Comment by N2yhWNXQN3k9
6 months ago
> It makes you wonder what obvious thing is being ignored right now
Not really, 40% of the US believes they were created (or are descendant of) by a divine being (creationism), in spite of all evidence, so pass that hurdle first
> I would not be 100% surprised if people in the future accepted things like 'ghost experiences' as normal things.
Like 20%-66% of the US believes this today? No one is experiencing the reality you are, ever, something to keep in mind, IMO.
To be exact a little under 40% believe in special creation - the mainstream Christian position (and more common even in the US) is that evolution is part of God's creation.
The US is very odd, not only in having large numbers of members of creationist churches, but also in tat a lot of members of churches that oppose creationism and Biblical literalism are quite often creationist.
The good news is that there is a downward trend in creationism.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-...
That's not so odd if you take into account that a lot of US citizens trace their origins back to people that left Europe because their beliefs were conflicting with those of the established churches. And because the established churches did not have a strong presence in the United States (or actually, its predecessor) these suddenly found themselves to be the dominant religion in sometimes much larger regions than they ever could have hoped for back in the home country. And when the population boomed so did their numbers.
It explains how it came about but not entirely why it persisted. It is also interesting that it has influenced the views of members of the established churches in the US.
I am not saying its unexplained, just that I do not understand it personally (I really do not understand the American culture and society at all well).
3 replies →
I think that background also helped entrench outspoken religiosity in US culture.
There's also the dynamics of having lots of variants of Christianity competing for attention (perfect for the age of televangelism) versus Europeans losing faith in established churches
Lack of evidence is not the same as contradictory evidence.
Could you point to any literature on evidence that refutes creationism? I'm not saying there isn't any. I'm just admitting my ignorance of it. Please enlighten me.
Falsifiability is pretty important here. What evidence could, in theory, refute creationism?
> No one is experiencing the reality you are.
This is a common sentiment, but it is also a declaration of epistemic bankruptcy, thus incompatible with the scientific method.
No, people don't experience the same reality, but it can still be observed and measured, which was pretty much resolved in the 1700s (Hume, others), so you might want to delve into that first.
I think you might be conflating "experience" and "interpret." If we can all measure reality and come up with the same values, we are experiencing the same one. How we interpret that is another question. Keep in mind the philosophers who came before had great contributions to the big thought-experiment we call existence, but many of them argued from emotionally or socioeconomically tainted positions and nobody has gotten it 100% right yet, or we would not be having this discussion.
Back to the original point of this thread, science doubts until certainty, or as close to certainty as our current capabilities will allow, is achieved. That doubt is what allows it to change with the introduction of new information. This is why the religious hold on to what they do, the paranormal believers cling to what seems like misunderstood phenomenon to the rest of us; they don't doubt, and are thus barred from discovery of the truth.
7 replies →
Not to mention flat-earthers, climate change deniers, 5G-causes-vaccines activists burning down 4G towers as they have no idea what 5G even is, etc., etc.
It's all too easy for the less skeptical to be misguided. :/
yeah, but way less people believe in those things though, still a huge problem, unfortunately
not many polls on people understanding a difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation even, who knows what people know