Do you understand those on the other side?

[Jose Fly]

As I've pointed out many times (probably too many times), I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian environment. I was taught young-earth creationism from an early age, was told prayer and reading the Bible were the answer to most of life's problems and questions, and witnessed all sorts of "interesting" things such as speaking in tongues, faith healing, end times predictions, etc.

Yet despite being completely immersed in this culture, I can't recall a time in my life when I ever believed any of it. However, unlike some of my peers at the time I didn't really find it boring. In fact, I found a lot of it to be rather fascinating because.....very little of it made any sense to me. I just could not understand the people, their beliefs, their way of thinking, or much of anything that I saw and heard. When I saw them anointing with oil someone who had the flu and later saw the virus spread (of course), I could not understand what they were thinking. When I saw them make all sorts of failed predictions about the Soviet Union and the end times, yet never even acknowledge their errors while continuing to make more predictions, I was baffled. Speaking in tongues was of particular interest to me because it really made no sense to me.

In the years that I've been debating creationists it's the same thing. When I see them say "no transitional fossils" or "no new genetic information" only to ignore examples of those things when they're presented, I can't relate to that way of thinking at all. When I see them demand evidence for things only to ignore it after it's provided, I can't relate. When I see them quote mine a scientific paper and after someone points it out they completely ignore it, I can't relate.

Now to be clear, I think I "understand" some of what's behind these behaviors (i.e., the psychological factors), but what I don't understand is how the people engaging in them seem to be completely oblivious to it all. What goes on in their mind when they demand "show me the evidence", ignore everything that's provided in response, and then come back later and make the same demand all over again? Are they so blinded by the need to maintain their beliefs that they literally block out all memories of it? Again....I just don't get it.

So the point of discussion for this thread is....how about you? For the "evolutionists", can you relate to the creationists' way of thinking and behaviors? For the creationists, are there behaviors from the other side that baffle you, and you just don't understand? Do you look at folks like me and think to yourselves, "I just cannot relate to his way of thinking?"

Or is it just me?

[Jose Fly]

No, evolution advocates do not baffle me at all. I used to advocate it myself, it's a reasonable hypothesis, there are reasonable arguments underpinning it. But likewise there are reasonable arguments to reject it, sure some reject it because they've been educated to do so in some religious context

That's really interesting.

but I don't think one can defend a belief in evolution by pointing out that some subset of those who doubt it are poorly educated and superstitious and often irrational.

I don't either.

This is in fact your own interpretation of what some others mean by "the interpretation of evidence", I do not see it as you do.

But again, not all interpretations are equally valid, are they? When a flat earther is shown a pic of a spherical earth, says "That's fake" or "That was taken with a fisheye lens", and then says "that's my interpretation" I don't see that as equally valid as the work of NASA scientists. Do you?

Yes, there's often scope for ambiguity and some fundamentalists are as you describe, I have no more time for that than you.

But it's not just end times preachers or faith healers. I see creationists exhibit the exact same behaviors as well. They'll say "X doesn't exist" and after being shown multiple examples of X they wave them away with vague statements like "That's not how I interpret it" or they say the scientists who did the work were "biased".

I don't see how that's at all different than the end times preacher who waves away his failed prediction as a matter of "interpretation". From my POV, both are just means of coping with potentially being wrong on something.

Well we could apply the label "coping mechanism" to huge numbers of people be they Christian fundamentalists or fierce evolution advocates.

Can you give an example of a coping mechanism typically employed by evolution advocates?

This may well be true, in my opinion the John Lennox vs Richard Dawkins debate could have shown the same thing, when the debate began to move toward morality Dawkins was at a loss and was speculating wildly (he said stuff like "we could rise above what are genes dictated" or some such) - was that a coping mechanism?

I can't say as I've not watched that debate.

This is true but hardly unique to Christian fundamentalists!

True, but it does seem to be much more common among creationists, end times believers, faith healers, etc.

