Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
They just didn't pray *hard* enough.
This is what happens when you let religion determine health policy:
Teen pregnancy and disease rates rose sharply during Bush years, agency finds
Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.
In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.
The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.
Can we please stop giving in to ignorance?
Jim Downey
Via Balloon Juice.
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Ignorance
I was reading an article a few days ago -- I wish I'd kept the link to it -- about a study that determined that some people believe a thing even MORE when evidence is advanced against it.
This completely anti-rational pattern is typical of, wait for it ... conservatives.
It was that article or another on a similar subject that said conservatives are most strongly motivated toward their beliefs by fear.
So if you put the two together, disproof of the god-and-abstinence theory will actually SCARE them into holding onto it even more strongly. Seeing evidence that they're wrong is so disorienting that, as a consequence, they'll hold more firmly to what they think they know. I guess anything else makes the fear unbearable.
What's weird is that when I think of the kids I went to high school with, the ones who were the loudest and seemingly most confident are the ones who are now ardent conservatives. It's like the brash ones peaked early, and confidently felt no need to let new stuff into their heads. They STILL act loud and confident, but only manage it by rejecting new information or ways of doing things -- a pattern of action I can only imagine is motivated by fear.
Realative Values Are Slippery
You said, ". . . some people believe a thing even MORE when evidence is advanced against it".
Hank, if you or I are wrong about something we only have to worry about breaking something, suffering some trivial injury, pissing someone off or looking foolish.
When a true believer is wrong his entire world begins to tremble and eternity is at risk.
Way different stakes.
*glad you liked my moon-landing memories*
Is it this one?
It's from Setptember.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/14/AR200809...
I didn't see anything about the fear motivation, so that must have been a different article (if indeed this is the one you were talking about.)
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
Saw the same article
but can't recall where I saw it either. If true, this is truly frightening. But it would explain a lot.