# The war on ignorance may not be winnable **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 7, 2004, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497 "2004-12-07T04:40:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/41 "2004-12-07T16:25:10Z")
> [@Metacom](#): > > Clearly, 3% of the population believes that it’s possible to create facts by inventing a story. 😃 You can believe in a Virgin Birth without swallowing the ‘baby Jesus born in a stable’ yarn. Or; you can buy the Christmas story without believing that Mary was quite as pure as she made out. So the stats don’t exactly add up that way. Scary all the same. But these kind of surveys usually only prove that 50% of the people haven’t ever thought about 50% of what’s been asked, so make up an answer on the spot rather than appear stupid. Which about the purest example of irony you can ever get. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/42 "2004-12-07T16:30:23Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > That’s the joke. It’s like saying “All generalizations are wrong”, or “Everything I say is a lie.” Look, I’ve told you a million times. Stop exaggerating. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/43 "2004-12-07T16:33:22Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] > [@](#): > > 1. It’s not that easy to understand. Most people take a year or two of a foreign language in high school, but how many of them remember even 20 words of that language now? Evolution is no different in that respect-- even those not opposed to it on religious grounds are going to have a poor understanding of it once they leave biology class behind. That’s no reason for it not to be taught in school. Evolution is the grand unifying theory of biology, and it underpins virtually everything we know about the life sciences. > [@](#): > > 1. It has no practical application for the vast majority of people. What are the negative consequences of not knowing about evoloution? For 99% of the populace, none at all. So, there is no reinforcement mechanism for retaining any knowledge one might once have had on the subject. Nonsense. Take for example the increasingly worrying problem of antibiotic resistance among dangerous microbes. More and more we see bacteria developing resistance to once-powerful drugs, so that infections once cleared up by a course of penicillin now pose a serious public health problem. Hello, this is evolution is action–alleles that confer immunity to a specific antibiotic drug become prevalent in the bacterial population. A scientifically literate nation would understand how antibiotic resistance occurs and how it may be combatted. > [@](#): > > 1. There is no single idea that rocks the very foundation of Christianity like evolution, especially human evolution, does. Many, many people simply can’t reconcile the two concepts, and so go for the one which is more comforting. I honestly don’t see how people who claim to accept that humans have an immortal soul (which also, btw, needs to be saved from eternal damnation) can also accept that humans evolved in a continuous line from non-human ancestors. If I were a Christian, there is no way I could accept human evolution unless I closed my mind at some point. Well, if you are stuck with a literal reading of the bible, then I grant the problem may be insurmountable. However, if you believe in an all-powerful God and accept the evidence of evolution, then one can say that God uses evolution as a tool of His creation. As for when humans became ensouled, why worry about it? Believe that you have a soul now and that God may not have told you everything He knows. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/44 "2004-12-07T16:35:05Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > How are these two concepts mutually exclusive? > > Evolution certainly happens, and is the result of the divine plan. God created the universe and its physical laws, and, like a chess master that can see thirty moves ahead, set in play the events that ultimately led to the formation of life and, even more ultimately, the formation of human beings, at which point they were ensouled. Where is the contradiction? Not so much a contradiction, as a series of paradoxes. If some particular human ancestor was “ensouled” then that ancestor’s parents were not “ensouled”. One can propose that God’s justice is unfathonable to humans, but this seems to be a gross injustice. Also, we no that _H. sapiens_ lived contemporaniously with at least 2 other homind species, one of which almost certainly believed in some sort of afterlife. God chose one species but no the other? If he chose a common ancestor of both species, then we have 2 distinct homind species with souls? Just doesn’t make sense. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/45 "2004-12-07T16:41:48Z")
> [@gobear](#): > > That’s no reason for it not to be taught in school. Evolution is the grand unifying theory of biology, and it underpins virtually everything we know about the life sciences. I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t be taught in schools. I’m just saying that it doesn’t surprise me that people retain little, if any, knowledge of it once they leave school. > [@](#): > > Nonsense. Take for example the increasingly worrying problem of antibiotic resistance among dangerous microbes. More and more we see bacteria developing resistance to once-powerful drugs, so that infections once cleared up by a course of penicillin now pose a serious public health problem. Hello, this is evolution is action–alleles that confer immunity to a specific antibiotic drug become prevalent in the bacterial population. A scientifically literate nation would understand how antibiotic resistance occurs and how it may be combatted. People typically don’t understand the treatments they receive from the medical community. This is no different. You go to the doctor, and he/she tells you what medicines you need to take. If I don’t know about evolution, the doctor still gives me the same antibiotic he gives to the person who does know about evolution. > [@](#): > > Well, if you are stuck with a literal reading of the bible, then I grant the problem may be insurmountable. However, if you believe in an all-powerful God and accept the evidence of evolution, then one can say that God uses evolution as a tool of His creation. As for when humans became ensouled, why worry about it? Believe that you have a soul now and that God may not have told you everything He knows. Well, that’s exactly what I mean. At some point you have to close your mind-- ie, stop asking questions because you can’t know everything. I won’t accept that. ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/46 "2004-12-07T16:56:30Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > Thank god for liberal educators, by the way. They’re the only thing stopping us from becoming Saudi Arabia. Who educated all those respondants? 😉 The “debate” between superstitionalists and rationalists has been ebbing and flowing for a few centuries now. Go back and look at some of the notions Cotton Mather prposed as perfectly reasonable. Go find some poll which claims that over 90% of Americans believe in angels. Taking that sort of thing into account, 40% opposing creations science only teaching is a good thing. 26% oppose teaching creation at all is an even better thing. On another note. I’d be curious to see if any questions were asked to determine if the respondants understood even the most basic things about evolution or creationism. It seems to me quite likely that the large number of people “favoring” teaching creationism merely want to include religion in some form in schools. Many people feel put upon or fearful that “liberal educatirs” want to remove religion entirely from young people’s education. They may see creation as a sort of back door for getting the ten commandments back on the front lawn, so to speak. I’m just saying that it may be a bit premature to conclude from this poll that more people belive creationisms version of history than evolutions. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/47 "2004-12-07T16:57:43Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Not so much a contradiction, as a series of paradoxes. If some particular human ancestor was “ensouled” then that ancestor’s parents were not “ensouled”. One can propose that God’s justice is unfathonable to humans, but this seems to be a gross injustice. Also, we no that _H. sapiens_ lived contemporaniously with at least 2 other homind species, one of which almost certainly believed in some sort of afterlife. God chose one species but no the other? If he chose a common ancestor of both species, then we have 2 distinct homind species with souls? Just doesn’t make sense. No, you’ve just restated the chicken and the egg paradox. At some point in the past, the creature in the egg was a chicken, but the creature’s parent’s were not. There is clearly a point, even if it’s not intuitively obvious. And what’s wrong with the idea that multiple species of hominds had souls? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Lance_Murdoch)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/48 "2004-12-07T16:58:01Z")
When I saw a similar poll a couple weeks ago, I too found it disheartening. I also noticed that the poll was worded poorly, giving little to no room for those who believe in God and accept the scientific validity of evolution. For what it’s worth, I don’t know _anyone_ who professes to believe in creationism. Maybe if I lived in a red state things would be quite different. Ultimately, I think religion almost always trumps science in the short run but science will inevitably get the upper hand eventually. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/49 "2004-12-07T17:00:10Z")
**John** , I’m having a little trouble understanding what point you’re trying to argue here. Are you saying that in your own mind you can’t reconcile evolution and religion, or that the public can’t? Or won’t? Or shouldn’t try to? Help me out here, bud. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/50 "2004-12-07T17:19:14Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > **John** , I’m having a little trouble understanding what point you’re trying to argue here. Are you saying that in your own mind you can’t reconcile evolution and religion, or that the public can’t? Or won’t? Or shouldn’t try to? > > Help me out here, bud. I’m saying that reconciling the two is a very, very difficult\* intellectual exercise. It does not therefore surprise me that most people don’t even attempt to do so. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t try, but hey, there are limitless intellectual difficulties that most people never overcome. This is just one of them. It also happens to be THE scientific theory that clashes most directly with commonly held religious beliefs. The fight against ignorance should continue. Evolution should be taught in schools. But don’t be surprised how hard it is going to be to overcome this hurdle. And it doesn’t help to take on an air of moral superiority about this, as many posters on this board seem to do. \*My own sense is that it is impossible, but for the sake of this discussion, “difficult” works fine. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/51 "2004-12-07T17:24:08Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > And it doesn’t help to take on an air of moral superiority about this, as many posters on this board seem to do. Moral superiority? No. Intellectual superiority? Yes, but only because I take an active role in educating myself. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/52 "2004-12-07T17:30:58Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > No, you’ve just restated the chicken and the egg paradox. At some point in the past, the creature in the egg was a chicken, but the creature’s parent’s were not. There is clearly a point, even if it’s not intuitively obvious. But one of them didn’t get eternal life in heaven (or hell) while the other was condemned to nothingness after death. Evolution is not a binary process, but a gradual one. Even punctuated equilibrium doesn’t argue for that radical a change in one generation. And actually the chicken/egg paradox isn’t really a paradox. Calling one individual a “chicken” and it’s immediate ancestor a “proto-chicken” is a human convention that we impose on the world to help us understand things. It doesn’t have meaning in a physical sense, certainly not to either the chicken or the proto-chicken. > [@](#): > > And what’s wrong with the idea that multiple species of hominds had souls? Nothing, except I’m not aware of any maintream Christian thelogy that espouses that possibility. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/53 "2004-12-07T17:35:52Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > I’m saying that reconciling the two is a very, very difficult\* intellectual exercise. It does not therefore surprise me that most people don’t even attempt to do so. Ah, OK. I would disagree with your assessment that it’s impossible. As I’ve said, the Catholic church has done it. So have all of my Xian friends. And so have many people in this very thread. You haven’t, and it seems that in your efforts to do so, you’re just not trying very hard. And that seems to lie at the crux of the matter – willingness to try. It would seem to me that many people can’t understand evolution because they don’t want to, not because they lack the intellectual capacity. Fundies fit this model especially well because their dogma is in direct conflict with it. Show me another sect that is not so scripturally literal, and I’ll show you followers willing to go the extra mile. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/54 "2004-12-07T17:38:31Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > As with the [PIPA](http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/Report10_21_04.pdf) results which many found unbelievable, there is a tendency to consider the results a fluke. However, 1000 people **is** a highly reliable sample space, so long as the respondents are chosen randomly (and I would be very surprised if an august institution like Newsweek _ignored_ such basic statistical requirements). Newsweek still publishes with the intent to find readers and this poll was included in a pre-Christmas edition. I vote with the folks who are waiting to see what the _questions_ looked like, the confidence interval, and a few other data points before I get excited about this. For one thing, some of the results are not borne out in other news stories. For example, after its brief flirtation with sending Creationism into the classroom, Kansas threw out the board members who had imposed it.\* Now, if the numbers are so completely bad across the country as a whole, one would expect a location such as Kansas–with a quite high proportion of conservative Christians–to stand fast and support the original Creationist schoolboard. Instead they threw the bums out in 2000. In 2002 the Creationist crowd made some gains, but failed to get a majority, and this year the election maintained the _status quo_. Obviously, there are many people who do hold the views being lamented in the OP, but such people do not appear to make up the supermajorities reported in the poll. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/55 "2004-12-07T17:41:40Z")
Of course, you could always choose the option of chucking the whole God hypothesis into the toy box with the rest of the outmoded, discarded ideas that humanity has outgrown. Just a thought. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/56 "2004-12-07T17:44:41Z")
My previous reply was directed to **John Mace**. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/57 "2004-12-07T17:45:54Z")
In Ohio, the school board foisted off a watered down Intelligent Design standard onto the schools, this year. They had to make a serious effort to disguise their motives in order to get it through. The Cleveland _Plain Dealer_ had similar horrible poll results during the debate showing a real tilt toward biblical literalism among the populace, yet the board still had to disguise their intentions in order to keep from being pilloried. If so many people are fervent believers of error, why are they not able to simply push their agendas through the political processes without subterfuge? ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/58 "2004-12-07T17:49:13Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Nothing, except I’m not aware of any maintream Christian thelogy that espouses that possibility. And here is a good example of moral superiority\*. “Man is above all beasts, and is God’s special chosen creature.” Humanocentric. Get past the egotism, and we can well imagine that animals have souls as well. It’s not hard for me to imagine that my pets (if I had any) have souls and will go to heaven (if I believed in that stuff, which I don’t). So it’s not hard to imagine that our ancestors had souls, all the way back to sea cucumbers and beyond. Of course, take this to its logical conclusion, and we have to accept that plants have souls, as do bacteria, as do amino acids. So we’re back at your contradiction, and yes, it’s a biggy. Can you think of some ways to explain it away? Let’s try a few: [ul] [li]Souls evolved concurently with brains. This was part of God’s design.[/li][li]One day God decided, boom, all critters of X type will have souls from now on.[/li][li]Everything has a soul. Rocks, stars, rock stars, atoms, eves, everything.[/li][/ul] I’m sure that someone with a little imagination could add to this list. (\* Not accusing you of that, just stating what I see in a lot of religion.) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/59 "2004-12-07T17:52:24Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > I would disagree with your assessment that it’s impossible. As I’ve said, the Catholic church has done it. So have all of my Xian friends. And so have many people in this very thread. You haven’t, and it seems that in your efforts to do so, you’re just not trying very hard. Or, I could simply be right. You seem to be assuming that I \*\*cannot \*\*be right. I know that most mainstrean Christians have “reconciled” their beliefs with evolution. I’d propose that that is mainly because they don’t really understand evolution. The fact remains that evolution works with our without God. There is no REQUIREMENT for God to exist, and so postulating His existence is completely besides the point. For most Christians, there is NOTHING that would cause them to not believe in God. Given that, the fact that they have reconciled their religious beliefs with the concept of evolution is meaningless (to me). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497/60 "2004-12-07T17:55:47Z")
> [@gobear](#): > > Of course, you could always choose the option of chucking the whole God hypothesis into the toy box with the rest of the outmoded, discarded ideas that humanity has outgrown. > > Just a thought. I’m not going to give you any grief about that proposal. The concept of “God” does nothing to help us understand the physical world around us. If it did, I’d be all for it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-war-on-ignorance-may-not-be-winnable/278497.md?page=4)