Creationism inherently incorporates a conspiracy theory - that evidence of a young earth exists, but is dismissed or even hidden by scientists because of their "faith" in secularism.
E.g., the Grand Canyon totally proves a global flood, but scientists refuse to accept that because of their "faith" in the earth being billions of years old.
You could probably find a correlation between any two things that involve rejecting mainstream beliefs, right or not. I'm suspicious of any theory that tries to divide everyone up in to the "enlightened ones" and "the dumb ones," on the grounds that you could minimize friction with the public by accepting every mainstream belief, whereas trying to be as right as possible would mean both disagreeing where society is wrong and sometimes when society is right, because if you're in the business of trusting yourself at all you will make at least a few mistakes.
To make it personal, think about it like this: if you start by saying to yourself "this thing society thinks is acceptable is wrong," and if you then go on and apply that mindset to everything else, there is a nonzero chance that your honest first-principles evaluation of, say, young-earth creationism would come out positive. Unless you think your inner compass has a zero false positive rate, spin that wheel again for every single commonly accepted belief and you're essentially guaranteed to end up believing at least one think that might appear in a study like this.
It shouldn't be too hard for
a study too
determine if the distribution of "number of conspiracy theories someone believes in" is bimodal with one mode near 0. I suspect it is.
Interestingly, it also requires a conspiracy masterminded by God: the argument I’ve heard goes that dinosaur fossils and other evidence for an ancient earth and evolution were faked and planted by God in order to test our faith.
The more common hypothesis is that the earth/universe is only 6000 years old but evidence of prior ages was planted by God or the Devil.
Of course, this is functionally indistinguishable from an argument that the world was created last Tuesday, with all evidence of prior existence intact.
> Creationism inherently incorporates a conspiracy theory - that evidence of a young earth exists, but is dismissed or even hidden by scientists because of their "faith" in secularism.
My understanding is that this is basically true though. That is, even fundamentalist Christians didn't believe in young earth creationism before the 1920s or so, and the reason it became a popular is that it was a reaction to that fact that mainstream science rejected the existence of climate change and tectonic plates.
It's basically the same as how homeopathy was created as a reaction to the fact that mainstream medicine had a success rate that was substantially lower than placebo treatments.
In each case science basically just got forked. And once it gets forked, it's impossible to use science on one side of the fork to convince people on the other side of the fork that they're wrong, because all the commits are out of order in way that changes the meaning of the diffs.
Yep, you're right, if you look into the history of the interpretation of Genesis in Christianity, Augustine of Hippo said this:
> Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
> Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
> The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
> If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
This is interesting and IMO generally true. But, not everything that is called a conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory. Asking “who benefits from this policy, and are they in a position to have influence in creating or maintaining it?” is not inherently a conspiracy theory. But anyone who’s doing something different from what they’re saying would prefer you didn’t notice. And if people are noticing, they’d probably want to dismiss their critics with whatever means they could. Including dismissing legitimate criticism and skepticism as paranoid conspiracy theories. This is especially confusing because there is overlap between actual conspiracies or at the very least dishonest politics/leadership and what people prone to paranoia and conspiracism would be more likely to think about. I just don’t like the idea of people allowing the charicture of a conspiracy theorist to stop them from thinking critically about the information they are being presented.
I read some of the article and I don’t think the findings make statements about the existence of conspiracy theories, but rather attribute individuals who attribute conspiracy to a number of things to a cognitive bias.
Individual conspiracy theories have sometimes panned out to be real but that doesn’t mean one who leans towards conspiracism to explain things is right.
I would argue that a true conspiracy theorist doesn’t just believe that a single event was the result of a single group of people, but that the conspiracy is near omnipotent and responsible for many unrelated terrible things.
It’s one thing, for example, to believe that some aspect of the 9/11 story doesn’t hold up — perhaps that you believe the government covered up for Saudi involvement. That may be right or wrong, but it’s at least something that’s plausible.
A true conspiracy theorist would believe that the whole thing was made up and never happened, or that the whole thing was planned and executed by the Illuminati, who have been working together for centuries to control the masses through mind control.
My brother-in-law is a fundamentalist Christian. My sister homeschooled all 8 kids from kindergarten through 12th grade. His view is that since God made Adam as a full grown man then it's possible that God created the world “with age” in his parlance. The point is that people who want something to be true will engage in the nececcsry mental gymnastics to justify their belief. It’s not unique to firinge ideas but it is easier to spot in people with fringe ideas.
EDIT: The fringe idea I referenced above is the notion that God created the world to look like it's really old even though it isn’t old. I've not encountered this rationale before. My comment is in no way diminishing religion.
It's hardly a fringe idea. It's actually pretty mainstream.
It even has a dismissive name: Last Tuesdayism.
You have to be careful to keep the idea separate from Young Earth Creationism!
Young Earth Creationism directly contradicts observation. In contrast believing the universe was created already old does not conflict with science (you just can't prove it one way or another).
So basically you're saying that this "God" thingy created the world to look like it evolved and changed but this is the way it always was? Such that he planted fossils and false carbon 14 decay just to fool scientists?
Do you really believe this idea? Do you think it is worth intellectual respect?
Edit: for perspective: there was a time the Catholic church rejected reason. It ended badly to Galileo and Copernicus and had very bad repercussions on the church credibility, from Spinoza to Voltaire. American Pentecostals and fundamentalist Jews and Muslims should learn that lesson: on the long run reason wins.
> So basically you're saying that this "God" thingy created the world to look like it evolved and changed but this is the way it always was? Such that he planted fossils and false carbon 14 decay just to fool scientists?
There's a large number of people who believe this.
Its a bit weird, because it implies that God is above lying to his followers. So as a Christian myself, who believes in Omnipotence (all powerful), Omniscient (all knowing), and Benevolence (all-loving), the viewpoint that God would explicitly lie to us is almost certainly against the 3rd peg: its anti-benevolence.
Anyway, different Christians obviously have different beliefs on the matter. I am in agreement with the poster you responded to: it is an... unfortunately... mainstream belief in some Christian communities.
I'm sure there are holes people can poke at my specific denomination of course. So it'd be hypocritical for me to push too much against the belief that "God is tricking us to see the true believers vs the evolutionists". But... yeah, its just not a belief I can get behind.
> Such that he planted fossils and false carbon 14 decay just to fool scientists?
Generally speaking, the argument goes to look at the Old Testament, specifically the Book of Job. In the Old Testament, God tested some of his prophets with incredible tests (ie: letting the Devil kill his kids, take all of his wealth away, etc. etc). So the idea of "God is just testing us" is generally the argument that comes forth.
I guess the general idea is that God can cause issues that seem big to us, but are small in the great scheme of His plans. If you want the religious background on this particular school of thought. The Book of Job has the prophet lose everything, but eventually gains greater prosperity in the end. In particular, Job deserves prosperity because even when all hope was lost, he kept his faith.
Still, that fundamentally doesn't quite explain why God would particularly lie to us humans about the "evolution" issue. So I've never personally liked this particular religious argument. I find it far more likely that God would prefer us Humans to discover science and properly make discoveries and advance our culture for the good of all mankind.
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It comes down to Biblical Literalism. Some people believe that the Bible is literally true. That there were exactly 7 days of creation, that Methusala lived over 900 years old... that a dude named "Samson" had magical hair, etc. etc. And since Biblical Literalism is a foundational peg to those denominations, they go through great pains to prove it.
Alternatively, if you're in my camp, you are open to interpreting the Bible. My denomination believes that the Bible is a collection of stories that God wants us to know about. Not necessarily that the word is literally true.
