National Review Underestimates Chinese Workers

Conservatives in America are fed a regular diet of nonsense on China by the conservative press. I have been allowed to rebut such nonsense in The Stream and in Quillette.  But one of the worst offenders, National Review, which I have read since college, does not allow anyone to puncture its balloons.   

A few days ago, "China expert" Therese Shaheen gave NR readers another test of their gullibility. Most readers, having been brainwashed, seemed to fail that test.  Let's examine just one claim from her article denigrating Chinese economic prospects:

"And as many as 700 million working-age people in China have a grade school education or less."

Penn Students like THIS better than Shakespeare?

"Too white.  We shall have to discard
this visage."

The University of Pennsylvania is said to be one of our great universities.  It was founded by none other than Benjamin Franklin, one of the greatest Americans (or so the Reigning Establishment long opined, despite his sins of being white and unambiguously male.)

Anyway, it seems the wise Penn pedagogues tired of looking at the face of William Shakespeare. Way white.   Way old.  Way male.  They decided to replace his visage.  But they waited too long, and the oppressed students in the English department determined to pre-empt the faculty and purify the premises.  So they took Bill down, and replaced him with a properly politically-correct poet, a good lesbian, black and therefore holy in skin color, a "warrior" named Audre Lorde.

Mao's little babes.  Let America have its Great Cultural Revolution, and rid ourselves of the Four Olds: old race, old gender, old money, good poems.

And you called William Shakespeare "irreplaceable?"

Just look at this brilliant work!

 Hanging Fire

Related Poem Content Details

BY AUDRE LORDE

I am fourteen 

and my skin has betrayed me   

the boy I cannot live without   

still sucks his thumb 

in secret 

how come my knees are 

always so ashy 

what if I die 

before morning 

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed . . . 

Nobody even stops to think   

about my side of it 

I should have been on Math Team   

my marks were better than his   

why do I have to be 

the one 

wearing braces 

I have nothing to wear tomorrow   

will I live long enough 

to grow up 

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed.

Now that is real poetry!  It may not rhyme, true.   But how mysterious!  What is momma DOING in the bedroom with the door closed?  (Sex?  How subtle!  How universal!)  

One can almost picture this girl - how brilliantly Ms. Lorde has captured her essence, the perfect caricature of a 14-year old's heart!  The universal adolescent, with hardly a trace of individuality -- braces, check, acne, check, unrequited love, check, jealousy over being overlooked, check, misogyny (the whole point), check, questions about sex, check, worries about clothes, check.  Every single cliche one expects from an adult trying to remember or visualize the teenage female condition!  Why, this is almost as brilliant as paint-with-numbers!

  Compare such verbal wizardry to the tawdry doggerel of "The Bard," trying feebly to imagine "what dreams may come" to a desperate young man considering a rash act of revenge against his uncle: 

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? 

The Red Guards purify culture.

If only Shakespeare had added something about braces, or Hamlet had wondered what his uncle was up to when he closed the door!  Think how much more universal and suggestive that play would have been!  And why doesn't this young man talk about sex, sports, or cars?  If only Shakespeare had created more fetching and realistic portraits of young people, the eager pups at Benjamin Franklin's old school would not be ashamed to stare at his nose every day.  (Especially if he'd put black face on in shame for his wicked whiteness, and executed a quickie sex change operation.)  

There's one good thing about our Glorious Cultural Revolution.  It helps me sympathize with the lost generation in China.  And it also takes the edge off my nationalistic and class vanities.  It turns out that not a few bright young Americans, and their highly-credentialed teachers, have learned to Love Big Sister, and made themselves look every bit as daft as China's Red Guards, abandoning the wealth and beauty of a great civilization, selling their heritage for a mess of cold porridge, sprinkled with brown sugar and lots of nuts.    

How the College Board Corrupts the Youth

Now I'm really angry. The College Board, in its infinite wisdom, has just "delayed" scores for students who took the SAT test "in the Asia region." Yeah, that includes Thailand, Taiwan, and Singapore, where our students went to escape the known scam of Hong Kong.

To hell with students and their parents. To hell with universities around the United States awaiting results.

Somebody was cheating! This had NOTHING to do with the fact that we morons at the College Board re...leased a two-year old exam offered previously, and publicly available, in the United States!

