Denialism. Why people believe unbelievable things.

golfmanwl

Eh hem.....

Because Time Magazine is "science". lol Didn't they do a "scientific" look at Intelligent Design a few years ago? Magazine headlines are always the best sources for real science. I saw Dr. Oz on one at the supermarket with a great new diet! Must be science.

Believe it or not, they don't actually DO the science, they interview scientists and report on the science the scientists do.
You must not get out much.

BTW, Seventeen the magazine is not 17, not made by 17 yr olds, and is in fact not an actual 17 yr old. It is a magazine that targets itself to not only 17 yr olds, but also other teens.

And don't ever read a newspaper. It will totally confuse you. Those stories are just reports of what's happened or happened to others. Poor you, thinking all those things happening to the same reporters over and over.


Wait...I get it now...you are intentionally demonstrating that selective denial that the OP was referring to. Job well done!

Go with God, my combative friend. Thank you for serving as an example of His love and understanding.

Right back at you, my judgmental brother.

BTW, my response was in the same tone as your comment that preceded it -- joking, snarky, and sarcastic...not combative.

neandermagnon

Never really understand why I get silence in response to what appears to me to be a well-thought out, logical, non-combative viewpoint. Ugh. Am I just wasting my time? Lets try again:


The fact is, we are constantly being told what the facts are, and that we should believe them.

Not if you actually study science you're not. I've studied science for years,and never have i been told to just believe and accept facts without question. Never. Science is about constantly questioning, constantly looking for more evidence, constantly testing what we know to check if it's correct. No-one should accept anything in science without evidence. Blindly accepting facts is non-science.

But scientific fact keeps changing.

Of course they do. It's called discovering new things. It's also due to the fact that scientists don't take anything as written in stone, if new evidence comes along that puts old ideas into doubt, they keep studying to discover what's going on. It's like putting a jigsaw together, where the completed jigsaw gives us the whole unified theory of everything and absolutely everything there is to know about anything.... but that jigsaw isn't complete yet, and new scientific discoveries are like new pieces of the jigsaw. Scientists use the evidence (jigsaw pieces) that they have, to build up a picture of what we know,

In addition, what is observable, like humans, or simpler, an ant, has not yet been fully understood even after thousands of years of study and observation have been made.

Nevertheless, the scientific community will attempt to explain the brilliance of nature by dumb accident, and string bits and pieces of ideas to support the conclusion, while being unable to observe or test these ideas.

Natural selection is not a dumb accident. I'm assuming you're religious? Personally, I see so much beauty in the process of evolution by natural selection that it always astounds me why religious people hate it so much and see only "dumb accident" rather than, for example, considering evolution by natural selection to be a particularly beautiful and extremely ingenious part of God's creation. It's about the most beautiful science there is, in my opinion. The fact that it can be explained entirely by the laws of physics with no need for magic makes it all the more beautiful, and living things all the more amazing. But for some reason some religious people get really disturbed by this theory, and refuse to believe it and call it "dumb accident". Oh wait, it contradicts literal interpretations of holy texts. That's what the problem is.

As for evidence for evolution, there is so so much of it, far too much to go into in one forum post. But look with an open mind and see it. Don't close your mind and refuse to accept any of it because it doesn't fit your personal beliefs, otherwise you're just proving what the OP is saying.

I know I'm dating myself to admit this, but when I was in college, my professor was working on the Human Genome Project. He said that he was disturbed by the ideologues in his field, who essentially, like the article you mentioned, are blinded by their belief -- in macroevolution. He took issue with their unwillingness to admit that there are many, very large holes in the theory (enough to throw turkeys through, was the phrase he used). Where was their scientific curiosity, their empirical quest for truth?

Maybe that scientist was doing the denialism thing mentioned in the OP. Scientists are not immune to it, especially if they have strong religious beliefs that they feel are being put into question by new discoveries.

