The debate is over, we are slowly closing in on the mental illnesses of the believers. Now the religious and advertising companies will respond by saying that the study was somehow biased, you know - because it's a conspiracy and all.
Wait for it.
Creationism and Conspiracism Share a Common Teleological Bias
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Fix the link.
Sorry, was in the process of reformatting when my net dropped out.
Sadly this sort of stuff will not make it to many creationism followers, and for the few creationist that do see this, they will simply dismiss it as fake news or some other way if they even did ever come across it.
Ofcourse to me, and I imagine many others, this is something we already considered as very likely, but it is nice to have a study done on it to help confirm what basic reasoning already lead us to consider as likely.
To me it follows pretty naturally that if you accept some of the biggest claims you can possibly make w/o any real testable evidence, it is easy to do the same for a host of smaller claims. Believing bigfoot exist is a much smaller leap then believing in some all powerful deity that I should worship and follow the human "leaders" on, based simply on the non evidenced claims of others.
Sadly Kataclismic, I have to agree with the study. When ignorance is confronted by facts that fly in the face of their assumptions/beliefs, they fall back to something more comforting, and easy but stupid explanation. Why go to the trouble of learning about and investigating an important tissue when you can just say "conspiracy"?
One one side are many thousands of people making serious investigations, backed by mountains of data. On the other side, we have ignorance, and those easy to manipulate.
General response to comments and the OP.
”We are slowly closing in on the mental illnesses of the believers.”
This study doesn’t touch on the subject of mental illnesses in relation to believers or conspiracists, so we can throw that statement out the window from the start.
”To me it follows pretty naturally that if you accept some of the biggest claims you can possibly make w/o any real testable evidence, it is easy to do the same for a host of smaller claims.”
Perhaps, but this study isn’t concerned with the size of the claim nor the acceptance of the evidence. In fact, false teleological beliefs are said to be false by convention rather than false explanations of natural phenomena.
”Why go to the trouble of learning about and investigating an important tissue when you can just say ‘conspiracy’?”
I get the impression that it’s the other way around. Conspiracy theorists definitely put a lot of time and effort into their theories, finding the smallest details on which to latch on. In contrast, I’ve noticed that non-conspiracy theorists, are generally the ones that brush their claims away by simply labeling them as “conspiracies.” Once an idea carries that label, it becomes easier to dismiss.3
Thoughts on the study.
Its important to be aware of what is and isn’t being studied. First, the study revolves around the concept of teleological thinking, which is defined as the attribution of purpose and a final cause to natural events or entities. It almost seems as if teleological thinking focuses on the effect something has, rather than the causes from which it stems.
Secondly, the study is generally more concerned with what is, than what ought to be. For example, conspiarcism is defined as the proneness to explain socio-historical events in terms of secret and malevolent conspiracies. That is a valid claim; there is nothing inherently contradictory or illogical about consiparcism. If individuals can conspire and be malevolent towards each other, then there’s no reasons why larger societal groups cannot also conspire and be malevolent. Thus, the proneness to conspircism is more important than its veracity. Teleological thinking also doesn’t seem be wrong; it appears to simply focus on the functionality of things, which is perfectly acceptable.
Towards the end of the paper however, there is small comment on teleological thinking also correlating with science rejection. I wish they had gone into more detail about that, because functionality is very important in my field. What is the function of the amygdala, what does it do, what is its purpose? What is the function of fear, what does it do, and what is its purpose. So teleological thinking shouldn’t be anti-science, at least not in the way they defined it.
Summary of the methods.
When reading studies, I rarely care about words such as creationism, teleological thinking, and conspiracism. Instead, I care about how they were operationally defined, and subsequently measured. Most of you don’t care about the definitions and the measurements, and simply apply the conclusions of a study into whatever you already think the terms mean. Hence why most of the comments on threads like this tend to miss the mark. So to summarize the measurements, here are some examples of how each term was measured.
-Teleological:
True teleological: “Alarm clocks beep in order to wake up people”
False teleological: “Houses have doorbells in order to make dogs bark”
True causal: “Lollipops are sweet because sugar is a main ingredient”
False causal: “Soda cans are cylindrical because they are made of aluminum
-Conspiracy
General non-specific examples: “The government is involved in the murder of innocent citizens and/or well-known public figures, and keeps this a secret.”
Classical, specific: Moon landing, 9/11.
-Magical thinking: “I think I could learn to read people’s thoughts if I wanted”.
-Esoterism: the exitance of magic, astrology, miracles.
-Creationism: “God created humans and the Earth since less than 10'000 years”
Conclusion.
