Thursday, October 23, 2008

Scientific Evolution of religion

Jeffrey D Sachs says in ET that in a “recent survey data by the Pew Foundation found that while 58% of Democrats believe that human beings are causing global warming, only 28% of Republicans do. Similarly, a 2005 survey found that 59% of self-professed conservative Republicans rejected any theory of evolution, while 67% of liberal Democrats accepted some version of evolutionary theory. 

To be sure, some of these deniers are simply scientifically ignorant, having been failed by the poor quality of science education in America. But others are biblical fundamentalists, who reject modern science because they take the word of the Bible as literally true. They reject geological evidence of climate change because they reject the science of geology itself. 

The issue here is not religion versus science. All of the great religions have traditions of fruitful interchange with — and, indeed, support for — scientific inquiry”.

In 2007, friend Vipin P Veetil wrote at CCS a article in which he says that the “Environmental problems cannot be solved with the domain of economics by calculating appropriate prices (inclusive of social costs and benefits), because the implication of environmental changes are not only interspatial, but are also inter-temporal in character. Therefore to calculate “correct” prices subjective relative valuation of various generations are necessary, this is beyond the scope of positive economics. The intellectual domain of environmental issues is not the monopoly of economists”. 

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