OT: Why Do People Reject Science - Wrap Up

[snuginarug]

So when a scientist says to me there is no such thing as God

Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, many scientists are so amazed by the world they see around them that the very things they study lead them to a belief in god. The idea that scientists are mainly atheists is a misconception. Darwin, for example, was not an atheist.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/24 ... -2009nov24

According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.

It is a slim majority, but a majority nonetheless.

I wish more people knew this.

[BlackSpinner]

The rejection of science has absolutely nothing to do with education, religious believes or anything else. It is solely about profit and convenience. The religious and belief systems are used only to justify it.

One very good example is the the whole history of the pasteurization of milk. Thousands and thousands of children died until it was legislated because of exactly the same arguments as modern climate science rejection. It wasn't until the dairies noticed that pasteurized milk had a longer shelf life that they accepted it. No stats on the DEATH of children, no scientific papers on bacterial spread, no lobbying was allowed to interfere with the profits. Even though all of the same science and and medical expertize was accepted for curing and preventing diseases, it was denied for milk because of the profit and convenience.

All of the science deniers only deny the science that either inconveniences them or reduces (or has to potential to reduce) their profits. They will accept the same science where it doesn't. Anti evolutionist happily accept medicine based on genetic theories when they are sick. Anti climate changers happily accept warnings for hurricanes on their doorsteps. Anti environment protectionists scream bloody murder when their river or lake turns out to be polluted and they aren't rich enough to move elsewhere. And none of them reject products based on science: Flat screen TV's, cars that park by themselves, heart transplants, cancer meds, MRI's, polyester leisure suits, Lycra bikinis, birth control pills, latex condoms, cpap machines, the internet, computers, cell phones, fibre optics, contact lens, the light bulb. Until they all move in with the Amish, they are basically only motivated by the fear of loss.

[VVV]

OT: Why Do People Reject Science

I did not know people reject science and do not want to read through these posts. So I went back to the opening post and see that it is about climate change and environmental science.

OT: Why Do People Reject Science

In the context of the opening post could it be that people are not rejecting science but are rejecting Al Gore who is a very biased and self-serving promoter and profit-taker of things to do with global warming and creating alarm about the environment; and is also being a huge hypocrite in his homebuilding and transportation activities as it pertains to his own "carbon footprint"?

I don't see that people reject science but then I acquired two science degrees in the sixties and spend most of my career working amidst scientists in a high tech company. So maybe I was blinded to the dark?

[VVV]

I was thinking about this subject this morning and came up with this idea. Quite possibly one reason many people reject science is because of a common (predominate? I don't know) attitude within the science community that all of life can be explained by scientific fact and theory and religious beliefs have no relevance.

Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, many scientists are so amazed by the world they see around them that the very things they study lead them to a belief in god. The idea that scientists are mainly atheists is a misconception. Darwin, for example, was not an atheist.

You two might be interested to read What's So Great About Christianity? http://www.amazon.com/Whats-So-Great-Ab ... 1596985178

There is a section on Christianity and Science which shows the history of the development of education and science in Europe. No doubt a little reading of history should convince any fair person that science would still today be in very dire straits without Christianity which incubated it.

In that section is also a chapter titled, The Atheist Fable: Reopening the Galileo Case.

The book was one I could not put down because it exploded the myth of so many slanders against Christianity that even Christians believe.

Have a nice weekend.

[mars]

I did not know people reject science and do not want to read through these posts. So I went back to the opening post and see that it is about climate change and environmental science.

OT: Why Do People Reject Science

In the context of the opening post could it be that people are not rejecting science but are rejecting Al Gore who is a very biased and self-serving promoter and profit-taker of things to do with global warming and creating alarm about the environment; and is also being a huge hypocrite in his homebuilding and transportation activities as it pertains to his own "carbon footprint"?

I don't see that people reject science but then I acquired two science degrees in the sixties and spend most of my career working amidst scientists in a high tech company. So maybe I was blinded to the dark?

In another thread VVV talked about tolerance - and I said - and he then said -

Re: Can this forum be edited to have sub-topics?
Postby VVV on Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:43 pm

mars wrote: Being tolerant implies that you do not lie about what you do not agree with.

Maybe you can state what you believe I distorted and lied about?
.....................................V

No problem

The first post is about what it is headed - Why Do People Reject Science - and climate change is but one example. Picking that one example, and ignoring the other examples, and you then saying the thread is about global warming - is a distortion of what the thread is about, and a lie.

