Stupid question, stupid comment, and insufficiently intelligent responses. Teach South Africa what it means to rouse the indignation of Pharyngula.
The debate over the origin of mankind's existence has been raging for ages.
Yes 61%
No 39%
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Yes (1104 votes) 61%
No (712 votes) 39%
Not much help with my one vote.
Ahoy from sunny SA. I feel awkwardly honoured that a South African poll is being pharyngulated! Just a request - please don't think all us Saffers are feeble-minded ignoramuses...
It's already at 63%. Let the Pharyngulization begin! :D
(Another saffer) IOL has a rather silly tendency to report on the results of their polls. Maybe they'll learn that the results are worthless, but I doubt it.
I don't think I've ever seen a poll with so many dumb comments.
Done my bit.
I've made a brief comment after the poll, too, inviting people to come and discuss the issue on my home discussion board.
I hope this doesn't prove unwise, and we get overwhelmed with burning stupid.
The issue is closed. As some commenters at the IOL site have stated, watch the Kent Hovind video. Now there is proof. /sarcasm
A sampling of courses at Hallelujah University:
Note the pie chart with the poll results, a classic misleading graphics problem: pie chart in perspective, therefore the side at the front is bigger than the vote percentage it represents. The result at the front, of course, is the "No" vote. Coincidence?
73% Yes (1977 votes)
27% No (721 votes)
75% Yes
25% No
75% at yes.
To be fair to the saffers, evolution is taught as non-controversial fact in schools there. This is just a weird little aberration from IOL and as such deserves to be stomped on.
Yes, please storm this site, and feel free to drop in on http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/forumdisplay.php?149-Philosophical-debates for some re-education of creationist cretins as well.
Did you know, that a lot of Islamic Creationists hold the same arguments, for the want of a better word, as your American Christian Creationist hold, even down to how the Grand Canyon was formed.
Lets hold a Jihad of reason on them I think.
Yes 77% (2442 votes)
No 23% (724 votes)
Evolution isn't always taught as fact ( at least not in this 7th grade class) in SA... http://wordoftheblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/creationism-taught-as-sci…
^ go check it out ^
Kinda embarrasing for us
Well, I don't believe in evolution. I see that it has happened and does happen, and I understand the mechanisms by which it works, but I don't believe in it.
Why is this paper reporting on Tiger Woods? Where would I have to move to get away from that?
I found this comment very entertaining:
I honestly thought the person was talking about the bible at first. Silly me.
Yes, 2,912 or 80%
No, 725 or 20%
Total votes, 3,637
Well, I did my bit (81% now).
It's a weird idea though, that you would try to answer that question with a poll...
On the plus side, I finally got confirmation that I'm human :-)
Done. I agree with the earlier comment about the vacuity of the comments posted on the site so far ... it seems as though most of the canards from Answers in Genesis are well represented there. It doesn't help much that responses are limited to 200 words at that site, either.
Voted.
Yes (3550 votes) 83%
No (731 votes) 17%
Hi Folks,
I could seriously use some help over on a comment thread of a evolutionary-based Sporcle quiz.
Game of Life
This quiz itself is fun, but there is some serious creationist trolling going on in the comments. Anyway, perhaps you'll click on over.
We're supposed to say "no", right? Don't "believe", but rather have been convinced by the evidence? :)
85% yes
15% yes
Hooray! Pharyngulate is a verb in Urban Dictionary! Sorry I was late to that party.
So let me make my melodramatic post for the week:
I grew up in the country that many of you thinking Americans fear yours might one day turn into.
A country where strict Calvinism informed every level of government and civil society. A country where the word "Christian" was written into the very constitution. A country where the national education philosophy was officially known as "Christian Higher Education". And yes, a country where the teaching of evolution to school children was actually and literally outlawed.
It's the same country that many of those commenting on that idiot poll grew up in: Apartheid-era South Africa.
Yep, the most hated country in the world was very, very Christian. And the things the whole world hated it for… well, you just know how thoroughly they were justified by the Bible, don't you?
(And let me just mention for those who are modern-history-challenged: That country no longer exists. In the years 1990 - 1994 we dismantled every legal trace of it and rewrote our constitution from scratch — something not many nations get the opportunity to do. The result is one of the most exemplary liberal documents of its sort in the world.)
