Science Denial is Not a Choice

[Danmark]

Watching Diane Sawyer’s interview with Bruce Jenner tonight on 20/20 I realized something that has been puzzling me. There is a common psychological issue or learning disorder that is associated with religious thinking, at least for some religious people, particularly with Muslims and Christians. I’m not sure if it comes from deference to authority or simplistic thinking or both… or other factors in combination. But this much I’ve observed: there is a common thread running through their thinking that seems to converge on not accepting facts that disrupt simple stereotypes.

We talk about “science denial,� but it is much more pervasive than just denying the science of evolution and denying the ancient age of the Earth despite the overwhelming evidence. Recently I realized science denial is involved when it comes to the obvious fact that manmade contributions to air pollution contribute to climate change.

What clarified this for me is the transgender issue. A segment of Christians and apparently an even larger segment of Muslims have long been in denial about same sex gender attraction being a something that is not a choice.

More recently we have the issue that has become more openly talked about because of Bruce Jenner. Here is a guy who set a world record in the decathlon, proclaimed the world’s greatest athlete, who has achieved the masculine ideal, yet he has always known he is female inside, not male despite his outward appearance. He is heterosexual, attracted to women not men, but he has always felt he was not a male deep within his psyche. Science supports this issue that gender attraction and gender identification are two separate issues. Because he has felt he has no choice but to be who he is, Jenner has suffered both economic and social consequences. Why would someone choose to be this way if it were not so compelling as to not be a choice at all?

But these facts seem impossible for a large segment of religious folk to accept. It struck me that expecting them to accept the truth, the facts, the evidence regarding homosexuality, transgender issues, evolution and other scientific evidence is impossible for them; that it is just as crazy to expect them to accept this reality as it is for the rest of us to accept that they cannot help but think they way they do. They are not being obstinate or evil or mean spirited. They simply cannot accept or appreciate what seems so obvious to others. Hence they deny the facts science presents and honestly believe there is a conspiracy among scientists to pervert the truth.

I don’t pretend to understand why this is so, but I am willing to accept that their science denial is as rigidly fixed as is gender attraction and identity. In other words, perhaps they have no more choice about denying scientific truth than homosexuals and heterosexuals have in denying who they are attracted to.

So, the affirmative of this subtopic is:
The refusal to accept evolution, a billions of years old Earth, climate change, homosexuality, and transgender issues is:
A. Science denial
B. These issues are related
C. Religious belief plays a role in denying the science behind these facts
D. People who deny these facts have little or no choice in their denial (they can't help it).

Finally, more for discussion than debate: "What is it about these religions that in large segments, causes the denial of obvious truths as confirmed by scientific discovery and experiments?

[H.sapiens]

Modern neuroscience (unlike the antiquated legal system) would say that eye-witness data has a serious risk of being faulty from the get go and degrades with each retelling. For the sake of your example (pretending the such evidence is worth a damn) science would say 9 out of 10, at a minimum. A conviction should be "beyond a reasonable doubt" and that should be a judgement call rather than a popularity contest.

So in essence you are saying that if a thousand people saw a man stabbing another man on a clear day in normal circumstances, and nobody saw otherwise, that would not be reliable enough to convict that person?

At this point I simply have to politely disagree with you "scientific" standards of evidence.

It is not that simple, here's an example:

http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gori ... iment.html

[instantc]

Modern neuroscience (unlike the antiquated legal system) would say that eye-witness data has a serious risk of being faulty from the get go and degrades with each retelling. For the sake of your example (pretending the such evidence is worth a damn) science would say 9 out of 10, at a minimum. A conviction should be "beyond a reasonable doubt" and that should be a judgement call rather than a popularity contest.

So in essence you are saying that if a thousand people saw a man stabbing another man on a clear day in normal circumstances, and nobody saw otherwise, that would not be reliable enough to convict that person?

At this point I simply have to politely disagree with you "scientific" standards of evidence.

It is not that simple, here's an example:

http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gori ... iment.html

Very interesting experiment, thanks for that.

However, it hardly affects my point at all. In the referred results half of the people saw the gorilla and the other half did not. I was talking about a situation where, say, a thousand people witness a simple event without any complications, such as trying to follow a basket ball around.

To say that such a simple uniform eye-witness account of thousand people is not reliable is in my view a bit derailed from reality. You seem to be living in some kind of a science land where only a test tube can provide us with any information of the world.