What you describe likely typifies most of those who drove the scientific revolution yet they were almost all of them creationists! The pursuit of underlying patterns and meaning and structure and causal relationships (in other words "science") is not confined to the materialist atheist. Most of those people from the 17th, 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries had no problem whatsoever exploring what they (and I and Barbarian) regard as a created universe of immense order, beauty, structure and wonder.

Yet those folks were also open to being wrong, even if it was painful. I've read some of the works of the 19th century geologists who had to eventually admit that the Biblical global flood just didn't happen. It was clearly a difficult conclusion for some of them to reach given their belief in the Bible, yet being good scientists they did so anyways, because that's what the data showed.

Contrast that with today's creationists who make it quite clear that they would never, ever do anything like that (e.g., AiG's statement of faith).

So again, I'm thinking a lot of this has to do with how open one is to being wrong.

[Inquirer]

No, evolution advocates do not baffle me at all. I used to advocate it myself, it's a reasonable hypothesis, there are reasonable arguments underpinning it. But likewise there are reasonable arguments to reject it, sure some reject it because they've been educated to do so in some religious context

That's really interesting.

but I don't think one can defend a belief in evolution by pointing out that some subset of those who doubt it are poorly educated and superstitious and often irrational.

I don't either.

This is in fact your own interpretation of what some others mean by "the interpretation of evidence", I do not see it as you do.

But again, not all interpretations are equally valid, are they? When a flat earther is shown a pic of a spherical earth, says "That's fake" or "That was taken with a fisheye lens", and then says "that's my interpretation" I don't see that as equally valid as the work of NASA scientists. Do you?

Yes, there's often scope for ambiguity and some fundamentalists are as you describe, I have no more time for that than you.

But it's not just end times preachers or faith healers. I see creationists exhibit the exact same behaviors as well. They'll say "X doesn't exist" and after being shown multiple examples of X they wave them away with vague statements like "That's not how I interpret it" or they say the scientists who did the work were "biased".

I don't see how that's at all different than the end times preacher who waves away his failed prediction as a matter of "interpretation". From my POV, both are just means of coping with potentially being wrong on something.

Well we could apply the label "coping mechanism" to huge numbers of people be they Christian fundamentalists or fierce evolution advocates.

Can you give an example of a coping mechanism typically employed by evolution advocates?

This may well be true, in my opinion the John Lennox vs Richard Dawkins debate could have shown the same thing, when the debate began to move toward morality Dawkins was at a loss and was speculating wildly (he said stuff like "we could rise above what are genes dictated" or some such) - was that a coping mechanism?

I can't say as I've not watched that debate.

This is true but hardly unique to Christian fundamentalists!

True, but it does seem to be much more common among creationists, end times believers, faith healers, etc.

What you describe likely typifies most of those who drove the scientific revolution yet they were almost all of them creationists! The pursuit of underlying patterns and meaning and structure and causal relationships (in other words "science") is not confined to the materialist atheist. Most of those people from the 17th, 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries had no problem whatsoever exploring what they (and I and Barbarian) regard as a created universe of immense order, beauty, structure and wonder.

Yet those folks were also open to being wrong, even if it was painful. I've read some of the works of the 19th century geologists who had to eventually admit that the Biblical global flood just didn't happen. It was clearly a difficult conclusion for some of them to reach given their belief in the Bible, yet being good scientists they did so anyways, because that's what the data showed.

Contrast that with today's creationists who make it quite clear that they would never, ever do anything like that (e.g., AiG's statement of faith).

So again, I'm thinking a lot of this has to do with how open one is to being wrong.

There's a nasty bug in the site. I replied to each of your points and tried to preview. The site considered me as not logged in and prompted me to login, I did so. When the page returned all of my edits were gone, totally lost, most frustrating and not the best use of 20 minutes!

[JoeyKnothead]

There's a nasty bug in the site. I replied to each of your points and tried to preview. The site considered me as not logged in and prompted me to login, I did so. When the page returned all of my edits were gone, totally lost, most frustrating and not the best use of 20 minutes!

