I disagree. If I am mistaking sarcasm for a serious point, than I will apologize and chuckle about this faux pas later. For now, I think the argument made by Paul below is somewhat misguided and rests on some shaky assumptions. At the risk of preaching to the choir, I hypothesize that a person with a scientific understanding of the world, is a person who understands and accepts the vast bodies of collected facts we dub ecology and evolution, and I predict that on average, a person with said understanding will have a smaller ecological footprint than a person lacking said education (e.g., a creationist). After all, this discussion is focused on public perception and understanding (maybe misunderstanding would have been a better word choice) of evolution, and because this is the ECOLOG forum, I thought evolution's good friend ecology should tag along for the ride. Paul, if I'm reading to far into your argument, please correct me, but I'm interpreting your statement of "people with good science educations" as meaning "people who understand evolution." I find fault mostly with your first assumption regarding education, and also the implicit assumption that scientists are merely exploiting science as a means to achieve great financial reward.
Regarding your assumption on education: accepting evolution, let alone understanding it, is not a prerequisite for attaining a position of any kind that would secure financial success (and consequently producing a larger ecological footprint). Surely there are a plethora of undergraduate and graduate programs in business and law that shamelessly neglect biology in their curricula but also produce countless individuals with relatively high incomes. I am willing to bet that a fair percentage of those affluent individuals subscribe to a creation story (they might even be Christians). Furthermore, any number of ancient tribes/cultures with a creation story developed habitat for human use and eventually ravaged that same land, producing enormous ecological footprints (I¹ll refer you to Jared Diamond¹s Collapse). These people, predating Charles Darwin by hundreds or thousands of years, lacked an understanding of evolution as far as we know (and probably had little comprehension of ecology, too). I would argue, that most people who believe a creation story also believe that the world was created for the purpose of hosting the human species, the ultimate ³creation.² That is, most creationists believe the world is their inheritance, passed down from a divine being, and thus, people have a right to do whatever they want with the Earth. The bottom line, to assume that acquiring a good science education leads to a higher than average income is at worst fallacious logic and at best an untested assumption. However, I am willing to accept, granted someone collects the data and runs the stats (I need to deal with my own data for my thesis first, so if someone else wants to work on this, I¹d be happy be second author or at least in the acknowledgements...), the assumption that people with higher than average incomes are also people who lead more materially affluent lives. Regarding the implicit assumption: Evolutionary biologists and ecologists, in contrast to most creationists, generally have a better comprehension of how the world works. That is, these scientists realize that their actions are not isolated events but rather parts of a larger, interacting global human population and multispecies biosphere (I am guessing most ecologists are familiar with the tragedy of the commons concept). They understand, or at least attempt to understand, the consequences of their actions and the interconnectedness of life through empirical study. Thus, these scientists are better armed with their science educations to reduce their own ecological footprints, discover new and/or better means of reducing an ecological footprint, and educated other people on how to do so. Perhaps I am biased because my philosophy, derived from my education in ecology and evolution, leads me to take actions to minimize my ecological footprint and encourage my family and friends to do so, as well. But what do I know? I¹m just a lowly master¹s student living on a stipend, not some super-wealthy, PhD-holding, professor-type scientist. Well, not yet. But, I do need to return to reading for class tomorrow if I am ever going to get to that point:) -Josh On 2/15/09 1:35 PM, "Paul Cherubini" <mona...@saber.net> wrote: > Why should the Gallup poll results matter? > > Seems to me the lifetime ecological footprint of a creationist is > likely lower than that of a scientist because people with good > science educations = people with higher than average > incomes = people who live more materially affluent > lifestyles = people with greater lifetime ecological footprints > = people who contribute more to chronic environmental problems > like global warming, loss of open space, biodiversity and so forth. > > Paul Cherubini > El Dorado, Calif. **************** Joshua B. LaPergola Graduate Teaching Assistant Biology Department, Villanova University Office: Mendel G22B (if the door is closed, knock!) Lab: Mendel 106 Office Phone: 610.519.6356 E-mail: joshua.laperg...@villanova.edu Office Hours: Spring '09 Monday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., or by appointment P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail or any unimportant document. "For in the end, our society will be defined not by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - John C. Sawhill, 2000
