Thank you!

Well it is a vicious loop to be sure, but well-informed people are a lot less susceptible to strongman cults than folks who have no awareness of how that dynamic has played out in history over and over.

Are you saying that those people who refused vaccination WERE educated in science. Well a great many people did have form of science education but it was all just illustrating and memorising "other peoples science" To be educated in science one must do a genuine piece of original research or at least simulate scientific situation. Then practice makes perfect. It also gives you more chance of avoiding scams and mis=takes made by others e.g. in diagnosis. Science education must change from deploying chemical volcanoes made of Paper Mache.

@Mcflewster The people who refused the Covid vaccination almost certainty got various vaccines when they were younger. Their need to belong to the cult caused them to reject authoritative medical advice. How can one advise people to do the right thing when they choose not to listen, and instead decide to follow nonsense. I totally support your advocacy of science education. (Tragically, many people really are so stupid that volcano models are as much as they can handle.)

@racocn8 Models of all sorts can fascinate. But if teachers and pupils do not understand the nature of science and it is more than the thinking involved in just listening to a story, then feeding them a bit more responsibility at a time can enlighten them that they could have figured it out by themselves more , given the chance. A lot os science teachers give them answers they can use in exams JUST to reproduce in exams and that is NOT education. Education is the path to creativity in many ways.

In practice, yes. But on paper we still have a legal justification for a representative democratic republic, “if we can keep it”.

@skado How can we keep what the Founders never gave us.

The change from a monarch with an aristocracy to an oligarchy of the wealthy. Isn’t that about the smallest possible change?

@yvilletom
In practice, yes.
Interesting topic for another post.

That’s kinda what I’m saying. I’m not promoting authoritarianism. Just saying that it is the alternative which will happen if we don’t choose education. Denying that authoritarianism is one of the options won’t make it go away. Only proper education, regardless of source, will do that job.

Correlation is not causation. An ignorant population will choose religious literalism over religious figuratism.

Religion is not a causal agent. It is a choice people make.

@skado No but correlation and causation are not mutually exclusive either, and sometimes in the complex mix of human culture, two things may feed one another in complex feedback loops, which always produce the result though it is hard to say which is the major cause. It may be that secular countries are more likely to be happier, or that happier countries are more likely to be secular, or that the two feed one another. Without alternate evidence the simplist explaination is often a complex uncertain mix, and generally the simplist explanation is the best assumption.

@Fernapple
It’s true that when people choose to believe things that aren’t true those choices come back to haunt them in a feedback loop. But practicing a religion does not require people to choose untruth. Indeed, authentic religion (for example) teaches people to ‘seek the truth, and the truth will set them free.’ To whatever extent they choose untruth, in that case, they have failed to follow the religious advice. When people interpret religious metaphor as literal truth they have chosen untruth, and in the final analysis they and they alone must accept responsibility for their choices. No religion can force a person’s private thoughts, just as no school can force an education.

America's divide is in my opinion mainly Rural versus Urban. I think that means that education is not the panacea we all hope for. Granted education also creates understanding of "the other". An urban environment exposes more people to people of other ethnicities and religions then can be found in rural America. It is very hard to understand or have empathy with something you know nothing about.

@Lorajay That is certainly another sourse of divide, but of course that exists in many other countries too, as do class, wealth, race and politics, and many more, all that I am saying is that it does not help to add another one, on exactly many of the same dividing lines.

@Lorajay, @skado Truth can find support in any one of a number of places, whether science, philosophy, politics, or popular consensus etc. etc., and religion may also contain truth, because there are no hard walls that keep human institutions apart, so that truth can move across all of them. Indeed religion may contain philosophy, science, art and even politics within itself. Therefore I can say, that for example Jesus ( Who may be fictional, metaphorical or a literal person being reported, it matters not which. ) speaks a truth when he says "Do unto others etc." . Yet I can also find support for that idea in several Philosophies, and it is quite correct to say that when he says that, then he is speaking as both a religious prophet and as a philosopher.

But what sets religion apart from all those other human institutions, is that it is the only one which is capable of supporting any idea however truthful or untruthful, without having any requirement for that idea to be justified, proved or tested in any way. So that while it may contain a lot of truth, there is no lie, however bad that it is unable to find support or even respectability in any other human institution, which can not find a home and support in religion. Philosophy requires that it meet the requirements of logic, science that it does that and also that it is supported by evidence too, and even politics, at least democratic politics, requires that it meets the 'ad populum' test. The only test of truth required by religion is that someone is prepared to say "I believe". And it does not matter one jot if that belief is literal or metaphorical.

And it is that which makes religion the natural habitat for lies, where untruth can most thrive and prosper, and makes it the greatest magnet and go to, for those in society who most wish to use deciet. Yes there are many in religion who have praised the search for truth, but most of those lived in more innocent ages in the past, often in ages and places, where the world offered no alternatives to religion or they were deluded. The most important thing to remember about deceit is that all the best and most successful liars, try to include as much truth as they possibly can with their deciet, both to cover the lie, and win them credibility. Therefore the inclusion of, and praise for truth within religion does not make it a source of truth or a reliable guarantor of truth.

If I was being really hard indeed I would use the old saying that. "The loudest protest of innocence always comes from the most guilty." But I will leave that for now. Because it is needful to say that. As the other human institutions have grown in scope, power and veracity over the years, since the ancient times when religion was the only option. So people who wish to promote truth have found them increasingly a better way to do so, and that they can do so without the taint that religion brings with it. A trend which continues, so that religions unique ability to promote the values of the deceptive and corrupt becomes it only attraction, and the only people who will find a use for it are those who wish to promote ideas so unsupportable, they can go no where else. We see that happening for the last three thousand years, and we see it continuing ever faster today. Times change everything.