And then pretending your lie is the truth, off you go on a rant about global warming.

And just looking at your first words we see -

I did not know people reject science and do not want to read through these posts.

really - you did not know that people reject science - no need for me to comment about that !

Mars

[SMenasco]

I love convenience. I love profit. Profit pays for all the give away programs. Profit provides services for the 50 odd percent that pay no income taxes. Not much happens until a sale is made and some level of profit is realized. I love science. Perhaps people don't reject science. Perhaps they do reject junk science. I do not love Al Gore. He is a pompous egotistical ass, but bless his heart, I'm certainly glad he invented the internet.

[BlackSpinner]

I love convenience. I love profit. Profit pays for all the give away programs. Profit provides services for the 50 odd percent that pay no income taxes. Not much happens until a sale is made and some level of profit is realized. I love science. Perhaps people don't reject science. Perhaps they do reject junk science. I do not love Al Gore. He is a pompous egotistical ass, but bless his heart, I'm certainly glad he invented the internet.

Climate change has been an issue long before Al Gore got on the band waggon. I am glad you like dead babies.

[brick]

Climate change has been an issue long before Al Gore got on the band waggon. I am glad you like dead babies.

Yes climate does change. Earth once experienced an Ice Age. A bit Overly Dramatic with the dead bunnies comment.

[M.D.Hosehead]

I'm certainly glad he invented the internet.

Obviously, Gore didn't invent the internet.

But he really did invent the Al Gore Ithm, didn't he?

[snuginarug]

I am not very interested in a book that is, essentially, a one-sided debate against atheism and for Christianity. Here are a couple of chapter headings in the table of contents:

The Twilight of Atheism: The Global Triumph of Christianity
The Genesis Problem: the Methodological Atheism of Science
A Foretaste of Eternity, How Christianity Can Change Your Life

This is not a history book. It has some history in it, yes, but it is a book about religious debate. However, I am a bit suspicious of a book that claims The Inquisition and The Crusades were "vastly over blown." More interesting is the claim that

atheist regimes are responsible for the greatest mass murders of history

Now that has a drop of validity... The Holocaust, Stalin, Pol Pot, The Cultural Revolution come to mind. Pretty awful, and essentially atheist regimes ARE responsible for them. However, every one of these regimes REPLACED all religion and turned the ruling government into a religion of its own. No one is proposing that the government of the United States wants to out law all religions and replace those religions with a religion of leader worship. Keeping church and state separate does not mean the state has outlawed any kind of religion.

But I stray from the subject. I think that was the purpose of inserting this book into our discussion.

I will not buy this book, but I am curious exactly what the author means by "atheism of science." Science is supposed to believe in god? Science is a method, not a person. Math is atheist. Spelling is atheist. Car mechanics is atheist. As I already mentioned above, the majority of scientists believe in a god or higher power.

A bit Overly Dramatic with the dead bunnies comment.

It sounds a bit dramatic, but we're talking about a temperature rise of perhaps 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Texas sweltering under 125 degrees in the summer? Will anybody live there? Of course this scenario will play out over the course of one hundred years, so we'll all be dead by then and it won't be our problem.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/futuretc.html

Please note the temperatures in these charts are Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

Of course, if you don't believe scientists are capable of doing anything trustworthy or accurate, we might as well flush those charts down the toilet and switch the conversation to baseball or Stephen King.

[backsavekkk]

yeah?

[mars]

Of course, if you don't believe scientists are capable of doing anything trustworthy or accurate, we might as well flush those charts down the toilet and switch the conversation to baseball or Stephen King.

Before we do that Snug - let's just have a look at something more -

Hi Everybody

I had thought that I knew a fair bit about denial -

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=50674&p=466000&hili ... aw#p466000

and I suppose I do. But until I read the links in this thread I only had a narrow view of denial - basically as it presented itself regarding addictions and recovery. I did expand that a little to try and help with cpap therapy intolerance.

Now I see that I have only been aware of one aspect of denial, and that although I have ranted against those who start wars based on lies, I had not really understood why those in power never learned from the horrendous consequences of those behaviours. Or I just figured that greed or power, either corprate or political or both, were what drove them. I forgot that the greedy and powerful (at least in the West) were often voted into office by those who had access to the same information that I have.

