Clarissa's Blog

I was asked to say something about the following comment:

I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard there are pretty big cultural differences between the United States and Russia when it comes to acceptance of certain non-scientific modalities, and that they are taken much more seriously in the former USSR.

I find it pretty hilarious that people from a country:

– where huge chunks of population do not “believe” in evolution,

– where many people seriously suggest that creationism should be taught in schools,

– where police officers employ psychics and there are hugely popular shows about that process,

– where there are people who speak in tongues and touch snakes because they are incapable of understanding a metaphor from a book that is thousands of years old,

– where a presidential candidate has to fake that he is religious in order even to be considered,

– where a political figure with a huge following says in public (and keeps insisting!) that the number of contraceptive pills you take depends on the number of sex acts you engage in,

– where there are Departments of Happiness founded at universities,

– where The Secret becomes an instant mega-bestseller;

– where a president bankrupts the country and drags it into two ruinous wars because God told him to,

– where millions of people can’t get the difference between an abortion pill and a morning after pill because the science behind how the pill works is too complex for them

would proclaim with a straight face that people in the FSU they know absolutely nothing about are more anti-scientific.