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Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

While true, the actual data presents a different picture:

http://i.imgur.com/FXMlOZB.png

[source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07....]

So actually, the U.S. had the second highest score on that question, behind South Korea. Furthermore, the U.S. consistently performed on par or higher vs. the other countries/regions for the remaining questions.

The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey was the question about evolution -- only 48% of Americans got that right, significantly behind the rest of the pack.

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That's obviously because a lot of people have religious beliefs that make more sense to them than evolution. It's not that they haven't heard of evolution, but that they reject it for the simpler theory found in their 3000 year old book.

Something like 95% of the entire human population believes in something supernatural. And also, what other nonsense do they believe?

IME, that's because most people haven't ever heard any reasonable explanation of evolution. They honestly believe that evolution is just "random things happened and fish decided to walk on land". That "animals wanted to see so they randomly got eyes". Given that explanation of evolution of course they're going to reject it - that explanation is nonsense.

Creation is only simpler if you exclude the axiom of having some omnipotent creator in the first place.

It's almost as if this stuff should be taught in school.

Another fun fact: Europeans were more likely to answer correctly about evolution than the earth going round the sun.

Where the percentage correct is significantly below 50%, it seems like there are very widespread myths being accepted, possibly dangerously. Malaysia scored 8% and Russia scored 18% on the second to last question (Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria) - that's scary to me from a public health standpoint.

> The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey was the question about evolution...

Which, the way the question was worded, could reasonably be attributed to people just affirming their belief in creation irrespective of their actual ignorance of the accepted scientific explanation for the origin of humans.

On the question of whether or not the universe began with a huge explosion, they say the correct answer is "true".

Is that actually correct? This was before cosmic inflation, so the whole universe was very small at the instant of the Big Bang, and so wasn't it actually a small explosion?

Cosmic inflation changed the expansion rate of the "explosion", but this doesn't mean there wasn't an explosion.

Cosmic inflation changed the density ratio between spacetime and mass/energy, but the entirety of the universe's mass/energy came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. So yes, some explosion that.

Remember about this particular explosion that it wasn't an explosion of mass/energy into the empty space of a pre-existing universe, but an explosion of mass/energy and spacetime into nothing -- the Big Bang was space, time and mass/energy.

In other words, there was no "before" before the Big Bang, and there was no "outside" outside the Big Bang. The Big Bang was everything.

More detail here: http://arachnoid.com/gravity

Does that mean around 1 out of 2 Americans doesn't believe in evolution? That's scary.

Why is that scary? If we assume it is indeed a matter of belief the 50/50 chance is not that bad. Now, I suppose both you and me think about it more as a matter of science, but how many people understand what science is (and why), how the scientific method is applied and so on? Well fewer than 50%, I'd guess. US, Europe or Africa, any place.

Well, for that question Europe fared much better. 70% believed in evolution. Only Russia was worse than US.

People that operate outside of coherent, explainable, rational principles tempered by compassion are bigger liabilities. It's common sense.

Departing from this is what allows folks to believe violent terrorism to be a viable strategy to "win."

Do you have any evidence for this? In my experience people with largely religious principles tempered by compassion are just as reliable as self-identified rationalists.

There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years...

What worries me more is people who believe the world is going to end in their lifetimes. How can we plan for the long-term future, as a species, with that kind of worldview?

Sure, those people worry me too. Even the ones that think a "Singularity" is going to zap them up to techno-heaven.

The people who don't believe in objective right and wrong also worry me.

It's a long list.

I think the world will end in our lifetimes. We are only a generation away from strong AI at most.

> Do you have any evidence for this?

The history of religion? The Inquisition, as just one example among many? Being absolutely sure that God is on your side is a powerful drug.

> There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years ...

Yes, but it can't compare to the well-established historical connection between religion and war.

One example -- try to imagine recent Indian history without the effect of religion, without Muslims and Hindus killing each other at every opportunity, true to the present day.

Another example -- 9/11 wasn't an attack by have-nots against haves, it was a largely successful effort by religious fanatics to snuff out some infidels.

Sure, the Inquisition was bad. But so was the gulag. Seems like the 'tempered by compassion' thing is more important than the left hand side, doesn't it?

There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war. From http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/06/god_and_the...

"Moreover, the chief complaint against religion -- that it is history's prime instigator of intergroup conflict -- does not withstand scrutiny. Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A BBC-sponsored "God and War" audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on a 0-to-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars = 0, Crusades = 5), found that more than 60 percent had no religious motivation. Less than 7 percent earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history's most lethal century of international bloodshed."

> There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war.

Absolutely false -- you have grossly overstated your claim and even contradicted your own sources. You have posted statistics that say either 7% or 40% (depending on source) of wars are caused by religion, and then blithely made a claim that contradicts your own evidence.

