Sometimes I just don’t feel like writing, especially when I see that someone else has done a much better job at it, in a more succinct way, with fun graphics and sound.
Sometimes I just don’t feel like writing, especially when I see that someone else has done a much better job at it, in a more succinct way, with fun graphics and sound.
SPANISH INQUISITOR 
I like that video. But I sort of understand why creationist loons would never watch anything like it. I sometimes get the feeling that their defensiveness about topics ranging from evolution to imagined wars on Christmas strongly correlates with an awareness of the tenuousness of their own religions. Active involvement in crazy Bible thumping is but a few small logical steps away from noticing the absurdity of it all.
I read an article recently on cognitive dissonance. Theists that believe those crazy creationist things, and are subsequently confronted with what we euphemistically call “reality”, suffer from the disconnect between what they believe and what they see. The brain has a hard time dealing with the dissonance that results within, and strives to calm it. The article used the analogy of a shouting match within one’s mind.
The brain tries to eliminate this dissonance, this shouting match, by either ignoring it (la la la I can’t HEAR you), or by attempting to convince itself that the new information that comes in in conflict with prior beliefs is wrong. One way Christians convince themselves that reality is wrong is by resorting to a higher authority (god, scripture, etc). If they are pre-convinced of the superior authority, then it doesn’t matter to them that the reality they are confronted with is right or wrong, it conflicts with god, so it must be wrong, because they have pre-supposed that god is always right. It’s then easy to minimize the dissonance. The mind craves peace more than correct knowledge, and theistic belief brings that peace to the mind, at the expense of truth. In effect, truth is irrelevant to the mind.
That makes sense to me. It’s as good an explanation for the sheer idiocy of those beliefs, and their ability to withstand critical analysis, as any I’ve seen.
Haha – thank you. I loved that video and I am really loving this blog. Thermodynamics? What?! I loved the terminus at Reductio ad Hiterum. I would like to point out that I still believe in my invisible non-existent deity (any god who creates all that exists and itself exists is a logical ‘eugh’). Belief in the ‘being’ of such a non-existent God, however, has never demanded I reject reason and become a creationist. Spanish Inquisitor, thanks for the great blog.
I’m glad you are enjoying it, but I am curious as to how you reconcile your faith with reason. I find them incompatible. Are you hanging on to a childhood pacifier?
Very good question. Reason doesn’t come into it. And there is very little that ‘pacifies’ me in a religion where I am brought daily into contact with misery, poverty, destitution, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse and child abuse. How I wish it were a pacifier. We must attempt to appreciate – as did Immanuel Kant – that people are not ‘pure reason.’ We are reflection, myth, and emotion. Do I believe in a God who exists? No. This would be unreasonable. I believe that the ‘being’ of the God in whom I believe presupposes matter and existence. As Descartes laboured to formulate: do I ‘know’ that I think and therefore exist? No. That would be a circular argument of the worst kind (I know because I know that I know). This has him conclude that I must believe that I may trust my senses and my perception – so trust or faith must precede reason.
I believe in the ‘truth’ of the myths which are the grammar of my understanding of my own personhood – I know that they are not ‘facts.’ Yet the facts of science or criminology (for example) do not give us meaning. Myth gives us meaning. This becomes ‘unreasonable’ only when we force this meaning-bearing mythos into the world of facts. Yet neither does myth mean quite the same thing as ‘false.’ Much of the secular-religious debate is hinged on a confusion between truth and fact. Is it a fact that your lover loves you? Of course it is not. Where does one begin to establish the factuality of such a thing? Yet you cannot convince yourself that it is not ‘true.’ This gives our relationships meaning. I hope that this has helped. (And I’m not attempting to convince you of anything – to make that clear.)