The Numbers Game

You're probably right that I didn't need to quote any numbers at all to demonstrate the point I was trying to make, which was: If you want to rule the world, you are going to need more people than just scientists on your side. You also may be right that I didn't remember the numbers correctly. After all, a certain amount of memory loss is to be expected at our age. (I read that somewhere, but I don't remember where.) I remember doubting those numbers when I first read them, but then I got to thinking that it depends on how you spin them. They didn't say that 90% of Americans don't believe in evolution, they said that 90% of the general public, meaning those people who are not part of the scientific community, don't believe in evolution. Now to verify that, we first need to know what percentage of the U.S. population is included in the scientific community. That might be hard to ascertain because, as you have said, not everybody who calls themselves a scientist is really a scientist. I remember once that you said sociology is not a real science, but then later you allowed that maybe it was. Unless we have an accurate and objective way to count all the scientists, we can't either prove or disprove the assertion conclusively.

I find the part about 10% of the scientific community not supporting evolution easier to believe than you do, only because I saw a documentary on TV once about Noah's Ark. This thing started out pretty rational, but then it went off on some tangents that were patently absurd. There were lots of scientists contributing to this movie, if you count anybody with the title of "Professor" who works for a university as being a scientist. Some time later, I was discussing this with a friend of mine who was married to a Seventh Day Adventist. He told me that lots of Seventh Day Adventists are scientists, but they have their own universities because they don't believe in evolution, or anything else that contradicts their literal interpretation of Biblical history. I know what you're thinking right now, but please bear with me for a little while longer, I'm going somewhere with this. I used to go to a medical doctor who was a Seventh Day Adventist, and it didn't hurt his medical practice at all. Well, he was kind of preachy about my smoking and drinking, but most doctors are nowadays. Also, he wouldn't prescribe birth control pills to an unmarried lady, unless she was engaged to be married within the next couple of months but, other than that, he was just a regular doctor. The point being that you could be a scientist and still not believe everything that every other scientist believed. A rocket scientist, for instance, might not believe in evolution, but that wouldn't interfere with his work. In addition to the Seventh Day Adventists, there are a few other religious denominations that don't believe in evolution. I know that some scientists are atheists, but I'm sure that many of them aren't. The 10% of non-believers in evolution might easily be made up of scientists who have religious or philosophical reservations about that one subject, but who are otherwise in agreement with the majority of the scientific community.

Go ahead and dismiss this argument out of hand if you want to but, if you do, I reserve the right to dismiss those Pew people out of hand. I remember discussing those pollsters with you once, and you admitted that you didn't know how they contacted the people they polled. How do we know that they don't just make those numbers up? Okay, they probably don't, but we don't know that for an absolute fact, we accept it on faith. That's right faith, Brother!

Speaking of numbers, where did you get that extra nickel we were going to have to pay for our Big Macs if the minimum wage were to be raised? I didn't dispute it because I assumed it to be an allegorical number, like when the Bible says that it rained for forty days and forty nights. Truth be known, we both were a little presumptuous about that. An increase in the minimum wage wouldn't necessarily cause a rise in prices, the employers might find some way to cut the other costs of production to make up the difference. They even might shave a little off their profit margin if they wanted to stay competitive with their competitors. I said they might, I didn't say that they would.

I didn't say that the government was any more corrupt than private corporations, I said that it might be less efficient. The government is better than the private sector at some things, like police and fire protection, but that doesn't mean we should let them co opt the entire domain of private enterprise. That's been tried before, Comrade!

The thing about the bailouts is that we'll never know what would have happened if they hadn't happened. They said we'd have economic troubles if they didn't do it, so they did it, and we had economic troubles anyway. How do we know if there would have been more troubles or less troubles if they hadn't done it? A lot of things in life are like that.