I can see some of your points but again I ask, why is he picking on the United States? Why doesnt his beloved UK (or Canada and Australia) pick up the slack and do the stem cell research the US will not? Or for that matter every other country in Europe? Arent their scientists in France, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and Italy?
Does he make similar attacks on the Japanese and their Asian religions getting into conflict with science?
Does he go to China or Russia and talk about how their official policy of atheism has made them scientific leaders?
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Once a scientist, always a scientist. But opinions don’t have to come with tables of data.
[/QUOTE]
Opinions that are worth anything need some kind of hard evidence to back them up.
No, basing your views on anecdotalal data is not being a scientist.
What I do know is that currently there are many protects were the US is involved with the UK scientists, the point here is that if a Republican is elected president it is very likely that a lot of these efforts will be curved in the USA, leaving us once again behind in the progress of the science. And it is clear that there will be no other reason for a ban in the USA other than the conservative politicians following the dictates of the bible belt.
When was the last time you started a thread criticizing some American for bad mouthing a European country? Perhaps we’re none of us perfect and even handed all the time.
I could say that we are doing good, but we could be doing much, much better. And when one looks at the current leadership in congress one has to wonder aloud if we are not beginning to decline.
Once again I look at what Neil DeGrasse Tyson said recently:
I am absolutely flummoxed as to how a man like Dawkins who is presumably quite educated and had at some point taken a few math classes could find this a wonder at all.
It would be exactly the same, of course.
There are 320 million people in the United States. The number of Americans who are NOT evangelical, science-denying Christians is greater than the combined population of Germany and France and Canada thrown in for good measure. The number of intelligent Americans able and willing to fill research posts at good school is well beyond counting.
Dawkins’ wonder would only make sense if EVERY American was a fundamentalist. Being surprised that a country with such a huge population and considerable material wealth can support both churches and research labs is kind of like being amazed that New York City has enough people to support both a baseball team and a hockey team, or that London can somehow accommodate the dietary preferences of people who prefer pizza and people who prefer Indian food.
For all that Dawkins and Tyson complain about scientific illiteracy - and shit, I complain about it - the United States is indisputably a country with many, many millions of highly LITERATE people. To draw another analogy, is anyone amazed that Elizabethan England produced William Shakespeare even though a lot of Britons were illiterate? Of course not, because it’s just sort of stupidly obvious that playwrights were not drawn from the illiterate portion of the population.
It is theoretically possible - though I am not totally sold on it - that less scientific illiteracy and religious stupidity would mean MORE Nobel prizes for Americans. But the fact that it can coexist with lots of Nobel prizes in a country of immense wealth with 200 million or more people who aren’t religious extremists living in and amongst the most extensive and elite higher education system in the history of the world is not exactly a puzzle.
It’s not just the absolute numbers–America also has a high per-capita rate of good science.
Take this list of Nobel prizes per-capita. The US is by no means the highest, but nevertheless does quite well, beating the EU average as well as many more secular nations.
So it’s not just that there are plenty of people left over to do good science–it’s that religion is not a huge factor in the first place. The rate would not be where it is if half our population were excluded from the results.
Dawkins IMHO is looking mostly at the news coming from the USA about the kind of people that are being selected as the ones making legislation and what they are doing with what science is telling us about climate change and other issues, they are ignoring it on purpose. I bet Dawkins sees things like this as reported by the BBC and that is why he is coming with statements like the one in the OP:
The problem is that many in the USA are still unaware of how the Republicans are so much out of step even with many republicans, so yes, it may be not much of a problem for our education and the science we make (IIRC there are a lot of dick moves the Republicans made recently to limit NASA from investigating climate change) but as I said the reason why science is being held back is in areas that are no less important. It is then crucial to educate and develop more informed citizens to prevent situations like this one.
Interesting bit from Tyson and Dawkins from October 3:
As Dawkins acknowledged, Tyson is like Darwin, not a confrontational fellow so he is the likeable guy; but Dawkins is like Huxley, the then attack dog for evolution against the attempts of religion to stop science.
Numbers alone are misleading. It’s not the absolute number of evangelicals that matters, it’s their political influence, and it’s substantial. It’s substantial enough to have banned federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, to have formally introduced amendments to teaching evolution in certain jurisdictions that labeled it “just one theory”, to have had major impact on gay rights and abortion policy (which would be, respectively, non-existent and totally illegal in many states were it not for Supreme Court rulings) and to have political parties cater to them. At the end of the first Republican presidential debate the last audience question to the candidates was whether God had been talking to them lately and what God was telling them to do, and every candidate – one of whom may well be the next president – had to seriously answer that.
And for slightly different reasons but along similar lines, when the kind of intelligent scientific minority that you’re talking about at the National Academy of Sciences issued a report on the dangers of climate change some years ago, the Bush White House altered the report by redacting and rewording sections of it to make it more palatable to their base. This may not have been religiously motivated but it illustrates the fact that one should never underestimate the impact of an irrational minority catering to irrational beliefs.
The October 29 - November 4, 2011 issue of New Scientist had a cover story titled “Unscientific America: A dangerous retreat from reason” about some of these phenomena. Evangelicals are a significant though not exclusive part of the problem.
Dawkins isn’t wrong, he’s just being hyperbolic. The negative impact of religion on science in America isn’t large, but it isn’t zero, either.
Incorrect. His views on biology are authoritarian. He* is *a authority in that field, to appeal to his expertise is a correct thing- we call this a 'cite".
You have commited two fallacies here: 1. Assuming the SDMB is a High School debating club.
A misuse of a “informal fallacy”.
His views on American religion, however, are just his opinion.
