Continuing our series, one obvious reason why people believe shit that just isn't true is that false belief can have value, or at least seem to have value in the short run. Given that people have no hope of understanding the evidence for many scientific conclusions, they often rely on criteria other than what the philosophers call justified belief. Furthermore, people with a lot of money and power often have a financial and/or political interest in bamboozling people.
The latter is why we've had fake controversies, often lasting for decades, over whether tobacco causes cancer and heart disease, or lead in the environment was poisoning children, or CO2 emissions are causing potentially catastrophic climate change. Rich and powerful people didn't want us to believe it. That means, of course, that they are profoundly evil. There's plenty of evidence that leaders of the tobacco, lead and fossil fuel industries knew the truth but they were happy to commit mass murder for money. Of course, they kept their ill gotten gains and paid no price for their abominable crimes. It's okay, they're Christians, they're forgiven.
But ordinary folks often succumb to misbelief even when there isn't a multi-billion dollar industry behind it. The case of religion is somewhat separate. Of course many pastors are wealthy charlatans and the Catholic church possesses immense wealth, but religion has ancient cultural roots and people are indoctrinated into it as children. So it has a multi-generational momentum that isn't characteristics of most false beliefs. However, religious rejection of certain scientific conclusions, notably evolution and cosmology, no doubt does contribute to some people doubting science as an overall enterprise.
But people also hold beliefs because they are comforting in some way, or make them feel better than confronting the truth. They also may have been indoctrinated in certain non-religious beliefs that conflict with scientific conclusions, e.g. laissez faire capitalism. That's an important enough feature of our culture -- really bedrock, actually -- that it deserves particular attention, which I will provide next. I've discussed this before but my thinking, and my presentation of it, have developed further.
3 comments:
It's all so sad, the desire of wealthy, greedy people to bamboozle folks for profit. I was listening to "Democracy Now" today and, incredibly, our mass incineration of civilians at Ameriyah in 1991 and our killing of over 150 children and teachers at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran, were being discussed!
We need a truth-and-reconciliation commission so we can come to grips with our country's crimes, starting from the original genocide of natives and the establishment of slavery. And whilel we're at it, we deserve to learn the truth about who killed JFK, RFK and MLK ... and what happened on 9/11 and why. We need to confront the truth of our past so people can take off their blinders. Whatever it takes.
Perhaps another reason people believe things that aren't true is because, at least in the United States, we keep getting gaslighted on what happened to JFK, MLK, etc. Even 911. People know that the official story ain't the story. I think we need a truth and reconciliation commission.
Hmm. Maybe it's time for me to take some cognitive testing :-)
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