Sounds to me like you timed out, so auto logged out.

Helps to copy a post into a word processor, then copy it back into the site.

[brunumb]

There are millions of creationists, like anyone else we use reason and logic to support our beliefs.

There are billions of people who were inculcated with their beliefs through indoctrination from infancy. Reason and logic were nowhere in sight. It's not surprising to find that in later life many will spend time trying to retrofit justification for their beliefs. Ditching one's religious beliefs comes with dire consequences for the living and allegedly for the dead.

[Inquirer]

There are millions of creationists, like anyone else we use reason and logic to support our beliefs.

There are billions of people who were inculcated with their beliefs through indoctrination from infancy. Reason and logic were nowhere in sight. It's not surprising to find that in later life many will spend time trying to retrofit justification for their beliefs. Ditching one's religious beliefs comes with dire consequences for the living and allegedly for the dead.

I think abandoning long held beliefs is always a struggle for us, no matter what the actual belief is. Part of the reason for that is it's an acknowledgement of error, an admission that we've been wrong and that's a hard pill for most people. Admitting error is often so daunting that a person would rather cling to the belief than face the dreaded unknown.

[Inquirer]

No, evolution advocates do not baffle me at all. I used to advocate it myself, it's a reasonable hypothesis, there are reasonable arguments underpinning it. But likewise there are reasonable arguments to reject it, sure some reject it because they've been educated to do so in some religious context

That's really interesting.

but I don't think one can defend a belief in evolution by pointing out that some subset of those who doubt it are poorly educated and superstitious and often irrational.

I don't either.

This is in fact your own interpretation of what some others mean by "the interpretation of evidence", I do not see it as you do.

But again, not all interpretations are equally valid, are they? When a flat earther is shown a pic of a spherical earth, says "That's fake" or "That was taken with a fisheye lens", and then says "that's my interpretation" I don't see that as equally valid as the work of NASA scientists. Do you?

I certainly don't think all interpretations are equally rational, that's for sure. But evaluating some interpretation always requires a set of founding assumptions and if we don't share those with the other individual then likely we will not accept their interpretation. Its interesting to look at the Michelson Morley experiment here. For decades scientists had interpreted Maxwell's field equations in such a way that a medium the "luminiferous aether" must exist and was the way that EM waves propagated. Waves were not considered able to propagate in empty space (because a wave is basically energy within a medium, like with sound or water waves). This in turn meant that the speed of waves for some observer would be a linear function of the observer's speed within that medium (again, as it is with sound). So it was expected that the speed of light of some local light source measured on earth would vary as the earth moved through the aether.

No such variation was found even with high accuracy equipment and later Einstein found that there was another way to interpret Maxwell's equations - thus even scientifically competent experts misinterpret sometimes. Being a "scientist" is no protection against misinterpretation.

Yes, there's often scope for ambiguity and some fundamentalists are as you describe, I have no more time for that than you.

But it's not just end times preachers or faith healers. I see creationists exhibit the exact same behaviors as well. They'll say "X doesn't exist" and after being shown multiple examples of X they wave them away with vague statements like "That's not how I interpret it" or they say the scientists who did the work were "biased".

I don't see how that's at all different than the end times preacher who waves away his failed prediction as a matter of "interpretation". From my POV, both are just means of coping with potentially being wrong on something.

I'm sure some creationists do do that, but again your "POV" that this is a "means of coping" is just your personal interpretation.

Well we could apply the label "coping mechanism" to huge numbers of people be they Christian fundamentalists or fierce evolution advocates.

Can you give an example of a coping mechanism typically employed by evolution advocates?

Well "coping mechanism" isn't a term I use much, I can't say for sure that some person acts in some way because in my opinion its a "coping mechanism". What do you mean exactly by "coping mechanism" anyway?