[Hatuey]

[Replying to post 142 by instantc]

The decisions of a court (in the United States) are intended to reflect the judgment of a "reasonable man," not be 100% accurate and beyond all possibility of fault. A few posts ago someone mentioned that eye witness testimony at a rate of 9 to 10 percent as enough for the court to consider the idea meritorious and that aligns with what a "reasonable person" would conclude.

[instantc]

[Replying to post 142 by instantc]

The decisions of a court (in the United States) are intended to reflect the judgment of a "reasonable man," not be 100% accurate and beyond all possibility of fault. A few posts ago someone mentioned that eye witness testimony at a rate of 9 to 10 percent as enough for the court to consider the idea meritorious and that aligns with what a "reasonable person" would conclude.

Yes, but the reasonable man test is essentially arbitrary, is it not? There is no objective yard stick that tells us what a reasonable person would believe, it is left to the discretion of the judge. The test also relies on the assumption that the judge is a reasonable man, for how could an unreasonable man accurately assess how a reasonable man would judge the situation at hand?

Of course the court practice today gives the judge a yardstick against which he can measure the reasonableness of his decision, but when I say "essentially arbitrary", I mean that even if the present day judge can rely on objective precedent, that precedent has initially been formed through a series of more or less arbitrary decisions.

[Hatuey]

[Replying to post 144 by instantc]

Correct. Essentially all judgments come down to democratic agreement. (Math. Physics, and chemistry are exceptions except how the terms are defined within those disciplines).

[instantc]

[Replying to post 144 by instantc]

Correct. Essentially all judgments come down to democratic agreement. (Math. Physics, and chemistry are exceptions except how the terms are defined within those disciplines).

I wouldn't go that far, I think there is a clear distinction at play here. In the thought experiment that I described before where you keep adding eye-witnesses and need to decide at which point it becomes reliable, the judgment can only be based on a gut feeling, there is nothing else available. Somewhere between one and a thousand witnesses you simply feel like this is it.

But, not every judgement is purely arbitrary in that sense. For example, if the judge is to rule on the validity of a contract and comes to a decision that one of the parties did not consent to the agreement based on the fact that there was a large percentage of alcohol in his blood at the time of giving his signature, that is not arbitrary in the same sense, as there is certain kind of a logic that necessarily leads the judge to that conclusion.

[H.sapiens]

Modern neuroscience (unlike the antiquated legal system) would say that eye-witness data has a serious risk of being faulty from the get go and degrades with each retelling. For the sake of your example (pretending the such evidence is worth a damn) science would say 9 out of 10, at a minimum. A conviction should be "beyond a reasonable doubt" and that should be a judgement call rather than a popularity contest.

So in essence you are saying that if a thousand people saw a man stabbing another man on a clear day in normal circumstances, and nobody saw otherwise, that would not be reliable enough to convict that person?

At this point I simply have to politely disagree with you "scientific" standards of evidence.

It is not that simple, here's an example:

http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gori ... iment.html

Very interesting experiment, thanks for that.

However, it hardly affects my point at all. In the referred results half of the people saw the gorilla and the other half did not. I was talking about a situation where, say, a thousand people witness a simple event without any complications, such as trying to follow a basket ball around.

To say that such a simple uniform eye-witness account of thousand people is not reliable is in my view a bit derailed from reality. You seem to be living in some kind of a science land where only a test tube can provide us with any information of the world.

If half the people observe incorrectly then your data is meaningless. Add to the the fact that every time you "recall" something it is taken out of long term memory and then put back into long term memory in a slightly altered state ... the more often it is recalled the less accurate the memory is.

[instantc]

If half the people observe incorrectly then your data is meaningless.

If a thousand people observe the a simple event and reach a uniform consensus about it, then it is extremely implausible that half the people have observed incorrectly.

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 148 by instantc]50% is just the gorilla experiment, an example. Memory is such a quirky thing, not to be trusted without empirical aids. Just look at how many people claim contradictory religious experiences.

[instantc]

[Replying to post 148 by instantc]50% is just the gorilla experiment, an example. Memory is such a quirky thing, not to be trusted without empirical aids. Just look at how many people claim contradictory religious experiences.

I'm specifically talking about a situation where there are no contradictory experiences but a uniform consensus. In the world where I live in that is reliable evidence.