I am very sorry, you talk like a sensible person. But the more you explain it the less respect I have for religion.
American Pentecostalism sounds like a very stupid tribal superstition to me.
I come from an European and Catholic background. Catholicism and the Protestant mainstream that adopted most of their Theology (e.g.: Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism) do have a deep respect for science. They learned that lesson painfully, after what they did to Copernicus and Galileo.
Pentecostals are headed to serious mistakes if they think anti-reason can take them anywhere.
Well, there are plenty of cults. So the concept of "religion being used for evil" shouldn't be alien to anybody. I think it is fair to say that some religious ideas are harmful (ie: getting together to drink cyanide, aka the Jim Jones cult / Peoples Temple)
And even for the Biblical literalists: they only have to look into the Bible to see the many examples of Pagan religions, from the Golden Calf, to Pharaoh / Exodus, and more, to understand that false gods exist. So surely, they should understand the importance of "getting religion correct".
So I think it is fair to call out certain religious doctrines to be "unhelpful", or even "evil", depending on the case. But I wouldn't generalize much further than that.
pentecostals are the fastest christian denomination in the world and have been for some time. most people barely understand what science means much less weigh it against the core of their social identity.
By that metric, that overstates growth in 3rd world countries, fundamentalist Islam and ultra-orthodox Jews are doing even better.
When I use the word "mistake" I am not referring to number of dumb followers, is about intellectual relevance. It is pretty clear that, in developed countries, these obscurantist and fundamentalist creeds are loosing cultural hegemony (e.g.: same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization, multiculturalism, abortion, etc).
You might be surprised by the official catholic position on evolution. There take on evolution for instance is:
> Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.
That isn't evolution via natural selection, that's evolution via gods hex editor altering the genome, they explicitly reject natural evolution:
> While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.
They also believe in a literal Adam and Eve:
> The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, "The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents"
Catholics are creationists, just not of they young earth variety.
> That isn't evolution via natural selection, that's evolution via gods hex editor altering the genome, they explicitly reject natural evolution:
I disagree with the interpretation of your source.
> Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul.
A quote straight out of your source. Pretty clear that Natural Selection could be a mechanism designed by God.
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With regards to Adam and Eve, it doesn't seem like the Church literally believes that they perhaps existed. But the fall of man away from God is tied to our gain of knowledge (the core element of the story).
The important element of the creation story, the part that is Catholic Doctrine above all else, is the existence of Original Sin. The moment that the first Man and first Woman turned against God, due to gaining knowledge forbidden to animals. Original Sin is the doctrine that is most fundamental to the Catholic faith.
It helps to understand what is Catholic Doctrine, so you know what the author is trying to say in those parts.
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Note: Catholic Doctrine (from the Catechism, one of the most important books in the Catholic Faith) is:
> Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth
> I disagree with the interpretation of your source.
Not my fault the pope can't be more clear. It's ridiculous that their official beliefs are open for interpretation at all.
> A quote straight out of your source. Pretty clear that Natural Selection could be a mechanism designed by God.
A mechanism designed by god would still be intelligent design, as an all knowing god it was still done with the knowledge that humans would arise and he would give them a soul. And given other beliefs that have god interacting with the universe directly and recently why would such an elaborate process be needed for humans to arise? It's like they're using a very different definition of god than the usual one.
> Not my fault the pope can't be more clear. It's ridiculous that their official beliefs are open for interpretation at all.
If you want a more official source, then quote more official material.
You weren't quoting the pope, or really any pope, on the matter. You were quoting some random webpage. As I explained earlier: a more official source you could have quoted was the Catechism.
The Catechism was ordered by Pope John Paul II and made official by the congregation of Bishops and Cardinals. Its about as official as you can get. Its the thing you're supposed to quote when you're nitpicking at Catholic's faith.
> A mechanism designed by god would still be intelligent design, as an all knowing god it was still done with the knowledge that humans would arise and he would give them a soul.
But it wouldn't be incompatible with your belief in Evolution (I'm presuming??). So I'm not entirely sure why you'd be worried about this.
Do you have a reason why you find the answer to be insufficient? As I said earlier, different people believe in different ideas of what God is. That Catholics have a different interpretation compared to other denominations shouldn't be a surprise.
Look, Catholics have a compatible viewpoint on Evolution. They're more or less your allies with regards to Young Earth Creationism, reason, science, etc. etc.
That is not the official catholic position. That is just a random webpage written by a self-proclaming catholic editor to promote their books. Do not try too hard to harvest for official catholic positions on matters that are not the core faith ones (and history of the Universe most certainly is not): there are more than a billion catholics around the world, coming from any social status and literary level. There cannot possibly be a position common to all of them on nearly anything, except maybe core faith matters.
That said, you are right in your conclusion, because it is true that (nearly all) catholics are "creationist", in that they believe that God created the universe and everything in there. But many of them also believe in evolution via natural selection, in the very same way you believe it and as shown by the proofs and scientific thinking that our society has accumulated. There is no hex editing by God: it is still true that evolution happens under the guidance of God, because it happens under the laws he created. But (actually, just because of that) without the need of touching anything. On the other hand, it is also true that he may do some hex editing if he wished to, but many catholics agree that there is no need to believe that this has actually happened.
You can use the Canonical Law Codex and papal bulls if you're so inclined to check the official statements of the Catholic Church. These are very interesting and nuanced positions on many weirdnesses accumulated over centuries.
I may be missunderstanding your point, please forgive me if I'm missrepresenting your intention. But I think what you are saying is if God did something that appeared to have occured without God that would be a lie. If God did this it would then violate His holyness.
I think I can follow the argument but it seems to me to be contradicted by this: "Prov 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter."
Also Jesus's first miracle was to convert water into wine. If he did this would there not be evidence of fermented grape juice in the wine. Would this not also make Him a liar (by your reasoning)?. If there was no evidence of fermented grapes would it still be wine and if it's not wine wouldn't that miracle be a lie?
I'm not trying to be argumentative here, just wanting to explore your reasoning.
> I may be missunderstanding your point, please forgive me if I'm missrepresenting your intention. But I think what you are saying is if God did something that appeared to have occured without God that would be a lie.
No. That's not what I am stating at all.
Dinosaur bones are in the ground. Modern science has discovered Uranium-dating (allowing us to date the stars themselves!), Carbon Dating (which is only accurate for a few tens of thousands of years, but is sufficient for us to figure out most of Human history), as well as other forms of dating.
Based on the evidence we have gathered from God's Earth, Dinosaurs used to roam the Earth roughly 300 million years ago.
Based on the evidence we have gathered: the Uranium in the ground and the theoretical distribution of Uranium, the Sun itself was formed roughly 4-billion years ago.
Both of these give reason to believe that the solar system is roughly, 4 billion years old. And the earth itself is older than 300-million years (the rough age of the dinosaur bones we have discovered).
And based on the Carbon-14 we find in various artifacts around the world, we know that Humans are at least 10,000 years old, older than the age that Young Earth Creationists think we are (7000 years old... with Eden happening somewhere around year 5000 BC).
A Young Earth Creationist believes that God planted those Dinosaur bones, planted the Uranium, and planted the Carbon14 in the ground to trick archeologists, paleontologists, geologists, and physicists.
While my opinion, is that the all-loving God would rather have us humans discover science without mucking us up.
Surely God, at very least, would want us to trust that His creation is at least somewhat consistent?
Just to clarify on this point
>A Young Earth Creationist believes that God planted those Dinosaur bones, planted the Uranium, and planted the Carbon14 in the ground to trick archeologists,
paleontologists, geologists, and physicists.