For starters, I do think most of the correlations, though significant, were still weak. Now, you can’t realistically expect to find correlations above .4 in most psychology research articles anyway; but that still doesn’t alter the strength of the correlations. I can't say how accurate it is, but I attached the scatterplots below to give a general visual of each correlation coefficient. The study reported .21, -.30, .36, .44, .31, .32, .27; the highest was .51.
Secondly, there seems to be a bit of circular reasoning with the definitions. When the focus of teleological thinking deals with functionality, then such thinking and creationism can be separate entities that interact and correlate. However, when teleological thinking is viewed in terms of design, then such thinking becomes synonymous with creationism. Fundamentally the claim of creationism is that life was designed in much the same way as clocks are designs. So in that regard, teleological thinking isn’t an underlying trait of creationism, it IS creationism. So when the paper states that teleological thinking is a hindrance to the acceptance of evolution, my response is duh; evolution is generally a hindrance to the acceptance of creationism, and you just blurred the lines between creationist ideas and teleological ideas.
So thats my conclusion: Duh, when you extend teleological thinking to the point that it includes creationism, of course its a hindrance to evolution. And secondly, when you extract teleological thinking from the nature of conspiracy theories, then of course teleological thinking will appear to be a gateway to anti-scientific notions; science is after all done by people, who may or may not have agendas. Anti-vaxxers for example, seem to be anti-vaxxers because of a distrust of scientists more than science. So when you add such people to your equation, of course the result will show that teleological thinking correlates with ant-science ideas.
Attachments
Attach Image/Video?:
No, the reasonable person says that to think NASA is lying about the shape of the planet is a silly conspiracy theory, no matter how much time and effort you've put into explaining away simple geometry.
So it's "defined as the attribution of purpose and a final cause to natural events or..." and yet it seems to focus on something "rather than the causes"? I don't know where to begin with this contradiction in terms so I'll just focus on the grammar: it's "cause of" not "cause to" in proper English.
Don't try to complicate the matter. The terms are clear:
teleology: [noun] the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes.
Which is your view, John; the view that you were put on this planet for some purpose other than pure chance. Which is a cognitive response related to conspiracism, as demonstrated by the results.
You demonstrated the study well, John.
Thank you for your participation.
When the authors speak of a "final cause" they seem to be talking about its effect; its a very forward sense. For example, they are not referencing the causes of Alzheimer's (e.g. genetics), they are talking about its "final" cause (e.g. memory loss, disorientation, and so on).
100% I consider the effects to be equally important as the causes, why wouldn't you? I also do view us as having a purpose other than chance. However, I'm not a conspiracy theorist; although admittedly, I don't dismiss conspiracies as beneath consideration.
If you are unaware of how the mind works, consider how it produces language. The brain takes small and finite number of rules and letters, and with them produces an infinite array of sentences and narratives. The words love and hate, both make use of the letter E; which is an utterly meaningless fact. Likewise, if both creationism and conspiarcism make use of a teleological thinking, great, who cares? Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if suicide and Darwinism both stem from a purposeless perspective. Different and even opposing behaviors will make use of the same underlying cognitive faculties.
Are you making up arguments again, John? Could you please pinpoint where in the literature Alzheimer's is mentioned? I missed it.
When the idea is presented to me that the entire scientific community is lying about the shape of the planet I see that as unreasonable because of my education in mathematics. If you don't have an education in mathematics then maybe you consider it, but only until I educate you. If you don't accept that education and continue to believe concepts that are unreasonable then it's no surprise that you accept creationism. See how that works?
That's the key term here John; reason. The Creationism concept has none and when you can demonstrate that those accepting the notion also believe in other unreasonable notions then it looks even less reasonable.
I care, and that's why.
Precise, concise, very nice.
That was a pleasure to read, an abject lesson in the simultaneous construction, and destruction, of an argument.
"I get the impression that it’s the other way around. Conspiracy theorists definitely put a lot of time and effort into their theories, finding the smallest details on which to latch on. In contrast, I’ve noticed that non-conspiracy theorists, are generally the ones that brush their claims away by simply labeling them as “conspiracies.”
I'm not sure the amount of time and effort put into beliefs validate them, and a quick trip to study the paranoid delusions of patients in any psychiatric hospital could confirm this, as complexity is quite common, but objectivity rare. Objective evidence is what validates beliefs, if you care at all that what you believe is true. Conspiracy theories are "labelled" as such because they are generally vapid concoctions with no credible objective evidence to support them.
"Once an idea carries that label, it becomes easier to dismiss."
This implies they don't deserve the label, but things generally get that label precisely because they are wild unsupported assertions, if they are supported by any credible evidence then they would of course cease to viewed as conspiracy theories. It;s not that they're dismissed easily because of the label, as much as they are dismissed because they deserve the label.