And of course, no money back when the College Board does not give the product you purchased.

History Alive: pro-Muslim, anti-Christian propaganda in school.

Last year I began a series on how the American public education system brainwashes young people against Christianity.   (Click the "education" label below for earlier installments.)  Some readers may approve of such public school biases.  But we like honest history here.  We despise intellectual bullying of defenseless young tykes.  And yes, we also tend to prefer Christianity to Islam, even on general moral grounds. 

Today I would like to explore the various lies I found in a popular history textbook used in our school district in Washington State, where I have worked as a substitute teacher.  The book is also used in other states.  

Does "Junk Science" make Americans smarter?

Two and a half years ago, I rebutted the notion that Americans are worse at science than people in other developed countries, in this post.  It wasn't as hard as you might think.  As it turned out, the very article that an anti-Christian Australian, John Grove, cited to prove that Americans were numbskulls because of their religion, actually demonstrated pretty much the opposite: that adult Americans do better on international science surveys, than people in any other country, except for Sweden.

In addition, I pointed out, also rebutting the author of the study, Jon Miller (Michigan State University, who also obviously despises Christianity too), that if anything, "fringe science" like Intelligent Design and "Global Warming Denialism" may actually increase awareness of science.  While Miller's study was clearly biased against Christians, loaded with questions designed to yield "correct" results, the evidence for this was nevertheless evident in his results. 

Today I was wading through old files, prepping for my debate with Phil Zuckerman next month, and came across Miller's study again.  I can't resist combing through his results once more.  There's nothing quite as satisfying as being shot not only without effect, but with rubber bullets that bounce off one's chest and take out the vehicle your would-be assassin is driving.  Opposing arguments that actually support one's own view are worth quoting for three reasons: (1) Credibility.  One can't accuse someone so hostile to Christian influence as Miller of doctoring results to favor OUR theory. (2) Laziness.  As a Taoist Christian, it seems so much more convenient when the other side brings the heavy weapons to the battle for us. (3) Irony, a sense of which adds spice to life. 

Old School Lies: Religion and Environment

Here's a propaganda flick I showed in a high school class earlier this school year, as part of the assigned classwork in a science or history class -- I forget which -- in which I was subbing.  This is interesting for a few reasons.  First, I was surprised this film would still be shown in public schools -- if anything, it shows how dramatically the environmentalist line has changed over the past 20 years.  Second, I was shocked to hear Paul Ehrlich seriously quoted as an authority on population -- whom I read as apocalyptic literature, as a young man, and took seriously -- and whose prophesies failed miserably, to put it mildly.  Third, the shoddiness and shamelessly one-sided character of this propaganda flick -- from CNN, which is supposed to be "down the middle" -- still takes my breath away. 

 

Lap it up, 16 year olds!  Memorize yesteryear's liberal propaganda.  If the details have changed a bit -- if we're at war with Eastasia and not Eurasia this year -- well, no need to rewrite history, when you're "learning" it for the first time! 

Howard Zinn, the Boston Bombers, and school propaganda.

One day I subbed in a Washington State middle school, and noticed student papers on the wall of a classroom entitled, "The Life of Mohammed."  Looking the reports over, I found them universally flattering of the prophet, and not terribly accurate historically.  Why, I wondered, were students in a state school being asked to write hagiographies of the founder of Islam?  Is parroting sectarian propaganda -- and foreign propaganda, at that -- how we are supposed to learn history in American schools?

A couple years later, reading the history text used both in middle and high school in our school district, I discovered the probable source of this propaganda.  The text book, which I plan to analyze in some detail in a later post, included several chapters lauding Islam, and making excuses for the crimes of Mohammed -- or rather ignoring them.  The man comes across as a model citizen, a liberal country gentleman.  No mention is made of his murder of 700 Jewish men in Medina, attacks on neighboring tribes, enslavement of those he conquered, assassinations or torture of enemies, or the fact that he consummated marriage (at over 50) to a nine year old girl. 

In short, our children were being systematically lied to about history. 