That was not my understanding, I thought the argument was that God created an old universe. Just as He created Adam an adult male and as he turned water into an aged wine. Is that not a possibility without any requirement for deception?
I don't see the lack of consistency in that reasoning?
That's interesting that you'd ask if it's worth intellectual respect, I don't think that is what anyone is looking for here.
Most people don't believe in God because they think they've figured something out or that their intellectual pursuits have led to that conclusion. A belief in God requires belief that there are super natural forces at work, that escape scientific detection. Yes this goes against materialism and other axioms you may hold dear. But many people have experiences that lead them to believe this to be the case. I totally agree without this sort of personal experience there is no compelling reason to agree.
The point is there are people like my self that are totally behind science as the best way to understand our physical reality but have been convinced there exists a God that cannot proven or described. I don't know how the pieces fit but I'm not trying to make them fit.
Believing in God doesn't explain the universe for me it just adds another complex unknown.
I can't discuss "God" because there's no objective argument I can hold about Him.
But I can discuss religion and I can point when religious people behave in a stupid way.
Again, this is not about God, it is about religion. Some religions (e.g. Catholicism) have learned the hard way how to show respect for reason. Many others seem to not have done that.
In most cases, perhaps. I'm a bit of an outlier, my parents do not share my beliefs and did not raise me with any belief in God. A data point of one is not enough to draw any conclusions but it is a data point.
For God, Free Will reigns supreme. Most importantly the Free Will to believe in God or not.
So it's absolutely essential that the world look like it could have created itself. Because if there was evidence that God existed then free will is broken, and that is something God will not do.
> and false carbon 14 decay
There's nothing false about it. It's basically a backstory.
Not is God lying to you. If I "save state" in a game, and then load the state later - is that state a lie? No, it's simply how the current conditions are initialized.
> Not is God lying to you. If I "save state" in a game, and then load the state later - is that state a lie? No, it's simply how the current conditions are initialized.
The fundamental question is not "did God create man". Any religious person would believe that God created Man. Period.
The fundamental question is HOW did God create us. Current science suggests that we humans evolved from a species (the Homo Erectus). An animal that very much looked like us, but is slightly different.
We have evidence of Homo Erectus societies, tool use, fire use, and other human-like behavior.
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The two schools of thought are NOT Atheism vs Christianity. But between Creationism and plain-ol' Science. God can exist with science.
It is far more likely that God created us, and molded us through the Homo Erectus stage some 3-million years ago. Why would God falsely create Homo Erectus bones (anti-benevolence), when it is far more likely (ie: theologically consistent with the belief in a Benevolent God) for God to want us to believe and grow in biological science and understanding of our own bodies?
Homo Erectus existed. And modern Humans were born from them. Period. That doesn't change my opinion on God (or really, anyone's opnion)
There are lots of videos on youtube about creationism. I like watching them. I find the reasoning actually pretty good. Too lazy to dig up good videos right now. But don't knock it till you try it.
It’s fringe in the sense that a large majority of the world's professing Christians don’t subscribe to it. It also seems to me to be a fairly new take on the belief that the Earth is young. Back when I was a fundamentalist Christian we just denied altogether that the Earth even appears to be old. I guess the evidence is so overwhelming that the Earth is old that this idea is starting to take hold.
This reinforces my statement about people looking to rationalize beliefs. I think we all do this. No one can possibly prove all of the statements they believe to be true. Hence a lot of times one engages in a knee jerk reaction to contradictory evidence to seek out whatever plausible explanation one can think of.
People often times argue about what could be true instead of seeking out what is true.
I don’t understand your point here. I did mention in my comment that I was talking about the world's professing Christians. Do you have evidence that amongst the world's professing Christians the idea that the Earth is young but God created it to look old is mainstream? As far as I know this is a fringe idea but I haven’t been in tune with Christian thought for 15 years so things may have changed.
i actually misremembered that statistics -- it was that ~40% of americans explicitly believe in young earth creationism. young earth creationism is definitely a mainstream view nationally in the US. even if the level is half that globally among protestants it would qualify as mainstream. protestant denominations (particularly american fundamentalist ones) are also growing at a much faster rate across the world than catholicism.
"A 2017 Gallup creationism survey found 38% of adults in the United States held the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings, which Gallup noted was the lowest level in 35 years."
and according to this[1], globally 50% of protestant leaders are biblical literalists (generally associated with young earth beliefs)
> ~40% of americans explicitly believe in young earth creationism ...... God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years"
Those two are not the same thing! That's the entire topic of this thread!
> young earth creationism is definitely a mainstream view nationally in the US
Your data does not back up that sentence.
> are biblical literalists (generally associated with young earth beliefs)
Would agree with you that it's semi-mainstream. I grew up evangelical, and I heard that argument many times. Though it was never accepted doctrine nor preached. At least at my baptist church.
But there is one potentially fun part of this silly theology. While discussing this with a never-Christian friend of mine, we both had the epiphany there's an overlap between this doctrine and the "universe is a simulation" idea. Which really amused me.
Maybe, at least with believers of that sort, gnosticism will make a well-deserved comeback.
I find it exceedingly odd that people find it easy to believe that matter can be created from nothing, but find it so difficult to believe that meaning can be created from nothing.
The simulation theorists are interesting because they try to invest in a quasi-logical argument, but it is built on the same shaky foundations as religion.
Edit: it is built on this same foundation, of not believing in the possibility of creation of meaning from nothing. Which is the same foundation that religion is built on (note, I say religion, not belief in God). And I say this as someone who was brought up in a baptist church believing in 'Christian Science' with all the bullshit magazines and everything. Took me years to undo that mess in my thinking. So though I fully understand the resistance to undo the belief, I still find it exceedingly odd.
And it’s not much of a stretch. If we assume that an intelligent being can create both TIME and a rapidly expanding UNIVERSE, both of which we don’t fully understand, is it really that “fringe” for some to believe that our perception of “time” doesn't necessarily have to start at zero?
Assuming that makes everything impossible to prove, therefore unscientific. You can assume whatever you want. It is whether you're willing to question and falsify the belief that is important.
Time is a nice label we apply to certain casual sequences. Negative tone is used when describing symmetries in quantum physics or when comparing viewpoints on relativity.
It's not stating that our perception of time doesn't start at 0. It's stating that god created the universe specifically to look like something it wasn't.
It's not about effort. It's about all the pieces of the story making sense -- or failing to do so, due to being a human creation that is forced to reconcile with new understanding, especially in cosmology and biology.
Similar arguments are made in scientific discourse.
If you assume that the universe happened by chance, and the observable universe is just a part of a bigger multiverse, then you can ask yourself what is more likely:
1. The whole, enormous universe happening out of nothing, including you
2. Your small brain (no offense, we compare with the universe :P) happening out of nothing in a mental state that contains all memories of a world existing as you experience it now
Option 2. seems to be more likely, and at the same time most people would call it absurd. This tough experiment is called Boltzmann brain.
I’ve always believed that conspiracy theories are fundamentally motivated by a belief that things happen for a reason.
If a bad thing happened, seemingly undeserved, there must have been some dark force behind it — if not Satan or witches, then Jews or communists or Muslims or globalists or gays or whatever. The alternative — that people suffer for no reason at all, is intolerable for some people.
Actually that's not what the study implies. They found "rejection of science and animism" to be a stronger predictor of conspiracism. Although "finalism" was found to be second best so it is certainly part of the mix but going off this study you could not say it is the fundamental cause. In fact the researchers are careful to point out that they have established correlation and not cause.
