Self-deception as a coping strategy for Christians

Intelligent Design is simply nonsense. If Intelligent Design is a valid scientific concept, why is it that we have examples of IDIOTIC design in so many organism, including vertbrates? All their eyes are wired BACKWARDS, making their retinas vulnerable to damage. And there is no good reason for this, because the eyes of cephalopods are wired FORWARDS. It seems that there was a more intelligent Designer for the cephalopod eyes than for the vertebrate eyes. - Dale Husband September 10, 2008 11:17PM

Looking at things scientifically? Science is ultimately based on the scientific method, which is used to support and confirm physical and chemical laws. It is the application of those laws to the past that makes natural history possible and the application of those same laws to the future that makes it possible to make predictions. The question is, what physical and chemical laws are in play in Intelligent Design? We know evolution is scientific because it does not contradict any scientific laws, we can make predictions based on evolutionary theory, and we can falsify it by finding a possible mechanism that would prevent mutations from accumulating beyond a certain limit, making evolution beyond the limits of a "created kind" impossible. But we have found no such thing, ever. You cannot test to see if something in biology is "intelligently designed" by reference to scientific laws. Instead, you would ASSUME something is designed just because it looks complex and specific, but such complexity is indeed possible via natural selection, because complex organisms may have survival value over less complex organisms. DNA, RNA, and proteins are polymers, molecules that are made of repeating parts, and they can actually be of unlimited length, so their complexity is also unlimited. In short, there is NO evidence for Intelligent Design. None. It is theology, nothing more. - Dale Husband September 11, 2008 11:07PM

As to the title read SELF-DECEPTION AS A COPING STRATEGY FOR CHRISTIANS which explains how we Christians deal with contradicting evidence.

How we Christians? So this is what you do? Can you give at least some of the rest of us credit for trying to think things through honestly and let go of bad ideas?

i-iv are psychological biases everyone has to some extent - not just Christians. Its one of the reasons science does peer review and confirmation experiments. Otherwise you get N-rays.

Religions lack these mechanisms. They could ALL be N-rays. :)

Though Luskin's case is unbelievably egregious. Having read through most of the Opposingviews posts, I have to say its just comical to claim there are "zero" anti-ID rebuttals.

I rather think all humans are prone to self deception to a greater degree than the vast majority would admit, given a motivation.

IDers and the like would say that this would also explain the fact that "Darwinists" insist, against ID "evidence," that evolution is the true basic mechanism that created the biodiversity that we see around us.

This ignores the fact that there is no such thing as "Darwinism." If someone came up with a truly better explanation than evolution then biologists would flock to it. The is no motivation corresponding to religion to provide an incentive to stick with the idea.

Creationists, in all their forms, seem not to be able to grasp this. Possibly as another example of self deception.

Have I got timming or what? ;)

jobby said: ... wrong. the testing is just as valid as the testing for Darwinism. show me the test that shows NS caused the complex lif forms.

@Casey Luskin - Rebuttal

jobby said: ou cannot test to see if something in biology is “intelligently designed” by reference to scientific laws. Instead, you would ASSUME something is designed just because it looks complex and specific, ... wrong. the testing is just as valid as the testing for Darwinism. show me the test that shows NS caused the complex lif forms.

Dale Husband said: All this is consistent with known scientific laws. What laws do Intelligent Design refer to or support?

Dale Husband said: All this is consistent with known scientific laws. What laws do Intelligent Design refer to or support?

PvM writes that the cited article "explains how we [?] Christians deal with contradicting evidence." Not quite accurate: the article as a whole addresses how some Christians deal with some contradicting evidence (on topics of economic justice), a much more restricted subject. There is of course no one way that Christians deal with contradicting evidence: Christians are far too diverse a group for any such thing to exist.

Moreoever, the passage citing the 6 techniques of self-deception is not, in its original context, a description of some alleged special Christian variety of self-deception but a summary of results from cognitive psychology about how self-deception in general functions. The citation is to a 1989 article in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, “Self-Deception, Human Emotion and Moral Responsibility,” that does not appear even to focus on religious believers. (Unfortunately, it would cost me $29 to summon up a copy of the JTSB article, so I'm not going to. But I bet a panda-burger that the article doesn't even distinguish religious believers' self-deceptive techniques from those of other people.)

The idea -- if anyone does hold it -- that "Christians" possess any technique of self-deception special to themselves is simply silly. Only a few entries earlier on the Thumb we read that the Vatican has excluded ID and creationism from its evolution conference, naming good reasons for doing so -- and Catholics were the most numerous group of Christians on Earth the last time I checked.

There is almost no point in making any generalizations about "Christians" at all, in the realm of evolutionary belief or any other.

They bait-and-switch their definitions, first referring to the formal law that total entropy always increases over time (a fundamental law of physics), then switching it with their notion that complexity (which is not even the same as entropy) cannot increase spontaneously. Therefore, when you point out to them that evolution can increase complexity, you get the (wrong) answer that this violates the laws of thermodynamics. If we actually use the law properly, all it says is that energy and entropy changes must be balanced properly. Evolution is well within these laws.

— Venus Moustrap

Larry Gilman's post effectively answers the OP, imo.

FL

FL said: Larry Gilman's post effectively answers the OP, imo. FL

Could PvM be registered as an "expert" so as to raise "formal objections"?

