibits progress and stifles advancement.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

That's a dumb opinion. If no one ever, anywhere, had come up with the concept of relgion...people would still find a cause or reason to kill, subject, rule, overthrow, coerce, whatever else you can think of. Religion is just your personal boogie man and something you like to simply blame for all the bad things in the world. You should be smarter than that. As far as better off without than with? Again, just a personal bias because of who you are. What makes you happy may not make someone else happy and vice-versa.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

If nobody had ever come up with Nazism, people would still find cause or reason to kill, subject, rule, overthrow, coerce, blah blah blah. Therefore Hitler's not that bad, because people would have done it anyway? Is that your argument? Because religion has caused far more oppression than Hitler or Stalin or any other modern tyrant. In fact, one can make a very compelling argument that without religion, such tyrants could never have risen to power.

Anyway, you didn't even touch on the bigger problem: the stagnation of human progress that religion promotes. That the rapid scientific advancement of the 20th and 21st centuries compared to the previous several thousand years of human history coincides with the loss of religious power in political institutions is no coincidence.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Was Hitler a person or a religion?

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."