A believe it or not survey
I’ve just done the SST’s Believe it or not survey. Takes around 10 minutes but is quite interesting to do, and the results will be fascinating. Probably a bit depressing that so many people believe myths. Anyway go do the survey if you have time.
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Tags: SST
August 17th, 2008 at 9:24 am
“Taniwha literally DO exist.”
Its a bit hard to take that survey seriously when they include questions like that, surely nobody of sound mind would agree.
August 17th, 2008 at 10:02 am
I had trouble believing this myth in their Important Information section, but strangely, they don’t supply a check box for it:
“…THE PURPOSE OF THE DATA IS NOT FOR INAPPROPRIATE CHARACTERISATION OF INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS ON THE BASIS OF THEIR BELIEFS…”
The purpose, they tell us, is to use the data in scientific papers, that won’t be used in governmental research by partisan groups with a history of divisive politics, or to shape new perimeters for social policy. It will be secret data, unavailable to anyone who could use them, held for up to five years and you aren’t allowed access to it, only they can use it. It’s totally ethical. And here’s a flash toy prize to prove it. Now shut up. That’s what they tell us. I didn’t see how fast we were going. We can’t afford tax cuts. It was an error of judgement. Victoria University has no government links. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
August 17th, 2008 at 10:33 am
It has a creepy “tabloid” feel to it – makes you feel a little dirty afterwards.
SST obviously take their horoscope readers VERY seriously.
August 17th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Some of the questions are a bit ambiguous… Are there witches? I’m certain that there are people who like to call themselves witches. But can they do magical things? No. Does prayer work? It might put you in a better frame of mind and help you to fight a disease. But not by causing supernatural beings to swoop down from heaven and help you out.
But there are enough questions that I think the few ambiguous ones will be lost in the crowd. I’ll be interested to find out if, say, Christians are more inclined to non-religious superstition. Or whether Greens will believe anything, no matter how batshit crazy it is.
August 17th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Also, the range of options is skewed. If you’ve been once in your life to a psychic you are forced to say you go “once a year” – or never.
August 17th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I paid a tarot reading once as a fundraiser for charity – it was more about the fundraising than the reading. So I ticked never.
August 17th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
What is disturbing is that as taxpayers we are already paying for politicians belief in deluded myths. The Greens managed to extract money out of the government in 2004 for a group of SCAM (Supplementary Complementary Alternative Medicine) merchants to prepare a report on the use of their flaky snake oil in the public health system. They have now wangled 450k pa for a Senior Policy Analyst within the Health Dept to continue this mischief.
Health already makes up 16.8% of the overall Government budget , wasting money on what is effectively medical fraud to satisfy some post-modern feminist ideology is extremely offensive.
August 17th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
It was an interesting questionnaire for bigot-identification! Such as the unadulterated idiocy just displayed by Bryan.
August 17th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I agree that there was a lot of ambiguous questions in there and the options available were sub-optimal.
August 17th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Looks like another religion bashing exercise to me. They can probably engineer anything they want out of that no. of questions.
I wonder if Danyl M. has anything to do with it?
August 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Yes, the questions about witches and other things that do in fact exist but are just not imbued with the mystical powers that are normally associated with the terminology, and the lack of a “yes, because I was going out with a girl who believed that hokum and I desperately wanted to get my leg over” response to visiting tarot card readers and the like must surely suggest a shonky methodology, DPF?
August 17th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
“yes, because I was going out with a girl who believed that hokum and I desperately wanted to get my leg over”
We will do anything for a blow job when we are young won’t we ?
August 17th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Do you believe a troll is a hairy Nordic creature?
August 17th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Young? I’d go to a tarot reader today for a blow job!! You should see the bribery that normally has to go on in our household for services of that nature. Tarot readings would be tame by comparison.
August 18th, 2008 at 6:43 am
“Taniwha literally DO exist.”
Land Transport Authority thought so. Enough to hold up roading projects.
August 18th, 2008 at 6:48 am
Until the necessary koha has been paid to the kaumatua who is able to cleanse the evil.
freakin stone age shit. right up there with christianity.
