Sam Harris: Illustrated (Science v Religion)

Faith and Foolishness

Every two years the National Science Foundation produces a report, Science and Engineering Indicators, designed to probe the public’s understanding of science concepts. And every two years we relearn the sad fact that U.S. adults are less willing to accept evolution and the big bang as factual than adults in other industrial countries.

Except for this time. Was there suddenly a quantum leap in U.S. science literacy? Sadly, no. Rather the National Science Board, which oversees the foundation, chose to leave the section that discussed these issues out of the 2010 edition, claiming the questions were “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs.” In short, if their religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts, the board doesn’t think it appropriate to expose that truth.

The section does exist, however, and Science magazine obtained it. When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of respondents indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”

Read the Article

Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours

Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.

About Laurie Santos
Laurie Santos studies primate psychology and monkeynomics -- testing problems in human psychology on primates, who (not so surprisingly) have many of the same predictable irrationalities we do.

41 countries that did not support making water a human right

Every year, 3.5 million people die of water-borne illness. Diarrhea is the second largest cause of death among children under five. Lack of access to potable water kills more children than AIDS, malaria and smallpox combined. Worldwide, approximately 1 in 8 people lack potable water.

In just one day, more than 200 million hours of women’s time is consumed by collecting and transporting water for domestic use.

The situation of lack of sanitation is far worse, for it affects 2.6 billion people, or 40% of the global population.

These are the 41 countries that abstained in the July 28 UN General Assembly vote on Bolivia’s resolution to recognise access to water and sanitation as basic human rights. Rather than honestly vote “no”, they abstained to avoid being labelled as opponents of access to water, but many made statements that reveal their hostility to the very idea of recognising water as a human right.

Among others:

• Canada complained that the resolution “appeared to determine that there was indeed a right without setting out its scope”.
• The UK said “there was no sufficient legal basis for declaring or recognising water or sanitation as freestanding human rights, nor was there evidence that they existed in customary law”.
• The United States said “there was no ‘right to water and sanitation’ in an international legal sense, as described by the resolution”.
• Australia “had reservations about declaring new human rights in a General Assembly resolution”.

Read the Article