Yes. A predisposition to finding agency where there is none is a key finding to both.[0] Its a coping method to randomness. Disease doesn’t just happen, someone did something to cause it. This person didn’t get away with a crime, they’ll be severely punished after they die. A random guy with a gun doesn’t just commit mass murder, someone powerful must of let him, or maybe even faked it. Even when there is a documented conspiracy to commit a horrific act, that’s not enough, because there must be an even bigger conspiracy to allow it to happen, because unacceptable alternative is that the good guys lost.
The question is what's behind it? My working conjecture is that it is some people that cannot tolerate the ambiguity of many events being essentially random, chaotic, or stochastic. They'd rather have an evil cabal deliberately executing the 9/11 attacks, or school shootings, or faking the school shootings, than to accept that sometimes things just get very far out of hand.
But, other than rough observation (and likely confirmation bias), I've not done much to substantiate this conjecture. Comments?
We evolved in small groups of people (around 100 people or so). Conspiracies are much more feasible at that scale. It’s basically your standard political intrigue and backstabbing. So that, IMO, is the genesis of conspiratorial thinking. Then I think people have a very hard time thinking about large scale systems, so they revert to explaining the difficult to understand with conspiracy.
I agree this paper doesn’t seem to present any issues. I can’t speak to whether it is useful, though.
As for your questions, I will put forth a theory that really isn’t all that crazy, or esoteric, but might help.
If religion, despite it’s means, has, over time (hundreds, thousands of years) encouraged adherence to social structures beneficial to survival and psychologically healthy livelihoods, shouldn’t that basis alone justify it’s prevalence?
If the only reason to deny this is the lucid awareness we ourselves experience, I cannot agree we are adhering to the dialectical approach we celebrate in the scientific method.
In this theory, religion serves a benefit to the ends of survival, giving these beliefs an evolutionary origin wildly entangled with the emergence of cognition and self-identity.
If this is the case, how do we reconcile that with science? Seems easier to me than any other way. Of course, these are our ancestors. This stuff is surely not simple.
This alone just begs for more questions that I think are classically best handled by humanities, but if I’m not mistaken this begs of multidisciplinary introspection. Granted, much of the humanities doesn’t take theology seriously these days but that’s a fairly recent issue. If you’re interested, there’s nobody stopping you from diving in.
Carl Jung is a useful place to start in terms of these natural cognitive mappings. Coincidentally Freud was actually a link between Jung and modern psychology these links are not much acknowledged these days. It’s all both very hand wavy and contentious depending who you ask. Anyhow, with Jung you don’t need to agree with his conclusions but he defines a map that can at least give an idea of what we could be working with and it leans heavily on mythology and imagination. It introduces some foundational stuff on how these unstable symbolic mappings could have assisted the transition into the lucid awareness that eventually became modern science. If you’ve never ‘gone here’ before, I will warn you: it’s big and deep.
There is a field of “Jungian psychology” but it’s mostly trying to find use in his work and I would recommend going strait to his work. “Man And His Symbols” is approachable enough to start.
I’ve opened a can of worms here, but it’s a fruitful one and very related to your interest because I am afraid these contentions with our own self-identities mark a cognitive recursion we are not seriously contending with.
Lots of interesting points IMHO. It is mentioned that those who "habitually seek meaning and patterns in the environment" and cannot tolerate mundane or unclear explanations for big world events are more prone to conspiracy theories. So on one hand, on this, I think you are right.
On the other hand, a lot of the article is devoted to the notion that conspiracy theories are a social defense mechanism among the more vulnerable, threatened, and/or powerless population.
Narcissism -- both of the self, and tribal narcissism, is also mentioned as a factor.
(Ironically, as the article mentions, conspiracy theories tend to make it less likely that individuals will take actions that, in the long run, might boost their autonomy and control. Thus the article calls conspiracy theories a "self-defeating form of motivated social cognition".)
I'll buy that it is a messy combination of any or all of the above factors that lead to a belief in conspiracy theories -- such make sense from my small sample of people I know who are more prone to conspiracy theories.
(They do note that "vulnerable and disadvantaged populations that have been identified as most likely to benefit from [conspiracy theories]" have not been as extensively studied as they would like to see. Interesting conclusions so far though.)
> evil cabal deliberately executing the 9/11 attacks
An evil cabal really did execute those attacks.
Your examples about school shootings are closer to the point you are trying to make, but even they are non-random in the crucial sense that they are the work of deliberate malevolent wills (though not usually conspiracies).
So I suppose ultimately I am agreeing with you that many people have habit of explaining the social world in terms of the deliberate acts of humans. But that's only because that is a perfectly good mental habit to have, it's an essential part of our toolkit. And like all tools it sometimes gets overused, and out in the tails it is no surprise that produces wacky conspiracy theories.
I suppose AQ does meet that definition, just not the one I was referring to -- the evil cabal is (supposed to be) the one the runs the world (shadowy Illuminati, lizard people, whatever), not a random enemy cabal that happens to pull off a spectacularly deadly stunt by exploiting our security weaknesses.
Ok, I thought you had in mind the kinds of folks who just thought e.g. that GWB or maybe Zionists faked the attacks. In which case it isn't an overactive intention detector but rather just partisanship induced delusion.
But yes. Illuminati type theories are something else again. Some people's intention detectors misfire so strongly that it is not enough that terrible events can be caused by an evil cabal that is merely trying to conquer us all.
> My working conjecture is that it is some people that cannot tolerate the ambiguity of many events being essentially random, chaotic, or stochastic.
A lot of people aren't willing to seriously entertain complexity and so rely paranoid thought processes. There's a good chunk of scientific evidence to think that this is driven by basic brain structures. You sometimes see this reported in the US as the difference between "liberal and conservative brains" [1] but this really distracts from the underlying issue. What's interesting is the growing evidence that this sort of paranoid thinking is encouraged by social media and the internet [2]. What you get are models where the intense paranoia of a few can be technologically amplified and virally overtake whole populations. Paranoia and fear is highly contagious and it seems the internet, rather than reducing such thinking by providing plentiful information, helps it spread.
YES, this study finding these effects from Facebook are extremely interesting.
"Their reams of data converged on a breathtaking statistic: Wherever per-person Facebook use rose to one standard deviation above the national average, attacks on refugees increased by about 50 percent."
"[the FB] algorithm is built around a core mission: promote content that will maximize user engagement. Posts that tap into negative, primal emotions like anger or fear, studies have found, perform best and so proliferate."
This selfish (to FB, Google, YouTube, etc) emphasis on engagement over truth has always disturbed me, but without any sound data. Now that some emerges, it much more rapidly than I expected approaches truly frightening levels.
I'm normally start from libertarian, but this seems to be actively damaging society (albeit unwittingly) for their own profit, a true tragedy of the commons.
I'm not sure what you're saying here -- evolution is a theory, specifically it has a huge amount of accumulated evidence that indicates that the theory is correct, and makes meaningful falsifiable predictions which have also been validated, and numerous long term experiments that agree entirely with the theory.
Religion is defined by faith in something/anything explicitly in the absence of evidence, hence "faith".
Conspiracy "theories" often use the absence of evidence as de facto evidence. Which is not remotely logically sound.
Not really. No one needs a label for things that are false.
Conspiracy theories are things that could actually be true but are designated as ridiculous by someone who perceives discussion as a threat. But lo and behold, "conspiracy theories" sometimes are true despite our efforts to write them off as quackery.
who was derided and written off as a conspiracy nutjob until his allegations surrounding the diversion of telecommunications traffic ended up being true.
We see it and participate in this every day. If you suggest there is life somewhere across the galaxy, they call you an astronomer. If you say you say a flying saucer in a photo of our own solar system, you are a nutjob. What is the fundamental difference?
