The problem for religionists is that the time-scales required by evolution are incompatible with the Book of Genesis. Since fundamentalist Christianity relies on the divinely-inspired infallibility of scripture for its only proof, even the slightest contradiction to its literal truth threatens the whole structure.

Fundamentalism has painted itself into a corner. The proof of god is in scripture, and scripture must be true because god wrote it. And if god wrote it it must be literally true, every last syllable.

Evolution crushes that meme. That’s why they hate it. Fundamentalism demands that doubt be indistinguishable from heresy. And that attitude carries over into their political thinking as well. If you don’t accept their politics, you’re not just mistaken, your a traitor and an atheist.

Lets not make excuses for these people. Deep down inside they’re no damn good.

However, that doesn’t jibe with “day” in the minds of the True Believers.

Why must God be limited? Perhaps, through Darwin, we are merely learning that great, unknowble plan.

I’m sure some people believe Homer was superior to Shakespeare, or Dante better than
Cervantes. I’m sure they can come up with all kinds of footnotes to prove their point as well. But its all angels dancing on the head of a pin. Those questions don’t have valid answers because they are not valid questions.

You know its true, but you don’t dare admit it. Because without that illusion of icy logic, you’re nothing. Your whole intellectual universe resolves to nothing.

Stick to spacecraft design, TB. At least there, you have an objective criterion of success. Or instead of talking about the glories of capitalism, you could actually start a business, sell a useful product, meet a payroll.

And, by the way, along the way you cut your own previous argument in half.

All I’m saying is politics and economics can be discussed with the application of facts and reason as much as any other area of human inquiry. Hell, even the application of basic common sense would be a refreshing change.

Differences in political and economic theory arise not just in lay people, but in those who are recognized as students and authorities of those fields by their colleagues. Your analogy fails, unless you rephrase it as “Anyone who disagrees with me must obviously have something to gain by rejecting the evidence.” As always, when you reveal your true attitudes, they succeed more at insulting your audience than instructing it.

You also imply that the issue is a simple one with two mutually exclusive positions, yours, and that of your ignorant, misguided and seditious critics. No, TB. We’re talking social sciences here, all issues lie on continuous spectra on which multiple positions are possible. There are no simple clear-cut questions, much less answers.

Some of these spectra are even multi-dimensional, you need more than a straight line to locate an opinion. Sometimes you need multiple axes, planes, volumes. You certainly don’t have just two points: TB and the founding fathers vs the assholes and the communists.

“The validity of a concept is not defined by how many people are willing to accept it.”

Exactly. The validity of a concept cannot be defined at all. It can only be discussed, and perhaps agreed on. But beware of unanimous agreement. Only zealots and ideologues fall for that.

I’ll give you a concrete example. I’ve expressed before how even though I was a Darwinist, I’ve always felt that natural selection alone could not fully explain adaptation in the biological world. But it isn’t necessary to reject natural selection to make further progress here. Look up biologist Lynn Margulis (Carl Sagan’s first wife) who has made suggestions (endosymbiotic theory)that pick up where Darwin left off.

Is she right? Wrong? I don’t know. I’m going to need to know a lot more about cell biology before I can even venture an opinion, and even then, that’s all it will be, an opinion. Of course, Margulis has been associated with the Gaia Hypothesis, so you would probably insist she has nothing of value to say about anything.

Tom, you have wasted a beautiful mind.

I just don’t think this is meaningful. Along comes a new Messiah and the belief in evolution does a 180. Nothing else changes as long as they are still washed in the blood of Jesus. I don’t think evolution is a deal breaker.

Being religious may have a relationship to stupidity but there are many religious people who reject evolution simply because it is against the law and they are conditioned to obey laws and accept things on faith. Faith = don’t question just obey/believe. This is not the same as stupidity.

People shift their political beliefs both ways and and the public expression of their religious and political positions are affected by many factors. If you are involved in social media you would see how it works. If you like the conservative positions of the Tea Party it is difficult to publicly express a belief in evolution just as it is difficult to parse your political positions if you are a Nazi, Communist, or a liberal Democrat. This social pressure is, indeed, exploited on both sides.

“If political and economic theory could be reduced to axioms and theorems demonstrable through formal analysis, then we would all be in agreement.”

Look around. This thread was about how surprisingly many people reject evolution, something that has an enormous objective scientific foundation in multiple fields.

Why should obvious evidence in any other field be any more universally accepted, particularly when so many have something to gain by rejecting that evidence?

The validity of a concept is not defined by how many people are willing to accept it. It never has been.

As far as the demented philosophies of history are concerned, get back to me when as many American university professors are teaching John Locke as they are Karl Marx.