# "Obvious Facts" Debate thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 2, 2010, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-facts-debate-thread/527309 "2010-02-02T00:13:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 7
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-facts-debate-thread/527309/7 "2010-02-02T00:38:32Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Heh, I don’t really see the point of all this. The book of Genesis was an allegory written by stone-age people FOR stone-age people. The Big Bang theory was a theory written by space-age people FOR space-age people, and has the advantage of being logically elegant while being pretty much unverifiable. But the Book of Genesis is much more than just the creation story. There’s a whole bunch of other unverifiable :dubious: stuff too. I’m just saying that it doesn’t “make as much sense”. > [@What fact is most obvious to you that you hear frequently denied?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fact-is-most-obvious-to-you-that-you-hear-frequently-denied/527009/50): > > There are significant cognitive and physical differences between different races that are THE main deciding factors in the successes and failures of members of those races in different arenas. The breakdown is something like 95% nature, 5% nurture. Nobody will admit or accept this, in spite of it being plain as day, because it’s an “offensive” concept. I also believe that research and empirical data confirming this is suppressed, though often tacitly. > > That said, this calls for even more equality-supporting laws and behaviors like affirmative action. Suppressed? By who? And for that matter, why would that even be a reason for affirmative action? Unless you subscribe to the happy fantasy that genetic deficits in one area would automatically be made up for in another, some races would end up inferior, under your percentages. Which would result in the decline and eventual disappearance of this race simply by social selection, at some point. Not that I agree with your assumption of 95% genetics/5% other. A great deal of “nature” is not in which genes one has, but in which ones are activated/deactivated–something that is primarily determined by the female’s amniotic fluid, the contents of which are partially determined by the pregnant woman’s behavior. Furthermore, a great deal of social conditioning has to do with what a person chooses to respond to in their own genes. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-facts-debate-thread/527309)._