August 18th, 2008 at 6:57 am
I was walking along regents canal toward camden the other day just minding my own business when I came across this fat old harpie draped in red crushed velvet accompanied by an apologetic looking man dressed like an accountant and their 6 ft tall goth daughter with thigh-high buckled boots, a mini skirt and suspenders with a black bra under some spider web top. The mother misunderstood the smile on my face and asked me sarcastically if I was alright to which i replied by pushing her into the canal and absconding with her daughter for some witch craft while her male carer tried to drag the over-stuffed bag of pot pourri and dream catchers out of the water on pain of having his nuts turned into raisins again.
The moral of the story is that thors hammer wins every time. my magic freed the daughter from a life of emotional munchausen by proxy, comfort eating, communism and gaia.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:03 am
“I was walking along regents canal toward camden the other day” – did you score any drugs?
August 18th, 2008 at 7:14 am
that might explain it.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:19 am
how did the 6ft goth go for you?
August 18th, 2008 at 7:31 am
i made that bit up
August 18th, 2008 at 7:34 am
shame. it had potential for a triple x kiwiblog entry.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:48 am
i should have known the leggie goth would obscure the moral. they always do. speaking of which I saw kate beckinsale the other day. yes.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:52 am
mmm, goth = hulun klarkk. you sick sick f*cker.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:58 am
here i was thinking of kate beckinsale getting about in a cat suit and you bring up hulun. i may be sick but you’re evil.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:00 am
it sorts the men from the boys – stay on ‘message’ bedroom wise with that playing in the back of your mind …
August 18th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Dear Penthouse forum,
You aren’t going to believe what happened to me. It all started when I met this leggie goth by regents canal…
August 18th, 2008 at 8:07 am
her crooked teeth immediately raised my blood pressure and I knew we were destined to become much much closer..
August 18th, 2008 at 8:09 am
this could get messy i thought. at least take your combat boots off please dear
August 18th, 2008 at 8:09 am
I was think more Keeley Hazell with heavy black eye make up.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:15 am
the thud of soviet era bulgarian standard issue combat boots hitting the ground provided a poignent counterpoint to the mouldy lemon reek of atheletes foot..
August 18th, 2008 at 8:18 am
…and then we said a prayer to gaia and had some aromatherapy and fell asleep feeling a little bit dirty.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:20 am
thoughts of a workers paradise and a lifetime of quango chair roles at the UN/WHO floated through our shared, non-judgemental and sustainable dreams.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:31 am
suddenly I was running through the corridors of power toward the light hoping to escape this hell only to awaken to find her spooning me in the way only a woman who doesn’t shave her legs can…
August 18th, 2008 at 8:32 am
(i deserve demerits for that).
August 18th, 2008 at 8:36 am
It made me wince. You’ll be lucky to get away with a weeks ban matey.
Do you think winnie has dreams that end like that?
August 18th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Wa-hey, preliminary results: http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4658673a6442.html
Dunno what Shunda was on about with ‘religion bashing’ – highly educated people don’t believe in god, oh no! (my forecast). These typically show that religious people are some of the happiest, but we’ll see.
August 18th, 2008 at 9:57 am
1 in 10 people overall believe the existence of a literal taniwha, and 1.3 in 10 Greens do! Wow!
August 18th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I remember a cartoon where some trendy young things in a cafe were mocking the ignorance and weak-mindedness of fundamentalist Christians, and in the last frame, as they split up, they each said something like:
“I’m off to the Tapu-lifting ceremony for my department’s new building”……..
“I’m off to my regular tarot-reading appointment”…….
“I’m off to my motivational seminar”……….
“I’m off to see the Uri Geller show”……..
August 18th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Heh heh.
August 18th, 2008 at 11:47 am
I suspect the secular humanist faith in reason and natural causes is starting to run out of steam. We see throughout the world a rise in religiosity. Islam of course is growing even amongst highly educated Asian people in Britain. Christianity is booming in the Third World. This is in countries with high population growth such as Venezuala and Nigeria.Even in secular New Zealand there is a rise of spirituality.
I suspect the writing is on the wall for the sterile scientific idea that technology and reason will be saviours. Indeed I think countries that are embracing Christianity will go from strength to strength. At the same time the post-Christian countries have run out of steam and seem to be slipping back into paganism and atheistic despair.