Did Avalos hunt witches? Education Bias II

This is the second post in a series on anti-Christian bias in American Public Education.  This post rebuts Iowa State University Professor of Religious Studies Hector Avalos. Dr. Avalos is in some ways a formidable academic. Completing his doctoral work at Harvard, Avalos has been awarded as "Teacher of the Year" and "Master Teacher" at Iowa State University.  Judging by "Rate your Prof," many of his students appreciate his mastery of religion, some noting that he has memorized large portions of the Bible.  He also poses as an advocate for freedom of speech on campus.  This makes his role in the tenure affair involving Guillermo Gonzalez perhaps even more troubling. 

Avalos responded to my post last month in three peculiar ways, which shed light on the issue of anti-Christian bias on campus. 

Stomping on Jesus: Bigotry in Public Education I

Over the past months, a series of incidents has brought to my attention how American Public Education often poisons young minds against Christianity. 

College makes (another) atheist.

It seems like everywhere I go lately, I've been confronted with evidence of gross anti-Christian bias in public high school and colleges.  I've run into professors who mock Christian students publicly (but don't want to be challenged by other scholars), or assume that their job is to deprogram the children under their command.  I've run into grade school textbooks that brainwash 12 or 15 year olds to think of Mohammed as a true prophet of God, and Jesus as an iffy historical also-ran. 

The pot is beginning to bubble.  I don't much mind when people attack me.  But when they go after the kids, my skin starts turning green. 

A few days ago, a young new contributor to the Skeptic Ink Network community introduced himself.  His name is Peter Ferguson, and he is a doctoral candidate at the National University Galway, where he established the Atheist Humanist Society.  (Side note: In naming your anti-God organization, please don't place two words side by side that both end in -ist, then add an "s" after the final "st" -- making unpleasant hissing for tongue and ears.)

Anyway, Peter posted his autobiography, and I noticed a familiar pattern. 

Ralph Winter: Apostle of holistic Christianity.

Dr. Greg Parsons, Executive Director of the US Center for World Missions, contributed a fascinating biographical sketch of Ralph Winter to our new book, Faith Seeking Understanding: Essays in Memory of Paul Brand and Ralph D. Winter.  I especially appreciated what Parsons said about Dr. Winter's love of learning, his passionate quest for deeper and holistic understanding of the patterns of life from a Christian perspective, a quality in Dr. Winter that I had the chance to observe, as well.  The following exerpt explains how that quality led to the creation of the Perspectives course, in which I and a few other contributors to Faith Seeking Understanding sometimes teach. 

As a student Winter observed that Christians seemed to avoid the sciences, and scientists avoided issues of faith . . . He had learned at Caltech about the academic achievements of great scientists such as Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, William Thompson (Lord Kelvin), James Clerk Maxwell and Sir Humphrey Davy.  But Caltech did not mention that each of them were also men of faith. He discovered to his surprise that  Newton had spent twenty years studying the life of the apostle Paul. Faraday was an ordained preacher who taught from the Bible every Sunday . . .

Why, he wondered, was this separation so pervasive?  Even when science was taught at Christian colleges, there was no clear connection with the faith of those involved.

Ralph wondered, “What would a regular ‘secular’ history course look like if also studied from ‘God’s’ perspective?” He had surmised that fifteen out of seventeen Evangelical students were in secular schools. He decided to prepare history lessons from a Christian perspective and meet with a handful of willing students at USC each week.  Winter learned a great deal from this experiment, and this led to an ongoing, as yet unfulfilled, vision to meld together faith and “secular” disciplines. Later he wrote:

God has given us two “books.” 1) the Bible which is a Book of Revelation, and 2) nature, which is His Book of Creation. He does not want us to slight either one. Yet the sad situation is that, in general, one major human tradition (the scientific community) is studying the second and despising the first, and another human tradition (the church community) is studying the first and ignoring the second. Yet, both are essential in understanding God and His will . . . The Bible itself affirms the second, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament displays His handiwork (and) there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.’

In many ways, this holistic view of Christian thought was an outworking of  Winter’s own expanding studies.  He attended seven different schools (including Cal Tech, Columbia, Cornell, and Princeton Seminary), and earned degrees in Civil Engineering, Teaching English as a Second Language, Linguistics, Anthropology, Mathematical Statistics, and finally Theology . . .

 

One of Winter’s best-known legacies, one that expresses the holistic passion by which Winter saw life, is the study course (and book) called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.  Each week a different instructor exposes students to a broad range of experiences, ideas and insights, building off material in that week's reading.  Some students are still in high school, while others are senior citizens, businessmen or women, or people in full-time ministry.  In 2011, almost ten thousand students took the course at over 200 locations.

