Driving to a club Friday, I caught a rerun of the NPR show "Talk of the Nation", it happened to be "science Friday", a weekly show where they actually talk to......scientists! Not typically a riveting show. HOWEVER. I was shocked to hear a guy saying the following: more science exists to SUPPORT intelligent design than does evolution. The AIDS crisis in Africa is really a "myth", created by the HMO because they changed thier testing standards a few years back, creating millions of false positives, and that "symptoms of aids such as diareha, low blood cell count and pnemonia now can be simply grouped together and called AIDS" (I'm paraphrasing). That any government funding of science is in the end a bad thing. That George Bush doesnt get enough CREDIT for his initial interest in Stem Cell Research. And finally, of course, that Global Warming is an absolute, complete myth. Should I go on? If you would like to hear the madness of the true state of partisan science in this country, follow this link:
http://www.npr.org/...
So how are we as rational citizens, able to counteract the complete lie by guys like this? How can you argue with someone who, no matter what facts look him in the face, continue to "believe" that something is true? And they get taken seriously by millions of people!! What would one of the greater minds of a previous generation (Einstein, Oppenheim, Fermi) have to say about these guys? I have always thought that the most dangerous threat to us all is the lack of truth in the world around us. When did start wanting to believe in science, as if its a faith based decision, failing to understand that science itself is built upon a scientific method, and proven, repeatable and predictable results to theory, and evidence to support it? There are other examples of the denial of truth: Some want to believe that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Some want to believe that the estate tax is bad for all of us, when only a few thousand people are effected by it each year. Some want to believe that most homeless people "want to live that way". Some want to believe that by voting against the absurd non binding resolution, you are voting "for the terrorists", as if we live in a world of absolutes. NONE of them are true, yet noone ever simply says "THAT IS A LIE!!!" Where is our Mark Twain? One of my favorites thats so appropriate in our world today: "best to be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt". How true.
Would someone please tell me how we got here? How did we get to an america that devide and conquer is now something worn as a badge of honor by politicians of both varieties. How did we get to a world where principles are unheard of, ethics rare, only found when people get caught with thier hand in the cookie jar, or 10K in the freezer, or a sweetheart land deal based around legislation YOU create. And now, someone tell me how even science, typically a non-partisan topic, has become something to rally the base around!!! Can someone give me the answers please?