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Re: [Phys-L] science +- politics +- religious denominations (plural)

I said Korean (as I recall). It may have been a Chinese study. In either
case the students in the study had no religious restrictions against
evolution, yet a significant number seemed to have a block against accepting
it. Lawson found that easy acceptance of evolution requires the students to
be at the "theoretical" level, above formal operational. Essentially his
experiment showed that concepts which can never be seen such as evolution
require a higher level of thinking, while concepts that can be seen are
easily understood. Concepts such a geological change are intermediate in
difficulty as they can be seen if you could use a time lapse camera. Atoms
are in the same class as evolution in difficulty.

This is rather like an article that I was reading about cleanliness in
hospitals. MDs should understand the need for it, but they are still often
resistant. Even when being monitored some will turn on the water, but not
wash their hands. I suppose it is similar to what soldiers did when the
habit of using the same pair of underwear for a long time in Germany became
known. The army tried to promote cleanliness and get the soldiers to change
underwear every day rather than once a week or longer. They mandated that
soldiers had to put a certain number of pieces of underwear into the wash
bags every week. The soldiers complied by putting in clean underwear!
Paradigms are very strong, even in the face of confounding evidence.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

-----Original Message-----
From: Phys-l [mailto:phys-l-bounces@phys-l.org] On Behalf Of
Bruce Sherwood
Sent: Friday, June 07, 2013 5:23 PM
To: Phys-L@phys-l.org
Subject: Re: [Phys-L] science +- politics +- religious
denominations (plural)

Note that about 30% of South Koreans are Christians.

I recommend Karen Armstrong's fine book on fundamentalisms
(Christian, Muslim, and Jewish), "The Battle for God".

Bruce
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