"If individuals can conspire and be malevolent towards each other, then there’s no reasons why larger societal groups cannot also conspire and be malevolent."
Well by definition secrecy is an essential component of a conspiracy, and secrecy by definition is the antithesis of shared knowledge. So a conspiracy becomes exponentially less likely as the number of people who know about it increases. So there is a very good reason why larger societal groups cannot conspire to be malevolent. When it happens on such a scale it can't be a secret by definition. Is there a more obvious oxymoron than "global conspiracy"?
"Fundamentally the claim of creationism is that life was designed in much the same way as clocks are designs."
We have no complex designs that we can examine for living things in the same way we have complex designs for clocks, we can examine clocks being made, but this is not the case for any living thing, and of course as is the case with all designed things, clocks never occur naturally.
"evolution is generally a hindrance to the acceptance of creationism, "
I concur absolutely, and thus I believe the scientific fact that is objectively evidenced beyond any reasonable doubt, over the archaic religious myth for which no evidence can be demonstrated, and which many different religions with wildly different deities lay claim to.
"science is after all done by people, who may or may not have agendas."
Luckily the method is antithetical with subjective agendas, and can only validate what the evidence shows. So a scientist's agenda would be irrelevant to whether their work will be validated. Which is why after 160 years of intense scrutiny species evolution is considered a scientific fact beyond any reasonable doubt. It could have been falsified in any number of ways, but the evidence has not done so, and all the validated evidence supports it, converging from different scientific fields of study.
"Anti-vaxxers for example, seem to be anti-vaxxers because of a distrust of scientists more than science. "
So their stance is based on ignorance then, as the validation of vaccines is not based on the opinion of any scientist, it has been validated by the scientific method. the same method that validates germ theory, the theory of gravity / relativity, and of course species evolution. You don't get to arbitrarily pick and choose which bits you want to accept as valid, that's not how the method works.
Just had to comment:
The anti vaxxers:
"Oh my gads! needles!" ..... wait, they have mercury in them? OH MY GAD ISN'T THAT BAD?!?! Vaccines are the devil!"
Scientist that dedicate their whole lives to improving everyone's life with vaccines:
"Sigh, if you want to read one thing that is taken out of context and completely wrong to support your bias and ignore the actual science, and think I somehow missed it spending thousands of hours with a large team of highly educated experts or insidiously want to poison you that would normally be your misguided prerogative. Unfortunately in the real world parents make decisions for their kids that can not decide for themselves, and there is this well known in the vaccine world known as "herd immunity." Anti vaxxers are literally through their ignorance putting the most vulnerable of us a completely unnecessary increased risk.
No vaccines are used on the basis of a scientist's opinion, but rather on the basis of scientific opinion, it always amazes me there are people who don't understand the difference. The anti vaccination brigade are the same morons who refuse to let their children take a sip of diet Coke as they've "heard the rumours", but are happy for them to eat a 520 calorie happy meal, followed by a 165 calorie McFlurry 5 times a week.
Sadly ignorance when wilful is harder to cure than cancer. I wish we had a fucking vaccine for stupidity and vapid superstition.
If you're a creationist who dismissed evolutionary biology then you must believe that there's a 150+ year conspiracy involving millions and millions of people all over the world, presumably who all just want to be mean to your god.
If you're a young earth creationist that number jumps ten fold as you have to include basically every single solitary branch of science in it.
Perfectly rational conclusions, and of course Breezy has refused multiple times to answer me when I have asked if he is a young earth creationist. One wonders what it is he is trying to hide?
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a response. Fascinating how he re-defines the term for his own argument... reminds me of someone.
Intelligent Design?
Oh look at those lying sacks of garbage still trying to tell us creationism and intelligent design are not the same thing. Do they need another trip to the wood shed so they can do Dover again?
Let's compare the definitions at the Great Wiki...
Creationism is the religious belief that the universe and life originated "from specific acts of divine creation", as opposed to the scientific conclusion that they came about through natural processes.
Intelligent design is a religious argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins", but is nevertheless pseudoscience.
Hmm... Seems exactly the same to me. Just different names.
rmfr
It some of Discovery Institutes own literature they were found to have simply changed the the word 'creation' to 'intelligent design'. It was no secret before the Dover trial and it certainly was no secret after the Dover trial that 'intelligent design' was nothing more than creationists attempts to lie their way past the radar because that is what they do.
Creationists are liars.
These guys are just a bit late to the party but are only reporting on the study. This is a good one for the links if nothing else.
Faulty Reasoning Identified