But never fear — Jesus is still the answer!
August 18th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
“Even in secular New Zealand there is a rise of spirituality.”
‘Spirituality’ encompasses a LOT more than just the traditional world religions though…
August 18th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Hi Stephen — couldn’t agree more. I see Massey University is offering a course in witchcraft!
I guess my point is that secularism is on the way out. Secular people tend to have very few children as opposed to religious people. In the secular West the population is declining while in religious countries in Africa and Asia the population is booming.
Many people are tired of the secular mindset. It may be that the writings Richard Dawkins and company are the last dying outbursts of atheism and secularism.
However spirituality is popular. You can have some of the feelgood factors of Christianity without worrying about concepts such as sin.
But I believe in Jesus. I have put my faith in him and I believe he is the one that truly leads us to God.
August 18th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I think you’ll find that it’s more the study of witchcraft’s role in society/history etc (like Religious Studies courses) than teaching how to be a registered witchcraft practitioner
, but you probably already knew that.
I haven’t really looked at numbers of the faithful, but the ‘declining population’ countries also have significant education/contraceptive access, so I hardly think religion is the only factor. A decline in population growth rates would be a ‘godsend’ to the developing countries that have high rates…
August 18th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Way to spout a bunch of unfounded sensationalism Scott.
1. I suspect the secular humanist faith in reason and natural causes is starting to run out of steam.
Ever since the Church stopped having a monopoly on punishing ‘heretics’ those who are against the belief in faith have continued to exist, just perhaps not in the corporate, business structures like Christians in Churches that take tithes to keep themselves running.
2. I suspect the writing is on the wall for the sterile scientific idea that technology and reason will be saviours.
A fuck load of people still study medicine these days, shame Christians are against stem cell research otherwise a lot of people could be cured from diseases like Alzheimers.
3. I think countries that are embracing Christianity will go from strength to strength.
Africa still looks like a shithole to me. China is booming because of capitalism, not Christianity.
4. The post-Christian countries have run out of steam and seem to be slipping back into paganism and atheistic despair.
Pornography outsells the Bible, people are leaving Churches in droves Christian children are turning from their parents’ faith as soon as they hit puberty.
5. Never fear — Jesus is still the answer!
Of what – to what?
6. I guess my point is that secularism is on the way out.
You argue that third world countries are embracing Christianity – but that is because they are less educated. Christianity is on the way out as intelligence increases.
7. Secular people tend to have very few children as opposed to religious people.
See below.
8. Many people are tired of the secular mindset.
Many people are tired of the Christian mindset.
9. It may be that the writings Richard Dawkins and company are the last dying outbursts of atheism and secularism.
It may be that the writings of Chuck Missler and company are the last dying outbursts of Christianity and spirituality.
10. However spirituality is popular.
However atheism is popular.
Seriously, do you have any evidence to back any of this up or are you just guessing and judging from say the people you hang out with. Take this parable – a frog lives in a well and thinks he’s seen the whole world. Then a frog from the sea comes and visits, and the frog from the well asks how big is the sea? The frog from the sea says big. Is it this big? The well frog makes a circle in the well. No. Is it this big? Makes a circle encompassing the whole well. No, it’s much bigger. The frog from the well is like, no fucking way, it can’t be.
Same as your statements of belief above – take for example #7 – children with non-religious backgrounds outnumber religious children in the average NZ classroom. And then that number falls even more when the children grow up and start to think for themselves. Only a tiny percentage go from non-Christian to Christian. You’re definitely stuck in a Christian worldview mindset ignorant of what is really going on around you. You base your conclusions perhaps on the one or two pathetic people who walk into Church and feel like they’ve had their lives changed from the inside out and therefore apply their desperation to the rest of society.
August 18th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Woah! Rude.
August 18th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
“…shame Christians are against stem cell research otherwise a lot of people could be cured from diseases like Alzheimers.”
Bullshit. There is still plenty of research into stem cells sourced from aborted fetuses going on, it just doesnt get Christian money or US governmental money.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
“Reb”: Here’s a poser for you:
How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science
By PETER WOOD
“In March, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, testified before the House Committee on Science and Technology about the abject failure of American schools, colleges, and universities to prepare students for advanced study in the sciences.