He’s specifically addressing the United States because it was the uncontested leader in advances in both theoretical and applied science, as well as STEM education post-WWII, but has lapsed in all areas due to social conservatism, religious ferment, and the shallow, self-congratulatory exceptionalism that has persuaded a generation of leaders that science is lest important than things like brand management and political lobbying. The nations you list and others have advanced in stature in science because of this lapse, and it is only the influx of foreign students seeking the already established centers of academic research in the US that have maintained the position in STEM education. While American students have increasingly moved away from the core arts and sciences curriculum to finance, fashion/design, and other well-compensated but unchallenging educational programs, students from Asia and elsewhere have come to the US in droves, some remaining to enjoy the relative social freedoms and fiscal opportunities, other returning to take their skills back to build a domestic technical base in their home countries.
I can’t think of a single example of the largely Shinto and Buddhist traditions of Japan (and Buddhist influence religions elsewhere in Southeast Asia) coming into conflict with science specifically because those practicianers are not dogmatic about their beliefs and accept that conflict be resolved by accepting factual evidence in support of scientific theories versus the blind rejection of science in favor of obtuse faith that an old and oft-mistranslated book or the claims of people in funny hats represents “The Truth, The Way, and the Life”, or whathaveyou. Like the more moderate Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other faiths that understand that evidence must be accepted as it is observed instead of distorted to reflect a pre-established dogma, scientists from Japan and Korea separate their spiritual belief from scientific fact. Indeed, the original purpose of objective scientific inquirity, a la Kepler, Linnaeus, et cetera was to examine natural phenomena to discern the true nature of the Christian God instead of accepting the authoritarian doctrine of the Catholic Church.
Both China and Russia have a long cultural tradition of developing science and mathematics which was unfortunately interrupted by the Communist dogma, which in its own way was every bit as distorting and repressive as any relgion, e.g. the Great Leap Forward, Soviet Lysenkoism, et cetera. Religion has no exclusive claim on distorting fact, especially when it comes to authoritarianism. Dawkins himself is an avowed humanistic socialist who has sternly criticized both dogmatic authoritarianism and the obtuse interpretation of Darwinian selection in a social and economic mileau.
As wolfpup already addressed, while fundamentalist Christians may be a minority of the electorate, they are a very vocal minority with a powerful voting block, hence why we see Donald Trump submitting (with obvious extreme discomfort) to being fondled and prayed over by a bunch of fundie nutters wishing upon a star for a Magic Negro to come to his aid and show him God’s Path to the White House. They’ve held this sway since the Reagan era when Jerry Falwell and his “Moral Majority” attained unprecidented policy development access to the office of the chief executive, notwithstanding that Reagan was never noted as being particularly religious or church-going. (Never mind that one of the most unquestionably and genuinely pius presidents–Jimmy Carter–rarely invoked any kind of religious sentiment in policy making or used it as a shield to justify his actions.) Most Americans who don’t reguarly interact with people from Europe don’t realize how just bizarre and medieval it seems to everyone else for public figures to be praying in the function of their office or invoking God as a decision-making authority in their policy and legislative decisions. Even in putitive religious nations with a state church such as England, such overt display of religion looks like rank superstition. Dawkins may be most vocal, but he is hardly alone in his impression or opinion.
I think the negative impact is quite large when viewed objectively. However, it’s probably canceled out by the positive effects. You have to include the positive effects of having religious people motivated to serve at home and abroad to providing medical intervention, education, and basic needs to people around the world, almost assuredly creating many more future scientists. You need to include the all of the universities and schools that would not exist but for religion. You need to account for the impact of religions like Judaism that hold scholarship and education in high regard. All those things and others have probably done more good for the cause of science than the negatives that have been mentioned thus far.
Yes, already acknowledged, that is not what Dawkins is talking about, but the issue is what the world is seeing now. And this will be more painful to notice once the Paris meeting about dealing with climate change takes place.
I’m okay with the U.S. being a leader in scientific and technological research, based on the ~60% of its population that hasn’t been doing the equivalent of guzzling lead paint. 60% of 330 million is still one of the largest countries in the world, after all.
It’s when the 40% is allowed to be in charge of anything more significant than a tollbooth that they become a nuisance.
Being a scientist means you know the difference between a clearly marked opinion piece (which does not get peer reviewed) and a paper which does. As I mentioned, I publish both so I think I’m reasonably aware of the difference.
Opinion pieces need some evidence - I think Dawkins has plenty. Lots of hate mail from moronic creationists as a start.
You got a cite for that? While I’m not at a university I do hire PhDs. I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen a resume from someone born in the US. And while we obviously do not ask about this, I strongly suspect few if any of the PhDs I hire are Christian.
As for universities, very few of the professors I know in my field under 40 were born in the US.
I’m not complaining, I love how we steal really smart people from other countries.
Speaking of Trump, I bet he’s not a creationist, and not very religious (except in the sense of self-worship.) It would be interesting to see if he could get away with making fun of the creationism of his opponents, and if his reality distortion field would handle that.
LOTS of hate mail you say??? Has he ever given an actual number?
Well no matter. Lets stop and think.
Lets say he can pull out a file and show 1,000 pieces of “hate” mail. The US has 300 million people. Plus his books are sold in other countries like the UK and Canada so lets figure 500 million. He has been written 13 books since 1976 (39 years).
Let’s do some math.
So how bad then is 1,000 or even 10,000 or heck even 100,000 pieces of mail from a country with a population of 300 million or a potential audience of 500 million in 39 years (100,000 of 300 million is .03%)
AND the man uses those letters to be the foundation of his argument that all Americans are “moronic creationists” that hate science and can somehow influence all government and private scientific research?