[Techtalk] Open Standard for Video Streaming

[Kai MacTane]

At 10/31/02 02:10 AM , Alvin Goats wrote:

>In a study performed in the early 1980's, it was found
>that the life sciences (botany, biology, zoology, medicine, et al) had
>the least amount of religious believers. That includes christian,
>budhist, jew, muslim, hindu and whatever else.

Really? Does that include Pagans? But this is just a side issue; the main 
point is below.

>90 percent (at that time) were atheist or agnostic and had ethics of less 
>than honorable quality.

So, did this study (which you might want to provide a specific citation 
for, rather than just "a study performed in the early 1980's") check on 
whether people had a religion, or whether they had ethics? If it claimed to 
have checked whether the people had ethics, what was its methodology?

I hope it wasn't as transparent and flawed as those "honesty tests" that 
have become common in the employment and hiring process at some firms -- 
you know, the ones that everyone knows you have to lie on to give the 
answer the company wants if you want to get the job? The ones that 
systematically weed out the people that are actually honest enough to admit 
to their occasional desires to do something not-completely-honest?

What I'm really wondering, though, is this: did this "study" specifically 
claim to have tested people's ethics, or did it just report on what their 
declared religion was, and you went ahead assumed that only religious 
people are ethical?

>On the flip side, the AIP (American Institute of Physics) polled ALL the
>members of the physics community, physics students, physics teachers,
>professors, physicists in industry and military.

Again, do you have a citation or reference on this? What was the 
methodology? Was this "poll" done at the same time as the "study" you 
mention earlier, and in the same manner? Or are we comparing apples and 
oranges?

Honestly, this whole thing sounds like the kind of bogus "statistics" that 
are actually made up out of thin air by Fundamentalists and Dittoheads to 
support their own agendas: indoctrinating everyone into the views of the 
Religious Right. It has the "feel" of those tactics most often employed by 
such folks in order to bamboozle intelligent left-wingers: mention a 
"study", "survey", or "poll", thus making it sound like it's the result of 
some actual scientific research.

Note, Alvin, I'm not saying that I think *you* made this up. I mean that I 
suspect perhaps someone else did, and you got taken in by it.

                                                 --Kai MacTane
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"But every night I burn,/Every night I call your name.
  Every night I burn,/Every night I fall again..."
                                                 --The Cure,
                                                  "Burn"