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12.08.09 - 9:52 PM
The Better Angels of Our Nature May Face an Uphill Fight in Copenhagen
We could be in big trouble. Polls show that far more Americans believe in angels - 55% - than in global warming caused by human activity - 36%, or about the same number as those who believe in ghosts and UFOs.
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18 Comments so far
Show AllAngels, global warming...What's the difference? Both are faith based religions.
Are you suggesting science is based on faith? I don't know what school you attended, (perhaps a Christian College?), but science is based upon strict factual measures. Granted, some scientific conclusions are open to interpretation, but faith? I don't mean to sound quite so snippy, but the subject is too serious to be dismissed so easily.
This isn't surprizing at all. Everybody knows that God gave us the Earth to plunder.
Give me an f'ing break. POLLS, are OPINIONS, not news. C'mon Abby, you're better than this.
Belief in angels is necessary if you're going to walk on water.
Nonbelief in global warming ENSURES that you're going to walk on water.
I think you meant to say "ENSURES that you're going to walk IN water" (depending, of course, on how close to the coast you live. A lot of other places are going to be dryer than a ... well, I'll leave that to your imagination.)
I think it was Evelyn Waugh who said "If you can believe in immaculate conception, you can believe in anything." and he was a big Catholic.I once did a two week house sit in his house on Blackheath, and it was full of bones & skulls and shit.Man, was he weird.
The polls are disturbing and show that much more work has to be done to educate the public. The trouble is the solution requires the cooperation of as many people as possible.
I will not live to see the worst effects of this warming, but I am able to appreciate the warnings. We have such an incredible gift with this planet, yet we are ruining it, for us, for all future generations.
The world will continue regardless of what we do or do not do. It has survived extinction events in past. This probably won't be the last. But this one is ours and it is one mighty shame that we didn't do a better job.
Ah Yes,.....Education. Most people become indoctrinated into their culture's religion by the age of 3; over-time, the indoctrination can reach extremes, like the fanatical white-supremeacist evangilist (or Israeli "settler"). Just overcoming the initial indoctrination one is subjected to at life's beginning can take a lifetime. As you ought to know, deprogramming through education is NOT what our schools do--Schools everywhere are indoctrination assisstants, some much worse than others. The Abrahamic Mythos that has the world so fucked-up is no better than a B-Movie fabrication, and I was lucky that I had a circle of friends (ages 5-7) that agreed our Sunday School "lessons" were akin to comic-book-like fantasies. The people who believe in talking snakes have killed more people than any other throughout the pages of time. If any one thing ought to be outlawed because it's a proven scourge to humanity, that one thing ought to be the whole edifice of the Abrahmaic Mythos, its three books and its institutions. Now that would be Change!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
When I tried to track down who, specifically was taking these polls, the very first link I got to was The Washington Times--the most dishonest far-Right rag in the nation; the Faux News of newspapers.
Why is CommonDreams quoting poll results taken from some dubious news report in the Washington Times??
Here's a story for you about the power (or impotence) of statistics: NASA computers were tracking ozone levels for years. When a hole developed in the ozone, odd and unexpected numbers began sprouting up, so the NASA computer threw them out, they were "statistically impossible." That is why British scientists are credited with noticing a hole in the ozone six years after NASA's computer started nixing its own results.
I am in my 40s and I have NEVER been polled. No one I know has ever been polled. Have you ever been polled? Do you know anyone who has ever been polled? 99.9% of Americans say no. So go ahead, report on how ridiculous Americans are in their beliefs. Maybe we'll all get as hopeless as we should from this news and just say, oh well, no point in trying -- think I'll fire up my Hummer and just go do whatever it is that must be done come hell or high water to make money, screw the world.
I have been polled.
The Cranky Old Cracker demographic just moved an ultra-microsmidgen to the left. Did you feel it?
so, YOU are the source of all our opinions. Please thank them for the lack of Paris Hilton these days, from all of us.
I feel the Power, Lord! Did you know that quite a few Americans believe Hitler started the Civil War, and the Rbt. E Lee bombed Pearl Harbor? I read that in a poll some where.
Most Americans believe that global warming is caused by Angel farts.
well, that is just silly...angel farts sound like ringing bells, and smell like brown sugar and cinnamon...does anyone smell brown sugar and cinnamon? I don't...
no, I'm afraid we must, in this case, dismiss ringing angel farts from our list of suspects, and face the real cause...the melting of the arctic ice shit laid by polar bears...
there is in fact a lingering smell of brown sugar and cinnamon in the air these days. The "Christmas Conspiracy?"
Then all we have to do is attach catalytic converters to angels' butts. Both superstition and science would be satisfied.