Neil Armstrong was a Christian, yet D3’s Space Program has a deleterious effect on religion. I am not sure how evolutional theories affect our technologies either so have removed Religion from Tech Backwater and Tech Grant. This is 2013 afterall. I have softened the effect Organ and Stem has on Religion too. Stuff like abortion and gambling I haven’t touched
The point I was putting across (probably a little too flippently) was, regardless of one’s belief system, I think the Evolutional and Creationist sciences both belong within the Historical Sciences. Both of these are polar opposites of that spectrum (hence the strong feelings) and consequently neither arguably advance or holdback technology.
The Applicational Sciences on the other hand keep on giving us ‘goodies’, like: GPS, computing, mapping of the genome, fussion etc. Consequently I am not sure why Evolution v Darwinism would make a country a ‘Technological Backwater’.
This is my opinion ofc; clearly not Positech Games’. Kudos to PG for allowing people to quickly tweak their game to their liking!
In early 19th century England, the Luddite’s wanted to hold back the abovementioned goodies technology offered because it was making them redundant in their workplace. I would like to mod an Antitechnology Party which will radicalise to the Luttide Martyrs because I think my tweaks have made the game a little easy. No-one wants my PM dead!
Creationism is not a science by any relevant definition. It is a religious assertion that has not even begun to be adequately supported by any scientific evidence.
In the same way Evolution is not a belief system. It is a extremely well-supported scientific theory.
Evolution has provided and continues to provide a framework for new modern sciences related to it and brings and has brought enormous benefits. Modern Medicine and many of the benefits research into Genetics and Biology have brought often directly rely on Evolution. Even Psychology and Anthropology have been effected by discoveries in evolution.
Teaching Creationism over Evolution in the class makes a country a technological backwater by broadly undermining the fields of Biology and Genetics and many others which have a direct effects on many fields especially Medicine. Like I said, Evolution is a vital part of a broad section of modern science.
I’m not sure about that, with regard to Darwin’s contribution to genetics and medicine. Creationism certainly doesn’t undermine these fields either.
Friar Gregor Mendel discovered genetics, with his work on the pea plant. Even he was following on from the work the ancient Greeks did with heredity.
Edward Jenner was the father of modern medicine. (Now he did struggle initially with the clergy but even they got over it quick enough. Darwin faced both scientists and clergy.)
To say that Creationism is not a science is a little condescending to those physists who are researching that field and have contributed to society (planetary magnetic predictors, lunar module erm… modules, MRI devices etc.) Many Creationist scientists are as peer reviewed as Darwinists. Also, not every non-religious scientist accepts Darwinism either: http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/100ScientistsAd.pdf <-- most of these dudes probably don’t accept Creationism either though.
I am personally sat on the fence. I see problems with both: thickness of sedimentary deposits or development of structures like flagellum (Orgel’s Second Rule doesn’t cut it for me!). Both branches try to explain them away and both require huge leaps of faith in either direction.
While philosophically, I will defend the relevance of exploring Intelligent Design as a concept, I respectfully disagree with your claim that the effects of the policy of Creationism vs. Evolution in the game are flawed. It has to do with what is taught as biology in schools. The well-supported idea that changes in DNA through generations of genetic transfer result in differing species of organisms is the cornerstone of contemporary biology. Creationism is founded on the idea that this is absolutely false and that we must start our scientific inquiries with the Book of Genesis.
Creationism, as a ‘science’, asserts that organisms have existed unchanged since the origin of all life. It asserts that there is a Creator which designed all life and everything in the Universe. Furthermore, we cannot conjecture as to who or what that Creator is or anything about the Creator because it’s all laid out for us in the Bible. This is not science. Teaching Creationism usually means teaching the earth is only about 6,000 years old. It means spending time attempting to prove that almost all the methods of attaining data from the natural world [including carbon dating] are flawed. Therefore, it sets back the whole understanding of the world to what it was before the twentieth and twenty-first century scientists made the revelations that they did.
The “goodies” you are talking about, especially the Humane Genome Project, were possible because of the technological strides and understandings that came about as a consequence of mainstream science questioning the origin story presented in Genesis. If we accepted that the Christian God of the Bible just designed everything as it is now, we would have no need to ask questions like “Where did this come from?” since the answer would be “From God, of course!”. I am not saying that being a Christians stops you from brilliant scientific breakthroughs or limits your understanding. I am saying that Creationism is dogma and science is the challenging of dogmas. We have to break the dogma and say “That answer doesn’t satisfy us anymore…” in order to make progress.
Creationists themselves may be brilliant scientists who have contributed to many different fields. But Creationism as a ‘scientific theory’ and accepting it as a worldview we pass unto the next generation requires a complete rejection of contemporary science & technology.