My point is that many of the people commenting on that poll are, literally, uneducated. I was lucky: I still remember what it was like to do high school biology without a single mention of evolution. But I also remember our biology teacher at one point — when we were studying mendelian genetics — explaining the theory of evolution to us in outline. (Verbally only; no evidence!). "If you ever want to go and study biology at a University," she said, "you're going to have to know this stuff. I don't want you to be surprised."
I didn't, at the time, realise the risk she was taking.
I Believe In Evolution For The Same Reason I Believe In Gravity!
Poll stormed at 4:30pm EST
Yes (4388 votes)
No (739 votes)
I stormed the poll as ordered, but there was a blank screen when I asked to see the results... so I do not know the current no/yes-percentage.
Well - pharyngulate, I did.
The first couple of comments on this poll are just awful. I couldn't bring myself to read any more of them.
Done !
And look what I found.
http://www-hyperevolution.com/
Yes (4717 votes) 86%
No (743 votes) 14%
Done!
I tried to add the comment that Kent Hovind, mentioned there as having "proof" that the bible is true, is a manipulator and a charlatan, but it doesn't appear.
Now the poll's 87-13. The Marshall linked to in #29 seems another wold-class nutter.
Voted and tried to leave a comment.
Voted 3 times (you have to clear your cookies between votes). Cheers
Kel,
I left a comment there over three hours ago. It still hasn't appeared.
Not sure if my comment will get posted, I was pretty rude. I said that people who reject evolution are uneducated or indoctrinated, and that nobody rejects evolution for scientific reasons - just culture.
North Korea.
Wow. I had no idea.
I voted yes but lulubelles convinced me I was wrong.
Posted by lulubelles: You can watch videos by a science teacher by the name of Kent Hovind - Im sure you will get them in christian shops and you will see there is proof that evolution is not true. The bible is true.
Kel,
Then probably not: General moderation policy at IOL.
We're supposed to say "no", right? Don't "believe", but rather have been convinced by the evidence? :)
Literate people will vote "yes" because they know that belief is simply assent to the truth of a proposition; it is not logically possible to be convinced that P but not believe that P.
I think that's the problem, when it comes to a one-sided topic like this it's almost impossible to come off as anything other than rude, unless you want to go the whole Chris Mooney conciliatory path and sound completely vapid.
89%-11%
Voted "89% -11%" same as above, could not resist posting this latest comment that was on the poll.
"Posted by lulubelles at 2010-04-09 21:26:29
You can watch videos by a science teacher by the name of Kent Hovind - Im sure you will get them in christian shops and you will see there is proof that evolution is not true. The bible is true."
I voted "No" since I don't "believe" in evolution. (I'm joking.)
It would have been hilarious if everyone had voted "No". IOL News wouldn't have known what to think. Let's try this next time ?
Still 89% - 11%
Yes (6450 votes)
No (761 votes)
@ Giles #44: yep, hilarious idea.
On the next US-based poll, yes? ;-)
The commenting seem pretty biased in favor of creationism, yet the poll is 90% for evolution. I wonder why that is?...
whubbell @ 21:
The guy you're arguing with appears to be both willfully and naturally ignorant. Well, I suppose that just makes him like the majority of creationists. I want to jump in every time someone is wrong on the internet, but I have been frustrated many times when dealing with people who don't know how to think.
Oh, and 10/10, 0 strikes. Yay, I can pat myself on the back for knowing basic cladistics. :)
Properly Pharyngulated.
Yes: 6695 votes
No: 763 votes
Kent frakkin' Hovind?!?
Kent Hovind a science teacher?! There goes another irony meter.
Voted NO. What Menyambal posted @#15, and if the 90% say that they believe in Evolution, that makes it a 'belief-system', ie. a religion.
I left it as
91% yes (9540 votes)
9 % no (770 votes)
The comments are a bit scary. Same old arguments we've seen over and over again. Fortunately, it looks like a handful of cranks monopolizing the comments.
Asking if one believes in evolution is aking to asking whether one believes in gravity.
That's blatant equivocation of the word belief. Just because some people take belief to mean faith does not mean that you don't believe the idea. Of course you believe, it's just that the belief is a scientific proposition and thus subject to empirical support. Not a faith position at all.
It's like saying "I'm not an atheist" just because some people think that saying atheist means baby-eater.
truth machine @40 made clear what should be obvious.