Also, a lot of science deniers get confused between debate within a particular science, and debate about whether that science is valid. Take human evolution. There's a lot of debate going on, and a lot of new discoveries that have led to scientists questioning our current understanding of human evolution............ but that is not the same at all as scientists questioning whether we evolved or not. The question only comes about in terms of which hominin species are human ancestors and which are an evolutionary side branch. *no-one* is questioning whether we evolved from apes, that's certain, and comes from both fossil and genetic evidence and is very easy to prove to anyone who isn't so entrenched in denialism that they refuse to accept any evidence at all. what's in question is the details of the picture, i.e. precisely how we evolved, and in what order various human traits appeared in in the fossil record. New discoveries of hominin species change this picture somewhat. But the big picture - humans evolving from a common ancestor with chimpanzees remains very clear. So scientists questioning things within a particular theory =/= questioning the theory itself

An archaeologist finds in the sands, a broken piece of pottery. They will carbon date it back to a certain time in history and paint a picture for us about the people who made the "sophisticated" artwork. And yet, another scientist will consider a human being, for all our symmetry and beauty and consider this incredibly sophisticated art as something NOT designed? Ask an artist how difficult it is to draw hands, ask a roboticist how difficult it is to make a robot walk and not fall over. The brilliance in the earth is astounding.

Because there is so much beauty in natural processes such as evolution by natural selection. What's not beautiful about this beauty arising as a result of natural processes? Are not those natural processes themselves beautiful?

btw natural selection isn't random, by definition. Mutations are random, but selection isn't.

George Washington Carver embraced science and faith, and was a better scientist for it. He enraged other scientists, because his method of discovery was not the scientific method, and yet he continued to make an abundance of scientific discoveries. When brought before congress to testify, they asked him where he was able to attain such knowledge. "From an old book," he said. "What book?," they asked. "The Bible," he replied. They asked, "does the Bible say anything about the peanut?" No, but it does say about the God that made the peanut.

Scientists are still making discoveries about humans and ants, although we have been studying both for thousands of years. Very sophisticated, I would say.

yes and....? The scientific method was thought up in recent centuries. Humans made many discoveries and developed a huge amount of technology without it. However they also accumulated a bunch of superstition. The scientific method is more about eliminating and preventing superstitious beliefs than it is about enabling us to discover more stuff, but it does also enable people to discover more, because a more fine-tuned understanding of the world leads us to be able to better apply technology.

Here's an example... one hunter-gatherer tribe I studied at university, believed that if mothers left their babies' poop lying around their main living area, and didn't clean up the poop or train their kids to go away from the living area to poop, that evil spirits would possess their babies and make them ill. well, there's a mixture of truth and superstition in that. they'd clearly observed that lack of hygiene with kids pooping wherever they wanted led to kids getting sick, and that clearing up poop stopped kids from getting sick............ but their explanation (evil spirits possessing kids) was incorrect. If they'd have been able to discover the real cause of the illness (germs) they would have been better able to protect themselves from illness from other sources.

Most human discoveries are like this. An incorrect explanation to an observed phenomena, or an incorrect or partial understanding about what's going on when they do things that work, which limits the extent to which they can successfully apply their knowledge to solve real world problems. Humans can make all kinds of discoveries without the scientific method, but there's no way to test their understanding of why things occur, or which ideas about the world are correct and which are superstition. The scientific method provides that.

Anyway, you said no-one's answered your questions.... I have, but because of denialism, I'm not confident that you won't just dismiss everything I've said without properly considering it, because it doesn't fit your current beliefs about the world.

If you're serious about actually finding answers to these questions, as opposed to using them to justify your non-belief in science such as evolution, then you should go and study evolution and palaeoanthropology with an open mind. You don't have to give up your religion to accept the theory of evolution. It only contadicts a literal interpretation of various texts such as the bible. Religion is a personal choice, and there's no need to reject any science just because it doesn't fit your personal beliefs. The only reason to reject anything in science is if it doesn't fit the evidence.

ldrosophila

im right youre wrong and nothing will convince me otherwise

CJisinShape

Never really understand why I get silence in response to what appears to me to be a well-thought out, logical, non-combative viewpoint. Ugh. Am I just wasting my time? Lets try again:


The fact is, we are constantly being told what the facts are, and that we should believe them.

Not if you actually study science you're not. I've studied science for years,and never have i been told to just believe and accept facts without question. Never. Science is about constantly questioning, constantly looking for more evidence, constantly testing what we know to check if it's correct. No-one should accept anything in science without evidence. Blindly accepting facts is non-science.

But scientific fact keeps changing.

Of course they do. It's called discovering new things. It's also due to the fact that scientists don't take anything as written in stone, if new evidence comes along that puts old ideas into doubt, they keep studying to discover what's going on. It's like putting a jigsaw together, where the completed jigsaw gives us the whole unified theory of everything and absolutely everything there is to know about anything.... but that jigsaw isn't complete yet, and new scientific discoveries are like new pieces of the jigsaw. Scientists use the evidence (jigsaw pieces) that they have, to build up a picture of what we know,

In addition, what is observable, like humans, or simpler, an ant, has not yet been fully understood even after thousands of years of study and observation have been made.

