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posted by LaminatorX on Saturday March 01 2014, @08:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-both-get-dirty-and-the-pig-likes-it dept.

McGruber writes:

"Following up on the Bil Nye and Ken Ham debate on Creationism, Creation Museum founder Ken Ham announced Thursday that a municipal bond offering has raised enough money to begin construction on the Ark Encounter project, estimated to cost about $73 million. Groundbreaking is planned for May and the ark is expected to be finished by the summer of 2016. Ham credits the high-profile evolution debate he had with "Science Guy" Bill Nye on Feb. 4 with boosting support for the project.

After learning that the project would move forward, Nye said he was 'heartbroken and sickened for the Commonwealth of Kentucky,' lamenting that the ark would eventually draw more attention to the beliefs of Ham's Young-earth Creationist ministry. 'Voters and taxpayers in Kentucky will eventually see that this is not in their best interest.' Nye hopes."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by johaquila on Saturday March 01 2014, @01:21PM

    by johaquila (867) on Saturday March 01 2014, @01:21PM (#9090)

    Bob Altemeyer, a Canadian psychology professor who found the behaviour of some of his students fascinating for similar reasons, actually studied it scientifically. The result is his book "The Authoritarians", which has a free online version: https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ [umanitoba.ca]

    Let me try to explain what he found out in my own words, as it applies to this topic. These people, whom Altemeyer calls "right-wing authoritarian followers", were conditioned by their own parents into not applying their reason for what most of us consider its normal application, and certainly not to admit it. For them, rationality and rational thinking are just something you have to pretend while you are actually trying to figure out which authority you must follow to avoid being punished, and what it is that this authority wants you to do, think, and most importantly say. It doesn't matter whether it makes sense. You just have to proactively do what you have been, or anticipate to be, told by the authorities that can punish you. (Even left-wing authorities, so long as they are in power!)

    So they are not insane, they are just victims of something that you can either call a specific culture, or a form of child abuse. It's not necessarily connected to this, but for example there is also evidence that psychopathy is often a natural reaction to how a child is raised, a reaction necessary to protect the child from even worse damage, rather than something people are necessarily born with. E.g. most African child soldiers become psychopaths because nobody can survive the horror otherwise.

    Such aberrations are stable when, as in these two cases, parents who have them normally behave in such a way that their children develop them as well. In the case of right-wing authoritarian followership, Altemeyer also found that experiences with diverse, 'different' people as e.g. at a university helps a little, whereas becoming a parent generally makes it worse.

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  • (Score: 1) by GeriatricGentleman on Saturday March 01 2014, @09:36PM

    by GeriatricGentleman (1192) on Saturday March 01 2014, @09:36PM (#9237)

    "university helps a little, whereas becoming a parent generally makes it worse"

    So educate or sterilise them? I like it. How do I contribute?
    Of course, once we get a foothold on the religious whack-jobs we can extend to the next subset of the population - maybe politicians? Hopefully it won't be too long before we get to my kids - a free full university education would be most welcome! Or if they fail their uni entry - maybe a sponsored o'seas adventure for a year to immerse themselves in a diverse and different culture? Hmm, I might be a little intolerant myself - perhaps I should go too!

    As an aside, I am not from the US, when I read "Noah's Ark to built in KY" I confess it took me a second or two of wondering...