Kent Hovind is a science teacher like Cheese is a vegetable
fixed
(Actual prisoner number. See here.)
Kent Hovind knows nothing about science, and I hope to the gods that he is not a certified teacher. He is an evil and ignorant prisoner (oh how sweet the sound).
I heard him explain to a kid that fish drowned in The Flood.
Damn.
I remember my shock when, as a first year medical student a few years back, Prof van der Heever started his lecture series on evolution...the class was split more or less:
95% - evolution is a lie/religion/joke
5% - not sure but it sounds okay.
SA can be shocking, but we are not all idiots! :-)
Good to see another "Mybroadband.co.za" member above, where some of us fight the good fight against ignorance.
Unfortunately ignorance is the currency in South Africa, especially with a president who believes a shower prevents HIV infection.
Yes (8606) 92%
No (790) 8%
I also put an a response to the Kent Hovind rubbish, but no comments have appeared since that comment was made.
Sheesh.
It's amusing that I had to confirm I'm a human to vote on a poll about evolution.
My problem with that one is that I disagree with both. I do not 'believe' in evolution. Belief is the ability to think something true despite no (or contradictory) evidence. A better 'yes' would be "Evolution, supported by multiple avenues of evidence and experimentation, best describes how life has developed on earth, and the distribution and diversity of life around us."
Pet peeve of mine.
@#38, 43, etc. Yes, lulubelles is, well, lulu, I guess but even more frightening is vuvuzela at 2010-04-09 20:41:22. How is brainwashing at such a depth even possible?! Thick as a brick.
There was only a limited amount that I could comment in 200 words. I hope this made sense:
The question is stated incorrectly. There is nothing to "believe" with regard to evolution. It is a fact.
That can be verified by searching for bacteria that exist on nylon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria
These strains of bacteria could not have existed before 1935, so they have evolved since that time.
Natural selection (the actual theory - and no, theory does not mean "guess") is the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.
This makes sense because the earth has varied in climate and temperatures over the millions of years of life being on this planet, and if that life were fixed within narrow parameters then all life would be extinct by now.
Humans are different from other primates because we have 23 chromosome and our closest relatives on the evolution tree have 24.
This caused the theory of decent through modification of humans and chimpanzees (anthropogenesis) sharing a common ancestor a lot of problems.
Actually with humans having 23 and our purported "cousins" chimpanzees having 24 makes an evolutionary relationship impossible.
During the evolutionary process two chromosomes in humans have fused together. It is our chromosome number two. So we actually do have 24 pairs.
Google "chromosome 2 fused" and you will find the scientific literature that explains this in detail.
While I appreciate my fellow country people writing to say that we're not all idiots, statistically, it's pretty meaningless - as the IOL comments show.
South Africa harbours a level of religious literalism that makes the USA seem like an atheist utopia. Our regular church attendance is among the highest in the world.
Black and white people (our standard lens for viewing ourselves here) both predominantly believe in the powers of witchcraft and black magic (witchcrraft a more common term among black people and Satanism the more popular term among white people).
I think I was pretty well sheltered from this until I began working and realised that my actual adult colleagues thought evolution was a rather obvious scam that brought out the sniggers. Not one. Not two. All of them.
Any debate on ethics in our country invariably takes seriously an argument from one or more texts by bronze-age goat herds.
We've just uncovered two incredible new homonin fossils here. I'm confident that this will be widely regarded here as a hoax, or the remains of a modern ape. After all, as one commenter on IOL said, "If we're descended from apes, why don't we look like them?" (if you're so egregiously stupid, how were you able to learn to write?).
The newspapers vacillate between reporting these finds, and the statements of scientists, and claiming that the reality of evolution is an ongoing "debate."
No matter how frustrated you are in the USA with creationists. Spare an occasional thought for the bewildered and frightened atheists in South Africa.
It's now 92:8, yet Kent Hovind still leads (or at least heads up) the ignoramus column.
Signed up just to comment here. I'm from SA - it's depressing, reading the comments from fellow South Africans. I remember an encounter with a friend, many years ago, which got me into looking into the whole creationism "debate". He was a fellow student engineer and I was astonished to find out that he believed in a 6000 year old earth. I had thought, very naively, that thinking like that had gone the way of the dinosaurs. But I was lucky in that my parents were both fond of science, so I got a better grounding than most of my peers. In fact, I was astonished to learn that only in the last year or two, has evolution actually become a integral part of the biology syllabus at schools. Not that it seems to have stopped the peddling of creationism at school. To the other South Africans on this site, what are your thoughts about the best way to tackle this?
