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Skeptics discount science by casting doubts on scientist expertise
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The people behind the new study start by asking a pretty obvious question: "Why do members of the public disagree—sharply and persistently—about facts on which expert scientists largely agree?"
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So, it’s not just a matter of the public not understanding the expert opinions of places like the National Academies of science; they simply discount the expertise associated with any opinion they’d rather not hear.
iPhone fanbois run off road in CoolBrand race
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Fanbois will be crying tears of frustration over their iPhones today at the revelation they no longer possess the UK’s most coveted product.
The CoolBrands survey, which delineates the most desirable consumer brands, has declared Aston Martin is this year’s coolest brand, driving the iPhone off the number one spot.
Apple fans will be aghast that a fabulously expensive car driven by no less than James Bond is somehow considered cooler than a phone which has downloadable farts and is mercifully free of porn.
Wall-E-mart
Eh, what?
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East Jakarta Police are investigating a case where a martial arts expert was able to break her underage lesbian lover out of protective custody where she was being “cured” of her attraction to women.
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Former Air Force personnel disclose UFO, alien-related threats
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A press conference was held this afternoon at the National Press Club in Washington, where at least a dozen former U.S. Air Force personnel, mostly officers who worked on secret projects connected to sensitive nuclear weapons sites, are admitting that they were privy to UFO and alien-related incidents — that occurred during their time of service.
In this clip, you will hear from: Retired Air Force Captain Robert Salas, Former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dwayne Arneson and Former Air Force Official Bill Jameson.
The military is so powerful and secretive that it covered up contacts with aliens, but it’s also powerless to stop these guys from having a press conference.
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Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says
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If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.
Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term "blind faith."
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The Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister from Leawood, Kan., and the author of “When Christians Get it Wrong,” said the survey’s results may reflect a reluctance by many people to dig deeply into their own beliefs and especially into those of others.
“I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it’s already accepted to be true, they don’t examine other people’s faiths. That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith,” he said.
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Stop the Internet Blacklist!
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Just the other day, President Obama urged other countries to stop censoring the Internet. But now the United States Congress is trying to censor the Internet here at home. A new bill being debated this week would have the Attorney General create an Internet blacklist of sites that US Internet providers would be required to block.
This is the kind of heavy-handed censorship you’d expect from a dictatorship, where one man can decide what web sites you’re not allowed to visit. But the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to pass the bill this week — and Senators say they haven’t heard much in the way of objections!
Obviously the Senators don’t live on the same planet as the rest of us.
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By and large Americans are raised to believe in magical thinking. They believe any belief that props up their own prejudice and wishful thinking. Anything is possible, they are told, because God could snap his fingers and make the world in six days and make it LOOK like it took billions of years and he could snap his fingers tomorrow and make dogs turn into igloos and apples sprout pink feathers.
Even those who had such childhood superstition curbed by school-taught logic and awareness still have a hard time giving up cherished beliefs. One study says wild American salmon is safe but farmed European salmon isn’t and Americans switch to wild salmon by the thousands. A later, broader study finds Norwegian farmed salmon much safer than wild American salmon – those same Americans refuse to believe the findings. And look how the study linking a diet high in tofu with Alzheimer’s was ridiculed without anyone attempting to replicate the findings.
When science confirms something they “know” it isn’t so, because they wish it weren’t. As Dr. Sagan was fond of pointing out, Belief is the opposite of knowledge.