I now see that "denial" may end up killing us all, not just the alcoholic or the addict.

Here is my latest update to this discussion -

The full article is in the New Scientist -

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... truth.html

which you will have to be a subscriber to read it in full.

An excerpt is here -

http://amira.amplify.com/2010/06/05/liv ... scientist/

which is in large print below -

Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth

by Debora MacKenzie of the New Scientist

"Denial is largely a product of the way normal people think. Most denialists are simply ordinary people doing what they believe is right. If this seems discouraging, take heart. There are good reasons for thinking that denialism can be tackled by condemning it a little less and understanding it a little more. (......)

Whatever they are denying, denial movements have much in common with one another, not least the use of similar tactics (see "How to be a denialist"). All set themselves up as courageous underdogs fighting a corrupt elite engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the truth or foist a malicious lie on ordinary people. This conspiracy is usually claimed to be promoting a sinister agenda: the nanny state, takeover of the world economy, government power over individuals, financial gain, atheism. (......)

Many people see this as a threat to important aspects of their lives. In Texas last year, a member of a state committee who was trying to get creationism added to school science standards almost said as much when he proclaimed "somebody's got to stand up to experts".

It is this sense of loss of control that really matters. In such situations, many people prefer to reject expert evidence in favour of alternative explanations that promise to hand control back to them, even if those explanations are not supported by evidence (see "Giving life to a lie"). (......)

This is not necessarily malicious, or even explicitly anti-science. Indeed, the alternative explanations are usually portrayed as scientific. Nor is it willfully dishonest. It only requires people to think the way most people do: in terms of anecdote, emotion and cognitive short cuts. Denialist explanations may be couched in sciency language, but they rest on anecdotal evidence and the emotional appeal of regaining control. (......)

Greg Poland, head of vaccines at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, often speaks out against vaccine denial. He calls his opponents "the innumerate" because they are unable to grasp concepts like probability. Instead, they reason based on anecdote and emotion. "People use mental short cuts - 'My kid got autism after he got his shots, so the vaccine must have caused it,'" he says. One emotive story about a vaccine's alleged harm trumps endless safety statistics. (......)

the instigators of denialist movements have more serious psychological problems than most of their followers. "They display all the features of paranoid personality disorder", he says, including anger, intolerance of criticism, and what psychiatrists call a grandiose sense of their own importance. "Ultimately, their denialism is a mental health problem. That is why these movements all have the same features, especially the underlying conspiracy theory."

Neither the ringleaders nor rank-and-file denialists are lying in the conventional sense, Kalichman says: they are trapped in what classic studies of neurosis call "suspicious thinking". "The cognitive style of the denialist represents a warped sense of reality, which is why arguing with them gets you nowhere," he says. "All people fit the world into their own sense of reality, but the suspicious person distorts reality with uncommon rigidity." (......)

Perhaps it is no surprise that some industries are prepared to distort reality to protect their markets. But the tentacles of organised denial reach beyond narrow financial interests. For example, some prominent backers of climate denial also deny evolution. Prominent creationists return the favour both in the US and elsewhere. Recent legislative efforts to get creationism taught in US schools have been joined by calls to "teach the controversy" on warming as well. (......)

These positions align neatly with the concerns of the US political and religious right, and denial is often driven by an overtly political agenda. Some creationists have explicitly argued that the science of both climate and evolution involve "a left-wing ideology that promotes statism, nanny-state moralism and... materialism". (......)

George Lakoff, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that conservatives have been better than progressives at exploiting anecdote and emotion to win arguments. Progressives tend to think that giving people the facts and figures will inevitably lead them to the right conclusions. They see anecdotes as inadmissible evidence, and appeals to emotion as wrong.

The same is true of scientists. But against emotion and anecdote, dry statements of evidence have little power. To make matters worse, scientists usually react to denial with anger and disdain, which makes them seem even more arrogant. (......)

Denialism has already killed. AIDS denial has killed an estimated 330,000 South Africans. Tobacco denial delayed action to prevent smoking-related deaths. Vaccine denial has given a new lease of life to killer diseases like measles and polio. Meanwhile, climate change denial delays action to prevent warming. The backlash against efforts to fight the flu pandemic could discourage preparations for the next, potentially a more deadly one.

If science is the best way to understand the world and its dangers, and acting on that understanding requires popular support, then denial movements threaten us all."