Welcome CloneboyZA you will find lots of interest here. You may also want to check out richarddawkins-net and other science blogs for lots of good fact filled information.
Poll still at 92% to 8%
I also agree with Singemonkey. The new fossils found should be held up by ZA as yet another fact of evolution and help bring those still in the dark ages into the light of knowledge. Hopefully as the internet becomes more commonly available to those who don't know much about science the level of understanding will increase.
Well one can hope...
Been reading this site for a while now, but always was just a lurker. Never felt quite smart enough to join in the debates...
Anyway, as Mbee points out, these new fossils were found in South Africa, which makes the ignorance here even more incredible. We should be celebrating this, but it will probably just disappear here in SA, while overseas it will be celebrated as an amazing discovery. Just frustrating to be here in SA, and not be able to get people to understand the significance of this find, and all the others that were found here.
I realise it was mentioned already, but it's worth reiterating. You can vote multiple times if you clear all cookies in your browser that end in iol.ca.za (or if you can't be fagged [yes, I can use that word coz I am one :D] deleting just those cookies, clear the whole lot of them) and go to the vote page again. The captcha does slow things down a split whisker though.
Why be nice when you can be norti?
Mikey.
Sadly, creationism is spreading into South African life. Here, in South Africa, there are many fundamental christian types peddling their wares on a mostly gullible (read religious) population. I am constantly having to explain & defend basic science, and critical thinking on my blogs. But it is scary how many of the younger Saffer population are falling for this religious fundamentalism. PZ, Dawkins, et al, we need you to visit!!
Oh, and the poll now stands at
92% yes, to
8% no!
@ singemonkey
It's horrible. I used to think that our 'insane religiosity' was only the impression created by very-conservative Afrikaans folks, but there are more than enough statistics to support your claim! It is a sad sad fact, despite my previous delusion.
Just have a look here: http://bit.ly/cNaZPL
No! You're equivocating belief in the context of faith with belief in the general sense "Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true."
What is knowledge but a justified true belief?
I remember on a facebook group having a South African creationist by the name of Johan spam the boards with long rants against evolution. Of course I've seen creationists from all over the world, just he was memorable in his persistence to project his ignorance everywhere.
Poll is archived: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3018&poll_id=1305&captcha=gihio…
Froze at 92% 8% with the stupid Kent Hovind comment as the last comment.
Ironically enough, the guy I knew personally who was a creationist was also named Johan. I wonder if it's the same guy, as I lost track with him after I finished my degree.
He was apparently in his mid to late 30s when I encountered him a couple of years ago. Went looking for examples of his idiocy on a facebook group, looks like they have been removed.
Well there seems to be some hope. I questioned my 12 year old son today about what they are learning at school re. evolution. He was clued up and even new about the new hominid discovery and said that his class are going to enter the competition to name it.
They do however have to sing teh lords prayer and such but he doesn't believe in any of the sky fairies.
My 7 year old does believe in jc which he picked up on since going to school last year. When the question does come up I tell him that some people believe in christianity some in other religions but Mommy and I don't.
My elder son also went through that phase when he started school but by answering him in the same manner he stopped believing.
Max Johnson, AKA Johan Swart, AKA Michael Wells (possibbly AKA Konrad Zuse and Johan Breytenbach) has been spewing his crap on the atheist / pro evolution pages for the last 6 months.
Checking one of his cut and paste jobs led me to the same cut and paste he posted a few years ago here. His arguments have hardly changed.
He is currently absent from the atheist / pro evolution groups, but is still active on some of the religious ones.
He was flirting a couple of months ago and said he was 27 years old (if I remember correctly).
So comforting to see some fellow atheist Saffers here! Was beginning to feel more and more alone. My personal experience with (mis)education and evolution: My undergrad genetics lecturer stating catergorically that she did not believe any of the evolution rubbish that she was now forced to teach us...
That's the guy. On a facebook group I was on, he'd make long posts on a particular topic showing how evolution was wrong, then the next few pages would be him getting his arse handed to him. Then he'd start a new topic and repeat ad nauseum. He really liked to copy / paste from creationist websites too - not the brightest spark the world has seen...