Nevertheless, the scientific community will attempt to explain the brilliance of nature by dumb accident, and string bits and pieces of ideas to support the conclusion, while being unable to observe or test these ideas.

Natural selection is not a dumb accident. I'm assuming you're religious? Personally, I see so much beauty in the process of evolution by natural selection that it always astounds me why religious people hate it so much and see only "dumb accident" rather than, for example, considering evolution by natural selection to be a particularly beautiful and extremely ingenious part of God's creation. It's about the most beautiful science there is, in my opinion. The fact that it can be explained entirely by the laws of physics with no need for magic makes it all the more beautiful, and living things all the more amazing. But for some reason some religious people get really disturbed by this theory, and refuse to believe it and call it "dumb accident". Oh wait, it contradicts literal interpretations of holy texts. That's what the problem is.

As for evidence for evolution, there is so so much of it, far too much to go into in one forum post. But look with an open mind and see it. Don't close your mind and refuse to accept any of it because it doesn't fit your personal beliefs, otherwise you're just proving what the OP is saying.

I know I'm dating myself to admit this, but when I was in college, my professor was working on the Human Genome Project. He said that he was disturbed by the ideologues in his field, who essentially, like the article you mentioned, are blinded by their belief -- in macroevolution. He took issue with their unwillingness to admit that there are many, very large holes in the theory (enough to throw turkeys through, was the phrase he used). Where was their scientific curiosity, their empirical quest for truth?

Maybe that scientist was doing the denialism thing mentioned in the OP. Scientists are not immune to it, especially if they have strong religious beliefs that they feel are being put into question by new discoveries.

Also, a lot of science deniers get confused between debate within a particular science, and debate about whether that science is valid. Take human evolution. There's a lot of debate going on, and a lot of new discoveries that have led to scientists questioning our current understanding of human evolution............ but that is not the same at all as scientists questioning whether we evolved or not. The question only comes about in terms of which hominin species are human ancestors and which are an evolutionary side branch. *no-one* is questioning whether we evolved from apes, that's certain, and comes from both fossil and genetic evidence and is very easy to prove to anyone who isn't so entrenched in denialism that they refuse to accept any evidence at all. what's in question is the details of the picture, i.e. precisely how we evolved, and in what order various human traits appeared in in the fossil record. New discoveries of hominin species change this picture somewhat. But the big picture - humans evolving from a common ancestor with chimpanzees remains very clear. So scientists questioning things within a particular theory =/= questioning the theory itself

An archaeologist finds in the sands, a broken piece of pottery. They will carbon date it back to a certain time in history and paint a picture for us about the people who made the "sophisticated" artwork. And yet, another scientist will consider a human being, for all our symmetry and beauty and consider this incredibly sophisticated art as something NOT designed? Ask an artist how difficult it is to draw hands, ask a roboticist how difficult it is to make a robot walk and not fall over. The brilliance in the earth is astounding.

Because there is so much beauty in natural processes such as evolution by natural selection. What's not beautiful about this beauty arising as a result of natural processes? Are not those natural processes themselves beautiful?

btw natural selection isn't random, by definition. Mutations are random, but selection isn't.

George Washington Carver embraced science and faith, and was a better scientist for it. He enraged other scientists, because his method of discovery was not the scientific method, and yet he continued to make an abundance of scientific discoveries. When brought before congress to testify, they asked him where he was able to attain such knowledge. "From an old book," he said. "What book?," they asked. "The Bible," he replied. They asked, "does the Bible say anything about the peanut?" No, but it does say about the God that made the peanut.

Scientists are still making discoveries about humans and ants, although we have been studying both for thousands of years. Very sophisticated, I would say.

yes and....? The scientific method was thought up in recent centuries. Humans made many discoveries and developed a huge amount of technology without it. However they also accumulated a bunch of superstition. The scientific method is more about eliminating and preventing superstitious beliefs than it is about enabling us to discover more stuff, but it does also enable people to discover more, because a more fine-tuned understanding of the world leads us to be able to better apply technology.