Winter believed in lifelong learning.  A little box from Amazon.com , sometimes not so little, would show up at his home every other day or so. The box would contain books on science, history, and other subjects.  Over one three month period, when Winter was 83, he acquired sixty new books this way!  The rate was about a book every other day for many years.

Postscript: Faith Seeking Understanding is a unique new book featuring insights from such Christian thinkers as Phillip Yancey, the eminent sociologist Rodney Stark, the great philospher Alvin Plantinga, Oxford historian of science Allan Chapman, anthropologist Miriam Adeney, eminent quantum physicist Don Page, and many other thoughtful people.  It's a lovely book, a great Christmas gift for all kinds of people, including pastors, students, missionaries, and non-Christians who want an intellectually-rewarding yet low-key, noncombatative approach to Christianity.  You can order the book either from William Carey Library, or from us. 

If you order from us, the price is $13, plus $3 shipping.  We are also offering a special deal this Christmas: just add $10 and no extra shipping, for any of my other books, or a total of $58 + $3 shipping, for all six.  This is a great package for students, pastors, or church libraries, maybe a bit much for a single non-Christian. 

Our mailing address is Kuai Mu Press / PO BOX 403 / Fall City, WA 98024

---

[1] Ralph D. Winter, “Ten Frontiers of Perspective”, a morning seminar, August 20, 1999, revised January 21, 2003, 8. (W1042.14

Phil Zuckerman: Jesus wants you to vote Democratic

Pastor Phil is ready to
preach.

It is common for skeptics to argue that Christians betray the teachings of Jesus.  Our own pastors often tell us the same thing, and Jesus himself could be pretty hard on his disciples. I find some such sermons irritatingly self-righteous, though, especially from a preacher who forgets he's not Jesus.  Here I'll dissect one from the increasingly popular sociologist Philip Zuckerman, an atheist whose papers on how much better secular European societies are, compared to the more religious and supposedly backwards United States have spread like wildfire among the Gnu blogoscenti.  This article (co-authored by one Dan Cady, an historian in the California State system) was written last year, but seems especially relevant in the present campaign season -- as, I hope, will be the skeptical comments I append to it. -- DM

"Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus"

Posted: 03/ 3/11 10:06 AM ET

Why are Americans Scientifically Precocious?

Why are Americans Scientifically Precocious?

Is Michael Behe Responsible?

The stupidity of the American people is an article of faith for many on the Left and among European intellectuals, it being generally accepted that religion is to blame. A popular discussion forum on Amazon.com right now, started by an Australian community developer named John Croft, is entitled “Why are People here so Scientifically Illiterate?" "Here" means not Australia, but the US:

"It is a sad and sorry state of US scientific illiteracy that a science forum is just full of discussions of (Intelligent Design) IDiocy and climate denial ostriches.

"The US is heading for irrelevancy, as the quality of its science is now done mostly by foreigners, whilst people here cannot address even the simplest scientific question.”

Croft cites research by Jon Miller, John Hannah Professor of Integrative Studies at Michigan State University. (Right -->.) As reported in a 2007 paper, Miller found that only 28% of American adults qualify as “scientifically literate.”

About 190 posters so far have registered their acceptance of the premise that Americans are crash test dummies when it comes to science, and that America is “fast becoming the sick man of the world,” as Croft puts it, thanks to religion, by voting these comments "add to the discussion." The Jesus Land mentality seeps into our minds like oil into the Gulf, it seems, numbing us into buying creationism, Intelligent Design, and Global Warming skepticism.

The odd thing is, when actually read, Miller’s paper, “The Public Understanding of Science in Europe and the United States,” shows the opposite: that Americans are better-informed about science than almost any other nation on earth, and rising rapidly. In fact, the study may even suggest that American heresies like Intelligent Design and AGW skepticism are part of what makes Americans exceptionally good at science.

Croft and his readers have some excuse for reading Miller as they do, however, as that is what Miller clearly wished his survey showed, and tried to make it show. So let us look at the data, the bias it hides, the spin Miller put on it, how best to understand relative American success in promoting scientific literacy, and what if anything that says about religion.