This may well be true, in my opinion the John Lennox vs Richard Dawkins debate could have shown the same thing, when the debate began to move toward morality Dawkins was at a loss and was speculating wildly (he said stuff like "we could rise above what are genes dictated" or some such) - was that a coping mechanism?

I can't say as I've not watched that debate.

Well if you ever do you'll find the point where Dawkins says we can "rise above" what our genes dictate. This was caught by Lennox as self contradictory, to claim a product of genetics can behave in a way that is contrary to its genetics. That a dispassionate universe, evolution with its brutality of the stronger consuming the weaker, that has no right or wrong can serve as a basis for morality, right and wrong, is self contradictory. Dawkins struggles, perhaps for him this belief is a "coping mechanism"?

This is true but hardly unique to Christian fundamentalists!

True, but it does seem to be much more common among creationists, end times believers, faith healers, etc.

That may be true, I've not seen your data though so please do share that.

What you describe likely typifies most of those who drove the scientific revolution yet they were almost all of them creationists! The pursuit of underlying patterns and meaning and structure and causal relationships (in other words "science") is not confined to the materialist atheist. Most of those people from the 17th, 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries had no problem whatsoever exploring what they (and I and Barbarian) regard as a created universe of immense order, beauty, structure and wonder.

Yet those folks were also open to being wrong, even if it was painful. I've read some of the works of the 19th century geologists who had to eventually admit that the Biblical global flood just didn't happen. It was clearly a difficult conclusion for some of them to reach given their belief in the Bible, yet being good scientists they did so anyways, because that's what the data showed.

Contrast that with today's creationists who make it quite clear that they would never, ever do anything like that (e.g., AiG's statement of faith).

So again, I'm thinking a lot of this has to do with how open one is to being wrong.

Fear of admitting error runs deep in humans, irrespective of their theological views, that's my experience anyway.

[Inquirer]

There's a nasty bug in the site. I replied to each of your points and tried to preview. The site considered me as not logged in and prompted me to login, I did so. When the page returned all of my edits were gone, totally lost, most frustrating and not the best use of 20 minutes!

Sounds to me like you timed out, so auto logged out.

Helps to copy a post into a word processor, then copy it back into the site.

Yes, that is the source of the problem.

I was logged in, began to edit a reply, was called away for an extended period. Upon my return I was unaware that the session had timed out and the UI gave no indication either, so I continued editing the post.

Then attempting to Submit the post led to a prompt to login and at that point the work was silently discarded.

I'm sure this could be improved but its likely a low priority.

[Jose Fly]

I certainly don't think all interpretations are equally rational, that's for sure.

I'm curious....do you believe in any sort of objective reality? Do you believe that we (humans) can ever acquire an accurate understanding of that reality?

But evaluating some interpretation always requires a set of founding assumptions and if we don't share those with the other individual then likely we will not accept their interpretation.

So when a flat earther "interprets" a pic of a spherical earth as being fake, is that rational? Is it valid?

Being a "scientist" is no protection against misinterpretation.

Agreed.

I'm sure some creationists do do that, but again your "POV" that this is a "means of coping" is just your personal interpretation.

What do you see such behavior as?

Well "coping mechanism" isn't a term I use much, I can't say for sure that some person acts in some way because in my opinion its a "coping mechanism". What do you mean exactly by "coping mechanism" anyway?

The term refers to strategies and behaviors people employ to deal with difficult situations. So when a creationist declares "X doesn't exist" and is shown multiple examples of X, or when an end times preacher makes predictions that don't come true, they are faced with a difficult situation. As I've described, some cope by making up excuses so they don't have to actually deal with the situation...."that's just one interpretation", "those are fake", "you're just biased", or just ignoring it altogether.

Those all fall under the category of avoidance behaviors (one type of coping mechanisms). Rather than confront the situation directly and resolve it objectively, the person elects (sometimes without realizing it) to just avoid it entirely. From my experiences and some of the material I've read over the years, it's one of the main reasons why conservative Christians shut down discussions so often.

