re: #36 freetoken

Speaking of science, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time reading up on some practical genetics/genomics, and how it applies to health and genealogy and evolution and such.

As I look at how various companies’ products are being received by our society, from DTC genetic testing to medicine, it is really clear that we’ve got a long way to go for the general populace to be able to deal with all this information.

First up is the scaremongering, which is around every corner. There is a cottage industry out there that peddles that we should be afraid of anything “genetic”.

Secondly, genetics can easily unveil long held secrets, such as adoptions and the dreaded non-paternity event (i.e., where the biological father doesn’t claim paternity.) This scares people too.

Finding out one might have African American ancestors - I wonder what that does to the VDARE crowd?

Time is of the essence, and as I grow older I realize that time not invested in bettering myself (in whatever fashion) or others is time wasted. I think of the billions of hours Americans spend getting programed week by week sitting in pews (and yes, I fully realize that there is benefit in some moral teachings, at least in some religious communities.)

Every hour a kid sits in a pew being taught that the world is 6000 years old is an hour destroying that young person’s life to better understand the world. There’s a big difference in spending an hour being taught “don’t murder others” vs. spending an hour being taught “all the scientists in the world are lying to you.” The two types of teachings are not equivalent and I don’t mean to confuse the two types of indoctrination.

So yes, I am stating that there is a causal connection between our society’s inability to handle genetics in all its applications and the religious indoctrination in which so much of America participates.

You’re oversimplifying, though I agree there is some connection between the belief in or discussion of Genesis and the general inability to understand genetics. Whether or not you believe in a six-day Creation, an underlying part of our culture is the Adam-and-Eve myth, and the Noah myth. These myths get in the way of understanding scientific conclusions about how our species has developed. For instance, the unfortunate terms “mitochondrial Eve” and “chromosomal Adam” suggest that millions of years ago there really were two human progenitors who hooked up and spawned the human species. Meanwhile, the Noah myth lends itself to facile explanations for the physical differences among Africans, Asians, European and so forth. These ideas are an endemic part of our culture, and for many people hard to shed, regardless of religious belief.

Racism is another contributing factor, as some people are predisposed to assume non-whites (except Asians, who are really good at math /snark) are less intelligent and/or less “civilized” than whites. Rather than seeing skin color as merely a physical difference, like hair or eye color, racists try to find causal connections between skin color and cultural or social achievements. For them, genetics (aka race) “explains” lower IQ test scores among African-Americans, for example. They misuse genetics to support prejudice.

Family origins are a sensitive topic for some people. The Melungeon population, for example, has maintained for two centuries or more that their typically dark complexions, eyes and hair result from Portuguese or Native American ancestry. In fact, genetic testing has indicated their ancestry is undoubtedly partly African — a bit problematic since most live in the Southeastern part of the USA, where the “single drop of blood” rule applied for so long.

Genetics is the new scary science, like nuclear physics and radiation were back in the 1950s. DNA testing and gene manipulation have developed so quickly in the last two decades that most people can’t keep up. Hell, I have a background in physics and consider myself scientifically literate, and I have trouble following the discussions relating to my Y-DNA group.