I am Norwegian, they are not my fellow citizens
Enough said. The situation is very different between Europe and the US. The US has a strong strain of Fundamentalism which is wields a depressingly large amount of political power. It's slowly changing and I hope to reach a more rational point in my lifetime.
If you want the honest truth, I'm actually a young-earther, which is about as far away from physical reality as you can get
There, fixed that for you.
Many Christians I know say it's a metaphor and has no objection to evolutionary biology.
Great. Same here, though not locally(I have many theistic evolutionist friends in other places, but I live in a stronghold of pure creationism). That has no bearing on the statistics. I invite you to watch an episode of 700 Club, or listen to one of the many Christian radio stations run by creationists and then try to envision the audience for those programs. There is a large part of that 46%. I can even point you to Catholic and Eastern Orthodox people who reject evolution entirely(and Muslims and Jews, to round out the program). Do you think it was just a crazy statistical anomaly that so many of the GOP candidates for president in this last election were creationists?
If presented thus, the %s would probably be lower.
What part of this is unclear?
Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.
You may not like it, but it's still true. A lot of your fellow citizens believe in creationism, and they are not bashful about it.
Natural selection is something that everyone I know is fine with. Random mutation is something that everyone I know is fine with. But the creation of new species? Not so much. And in this case, we're merely seeing natural selection at play, which is not evolution, in and of itself, any more than a motor by itself should be considered a car.
Until the sub-species is altered in some way to prevent interbreeding(physical isolation, physical inability to mate, behavioral changes which prevent mating, etc), it is indeed not a speciation event. It is, however, evolution("a change in heritable traits over time"). The term "species" is just a convienent label to place on living things in order to categorize them. It is just a snapshot of a particular group of living things at a particular time. All species are always adapting, always evolving. Some can interbreed(even long after they diverged, like lions and tigers), some can't.
Saying that you accept all of the mechanisms of the evolutionary process and yet reject the logical result of those processes is irrational.
And if the universe itself is infinitely old and un-caused, then that too is a violation of the notion of cause and effect every bit as great as that of the First Effect.
The obvious response is that we have evidence of the universe, so until we find evidence that that is not sufficient then there is no need to pretend that some amorphous mind simply popped it into existence.
There is a quantative distinction between an organism engaged in biotic processes and other collections of matter which are not.
Sorry to bust your bubble, but it is just chemistry. Complex chemistry, mind you, but chemistry all the same.
Ok, how about Dr Mengele? Unit 731? Tuskeegee Syphilis study?
The situation has come up and continues to come up; if you didnt realize that, you havent been paying attention.
And we dealt with those by enacting controls to ban them(and killed a bunch of Nazis in response to the first). If you haven't noticed that, then you haven't been paying attention.
Influence != block. It's also worth noting that they're a large enough voting block to influence road construction or military spending. Do they by default "block" those as well?
Since they don't seem to be trying to rewrite educational guidelines to attack the ideas of road construction and military spending, I would say no. Since they seem to applaud runaway military spending while supporting bans on stem cell research(as an example), I would say no. Are you simply ignoring the political and religious landscape of the US?
There are probably a lot of people in the 47% who know they don't get back what they pay to the government but are still happy getting back whatever they can and expected that to be higher under Obama than under Romney.
It sounds like you are implying that government benefits are the only or main reason that people voted for Obama.
Is there "research" that you feel should off limits, or are you going all in with Dr. Mengele?
When the situation comes up of some researcher asking to experiment on humans ala Mengele, we'll worry about it. Until then, you are just taking an absurdist position which doesn't exist in the real world.
If you do think some research is off limits, why? Because any reason you offer has its foundations in ethics/philosophy, which is inextricably entwined with religion.
That is incorrect. The ethics of secular humanism, for example, require no reference to religion or religious beliefs. Ethics are ultimately based on human behavior and the ways that we interact with each other. It is a common claim that religions have some monopoly on ethics, but that is just not true. And, yes, I would oppose research which required that avoidable harm be inflicted upon developed humans(and certain animals), but I'm certainly not basing that opposition upon some religious foundation.
I am a trained scientist that certainly understands the reality of the 5 billion year old solar system, the evolution of species, and for that matter the truth of global warming. Yet I still believe whole-heartedly in God and practice my faith within the Catholic Church.
So, you claim to believe in Catholicism and understand evolution, yet you fail to see how the dogma of Adam and Eve is directly contradictory to the evolution of the human species?
Ok - what non-religious country in the past one thousand years do you feel pushed/allowed science to advance better than the Christian countries?
What non-religious country has existed in the past one thousand years? Even the officially atheistic countries were only atheistic by government fiat. Only recently have we seen the rise of a dominant organic atheism anywhere in the world. And those states are indeed doing well in advancing science and education. Here in the US, where our level of religiosity is more in line with Islamic countries, we have a serious problem with people attempting to subvert public education, public funding and public research to suit their religious beliefs.
I sincerely hope that the anti-religious folks keep pushing harder and harder against people that have faith. Eventually, you are going to push people to the point where they start speaking up for themselves.
What planet are you on that you think that religious people are not voicing their opposition now? Did you somehow miss the debates, the billboards, the church signs, the youtube videos, the religious forums, the protests, etc?
So what? They're not blocking the science. You aren't less rational or scientific in your thinking just because someone out there believes crazy things.
These people are a large enough voting block to influence public education and government research. So, yes, they very much do block science. Their influence is growing smaller, but it is still a force to be dealt with in the US.
The hypothesis is the prediction.
Now you are talking gibberish. The hypothesis in this case is "god X with properties Y and behaviors Z exists." The prediction is "if god X exists, then based upon the asserted properties and behaviors, we will see measurable effect E." E fails to happen, therefore the initial hypothesis is wrong. Not rocket science.
Do you see how absurd that is? How scientifically illiterate would you have to be to make that statement in earnest?
No, I don't, because it is not.
If you meant something else (as implied by earlier quote) great. Next time, try saying what you mean.
I meant what I said.
1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.