Well if you ever do you'll find the point where Dawkins says we can "rise above" what our genes dictate. This was caught by Lennox as self contradictory, to claim a product of genetics can behave in a way that is contrary to its genetics. That a dispassionate universe, evolution with its brutality of the stronger consuming the weaker, that has no right or wrong can serve as a basis for morality, right and wrong, is self contradictory. Dawkins struggles, perhaps for him this belief is a "coping mechanism"?

Could be, since (as I understand it) Dawkins has a specific view about how genes and their level of control and influence.

That may be true, I've not seen your data though so please do share that.

I don't have data, which is why I specifically said "seems to be".

Fear of admitting error runs deep in humans, irrespective of their theological views, that's my experience anyway.

Yes, but not everyone takes the same approach to potentially being wrong. Not that long ago Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted something like "A plane that loses its engine is a glider, a helicopter that loses its engine is a brick". Soon thereafter some helicopter pilots tweeted back that he was actually wrong and they had a specific technique for getting a engine-less helicopter to land safely. Dr. Tyson asked them to show him and said "If I'm wrong, I want to know. I want to learn".

And again I refer to Ken Ham and Bill Nye, where Ham said "nothing" could ever prove him wrong whereas Nye said "evidence" could. Add in the "statements of faith" of multiple creationist organizations and we see the contrast. Conservative Christians tend to adopt the view that their beliefs are non-negotiable, unquestionable, and not open to revision. In my experiences, even showing the slightest bit of doubt is discouraged and highly frowned upon. Yet the scientific approach is that everything is potentially open to questioning and revision pending further evidence.

Yes, none of us like being wrong and having to admit it, but not everyone will stoop to extreme behaviors to avoid it.

[Inquirer]

I certainly don't think all interpretations are equally rational, that's for sure.

I'm curious....do you believe in any sort of objective reality? Do you believe that we (humans) can ever acquire an accurate understanding of that reality?

Yes, I do regard what I perceive as the external world as truly existing independently of me. I certainly can't prove that to myself though. As for understanding reality, well I don't know, physics taught me that understanding changes all the time, what was once regarded as "understanding gravitation" for example is now discarded and there's a newer, better understanding, and tomorrow? who knows. So understanding seems to me to be beyond our grasp, always just an interpretation, fleeting.

But evaluating some interpretation always requires a set of founding assumptions and if we don't share those with the other individual then likely we will not accept their interpretation.

So when a flat earther "interprets" a pic of a spherical earth as being fake, is that rational? Is it valid?

I think someone who truly believes the earth is flat is irrational - IMHO - but it is often used as an example of how we assume so much. It is used rhetorically to emphasize how the interpretation of observations all depends on one' starting assumptions, if people overlook this they might fall victim to regarding something as an absolute truth when it might not be so.

Being a "scientist" is no protection against misinterpretation.

Agreed.

I'm sure some creationists do do that, but again your "POV" that this is a "means of coping" is just your personal interpretation.

What do you see such behavior as?

I'd need to speak to the individual before trying to label them, try to understand their reasoning even though I likely won't share it.

Well "coping mechanism" isn't a term I use much, I can't say for sure that some person acts in some way because in my opinion its a "coping mechanism". What do you mean exactly by "coping mechanism" anyway?

The term refers to strategies and behaviors people employ to deal with difficult situations. So when a creationist declares "X doesn't exist" and is shown multiple examples of X, or when an end times preacher makes predictions that don't come true, they are faced with a difficult situation. As I've described, some cope by making up excuses so they don't have to actually deal with the situation...."that's just one interpretation", "those are fake", "you're just biased", or just ignoring it altogether.


Those all fall under the category of avoidance behaviors (one type of coping mechanisms). Rather than confront the situation directly and resolve it objectively, the person elects (sometimes without realizing it) to just avoid it entirely. From my experiences and some of the material I've read over the years, it's one of the main reasons why conservative Christians shut down discussions so often.