I. The Facts. Here's a country-by-country list of the percentage of those in each country found by Miller to be scientifically-literate (we’ll get to what he meant by that later):

Sweden 35.1%
USA 27.8
Holland 23.9
Norway 22.3
Finland 22.2
Denmark 22.0
Bulgaria 19.3
Iceland 18.2
Belgium 18.1
Germany 18.0
France 17.0
Switzerland 17.0
Czech Republic 16.8
Luxembourg 16.7
Hungary 15.3
Great Britain 14.1
E.U. 13.8
Estonia 12.1
Italy 11.9
Croatia 11.7
Slovakia 10.1
Austria 10.1
Ireland 9.4
Poland 9.1
Spain 8.6
Greece 6.5
Portugal 6.0
Romania 5.9
Japan 5.0
Malta 4.8
Lithuania 3.3
Cyprus 2.8
Slovenia 2.3
Latvia 2.2
Turkey 1.5

A separately-conducted survey located China in the 3-4% range.

How to explain this data? What does religion have to do with these numbers? Lutherans seem to do well, except for Latvians (who are largely atheists, anyway)! Catholic and Orthodox countries seem to do less well. But the bottom is occupied by the only Muslim country on the list, and neither Hindu country is surveyed. The only (nominally) Buddhist country is towards the bottom, despite its wealth and education. Former communist countries fall all over the spectrum.

Could one explain these data, by saying not that religion is harmful, but that countries that used to have a strong religious monopoly, tend to do poorly? But let’s talk about interpretations later.

II. Survey Bias: ID and AGWOne should understand that the author seems to have created this study with an agenda in mind. In his article, Miller bewails the "high proportion of American adults who reject the concept of biological evolution" as a "joint failure of our secondary education system and the emerging structure of partisanship," identifying conservatives and Christians as a problem. It appears he was hoping Americans would do badly, so he could use our ineptitude as a stick with which to beat political and ideological enemies. To give him credit, he published contrary results, admitting more or less forthrightly: “On balance, European adults are not better informed about science than American adults.”

But the survey is rather sneaky. Five of the 32 questions on the American version (fewer questions were asked in some international surveys, but care was apparently taken to ensure they remained representative) were loaded, and may measure agreement with Miller more than scientific knowledge per se.

Most questions seem pretty objective:

True or false: "Lasers work by focusing sound waves."

True or false: “Electrons are smaller than atoms."

"Provide a correct open-ended definition of 'DNA.'"

But several seem designed to bate those Miller calls "religious fundamentalists," alleged to be aligned with a "more uniformly conservative Republican Party," though:

(a) True or False: “Global warming is increasing primarily because the level of direct radiation from the Sun is increasing."

I agree with Miller that the right answer is "false." But many respondents may recognize, or feel without expressing it in words, that Miller begs the question of whether Global Warming is increasing. The temperature of the atmosphere has increased about 1 degree Celsius, at varying rates, for more than a century. But it is not clear that the rate of increase has increased – which some respondents may understand this question to mean.

(b) "True or False: Astrology is not at all scientific."
What does it mean, "not at all scientific?"

Probably Miller is bating ID proponents here. He seems to be asking people to comment on Michael Behe's famous claim, in expert testimony at the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial two years earlier, that astrology, while false, was a "scientific theory" in the sense of "a proposition based on physical evidence to explain some facts by logical inferences."

In that sense, the correct answer to Miller's question might be "yes." Certainly astrology shares SOME characteristics of science, as Behe recognized. This question is thus a sand trap for contrarian logicians.

(c) "True or false: More than half of all human genes are identical to those of mice."The correct answer, Miller assumes, is "true." But actually, genes are almost never "identical," so the more accurate answer should be "false." Religious respondents might notice this technical error, and use it as an excuse to wipe the smirk off Miller’s face by giving a “wrong” answer that is in fact correct. At least, that might be this sinner’s inclination.

(d) True or false: “The primary human activity that causes global warming is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil."
Most Americans got this question "wrong" by saying "false."

This a scientifically complex question, involving several issues: (1) The reality of Global Warming; (2) its allegedly human cause; and (3) the alleged leading role the burning of fossil fuels play in that cause.

The first claim is nominally true, but could be disputed. The atmosphere does seem to have warmed slightly over the past century. But to many people, the term “Global Warming” will likely include not only facts about the past, but the claim (especially given (2)) that such warming will continue in the future.