Myself, I too am somewhere “in the middle”. Evolutionary theory is not perfect. That does not mean it is wrong as a foundation. It is well-supported and has a lot of evidence to back it up. I am not ruling out the existence of something we have come to know as “God”. However, I know that we cannot know anything scientifically about God (yet). The existence and nature of God is an open-ended, ongoing philosophical, theological, cultural and semantic debate best left out of the science textbooks… for now.
Time to wrap it up. While I support your effort to tweak religion in the game of Democracy 3, so that it reflects the open-minded spirituality gaining momentum in the real world, I do not agree with your assertion that teaching Creationism in school would not have a negative affect on Technology.
I can accept that. Not that it matters what I think!
I am pretty sure religious people would argue there is nothing wrong with being curious about reality, beyond the ‘It’s from God’ response though! People can accept ‘it’s’ from God but still question what to do with ‘it’. There are plenty of passages from scripture promoting curiousity with reality too. As I said, I like Psalm 111:2.
T, thinking about what you said about the role of science questionning dogma; what is healthier for science: having both theories taught in school or just one?
I would argue both is best, I think blind acceptance to either would be harmful. (I always thought the problem was: scientists struggling against scientific dogma!)
[b][i]Creationism is not a theory, a hypothesis, or even fully baked idea. It has no framework, no evidence, no scientific explanatory power, no verifiable predictions, or anything else useful.
Teaching creationism IN ANY FORM in school is completely unacceptable. Creationism is not science, and its place in school is EXACTLY nowhere.[/i][/b]
The difference between evolution and creationism is that one of them has evidence and one of them is scientific. Credible scientists do not hold to their theories as if they are dogma.
Another thing, your peer review is only as good as your peers. You need more than peer review to make your idea credible, even if it is quality review (which creationist journals are not), peer review is the bare minimum of scientific proposal.
Edit: The same goes for Intelligent Design, because it is creationism in a lab coat.
Ugh…did another thread about gaming turn into a flame war over religion? Oh well…when in Rome I guess…
I think the connection between promotion of anything scientific, and the elimination of religion makes sense. If somebody is immersed in a society that promotes the scientific method, they will be more inclined to reject any belief system that requires them to believe without asking too many questions.
However, to accurately represent this we need to break down religion into two categories: moderates and fundamentalists. The moderates would be people who hold religious beliefs, but not strongly enough to vote based on them, while the fundamentalists would be the currently titled “religious” voters category. Pro-science policies would create an overall decrease in the total of the two, but would also create a shift of moderates to fundamentalism, as those who were happy to be moderate under “balanced” laws will become fundamentalists in response to the attack on their way of life.
This would mean that if you enacted policies with the purpose of purging religion, you would initially create a surge of religious voting, which would eventually die out after decades…assuming the surge never exceeded 50% of voters. (given the title of the game, I don’t think I need to go into what would happen then)
I also dislike flame wars. There is no need to take an extremist side and denigrate the other side.
I like the idea of the Religious Voter population growing as a result of the growth of fundamentalism as a reaction against increasingly scientific/skeptical policies, but then dying down over time. I would say that is what has been happening in the United States. However, I don’t think that type of formula is currently allowed by the game’s engine. It would require an inequality, right?
I still believe strongly that the game could benefit by some sort of overhaul of the religious element. Just so that spirituality can be represented in the game without merely existing for the purpose of either increasing or obliterating regressive ‘fundamentalism’.
In another thread I proposed a mod that would basically decide whether the Religious group was ‘fundamentalist’ or more moderate. It would not change the effects of various policies, but instead would provide new policies which would make it possible to make Liberals and the Religious happy at the same time. Or not. It seemed that it’s an either/or with them in the game, which I get because Liberals are supposed to be the opposite of ‘the religious right’.
However, it would be possible to socially engineer society so that being influenced by the Religious bloc would still make you opposed to abortion and evolutionary theory, but also allow that you may be be able to overlook these things from the viewpoint of your religion/spirituality. This phenomena currently exists in very small proportions in the western world in real life.
Since the game allows for sweeping changes over several terms through policy implementation, I argue that it would be possible to socially modify what it means to be Religious. So, if the dominant religion of society is more open and accepting, even a Religious Conservative could be happy with that society being more ‘left-leaning’.
Good ideas, although I’m not really sure how this thread could possibly be seen as a flame war by anyone. There were no personal attacks or nastiness at all.
I’m not sure about that, with regard to Darwin’s contribution to genetics and medicine. Creationism certainly doesn’t undermine these fields either.