Well, that’s not exactly what he testified. The purpose of his trip to the Hill was to impress on Congress the need for more H-1B visas. Those are the visas extended to highly trained experts for specialized jobs. Microsoft, said Gates, can’t find enough top-quality computer scientists who are U.S. citizens or already have the right visas. But, he added, a solution is at hand: America’s first-rate graduate schools have a wealth of brilliant scientists and engineers in the pipeline. A large portion of them, however, are foreign nationals here on student visas, and are destined to return home after they graduate. Wouldn’t it be smarter for our nation to give them H-1B visas so they could stay here and put their training to work helping American companies?
Gates has a compelling point — largely because the shortage of Americans holding or pursuing advanced degrees in fields like computer science defies conventional market explanations. The average annual salary in the field is more than $100,000. Meanwhile, we have a robust supply of high-IQ baristas and college graduates with jobs that a generation ago would not even have required a high-school diploma.
So while Gates didn’t make the point in so many words, his call for more H-1B visas was really testimony to the incapacity of American education to inspire children to take an interest in science and motivate young adults to follow though. He noted that 60 percent of the students at the top American computer-science departments are foreign-born.
Gates is hardly the first to sound the alarm. Back in 2003, the National Science Board issued a report that noted steep declines in “graduate enrollments of U.S. citizens and permanent residents” in the sciences. The explanation? “Declining federal support for research sends negative signals to interested students.” That seems unlikely, in that the alleged decline hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of students from all around the world for our country’s graduate programs.
The precipitous drop in American science students has been visible for years. In 1998 the House released a national science-policy report, “Unlocking Our Future,” that fussily described “a serious incongruity between the perceived utility of a degree in science and engineering by potential students and the present and future need for those with training.”
Let me offer a different explanation. Students respond more profoundly to cultural imperatives than to market forces. In the United States, students are insulated from the commercial market’s demand for their knowledge and skills. That market lies a long way off — often too far to see. But they are not insulated one bit from the worldview promoted by their teachers, textbooks, and entertainment. From those sources, students pick up attitudes, motivations, and a lively sense of what life is about. School has always been as much about learning the ropes as it is about learning the rotes. We do, however, have some new ropes, and they aren’t very science-friendly. Rather, they lead students who look upon the difficulties of pursuing science to ask, “Why bother?”
Success in the sciences unquestionably takes a lot of hard work, sustained over many years. Students usually have to catch the science bug in grade school and stick with it to develop the competencies in math and the mastery of complex theories they need to progress up the ladder. Those who succeed at the level where they can eventually pursue graduate degrees must have not only abundant intellectual talent but also a powerful interest in sticking to a long course of cumulative study. A century ago, Max Weber wrote of “Science as a Vocation,” and, indeed, students need to feel something like a calling for science to surmount the numerous obstacles on the way to an advanced degree.
At least on the emotional level, contemporary American education sides with the obstacles. It begins by treating children as psychologically fragile beings who will fail to learn — and worse, fail to develop as “whole persons” — if not constantly praised. The self-esteem movement may have its merits, but preparing students for arduous intellectual ascents aren’t among them. What the movement most commonly yields is a surfeit of college freshmen who “feel good” about themselves for no discernible reason and who grossly overrate their meager attainments.
The intellectual lassitude we breed in students, their unearned and inflated self-confidence, undercuts both the self-discipline and the intellectual modesty that is needed for the apprentice years in the sciences. Modesty? Yes, for while talented scientists are often proud of their talent and accomplishments, they universally subscribe to the humbling need to prove themselves against the most-unyielding standards of inquiry. That willingness to play by nature’s rules runs in contrast to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along insouciance that characterizes so many variants of postmodernism and that flatters itself as being a higher form of pragmatism.
