In the comments box at Miller’s Mendacity, Barry Arrington asks
It is getting to the point that refuting the nonsense is almost beside the point. No one believes it, least of all those who say they do. As you’ve been saying for some time now, the really interesting story here is the psychological story. Why do people profess belief in the obviously false?
Okay: Why do people profess belief in the obviously false? A couple notes:
– The belief that randomness produces information (central to Darwinism) is obviously false. It’s never been demonstrated because it can’t be. It is assumed.
It is assumed for the same reasons as the existence of a multiverse or a naturalist explanation for consciousness are assumed. And often spelled out: Any other approach raises the spectre of design.
Why? The unwillingness to confront something that appears dreadful often forces people to indulge beliefs known to be false (or unfalsifiable).
Let’s say a person has a skin itch that needs scratching. But he doesn’t want to consider what it might mean. What does he do? First, he drops a wad on over-the-counter symptom relievers. Then he goes on the internet, and embraces and discards various medical theories.
He won’t go see a skin specialist precisely because the specialist might identify the problem correctly, forcing a choice: Do I really want this situation to get better or not? Am I prepared to make the needed changes?
If the answer is no, he will typically not only continue to embrace the obviously false theory but try to enforce it. That’s the basis of the Darwin lobby’s finely honed enforcement skills and dramas around evolution.
– Some people also attempt to divert attention to a separate question: “Why do people profess belief in things that are not obviously true”? Hence various sludge theories in evolutionary psychology about why people believe in God.
Notice that the same people never focus the equivalent type of attention on questions like “Why do people believe in democracy?” or “Why do people believe in saving the whales?”
Because they know as well as anyone else that most matters in life stop short of incontestable proof, such as can be had in simple mathematics. Most of the time, we make do with “balance of evidence” rather than “beyond reasonable doubt.”
And that is just the problem. Naturalism and its creation story Darwinism are anomalous in that they are among the few beliefs that are false beyond reasonable doubt, but highly profitable to their purveyors. Especially because they must go on believing it themselves. Or pretending to. Or, more usually, something in between, always hoping …
Prediction: On that account, we will see much more crazy stuff in the near future.
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