>If you suggest there is life somewhere across the galaxy, they call you an astronomer.
No, that has nothing to do with being an astronomer.
>If you say you say a flying saucer in a photo of our own solar system, you are a nutjob. What is the fundamental difference?
The "astronomer" claims there is likely life somewhere across the galaxy, but doesn't state with absolute certainty that it exists, where it exists, what it looks like, etc.
Whereas "you" claim, explicitly, to have seen it in a photo, and that it is a flying saucer, and that anyone who says otherwise "perceives discussion as a threat."
Given the size of the known universe, the laws of physics forbidding, so far as we know, any form of FTL travel, the lack of any widespread corroborating evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life or technology in our solar system, and the tendency of the human brain to see things that aren't there (paredolia, false memories, etc.) the likelihood of what "you" believe to be a flying saucer being a flying saucer which just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be caught on camera is very, very, very low.
The fundamental difference between "nutjob" and "not a nutjob" is that the "nutjob" refuses to believe it can't be a flying saucer, regardless of the statistics or evidence to the contrary, whereas "not a nutjob" accepts that it almost certainly isn't.
The axiom that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" exists for a reason - not because the people requiring proof can't handle discussion, but because those claims inevitably require revising known science to be true, and "ordinary proof" is never sufficient to prove their case.
To me, the most interesting about this belief that "everything is part of a master plan and a big conspiracy" are:
1) There is always some kind of political undertone on it.
2) The ones most prone to believe in it are the ones most gullible to accept authoritarian rule. No wonder that every dictator, from Maduro to Erdogan to Putin and Jiping love so much this argument.
I couldn't find the distribution of religious affiliations in the supplemental material. Did anyone find it?
Surely, if you are going to do a study as such, you need to disclose the numbers on religious affiliations of the participants. It would be fun to see the correlations of analytical ability and affiliation to a particular religion. Or if you want to brush all religions under the same rug, then it doesn't matter.
My all time favorite is conspiracy theory is that the positions and angles of street inspection stickers on the backs of road signs are secretly driving directions to concentration camps for foreign UN soldiers to take people to.
I've known plenty of conspiracy theorists, on both sides of the political spectrum - black helicopters, chemtrails, faked moon landings, flat-earthers, NSA-records-your-phone calls-and-emails, white people were bred on an island by a professor named Jacob and are inherently evil as a result of the process, US government did OKC, US government did 9/11, Mossad did 9/11, JFK...
But I don't think the defining characteristic of these "believers" is not belief, but rather unbelief - a feeling that someone is lying to them. A lot of times they'll argue in the same evening for mutually contradictory conspiracy theories. Or will happily switch to a different theories about the moon landing as soon as I show some evidence against their first one. It's not at all about any one particular theory being true.
In end, perhaps it's a good thing to have a some percentage of the population be disposed to a little skepticism about those in power.
Ok, so right off the bat I have issues with this paper.
* A topic like this, especially with the stated result, seems super likely to be subject to confirmation bias so we need to be careful not to fall prey to that. The paper title seems geared to produce that.
* Study 1 (the college student study) had N=157, and as is the nature of such quizzes seems way too biased to be meaningful given the claims being presented. All were from one university, they received course credit for participating, 135 were psychology students, etc. This is ignoring potential bias in the results (I recall studies discussing the desire of study participants to "help" studies). So I don't believe anything super meaningful should be taken study 1.
* Study 2, French population analysis had a larger sample, but I'd still be reticent to make huge statements. The supplementary material doesn't include the actual quiz questions, but seems to be a 1-4 scale of agreement with a list of conspiracies + horoscope + creationism. The creationist question conflates young earth and creation theories which are obviously correlated but aren't strictly the same (I've known creationists who still realize actual age of earth)
* Study 3 is also super biased, N=513 French and 220 Swiss, 72% of the French participants were students at the host university. Again the Swiss students (but not the French) received course credit for participating. Participants were also informed of the goal of the study ahead of participating which could reasonably be expected to skew data.
Honestly it irks me that a paper like this has got into something like Cell as given the claims being made I would expect/requirer a larger and less biased sample and more information about the actual quiz contents.
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[ 128 ms ] story [ 1428 ms ] threadThe Matrix is working hard to preemptively discredit any sheep who dare stick their heads up.
My fav conspiracies:
- moon landing with Aldrin et al did not happen
- the left is importing immigrants who are dependent on welfare, which inevitably gets them to vote for more and more free stuff
- same financier's financed all sides of WWII
- flouride makes you dumb
- global warming is about creating global taxation
- Brexit was the plan from the very start (you didnt think the Monarchy was actually going to give up their sovereignty did you?)
E.g., the Grand Canyon totally proves a global flood, but scientists refuse to accept that because of their "faith" in the earth being billions of years old.
To make it personal, think about it like this: if you start by saying to yourself "this thing society thinks is acceptable is wrong," and if you then go on and apply that mindset to everything else, there is a nonzero chance that your honest first-principles evaluation of, say, young-earth creationism would come out positive. Unless you think your inner compass has a zero false positive rate, spin that wheel again for every single commonly accepted belief and you're essentially guaranteed to end up believing at least one think that might appear in a study like this.
“which was partly independent from religion, politics, age, education, agency detection, analytical thinking and perception of randomness.”
Plenty of smart people suffer from cognitive bias, I’d bet most do to some degree.
If you were in charge, what would you test?
Of course, this is functionally indistinguishable from an argument that the world was created last Tuesday, with all evidence of prior existence intact.
My understanding is that this is basically true though. That is, even fundamentalist Christians didn't believe in young earth creationism before the 1920s or so, and the reason it became a popular is that it was a reaction to that fact that mainstream science rejected the existence of climate change and tectonic plates.
There's a good talk about this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMaUzNlDnSY
It's basically the same as how homeopathy was created as a reaction to the fact that mainstream medicine had a success rate that was substantially lower than placebo treatments.
In each case science basically just got forked. And once it gets forked, it's impossible to use science on one side of the fork to convince people on the other side of the fork that they're wrong, because all the commits are out of order in way that changes the meaning of the diffs.
> Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
> Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
> The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
> If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Individual conspiracy theories have sometimes panned out to be real but that doesn’t mean one who leans towards conspiracism to explain things is right.
It’s one thing, for example, to believe that some aspect of the 9/11 story doesn’t hold up — perhaps that you believe the government covered up for Saudi involvement. That may be right or wrong, but it’s at least something that’s plausible.
A true conspiracy theorist would believe that the whole thing was made up and never happened, or that the whole thing was planned and executed by the Illuminati, who have been working together for centuries to control the masses through mind control.
EDIT: The fringe idea I referenced above is the notion that God created the world to look like it's really old even though it isn’t old. I've not encountered this rationale before. My comment is in no way diminishing religion.
It even has a dismissive name: Last Tuesdayism.
You have to be careful to keep the idea separate from Young Earth Creationism!
Young Earth Creationism directly contradicts observation. In contrast believing the universe was created already old does not conflict with science (you just can't prove it one way or another).
Do you really believe this idea? Do you think it is worth intellectual respect?
Edit: for perspective: there was a time the Catholic church rejected reason. It ended badly to Galileo and Copernicus and had very bad repercussions on the church credibility, from Spinoza to Voltaire. American Pentecostals and fundamentalist Jews and Muslims should learn that lesson: on the long run reason wins.
There's a large number of people who believe this.
Its a bit weird, because it implies that God is above lying to his followers. So as a Christian myself, who believes in Omnipotence (all powerful), Omniscient (all knowing), and Benevolence (all-loving), the viewpoint that God would explicitly lie to us is almost certainly against the 3rd peg: its anti-benevolence.