I agree that some, but perhaps not most, of Global Warming is due to human activity. Earth warmed for decades before CO2 output began to increase dramatically after WWII. Assuming natural trends before 1940 had continued, the “extra” increase in warming over the past 70 years, above an extrapolation of the earlier trend, appears to constitute less than half of the overall warming for the past 110 years.

If he wanted to be objective, Miller should have asked a more neutral question, such as:

"True or False: The primary human activity that leads to increased release of CO2 into the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels."

And finally:

(e) "True or false: Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals."This question, answered "wrongly" by 63% of respondents, the worst result of any, is also one of the most ideologically touchy. Strictly speaking, I think Common Descent is true. I would probably have answered this question "correctly." But knowing what Miller was up to, I might have looked for an excuse to get it "wrong." One cannot, for example, be sure that "human beings as we know them today" developed entirely from "earlier species of animals." Who can say scientifically (this being an historical question) that God did not reach the tip of his finger out to Adam, to tweak the reeds and make them rustle up some thought? Respondents may react to Miller’s reductionist tone and intellectual presumption as much as to the scientific "facts.” To the extent that he prompts such responses, Miller measures not scientific literacy, but scientific orthodoxy.

Frame those five questions in a more fair-minded way, and who knows how many Americans would have "passed" his test? We might even have beaten the Swedes! (Who have nothing to do all winter long but trace the geometry of snowflakes on window sills!)

III. The Miller Model of the Scientific Method
Step A: Form an hypothesis, Y, and an emotional attachment to Y. ("Americans are bad at science because religion rots the brain.")

Step B: Test Y with a survey, including a few snide questions to bias answers towards Y, but find -Y anyway. ("The percentage of scientifically literate Americans has tripled in two decades, and is now higher than in almost any other country.")

Step C: Publish -Y accurately, but in interviews, gratuitously suggest Y, anyhow.
Step D: Watch while allies take your gratuitous Y comments and broadcast them to the world by means of the brain-rotting Internet, while -Y is buried and forgotten, all your “enlightened” allies being too lazy to read the original report.

IV. So why are American "IDiots" and "Climate Denial Ostriches" so good at science?That, apparently, is the correct question to ask.

One factor, mentioned by Miller, is that Asian education so often involves what Chinese call "stuff the duck" method of teaching. Students sit silently in class and take notes. They memorize, stuffing themselves with facts like ducks readied for the slaughter, for all-important entrance exams. Then they test, slack off in college (my students at Nagasaki University often spent the nights playing pool), and read comic books for the rest of their lives. They've been inoculated to real education as Socrates (and Confucius) taught it, and lost the childhood passion for learning they once satisfied at their mother’s knee.

I taught in Japanese colleges for six years. I had a few good students, but they seemed to retain their love of learning despite, not because of, their long and too-often overly didactic education.

Miller's suggestion is that many Americans know some science because they were forced to take "at least one year of college science courses en route to a baccalaureate."

This may seem a bit self-serving, since Miller's job is to promote scientific literacy from his perch at Michigan State University. But I'm willing to give Dr. Miller some credit. I'm pretty sure some good things lodged in my mind during my 1st year Honors Physics class, including the truth (Honors Calculus helped here too) that I would never be an engineer.

Still, looking down Miller's list of questions, I'm not sure I learned the answers to any of them in college. I think I first garnered answers to ten or so of them in the process of exploring heretical thoughts about Evolution and Global Warming. So Miller must share some credit for the success of American scientific education with Michael Behe and Roy Spencer.

Perhaps there is an indirect connection between the religiosity of Americans and their scientific success. I suspect enthusiasms of both sorts are encouraged by a free market for ideas. (And freedom, in turn, I agree with Bunyan and Locke, is a proper implication of the Gospel.) Freedom is also why heretical ideas like Intelligent Design, and opposition to Anthropogenic Global Warming, catch on in the US: we have an open market of ideas, with alternative institutions like home-schools, Sunday School, Talk Radio, and conservative think tanks and magazines. Ideas thus have a better chance to clash than in countries where ducks open their mouths and have them filled. And when our ducks go out and forage for themselves, they develop healthy but discerning appetites, and learn not to blindly accept everything from our governmental Master’s hand.