Pharyngula

Posted by: Lucy | December 27, 2007 11:39 AM

This makes me so happy...thanks for the good news, needed it...especially after what happened in Pakistan

Posted by: Arnaud | December 27, 2007 11:56 AM

Le Monde had a mention of this a few days ago in a piece about the dominance of religion in the US political landscape.

A group of scientists, including several thousands researchers and more than a dozen nobel prizes, are asking for a TV debate on science, environment, medicine and technology. This organisation, ScienceDebate2008, ask for all candidates to participate in at least one public discussion on these subjects. Lawrence Krauss .../... declared having been convinced of the necessity of this debate after hearing Mike Huckabee, ex republican governor of Arkansas and a baptist minister, defending creationism against darwinism.

Some good statistical data towards the end of the article:

In the society at large, the religious phenomena seems declining. According to polls taken by the Pew Research Centre and published in March, 45% of US citizen still say that praying is an important part of their daily life, 10% less than seven years ago. Between 2003 and 2007 the percentage of people who affirm never doubting the existence of god has lost 8 percentage points (still high at 61%). Pew Center analysts say that the '90s tendency of augmentation in religiosity, has been reversed. The proportion of agnostic Americans still stay infinitesimal (12%) but is in augmentation among young people: nearly 20% of whom are without religious affiliation or atheists.

How much of that is due to outspoken "militant" atheists, I wonder, and how much thanks to framing...

Posted by: rp | December 27, 2007 12:39 PM

Between 2003 and 2007 the percentage of people who affirm never doubting the existence of god has lost 8 percentage points (still high at 61%).
Never doubting??? I never believed. I used to try to believe, when I was like 10 and my mother made my father haul me to Sunday school (luckily, he used to come back to get me afterwards), but I always thought it was just fairy stories, or maybe the history of delusional people, but I never did believe.

Posted by: Helblindi | December 27, 2007 12:59 PM

I will be mightily impressed if scienceblogia (is that the current term?) actually manages to pull this off - a science debate would be a far better proof of the power of the net community in these elections than mushy YouTube recordings of candidates and their loving families. I wish we'd have something like that over here...