I see, well I simply regard that as fear of being wrong, most people I've met have a fear of admitting error so won't admit error, their ego is more important than truth, this trait is not restricted to poorly educated religious fundamentalists either.

Well if you ever do you'll find the point where Dawkins says we can "rise above" what our genes dictate. This was caught by Lennox as self contradictory, to claim a product of genetics can behave in a way that is contrary to its genetics. That a dispassionate universe, evolution with its brutality of the stronger consuming the weaker, that has no right or wrong can serve as a basis for morality, right and wrong, is self contradictory. Dawkins struggles, perhaps for him this belief is a "coping mechanism"?

Could be, since (as I understand it) Dawkins has a specific view about how genes and their level of control and influence.

That may be true, I've not seen your data though so please do share that.

I don't have data, which is why I specifically said "seems to be".

OK so its an interpretation of things you've experienced.

Fear of admitting error runs deep in humans, irrespective of their theological views, that's my experience anyway.

Yes, but not everyone takes the same approach to potentially being wrong. Not that long ago Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted something like "A plane that loses its engine is a glider, a helicopter that loses its engine is a brick". Soon thereafter some helicopter pilots tweeted back that he was actually wrong and they had a specific technique for getting a engine-less helicopter to land safely. Dr. Tyson asked them to show him and said "If I'm wrong, I want to know. I want to learn".

Yes, sounds like me in that respect.

And again I refer to Ken Ham and Bill Nye, where Ham said "nothing" could ever prove him wrong whereas Nye said "evidence" could. Add in the "statements of faith" of multiple creationist organizations and we see the contrast. Conservative Christians tend to adopt the view that their beliefs are non-negotiable, unquestionable, and not open to revision. In my experiences, even showing the slightest bit of doubt is discouraged and highly frowned upon. Yet the scientific approach is that everything is potentially open to questioning and revision pending further evidence.

There's no doubt that fundamentalist Christians are rigid in their thinking, but I do not regard that as implying anything about theology, God or the Bible. I don't think such people discredit theology or the Bible any more than fanatical eugenicists in the past discredited scientific inquiry.

Consider Quakers, they are Christians but not fundamentalists. They have called for Trump's impeachment, they are generally supportive of restricting the scope for guns in society. They have been prominent in science after being initially disadvantaged in the US due to the dominance of Puritanism. Quakers were the other less well know side in early US history, everyone knows of the Puritans and their influence but few realize that there were also Quakers and very different they were too.

Yes, none of us like being wrong and having to admit it, but not everyone will stoop to extreme behaviors to avoid it.

Well perhaps we should meditate on why we hate being wrong and admitting it, ideally we should aim to be indifferent, dispassionate, unemotional like Mr. Spock, fascinated by the unexpected rather than protective of our all too fragile ego:

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Inquirer in post #16]

No such variation was found even with high accuracy equipment and later Einstein found that there was another way to interpret Maxwell's equations - thus even scientifically competent experts misinterpret sometimes. Being a "scientist" is no protection against misinterpretation.

That's not quite right. Maxwell assumed there must be some medium such as the proposed luminiferous aether, like everyone else, because it was thought impossible for a wave to propogate without some kind of medium. But his EM equations did not specify any characteristics of the aether or include it in any way. The many properties that this supposed medium would have to have also made a lot of people question its existence (hence, experiments like Michelson-Morley).

Maxwell's equations were inconsistent with Newtonian Mechanics because they implied that the speed of an EM wave in a vacuum equaled a constant (c) in all inertial reference frames, which contradicted Newton's law of relative speed. What Einstein and Special Relativitity did was to modify the definitions of things like length and time (via the Lorentz factor = [1 / (sqrt(1 - v^2 / c^2))] ), which made Maxwell's EM equations work independent of the frame of reference with c being constant in all frames.

So Einstein didn't reinterpret Maxwell's equations ... he reinterpreted how length, time and simultaneity were treated in different inertial reference frames and Maxwell's equations now worked automatically, without any specific changes to those fundamental equations.