Anyway, different Christians obviously have different beliefs on the matter. I am in agreement with the poster you responded to: it is an... unfortunately... mainstream belief in some Christian communities.
I'm sure there are holes people can poke at my specific denomination of course. So it'd be hypocritical for me to push too much against the belief that "God is tricking us to see the true believers vs the evolutionists". But... yeah, its just not a belief I can get behind.
> Such that he planted fossils and false carbon 14 decay just to fool scientists?
Generally speaking, the argument goes to look at the Old Testament, specifically the Book of Job. In the Old Testament, God tested some of his prophets with incredible tests (ie: letting the Devil kill his kids, take all of his wealth away, etc. etc). So the idea of "God is just testing us" is generally the argument that comes forth.
I guess the general idea is that God can cause issues that seem big to us, but are small in the great scheme of His plans. If you want the religious background on this particular school of thought. The Book of Job has the prophet lose everything, but eventually gains greater prosperity in the end. In particular, Job deserves prosperity because even when all hope was lost, he kept his faith.
Still, that fundamentally doesn't quite explain why God would particularly lie to us humans about the "evolution" issue. So I've never personally liked this particular religious argument. I find it far more likely that God would prefer us Humans to discover science and properly make discoveries and advance our culture for the good of all mankind.
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It comes down to Biblical Literalism. Some people believe that the Bible is literally true. That there were exactly 7 days of creation, that Methusala lived over 900 years old... that a dude named "Samson" had magical hair, etc. etc. And since Biblical Literalism is a foundational peg to those denominations, they go through great pains to prove it.
Alternatively, if you're in my camp, you are open to interpreting the Bible. My denomination believes that the Bible is a collection of stories that God wants us to know about. Not necessarily that the word is literally true.
American Pentecostalism sounds like a very stupid tribal superstition to me.
I come from an European and Catholic background. Catholicism and the Protestant mainstream that adopted most of their Theology (e.g.: Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism) do have a deep respect for science. They learned that lesson painfully, after what they did to Copernicus and Galileo.
Pentecostals are headed to serious mistakes if they think anti-reason can take them anywhere.
And even for the Biblical literalists: they only have to look into the Bible to see the many examples of Pagan religions, from the Golden Calf, to Pharaoh / Exodus, and more, to understand that false gods exist. So surely, they should understand the importance of "getting religion correct".
So I think it is fair to call out certain religious doctrines to be "unhelpful", or even "evil", depending on the case. But I wouldn't generalize much further than that.
my point is they're doing pretty well despite you knowing better
When I use the word "mistake" I am not referring to number of dumb followers, is about intellectual relevance. It is pretty clear that, in developed countries, these obscurantist and fundamentalist creeds are loosing cultural hegemony (e.g.: same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization, multiculturalism, abortion, etc).
> Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.
That isn't evolution via natural selection, that's evolution via gods hex editor altering the genome, they explicitly reject natural evolution:
> While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.
They also believe in a literal Adam and Eve:
> The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, "The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents"
Catholics are creationists, just not of they young earth variety.
Edit - Source: https://www.catholic.com/tract/adam-eve-and-evolution
I disagree with the interpretation of your source.
> Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul.
A quote straight out of your source. Pretty clear that Natural Selection could be a mechanism designed by God.
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With regards to Adam and Eve, it doesn't seem like the Church literally believes that they perhaps existed. But the fall of man away from God is tied to our gain of knowledge (the core element of the story).
The important element of the creation story, the part that is Catholic Doctrine above all else, is the existence of Original Sin. The moment that the first Man and first Woman turned against God, due to gaining knowledge forbidden to animals. Original Sin is the doctrine that is most fundamental to the Catholic faith.
It helps to understand what is Catholic Doctrine, so you know what the author is trying to say in those parts.
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Note: Catholic Doctrine (from the Catechism, one of the most important books in the Catholic Faith) is:
> Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth
Not my fault the pope can't be more clear. It's ridiculous that their official beliefs are open for interpretation at all.
> A quote straight out of your source. Pretty clear that Natural Selection could be a mechanism designed by God.
A mechanism designed by god would still be intelligent design, as an all knowing god it was still done with the knowledge that humans would arise and he would give them a soul. And given other beliefs that have god interacting with the universe directly and recently why would such an elaborate process be needed for humans to arise? It's like they're using a very different definition of god than the usual one.
If you want a more official source, then quote more official material.
You weren't quoting the pope, or really any pope, on the matter. You were quoting some random webpage. As I explained earlier: a more official source you could have quoted was the Catechism.
The Catechism was ordered by Pope John Paul II and made official by the congregation of Bishops and Cardinals. Its about as official as you can get. Its the thing you're supposed to quote when you're nitpicking at Catholic's faith.
> A mechanism designed by god would still be intelligent design, as an all knowing god it was still done with the knowledge that humans would arise and he would give them a soul.
But it wouldn't be incompatible with your belief in Evolution (I'm presuming??). So I'm not entirely sure why you'd be worried about this.
Do you have a reason why you find the answer to be insufficient? As I said earlier, different people believe in different ideas of what God is. That Catholics have a different interpretation compared to other denominations shouldn't be a surprise.
Look, Catholics have a compatible viewpoint on Evolution. They're more or less your allies with regards to Young Earth Creationism, reason, science, etc. etc.
That said, you are right in your conclusion, because it is true that (nearly all) catholics are "creationist", in that they believe that God created the universe and everything in there. But many of them also believe in evolution via natural selection, in the very same way you believe it and as shown by the proofs and scientific thinking that our society has accumulated. There is no hex editing by God: it is still true that evolution happens under the guidance of God, because it happens under the laws he created. But (actually, just because of that) without the need of touching anything. On the other hand, it is also true that he may do some hex editing if he wished to, but many catholics agree that there is no need to believe that this has actually happened.
I think I can follow the argument but it seems to me to be contradicted by this: "Prov 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter."
Also Jesus's first miracle was to convert water into wine. If he did this would there not be evidence of fermented grape juice in the wine. Would this not also make Him a liar (by your reasoning)?. If there was no evidence of fermented grapes would it still be wine and if it's not wine wouldn't that miracle be a lie?
I'm not trying to be argumentative here, just wanting to explore your reasoning.
No. That's not what I am stating at all.
Dinosaur bones are in the ground. Modern science has discovered Uranium-dating (allowing us to date the stars themselves!), Carbon Dating (which is only accurate for a few tens of thousands of years, but is sufficient for us to figure out most of Human history), as well as other forms of dating.
Based on the evidence we have gathered from God's Earth, Dinosaurs used to roam the Earth roughly 300 million years ago.
Based on the evidence we have gathered: the Uranium in the ground and the theoretical distribution of Uranium, the Sun itself was formed roughly 4-billion years ago.
Both of these give reason to believe that the solar system is roughly, 4 billion years old. And the earth itself is older than 300-million years (the rough age of the dinosaur bones we have discovered).
And based on the Carbon-14 we find in various artifacts around the world, we know that Humans are at least 10,000 years old, older than the age that Young Earth Creationists think we are (7000 years old... with Eden happening somewhere around year 5000 BC).
A Young Earth Creationist believes that God planted those Dinosaur bones, planted the Uranium, and planted the Carbon14 in the ground to trick archeologists, paleontologists, geologists, and physicists.
While my opinion, is that the all-loving God would rather have us humans discover science without mucking us up.
Surely God, at very least, would want us to trust that His creation is at least somewhat consistent?
