Science Denial

[Wertbag]

Religion puts you in a mindset to deny science.  If you have been taught that the supernatural is having a direct influence on our world and that there are angels, demons, Gods, heaven and hell, then you are primed in advance by confirmation bias to reject science if it conflicts with pre-held ideas.  Then you have the constant reinforcement "Science can't answer questions on the immaterial", or "Science is blind to the spiritual", puts science into this limited view category, where the scientists are accused of being in it for the money and science accused of being close minded.  If you have this negative view of science then you don't bother to learn it, why would you waste your time?  And if scientists say "We should probably be worried about X", the initial thought is "They are lying/wrong, so I won't pay any attention".  You then get people refusing medical treatment and instead relying on prayer or healing touch, which inevitably ends with terrible health outcomes.

 

Flat Earthers are science deniers to an excessive degree.  Every space agency, every astronaut, the 200+ people who have been to the ISS, the thousands of photos or hundreds of hours of video, and of course the government, are all in on this big conspiracy to hide the truth.  We often forget that Flat Earth beliefs are very much fostered by Christianity and people trying to read the bible literally.  The whole model of a glass/crystal dome over a flat plate is a biblical image:

Genesis 1:7 "Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament".

Job 37:18 "Hast thou with Him spread out the sky, which is strong and as a molten looking glass?"

For some the bible comes first and then the hunt to find any science that can support their pre-held worldview begins.

 

Young Earth Creationists are in the same mindset.  Radiometric dating must be wrong, ice core samples, erosion rates, fossilization rates, fossil sorting, chalk bed growth rates, coral growth rates and just a ton of other clear-cut reasons to see the Earth is not 6000 years old.  They have to deny science to achieve that view, as it conflicts with every field and all the evidence.  This is why you usually find them trying to pick holes in the science rather than trying to prove their own position.  if Piltdown man was a fake then perhaps, they all are!  If we have one example of carbon dating being off due to contamination, then they all must be!  Evolution isn't real, until I need the animals off the Ark to repopulate the world, then suddenly I'll accept hyper mega evolution, cos reasons!

But even the social sciences show that a young earth and global flood are ridiculous concepts.  If the flood happened in ~2300BC, then all of human history has to be crammed into a tiny fragment of time.  The population growth had to be at an extreme level, we had to get the worlds genetic diversity from 8 people, that one family had to make up numerous languages, cultures, art styles and spread to create kingdoms on every continent around the world.  But even with the overwhelming evidence it's still possible to reject all of it and just say "But my bible though".

 

The global flood is another category, as you can be an old earth creationist who believes in a literal global flood.  I know there are some Christians who try to say it was a local flood (the bible seems pretty clear, but you can hand wave all that away as hyperbole) but you are then left with the question why have a boat at all?  Noah could have just packed his bags and walked away, in a couple of weeks he'd be well away from the flood zone and just saved 120 years of boat building.

Science says the boat doesn't work, that there is no way to repopulate from inbreeding, that there isn't enough water to cover the mountains, that the carnivores would wipe out all of the species and a hundred other problems.  These are all generally rejected by stacking miracles upon non-scriptural miracles and saying, "God can do anything".  It's a flat rejection of all science because magic.

 

When Hitchen's says religion poisons everything, everyone just takes it as hyperbole, but perhaps there is a poisoning of the mind where magic is given a higher credulity than science.  It would be a different level of poisoning depending on what is said and how hard it is pushed, but the mild form is still that science is incomplete and ignoring known facts about the supernatural, while the more hardcore fundamentalist view pushes it into the realm of conspiracy and intent to deceive.  Scientists are either ignorant or outright liars.  Decades of research and mountains of evidence are irrelevant if it conflicts with a literal bible reading. 

[midniterider]

Scientific Fundamentalism is the belief that all knowledge gained through, and all conclusions drawn from, the scientific method are true.

 

 In other words if you only believe in knowledge which is obtained through the scientific method, soon you only see as real things that have been, or conceivable could be, obtained through the scientific method.

 

https://philosophyisnotaluxury.com/2009/11/scientific-fundamentalism/#:~:text=Scientific Fundamentalism is the belief,the scientific method are true.

[walterpthefirst]

I've been accused of scientific fundamentalism (scientism) in this forum, midniterider.

 

What is scientism, and why is it a mistake? - Big Think

 

 

Thank you,

 

Walter.