If your claim were true, having religious beliefs would produce a reduction in warlike tendencies and violence in religious believers, a claim that is obviously false. If you want to argue that religion doesn't lead to violence in and of itself, you have to ignore India, 9/11, every bombed abortion clinic, and dozens of other examples from the recent past, to say nothing of history. You would have to live in perpetual denial of reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence

I can't meaningfully quote from the above article -- every line contradicts your claim.

If anything, atheism has stronger correlation with wars and violence than religion has (after controlling for the age of civilization).

Consider WW2: it was not backed up by religion. USSR was an atheist state and Germany was only mildly religious.

How about Cambodian Civil War: what was Pol Pot's religion?

> If anything, atheism has stronger correlation with wars and violence than religion has ...

"Atheism?" You're absurdly arguing that every war not started by a recognized religion is started by atheists. You're overlooking the fact that a non-religious war is most often fought by people with religious beliefs -- not atheists.

> USSR was an atheist state

Oh, do learn some history. By that reasoning, prohibition stopped Americans from drinking, and laws against prostitution prevent sex workers from plying their trade.

Do you know the term "self-reference"? This conversation has a big element of self-reference. You're defending religion for a reason other than a dispassionate pursuit of truth, and you're not very bright. You represent the I.Q. norm that's been scientifically established for religious people.

If your arguments were more than paper-thin and self-contradicting, if you had the requisite intellect to construct substantial arguments, you wouldn't have religious beliefs and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Self-reference.

Wow, an article on religious violence goes over religious violence. Who would have guessed?

7% of all wars in history have been religiously motivated (note, that is not by body count: if we went that way the atheistic russian and Chinese civil wars plus nationalist world wars would make them a round-off error.)

Do some religious people commit violence? Yep. So do some environmentalists. Is the problem environmentalism? So do socialists. Is the problem socialism?

I get it: HackerNews commenters generally don't like religion, mainly on first-principle and emotional grounds. But there is no reason, logically, to exaggerate the dangers of religion, nor to deny the observable benefits.

> 7% of all wars in history have been religiously motivated

You're picking data to suit your beliefs. Another of your own sources said the number was 40%. In any case, this contradicts your prior claim that: "There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war." That's quite false, however you cut it.

> Do some religious people commit violence? Yep. So do some environmentalists.

You're moving the goal posts and posing an absurd argument -- not unlike the child molester who says, "So? Who's perfect?"

> But there is no reason, logically, to exaggerate the dangers of religion, nor to deny the observable benefits.

I can't possibly exaggerate the dangers of religion in a country that (because of religious belief) rejects science and critical thinking, murders health workers, and tries to force Creationism into public school classrooms as though it's science.

And what benefits did you have in mind? A way to control the behavior of people who aren't very smart and need to have their hand held as they cross the busy street of life?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

Quote: "In a 2013 meta-analysis, led by Professor Miron Zuckerman, of 63 scientific studies about IQ and religiosity, a negative relation between intelligence and religiosity was found in 53 out of 63 ..."

You are the one picking data. The reality is that non-religious, even restricting to the more tightly defined atheist, people are responsible for more death and suffering than religious people. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. End of discussion.

Religious people are happier and more moral. They are less intelligent, for sure, but there is no correlation between intelligence and morality. Furthermore, since there are far more religious people in the world than non-relgious people, in absolute terms there are more intelligent religious people than intelligent non-religious people.

Good times are to be had outside the anti-religious bubble most people swim in here, you should come on out.

9/11 was an attack mostly fueled by Saudi Arabians pissed off by US involvement in the Middle East in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular.

Blaming it on Islam is missing the point.

Wasn't a major reason they were pissed off by the US presence in Saudi Arabia that some very major holy sites of their religion are there (such as Mecca), and they objected to having infidels near such sites?

That's probably an oversimplification. The Saudi government's gobsmacking flagrant corruption was a powerful motivator for bin Laden, and religion is a vector for opposition to the Saudi state. And there's no question that the US helps keep the Saudi government in power.

The original stated objection of AlQ was indeed to remove US presence from Muslim holy sites, but Lawrence Wright's book on what happened (for example) makes it pretty clear that the religious stuff was more emblematic of the real problem than it was the real problem itself.

> Blaming it on Islam is missing the point.

I didn't blame it on Islam, I attributed it to religious extremism, something the vast majority of Muslims reject. That attribution is absolutely correct and supported by an unbiased analysis of the events.

What's your point? That extremism is bad? I agree.

Are you also claiming that religious extremism is worse than non-religious extremism? Available data shows us that it's not the case.

> Are you also claiming that religious extremism is worse than non-religious extremism?

No, only that a prior poster's claim that religions have no connection to wars is false. This is easily established by reading the thread's contents instead of inventing views for people.

Why? The vast majority are religious as well.

The form of evolution I was taught in school was strictly wrong. It's not hard to see why anyone would reject the principle outright.

Yes and the guns, mass surveillance and racially unequal incarceration tantamount to genocide.

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