Just to clarify on this point >A Young Earth Creationist believes that God planted those Dinosaur bones, planted the Uranium, and planted the Carbon14 in the ground to trick archeologists, paleontologists, geologists, and physicists.
That was not my understanding, I thought the argument was that God created an old universe. Just as He created Adam an adult male and as he turned water into an aged wine. Is that not a possibility without any requirement for deception?
I don't see the lack of consistency in that reasoning?
That's not an issue at all. "Old Earth Creationism" seems compatible with mainstream science. I don't have much issue with Old Earth Creationists.
"Young Earth Creationism", which a number of people believe in, suggests that God Created the Earth in roughly 4000BC to 6000BC, in exactly 7 days.
Most people don't believe in God because they think they've figured something out or that their intellectual pursuits have led to that conclusion. A belief in God requires belief that there are super natural forces at work, that escape scientific detection. Yes this goes against materialism and other axioms you may hold dear. But many people have experiences that lead them to believe this to be the case. I totally agree without this sort of personal experience there is no compelling reason to agree.
The point is there are people like my self that are totally behind science as the best way to understand our physical reality but have been convinced there exists a God that cannot proven or described. I don't know how the pieces fit but I'm not trying to make them fit.
Believing in God doesn't explain the universe for me it just adds another complex unknown.
But I can discuss religion and I can point when religious people behave in a stupid way.
Again, this is not about God, it is about religion. Some religions (e.g. Catholicism) have learned the hard way how to show respect for reason. Many others seem to not have done that.
translation: because that's what they were told by their parents when they were young
So it's absolutely essential that the world look like it could have created itself. Because if there was evidence that God existed then free will is broken, and that is something God will not do.
> and false carbon 14 decay
There's nothing false about it. It's basically a backstory.
Not is God lying to you. If I "save state" in a game, and then load the state later - is that state a lie? No, it's simply how the current conditions are initialized.
The fundamental question is not "did God create man". Any religious person would believe that God created Man. Period.
The fundamental question is HOW did God create us. Current science suggests that we humans evolved from a species (the Homo Erectus). An animal that very much looked like us, but is slightly different.
We have evidence of Homo Erectus societies, tool use, fire use, and other human-like behavior.
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The two schools of thought are NOT Atheism vs Christianity. But between Creationism and plain-ol' Science. God can exist with science.
It is far more likely that God created us, and molded us through the Homo Erectus stage some 3-million years ago. Why would God falsely create Homo Erectus bones (anti-benevolence), when it is far more likely (ie: theologically consistent with the belief in a Benevolent God) for God to want us to believe and grow in biological science and understanding of our own bodies?
Homo Erectus existed. And modern Humans were born from them. Period. That doesn't change my opinion on God (or really, anyone's opnion)
This reinforces my statement about people looking to rationalize beliefs. I think we all do this. No one can possibly prove all of the statements they believe to be true. Hence a lot of times one engages in a knee jerk reaction to contradictory evidence to seek out whatever plausible explanation one can think of.
People often times argue about what could be true instead of seeking out what is true.
"A 2017 Gallup creationism survey found 38% of adults in the United States held the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings, which Gallup noted was the lowest level in 35 years."
and according to this[1], globally 50% of protestant leaders are biblical literalists (generally associated with young earth beliefs)
[1] http://www.pewforum.org/2011/06/22/global-survey-of-evangeli...
Those two are not the same thing! That's the entire topic of this thread!
> young earth creationism is definitely a mainstream view nationally in the US
Your data does not back up that sentence.
> are biblical literalists (generally associated with young earth beliefs)
Again, not necessarily.
But there is one potentially fun part of this silly theology. While discussing this with a never-Christian friend of mine, we both had the epiphany there's an overlap between this doctrine and the "universe is a simulation" idea. Which really amused me.
Maybe, at least with believers of that sort, gnosticism will make a well-deserved comeback.
The simulation theorists are interesting because they try to invest in a quasi-logical argument, but it is built on the same shaky foundations as religion.
Edit: it is built on this same foundation, of not believing in the possibility of creation of meaning from nothing. Which is the same foundation that religion is built on (note, I say religion, not belief in God). And I say this as someone who was brought up in a baptist church believing in 'Christian Science' with all the bullshit magazines and everything. Took me years to undo that mess in my thinking. So though I fully understand the resistance to undo the belief, I still find it exceedingly odd.
Not a new idea – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis
Time is a nice label we apply to certain casual sequences. Negative tone is used when describing symmetries in quantum physics or when comparing viewpoints on relativity.
If you assume that the universe happened by chance, and the observable universe is just a part of a bigger multiverse, then you can ask yourself what is more likely:
1. The whole, enormous universe happening out of nothing, including you
2. Your small brain (no offense, we compare with the universe :P) happening out of nothing in a mental state that contains all memories of a world existing as you experience it now
Option 2. seems to be more likely, and at the same time most people would call it absurd. This tough experiment is called Boltzmann brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
So, do you think you are a Boltzmann brain? It seems like answer to this type of problem depends fully on your a prior's.
It's a big problem in cosmology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_problem_(cosmology)
If a bad thing happened, seemingly undeserved, there must have been some dark force behind it — if not Satan or witches, then Jews or communists or Muslims or globalists or gays or whatever. The alternative — that people suffer for no reason at all, is intolerable for some people.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712257/
The question is what's behind it? My working conjecture is that it is some people that cannot tolerate the ambiguity of many events being essentially random, chaotic, or stochastic. They'd rather have an evil cabal deliberately executing the 9/11 attacks, or school shootings, or faking the school shootings, than to accept that sometimes things just get very far out of hand.
But, other than rough observation (and likely confirmation bias), I've not done much to substantiate this conjecture. Comments?
As for your questions, I will put forth a theory that really isn’t all that crazy, or esoteric, but might help.
If religion, despite it’s means, has, over time (hundreds, thousands of years) encouraged adherence to social structures beneficial to survival and psychologically healthy livelihoods, shouldn’t that basis alone justify it’s prevalence?
If the only reason to deny this is the lucid awareness we ourselves experience, I cannot agree we are adhering to the dialectical approach we celebrate in the scientific method.
In this theory, religion serves a benefit to the ends of survival, giving these beliefs an evolutionary origin wildly entangled with the emergence of cognition and self-identity.
If this is the case, how do we reconcile that with science? Seems easier to me than any other way. Of course, these are our ancestors. This stuff is surely not simple.
This alone just begs for more questions that I think are classically best handled by humanities, but if I’m not mistaken this begs of multidisciplinary introspection. Granted, much of the humanities doesn’t take theology seriously these days but that’s a fairly recent issue. If you’re interested, there’s nobody stopping you from diving in.
Carl Jung is a useful place to start in terms of these natural cognitive mappings. Coincidentally Freud was actually a link between Jung and modern psychology these links are not much acknowledged these days. It’s all both very hand wavy and contentious depending who you ask. Anyhow, with Jung you don’t need to agree with his conclusions but he defines a map that can at least give an idea of what we could be working with and it leans heavily on mythology and imagination. It introduces some foundational stuff on how these unstable symbolic mappings could have assisted the transition into the lucid awareness that eventually became modern science. If you’ve never ‘gone here’ before, I will warn you: it’s big and deep.
There is a field of “Jungian psychology” but it’s mostly trying to find use in his work and I would recommend going strait to his work. “Man And His Symbols” is approachable enough to start.
I’ve opened a can of worms here, but it’s a fruitful one and very related to your interest because I am afraid these contentions with our own self-identities mark a cognitive recursion we are not seriously contending with.
Lots of interesting points IMHO. It is mentioned that those who "habitually seek meaning and patterns in the environment" and cannot tolerate mundane or unclear explanations for big world events are more prone to conspiracy theories. So on one hand, on this, I think you are right.