The aversion to long-term and deeply committed study of science among American students also stems from other cultural imperatives. We rank the manufacture of “self-esteem” above hard-won achievement, but we also have immersed a generation in wall-to-wall promotion of diversity and multiculturalism as being the worthiest form of educational endeavor; we have foregrounded the redistributional dreams of “social justice” over heroic aspirations to discover, invent, and thereby create new wealth; and we have endlessly extolled the virtue of “sustainability” against the ravages of “progress.” Do all that, and you create an educational system that is essentially hostile to advanced achievement in the sciences and technology. Moreover, those threads have a certainty and unity that make them not just a collection of educational conceits but also part of a compelling worldview.
The antiscience agenda is visible as early as kindergarten, with its infantile versions of the diversity agenda and its early budding of self-esteem lessons. But it complicates and propagates all the way up through grade school and high school. In college it often drops the mask of diffuse benevolence and hardens into a fascination with “identity.”
That could be a good thing if the introspections were enriched by professors who could show students where Plato or Shakespeare had touched such depths, or who could startle them by showing where Hobbes or Tocqueville had seen them coming. But in a curriculum dissolved in the sea of minutiae and professorial enthusiasms, the opportunity to pass through moody introspection and back into the sturdy world of real people grows rare.
The science “problems” we now ask students to think about aren’t really science problems at all. Instead we have the National Science Foundation vexed about the need for more women and minorities in the sciences. President Lawrence H. Summers was pushed out of Harvard University for speculating (in league with a great deal of neurological evidence) that innate difference might have something to do with the disparity in numbers of men and women at the highest levels of those fields. In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report, “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering.” Officials of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education are looking to use Title IX to force science graduate programs to admit more women. The big problem? As of 2001, 80 percent of engineering degrees and 72 percent of computer-science degrees have gone to men.
A society that worries itself about which chromosomes scientists have isn’t a society that takes science education seriously. In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert famously drew up a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics; 18 have now been solved. Hilbert has also bequeathed us a way of thinking about mathematics and the sciences as a to-do list of intellectual challenges. Notably, Hilbert didn’t write down problem No. 24: “Make sure half the preceding 23 problems are solved by female mathematicians.”
Obsession with the sex and race of scientists is just one more indication of how American higher education has swung into orbit around the neutron star of identity politics. Talk to recent college graduates and you are likely to hear something like: “Asian students are just better at science and math.” That is a verbal shrug, not a lament. The reward of 16 years of diversiphilic indoctrination turns out to be a comfort zone of rationalizations.
In his testimony, Bill Gates did more than glance at the failures of American schooling. Our record on high-school math and science education is particularly troubling. International tests indicate that American fourth graders rank among the top students in the world in science and above average in math. By eighth grade, they have moved closer to the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, our students score near the bottom of all industrialized nations. As a result, too many of them enter college without even the basic skills needed to pursue a degree in science or engineering.
And Gates has backed his words with money. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he reported, has spent $1.9-billion to “establish 1,124 new high schools and improve 761 existing high schools.” The Gates-supported schools have as “common elements” such anodyne features as “high standards,” “relevant, challenging course work,” and “high levels of support.” Gates also supports “great transparency and accountability.”
The sheer magnitude of the effort could make a dent, the way Andrew Carnegie’s libraries opened the world of books to millions of Americans. I applaud the philanthropy and hope Gates’s STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) initiatives in Texas, Ohio, and other states bear fruit. One way culture changes is through the efforts of determined reformers, and Gates qualifies.
On the other hand, nothing in his testimony suggested recognition that American education’s cultural imperatives play a role in diminishing the importance of science and technology in the eyes of the great majority of students. I don’t take it as a tragedy if our top graduate programs fill up with ambitious and talented students from abroad; if we need to issue more H-1B visas to sustain our high-tech industries, let’s do it with dispatch. Welcoming some of the world’s most educated, talented, and ambitious scientists to our shores only strengthens the nation. But the apathy of so many homegrown American students to the intellectual challenges of science is something else — something that building schools, multiplying computers, and ginning up STEM programs won’t touch.
Bill Gates may not be the right person to tell us how to restore that mixture of awe, admiration, sheer ambition, delight in meeting difficulties, and stubborn curiosity — the patient exuberance — that draws students into the adventure of science. A few of our students catch it despite the preoccupations of their teachers and their textbooks. But what to do about the larger problem? I’m starting my own Hilbert’s list.”
Peter Wood is executive director of the National Association of Scholars.