[midniterider]

2 hours ago, walterpthefirst said:

I've been accused of scientific fundamentalism (scientism) in this forum, midniterider.

 

What is scientism, and why is it a mistake? - Big Think

 

 

Thank you,

 

Walter.

 

Thanks for the article. 

[Wertbag]

16 hours ago, midniterider said:

Scientific Fundamentalism is the belief that all knowledge gained through, and all conclusions drawn from, the scientific method are true.

 

 In other words if you only believe in knowledge which is obtained through the scientific method, soon you only see as real things that have been, or conceivable could be, obtained through the scientific method.

 

https://philosophyisnotaluxury.com/2009/11/scientific-fundamentalism/#:~:text=Scientific Fundamentalism is the belief,the scientific method are true.

I completely agree that you can take any position much too far.  There is a reasonable ground between the two extremes, where science is appreciated for what it can do and for the technology that it brings, while fully admitting that it cannot investigate everything, can be wrong and that there are major gaps in our knowledge.  Admitting that science is not perfect is still a long way from the examples I've given of science denial.  For example, a flat earther will deny gravity, while not positing a superior solution.

 

I find most science denial ends up that way, in that its focused on denying existing answers while not giving working alternatives.  It's the idea that if they disprove an idea then their idea becomes correct by default.  A young earther is rarely putting forward reasons why the earth is young, more often just complaining about radiometric dating or pointing to anomalies as though such things overturn all science.  While a flat earther won't have a working map or model, but will still claiming the globe maps and models are incorrect.

 

It's the old saying that the religious types start with the conclusion, then work backwards to use confirmation bias to find anything that can support their pre-held position.  But as I also mentioned this can go full science hatred, with scientists abused as liars, shills or part of a global conspiracy.  I've seen many flat earthers just calling anyone who doesn't agree with them a "NASA shill", which is then taking science denial to a personal attack.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

I think we should teach Intelligent Downward Pushing in school instead of filling our children's minds with that demonic Theory of Gravity nonsense.  Like some mysterious, unseen force could be holding the planet together and not the mighty hand of god, who is totally real and totally not mysterious and unseen.  

[◊ Weezer ◊]

If you believe in magic, anything is possible.  My brother is a young earther and says that god put all those fossils and stuff in the earth to made it look old.  But he didn't know why god would want to do that.  He and my Dad both could just turn off part of their brains at times.

[Wertbag]

Just now, Weezer said:

If you believe in magic, anything is possible.  My brother is a young earther and says that god put all those fossils and stuff in the earth to made it look old.  But he didn't know why god would want to do that.  He and my Dad both could just turn off part of their brains at times.

Good ol' trickster god doing things just for the giggles

[walterpthefirst]

When it comes to flat earthers, if I was a rich man and had the money to do it I'd offer a $ 1,000,000 prize to any of them who could meet my challenge.

 

Physical world map in Hellerick triaxial boreal projection - shallow - Modern flat Earth beliefs - Wikipedia

 

If the Earth is flat then the Pole Star (Polaris) must sit above the north pole, which is at the centre of their unfeasible map.

 

Therefore, Polaris must be visible to everyone living anywhere on their flat earth.

 

It should even be visible from the (ahem!) ice wall of Antarctica, which they claim wraps around the flat earth and stops the oceans pouring off into space.

 

So, I'd challenge them to travel to New Zealand and try and photograph the Pole Star from there.

 

 

Good luck with that!

 

 

[mwc]

7 hours ago, Weezer said:

If you believe in magic, anything is possible.  My brother is a young earther and says that god put all those fossils and stuff in the earth to made it look old.  But he didn't know why god would want to do that.  He and my Dad both could just turn off part of their brains at times.

     I believed that dinosaurs weren't real* for the first few decades of my life.

 

     * I was taught, and believed, that they were placed there like your brother and so weren't real in the sense they actually wandered around the planet as living critters.  Way back when, I heard either god or the devil placed the bones there.  Didn't care to think about it.  I too just turned off the old brain when it came to things like this.  I just wanted the bible to be true so throwing dinos, and other parts of reality, under the bus was kind of an easy ask.

 

          mwc

 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

I was fascinated with dinosaurs when I was about 4 or 5 years old.  I wanted to dig up dinosaur fossils when I grew up.  Unfortunately, for my parents, dinosaurs went hand-in-glove with evolution and cosmology; they were all lies of "the enemy" sent to deceive the faithful. 

 

One of many childhood dreams taken from me by religion.