On the other hand, a lot of the article is devoted to the notion that conspiracy theories are a social defense mechanism among the more vulnerable, threatened, and/or powerless population.
Narcissism -- both of the self, and tribal narcissism, is also mentioned as a factor.
(Ironically, as the article mentions, conspiracy theories tend to make it less likely that individuals will take actions that, in the long run, might boost their autonomy and control. Thus the article calls conspiracy theories a "self-defeating form of motivated social cognition".)
I'll buy that it is a messy combination of any or all of the above factors that lead to a belief in conspiracy theories -- such make sense from my small sample of people I know who are more prone to conspiracy theories.
(They do note that "vulnerable and disadvantaged populations that have been identified as most likely to benefit from [conspiracy theories]" have not been as extensively studied as they would like to see. Interesting conclusions so far though.)
An evil cabal really did execute those attacks.
Your examples about school shootings are closer to the point you are trying to make, but even they are non-random in the crucial sense that they are the work of deliberate malevolent wills (though not usually conspiracies).
So I suppose ultimately I am agreeing with you that many people have habit of explaining the social world in terms of the deliberate acts of humans. But that's only because that is a perfectly good mental habit to have, it's an essential part of our toolkit. And like all tools it sometimes gets overused, and out in the tails it is no surprise that produces wacky conspiracy theories.
I suppose AQ does meet that definition, just not the one I was referring to -- the evil cabal is (supposed to be) the one the runs the world (shadowy Illuminati, lizard people, whatever), not a random enemy cabal that happens to pull off a spectacularly deadly stunt by exploiting our security weaknesses.
But yes. Illuminati type theories are something else again. Some people's intention detectors misfire so strongly that it is not enough that terrible events can be caused by an evil cabal that is merely trying to conquer us all.
A lot of people aren't willing to seriously entertain complexity and so rely paranoid thought processes. There's a good chunk of scientific evidence to think that this is driven by basic brain structures. You sometimes see this reported in the US as the difference between "liberal and conservative brains" [1] but this really distracts from the underlying issue. What's interesting is the growing evidence that this sort of paranoid thinking is encouraged by social media and the internet [2]. What you get are models where the intense paranoia of a few can be technologically amplified and virally overtake whole populations. Paranoia and fear is highly contagious and it seems the internet, rather than reducing such thinking by providing plentiful information, helps it spread.
[1] eg https://www.businessinsider.com/psychological-differences-be..., https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/study-predicts...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/world/europe/facebook-ref...
"Their reams of data converged on a breathtaking statistic: Wherever per-person Facebook use rose to one standard deviation above the national average, attacks on refugees increased by about 50 percent."
"[the FB] algorithm is built around a core mission: promote content that will maximize user engagement. Posts that tap into negative, primal emotions like anger or fear, studies have found, perform best and so proliferate."
This selfish (to FB, Google, YouTube, etc) emphasis on engagement over truth has always disturbed me, but without any sound data. Now that some emerges, it much more rapidly than I expected approaches truly frightening levels.
I'm normally start from libertarian, but this seems to be actively damaging society (albeit unwittingly) for their own profit, a true tragedy of the commons.
Religion is defined by faith in something/anything explicitly in the absence of evidence, hence "faith".
Conspiracy "theories" often use the absence of evidence as de facto evidence. Which is not remotely logically sound.
Conspiracy theories are things that could actually be true but are designated as ridiculous by someone who perceives discussion as a threat. But lo and behold, "conspiracy theories" sometimes are true despite our efforts to write them off as quackery.
My favorite example is Mark Klein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein
who was derided and written off as a conspiracy nutjob until his allegations surrounding the diversion of telecommunications traffic ended up being true.
We see it and participate in this every day. If you suggest there is life somewhere across the galaxy, they call you an astronomer. If you say you say a flying saucer in a photo of our own solar system, you are a nutjob. What is the fundamental difference?
No, that has nothing to do with being an astronomer.
>If you say you say a flying saucer in a photo of our own solar system, you are a nutjob. What is the fundamental difference?
The "astronomer" claims there is likely life somewhere across the galaxy, but doesn't state with absolute certainty that it exists, where it exists, what it looks like, etc.
Whereas "you" claim, explicitly, to have seen it in a photo, and that it is a flying saucer, and that anyone who says otherwise "perceives discussion as a threat."
Given the size of the known universe, the laws of physics forbidding, so far as we know, any form of FTL travel, the lack of any widespread corroborating evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life or technology in our solar system, and the tendency of the human brain to see things that aren't there (paredolia, false memories, etc.) the likelihood of what "you" believe to be a flying saucer being a flying saucer which just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be caught on camera is very, very, very low.
The fundamental difference between "nutjob" and "not a nutjob" is that the "nutjob" refuses to believe it can't be a flying saucer, regardless of the statistics or evidence to the contrary, whereas "not a nutjob" accepts that it almost certainly isn't.
The axiom that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" exists for a reason - not because the people requiring proof can't handle discussion, but because those claims inevitably require revising known science to be true, and "ordinary proof" is never sufficient to prove their case.
1) There is always some kind of political undertone on it.
2) The ones most prone to believe in it are the ones most gullible to accept authoritarian rule. No wonder that every dictator, from Maduro to Erdogan to Putin and Jiping love so much this argument.
Could anyone point me in the right direction? I can't really think anything of this study without them.
Surely, if you are going to do a study as such, you need to disclose the numbers on religious affiliations of the participants. It would be fun to see the correlations of analytical ability and affiliation to a particular religion. Or if you want to brush all religions under the same rug, then it doesn't matter.
I've known plenty of conspiracy theorists, on both sides of the political spectrum - black helicopters, chemtrails, faked moon landings, flat-earthers, NSA-records-your-phone calls-and-emails, white people were bred on an island by a professor named Jacob and are inherently evil as a result of the process, US government did OKC, US government did 9/11, Mossad did 9/11, JFK...
But I don't think the defining characteristic of these "believers" is not belief, but rather unbelief - a feeling that someone is lying to them. A lot of times they'll argue in the same evening for mutually contradictory conspiracy theories. Or will happily switch to a different theories about the moon landing as soon as I show some evidence against their first one. It's not at all about any one particular theory being true.
In end, perhaps it's a good thing to have a some percentage of the population be disposed to a little skepticism about those in power.
* A topic like this, especially with the stated result, seems super likely to be subject to confirmation bias so we need to be careful not to fall prey to that. The paper title seems geared to produce that.
* Study 1 (the college student study) had N=157, and as is the nature of such quizzes seems way too biased to be meaningful given the claims being presented. All were from one university, they received course credit for participating, 135 were psychology students, etc. This is ignoring potential bias in the results (I recall studies discussing the desire of study participants to "help" studies). So I don't believe anything super meaningful should be taken study 1.
* Study 2, French population analysis had a larger sample, but I'd still be reticent to make huge statements. The supplementary material doesn't include the actual quiz questions, but seems to be a 1-4 scale of agreement with a list of conspiracies + horoscope + creationism. The creationist question conflates young earth and creation theories which are obviously correlated but aren't strictly the same (I've known creationists who still realize actual age of earth)
* Study 3 is also super biased, N=513 French and 220 Swiss, 72% of the French participants were students at the host university. Again the Swiss students (but not the French) received course credit for participating. Participants were also informed of the goal of the study ahead of participating which could reasonably be expected to skew data.
Honestly it irks me that a paper like this has got into something like Cell as given the claims being made I would expect/requirer a larger and less biased sample and more information about the actual quiz contents.