Here's an example... one hunter-gatherer tribe I studied at university, believed that if mothers left their babies' poop lying around their main living area, and didn't clean up the poop or train their kids to go away from the living area to poop, that evil spirits would possess their babies and make them ill. well, there's a mixture of truth and superstition in that. they'd clearly observed that lack of hygiene with kids pooping wherever they wanted led to kids getting sick, and that clearing up poop stopped kids from getting sick............ but their explanation (evil spirits possessing kids) was incorrect. If they'd have been able to discover the real cause of the illness (germs) they would have been better able to protect themselves from illness from other sources.

Most human discoveries are like this. An incorrect explanation to an observed phenomena, or an incorrect or partial understanding about what's going on when they do things that work, which limits the extent to which they can successfully apply their knowledge to solve real world problems. Humans can make all kinds of discoveries without the scientific method, but there's no way to test their understanding of why things occur, or which ideas about the world are correct and which are superstition. The scientific method provides that.

Anyway, you said no-one's answered your questions.... I have, but because of denialism, I'm not confident that you won't just dismiss everything I've said without properly considering it, because it doesn't fit your current beliefs about the world.

If you're serious about actually finding answers to these questions, as opposed to using them to justify your non-belief in science such as evolution, then you should go and study evolution and palaeoanthropology with an open mind. You don't have to give up your religion to accept the theory of evolution. It only contadicts a literal interpretation of various texts such as the bible. Religion is a personal choice, and there's no need to reject any science just because it doesn't fit your personal beliefs. The only reason to reject anything in science is if it doesn't fit the evidence.

What makes you assume I haven't already? Because I happen to disagree?

I used to believe in evolution. My former belief was more aligned with your idea that this is the process by which God created. Then I went to school for genetic engineering and to my surprise, things I'd accepted as fact were not so concrete as I'd been led to believe. Disgusted by some of what I saw in academia, and worried about the direction my field was going in, I left. Not because of the theory of evolution, but from the potential for abuse.

Mutations are usually maladaptive. For the number of mutations to occur that are actually beneficial to the organism, you are talking about a statistically significant event. Then, for a great number of statistically relevant events (series of mutations to occur) in such great number as to actually change the species into another is so statistically immense, it is essentially in the realm of drastically miracle. For the extreme diversity you witness on the planet to have all come out of adaptive mutation is so statistically outrageous, it is on the same scale of a miracle. So I just go with the miracle, it makes more sense to me. Why? Adaptations in nature happen all the time. Expose bacteria to tetracycline, they die, mostly. Some develop resistance, and that restistance is carried over genetically. A different species is not produced by this adaptation. Even so, bacterial colonies and complex multi-cellular organisms like humans are not comparable because our reproduction processes are more complex. There are measures in place to prevent cross speciation from occurring. Nature ITSELF informs us of the difficulty of speciation. A horse and a donkey can mate and reproduce, but the offspring is a mule, and is sterile. Animal husbandry can provide differed breeds of dogs, but they are still dogs, able to reproduce among the different breeds. Even artificially sped up "evolution" does not produce speciation. So, for the theory of macro evolution - one species mutating into another, they have to be able to breed successfully among themselves past the second generation. Statistically, what's the liklihood? How many generations are required for that level of change to occur? On E.Coli experiment is on its 50,000 generation.

Here's a quote:
. Of the 12 populations, four developed defects in their ability to repair DNA, greatly increasing the rate of additional mutations in those strains. Although the bacteria in each population are thought to have generated hundreds of millions of mutations over the first 20,000 generations, Lenski has estimated that within this time frame, only 10 to 20 beneficial mutations achieved fixation in each population, with fewer than 100 total point mutations (including neutral mutations) reaching fixation in each population.[3]

So, after 50,000 generations, and 12 different populations, 4 populations have DE-EVOLVED. They are LESS hardy over time - mutations were maladaptive. In addition, after hundreds of millions of mutations, 10 to 20 "stuck." And guess what? They are all STILL E.Coli, not a new species. Extrapolate this info to complex organisms, say, apes, and consider how many generations would it take to become a new species? So, that's my opinion, and, as you can see, it might not agree with yours, but its not because I haven't considered the evidence. It's because I have considered it. And I could go on, and discuss DNA, and how "we knew" how genetics would work until we found out that it was less recipie and more potentiality, and the role proteins now play in our understanding of genetics, but this would get very long.