Some evidence for the fideistic nature of materialism.

(i) Screening. This means that we select from all the information available to us that which is consistent with the beliefs we would like to have. We fail to hear the discordant notes.

A frequent problem on evolution promoting websites. Ask where cytosine synthesis came from, how CERV1 and 2 is found in primates but not humans, why recent volcanic eruptions show radio isotope dating 100s MYrs older than it should, or of course how red cells can be found intact in a 69 Myr old T rex - and often the answer is full of perjorative nonsequitors.

(ii) Weighted evidence. We give greater weight to the evidence which supports what we want to believe about ourselves, and we discount the evidence which points in the other direction. Evidence that supports our self-interest is seen as logical and compelling.

Homology is an excellent example. Again and again, materialists convince themselves this is incontrovertible evidence of descent, even though the nature and distribution of the distinctions argue against descent.

(iii) Confirmation. Our attention is quickly drawn to little bits of evidence which confirm us in our false beliefs. Events which confirm us become significant and are remembered whilst those which might appear to have disconfirmed the event are quickly forgotten or regarded as insignificant.

Marcellin Boule's reconstruction of Neanderthal skulls? Why did Dubois conceal the cranial capacity of Homo wadjenkisis (1550 and 1650 cc) for 30 years, was it because it there were adjacent to his precious Pithecanthropus? Homo rudolfensis? What about Hesperopithecus haroldcookii (which the press hastily called 'Nebraska man') actually of course a pig's tooth. Or at the less dramatic end of the spectrum how about the extraordinary ageing of Rhodesian man 11kyrs 1921, 40 kyrs 1962, 125+kyrs 1973, 300-400 kyrs 1999! Or the rather curious foot shuffling over the titling of Australopithecus ramidus to trumpet blasts and headlines, to the humbler Ardipethicus ramidus a year later in 1995 (even more curious was Ian Tattershall's fury at being prevented from examining the fossils). The instances of misleading representations of fossil series (as alleged not by creationists but by evolutionary minded colleagues) especially of horse series and ape-humanoid sequences are well, starting from T.H.Huxley's inclusion of ape ancestors he didn't himself believe in. There's plenty more where that came from....

(iv) Gradualism. We do not take too big a step at once because this would be difficult to deny.

How true! How astonishly true of naturalism!

(v) Refusal to review the evidence. We do not subject our preferred beliefs to periodic review in order to update them, and thus face the possible risk of invalidation.

A prime example being the Missoula flood - resisted for decaded in spite of the evidence by large numbers of eminent geologists, on the basis it smacked on cataclysmic geology. http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/projects/geoweb/participants/dutch/VTrips/Scablands0.HTM

(vi) Habit. These tricks of thinking and judging become habitual with us so that we gradually lose the very skills of self-critical knowledge. We become habituated in patterns of thought which contribute to and maintain us in our self-deception.

How dangerous never to examine one's religious preconceptions! Especially when the Deity worshipped is inanimate Nature herself!

By the way, I was born and bred into a family which took evolution as granted.

So, then, charles, tell us again what the names of the Creationists who discovered that Piltdown Man was really a modern human skull with a filed down orangutan's jawbone or that Nebraska Man was actually a peccary's tooth?

Oh, wait, you can't because Creationists never bothered to look at either.

Quite true but, why should creationists be the only thinkers? Do we claim a monopoly on intellection.

charles said: Quite true but, why should creationists be the only thinkers? Do we claim a monopoly on intellection.

charles said: Quite true but, why should creationists be the only thinkers? Do we claim a monopoly on intellection.

charles said: Quite true but, why should creationists be the only thinkers? Do we claim a monopoly on intellection.

charles said: A prime example being the Missoula flood - resisted for decaded in spite of the evidence by large numbers of eminent geologists, on the basis it smacked on cataclysmic geology.

but not from competent scientists in the scientific community.

iml8 said: The mavericks were always members of the scientific communities they were struggling with. They took a level of abuse, but they published scientific papers and made their case. They might have got mad at times but they knew they had to answer criticisms and not just blow them off. And they absolutely knew they were not going to succeed until they sold the scientific community. They never even thought of taking their controversy to secondary school textbooks first.

The mavericks were always members of the scientific communities they were struggling with. They took a level of abuse, but they published scientific papers and made their case. They might have got mad at times but they knew they had to answer criticisms and not just blow them off. And they absolutely knew they were not going to succeed until they sold the scientific community. They never even thought of taking their controversy to secondary school textbooks first.

— iml8

Mike Elzinga said: There is no question that the scientific enterprise can get rough at times. There is competition for scarce resources, money and workers. Judgments have to be made about the research potential of young, newly-minted researchers. There are politics over space, priorities, qualifications, payoff/risk ratios. All this is just as necessary as it is in any area where resources and time are less than what is required for the number of tasks that need to be done.

Mike Elzinga said: The relaxed scientist on television passionately explaining the excitement of his or her work is mostly an illusion. This is a time-out opportunity for a busy scientist. However, most of my colleagues I have worked with don’t care to be in the spotlight anyway; they are too busy, and they often feel the reporter will just mischaracterize what they are reporting.

Stanton said: Like when the reporters keep asking about how the scientist's current project of genetically engineering more nutritious vegetables is just another ploy by their horned masters to gather more babies with which to leaven their unholy matzo bread with?