(The above is an excerpt, for inside the brackets the full article is needed).

cheers

Mars

[snuginarug]

Of course, if you don't believe scientists are capable of doing anything trustworthy or accurate, we might as well flush those charts down the toilet and switch the conversation to baseball or Stephen King.

Before we do that Snug - let's just have a look at something more -

The thing that jumped out at me in this article is

"The cognitive style of the denialist represents a warped sense of reality, which is why arguing with them gets you nowhere,"

What else, exactly, can you do?

(Although I am one to talk, as I do keep blathering on, using reason and facts and figures, despite the futility.)

[jnk]

There is something very interesting going on here.

There often is. It's an acquired taste, but it can grow on you.

It is clear that there is a rich diversity of expertise and viewpoints, and most people here seem interested in debating from genuine principles, in good faith, and to share their views and information. Not all, but most. It's been a very interesting OT thread, and has the potential to continue.

Just so you know, your posts in this thread have been very much appreciated by this lurker, and I would assume many others.

Posting sense, just as you have done, when there is opportunity to do so, is never the wrong thing to do, no matter who else may also happen to be posting what in the same thread, in my opinion.

It is also clear that there are very different views here of what constitutes respectful treatment of others. Some posters (on all sides of the discussion) are clearly trying very hard to stick to facts and to present their viewpoints carefully and respectfully of others.

Others are using rhetoric techniques of loaded emotive language, sarcasm, and twisting other people's words to score points. Those techniques squash any legitimate discussion because they move the thread from fact-based information and viewpoint sharing to emotion-based reactive argument.

Some are just having fun, only half believing what they post themselves. Some trolls sort of become cute and cuddly after a while, since they have no real teeth, whether they know it or not. The nonsense clutters the threads at times, but it also, in a sense, makes the point that we all respect one another's rights to have stupid opinions in anything OT on such a VERY public, as in "all-inclusive," forum dedicated (mostly) to a widespread health issue that isn't discussed as openly as it should be by the masses.

"Lack of moderation" is a choice--and that is true of the owners of this forum (in a positive sense) and of certain posters in the forum (in another, not-so-positive, sense), if you get my drift.

In other forums of which I'm a member, that sort behaviour gets you branded as a troll and a bully, and nobody takes you seriously any more.

Threads in this forum often contain as much chaff as your average TV talk show, but the wheat you have planted here in this thread is impressive.

In fact, your talents for expression make me think you should be speaking seriously to a mainstream publisher, if you aren't already.

Your time spent slogging through mud makes you particularly qualified to ignore the muck that sometimes shows up in threads as you make a difference right here.

Just sayin'.

Thanks, again.

[SMenasco]

Most of the time I try to be respectful. However, this snide, vile thought process that generated the dead baby remark by whatever a BlackSpinner is, gets the Leftie Elitist Grand Award. The name certainly fits well. It has always been beyond my understanding that marxists, socialists and anarchists just don't connect the dots regarding the tremendous uplifting of life provided by a profit-based economy. I doubt they even consider where the electronic wonders, tvs, smart phones, i-pads, computers, etc. came from and why. And I would bet that left wing elitists, for whatever reason, support these lazy, self-centered unemployed bums that are camping out, making a mess and damaging small businesses, most not even knowing why they are protesting and what they want, except a little smoke, a little drink, a little roll in the hay and the overthrow the capitalist system. All this claptrap is a direct result of the crazy marxist-leaning tenured university professors that are training these ne'er-do-wells that are crapping on people's property and in public spaces. There are abuses in every system known to mankind; except there are fewer in reasonably regulated free enterprise for profit economies. You know these people don't understand what our system is all about, since we don't teach much of it in school, especially high school. Did you ever give a fast food cashier some change to keep from getting more change back? Anything other than what's shown on the register is beyond them.

Dead babies? What a poisonous attitude! I will take part of the blame for a lot of what's wrong and causes "dead baby" remarks as well as the protests. I do believe that my generation caused a lot this crappy attitude and behavior, by giving our kids all the neat stuff we never had, since we want them to have it better than us. We spoiled them. But I don't think you are a spoiled person, BlackSpinner. I think you are just someone with a nasty agressive disposition that's lurking around waiting to attack.

So in order to feel better, I think I'll go chop a tree down, choke a chicken, drive around without a destination, select both paper and plastic, leave all the lights on, pour used oil along the fence, and kill a cow and devour the carcass.