The more I see of nature, the more evidence I see of God's intentionality. The Bible says that even the hairs on our head are numbered. Imagine that. Did we know how unique we were until we learned of the uniqueness of fingerprints? Or the snow? The Bible says God told Job that he didn't know the treasures he put in the snow. Think about that. Thousands of years ago, we knew there were treasures in the snow, before we could look in a microscope and behold the gem like structures of these magnificently unique flakes. When you see the creation as a miracle from God, you are able to live knowing you are part of a miracle. God is awesome!

SunofaBeach14

Eh hem.....

Because Time Magazine is "science". lol Didn't they do a "scientific" look at Intelligent Design a few years ago? Magazine headlines are always the best sources for real science. I saw Dr. Oz on one at the supermarket with a great new diet! Must be science.

This goes back to the messaging of scientific evidence rather than scientific evidence itself. I do think that the politicization of science has damaged the scientific community's credibility in the public's eyes. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is a good example. I think there is also a very well ingrained culture of distrust for authority in the United States in particular, which is mixed blessing, particularly in areas of climate science and vaccines.

Sinisterly

This thread has WAYYYY too much TL;DR :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad:

-goes back to work-

neandermagnon

What makes you assume I haven't already? Because I happen to disagree?

I used to believe in evolution. My former belief was more aligned with your idea that this is the process by which God created.

and worried about the direction my field was going in, I left. Not because of the theory of evolution, but from the potential for abuse.[/quote]

This isn't relevent to the theory of evolution though. It's your personal reason for not remaining in the field of genetic engineering, and it's an emotive reason for rejecting evidence.

I hate debating creation-evolution with anyone, because I've yet to meet one single creationist that fully understands the theory of evolution and has rejected it for purely scientific reasons and not emotive reasons. There's no point arguing with such people, because whatever you say they will reject out of hand, and they will keep on presenting their "objections" to the theory even after you've repeatedly refuted them. Then they go around telling others that they won the debate, because you didn't present any evidence that they accepted.

The fact that you use phrases such as "artificially sped up evolution" to describe artificial selection, and the phrase "de-evolved" (or the implication that things can "evolve backwards") shows that you don't fully understand the theory of evolution to begin with. And your explanation for why you rejected evolution is an emotive one.

There's no distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" (I've only ever heard creationists use these terms, never evolutionary biologists unless they're arguing with creationists) - the first describes how a particular trait evolves. The latter is the sum of all traits that have evolved. 1+1=2. repeatedly add 1 enough times and you get a very very very big number. That's not micromaths and macromaths. It's just maths.

As for speciation, that happens when organisms who are separated from each other (usually by geography but not always) become too different to be able to breed with each other when they finally do meet (if they meet) they can no longer breed. Of course this takes millions of years, and for life on this planet to have evolved as much as it has, this takes many more millions of years. So what? The earth has been around long enough for this to have happened repeatedly, and the fossil record shows it too, and how many millions of years it all took. And there are countless examples of evolution shown in the fossil record like dinosaurs evolving into birds, apes evolving into humans etc.... oh but of course there are people who reject the entire fossil record out of hand because it doesn't fit their personal beliefs.... and there are people who reject the evidence of dating of the earth itself, because it doesn't fit their personal beliefs. There are even a few who refuse to accept the pictures of the earth taken from in space because they prefer for whatever reason to believe that the earth is flat. Rejecting scientific evidence for unscientific reasons isn't science.

CJisinShape

:-)

CJisinShape

Just to clear up - I left my career choice because I thought the potential for abuse if the technology too great. I didn't stop believing in evolution because of that - I had already stopped believing in that long before I wanted to leave. I could overlook theories while working on good technology. Regarding the use of my words and your distain of them, citing it as evidence of ignorance, that too, is your choice. I use them for clarity.

It is choice. You look at bones from different animals as proof of evolution. I look at the evidence and see bones from different animals. You see similarities in DNA among the species and see evidence of evolution. I see the similarities and see different works of art from the same artist. If you read closely, you would have seen that the evidence DID challenge my beliefs - in evolution. I not only had to change my beliefs, but also my career choice! One day, I hope you will understand that reasonable, intelligent people can make choices based on how they interpret the facts. It's not as black and white as it appears to you right now - heck, look at nutritional science! I worked in academia for many years, and you'd be surprised how much pressure there is on having the right outcomes for the right research projects. Grant money has to come from somewhere. Have a great day!

QuietBloom

As a Christian, I scratch my head at those who dismiss the fossil record. To say nothing of the DNA evidence that points to a common ancestor between all primates. God created all things. He didn't tell us exactly how. That leaves plenty of room for evolution.

Alex

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