<snip>
> does anyone
>think that we're seeing a disturbing trend of anti-intellectualism
>and, what I consider to be worse, an overall position of
>I'm-right-even-if-I'm-wrong among Christians?
<snip>
> I wonder if the followers of Jim Jones or
>David Koresh felt the same way?
To answer the second question first, I would say yes.
To reply to the first, I am simply going tostart with practicing my typing:
". . . subjects were presented one of two bogus abstracts of a fictitious journal article discribing a series of experiments that purported either to prove or disprove the existence of ESP. The two versions of the abstract were identical except for the alleged results of the experiments and the author's conclusion based on those results. Subjects for the experiment consisted of college students who believed in the paranormal (believers) or who did not (disbelievers) as determined by the Belief in the Paranormal Scale (Jones et al., 1977). After reading the abstract, subjects completed items assessing their emotional arousal, agreement with the conclusions drawn by the author of the abstract, and recall for the details presented in the abstract. As expected, results indicated that both believers and disbelievers were emotionally aroused after reading the abstract that contradicted their beliefs, but were not so aroused when they read the belief-consonant abstract. Surprisingly, however, although disbelievers agreed with the conclusion of the abstract significantly more frequently when it was in agreement with their original beliefs than when it was not, there was little difference in agreement for the believers, regardless of whether they jad read tje ESP-proven or ESP-disproven abstracts. Furthermore, original belief and recall were related only in the ESP-disproven condition, with greater belief being associated with reduced accuracy in recall. Analysis of individual recall items indicated the reasons for these anomalies. Several of the believers who read the abstract purporting to challenge the existence of ESP had distorted the outcome of the studies reported so that it agreed with their initial view--i.e., that ESP was supported. In other words, for these believers, there was no reason to disagree with the counter belief message because in the interval between reading the abstract and completing the recall test, they had reversed the conclusion (and hence the meaning) of the abstract. Thus, both believers and disbelievers showed negative emotional arousal when confronted with information that appeared to contradicit theri beliefs about ESP, but only believers manifested a distortion whereby the meaning of the information presented to them was altered. "These results were interpreted as an example of the *selective-learning* (original in italics- mike)process (e.g., Greenwald & Sakamura, 1967) in which the learning and retention of attitude-relevant information is theorized to be most likely to occur whin that informationis in agreement with prior beliefs. . . .Thus, selective exposure, attention, and retention of confirmatory information helps toensure the persistence of extraordinary beliefs." ----------pp.205-206, ANOMALISTIC PSYCHOLOGY, Zusne & Jones, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982. ISBN 0-89859-068-X-----------
Zusne and Jones are careful never to directly examine religion, at least major ones, as examples of "extraordinary belief", but the principals apply, at least in my view. If you examine Rogers resoponses over the past few weeks, you can see everything discussed in the passage happening.
And notice that it seems to be a unilateral problem. Belivers distort the meaning of contrary information so as to make it conform to the belief system. Unbelievers do not lose perspective even when confronted with disconfirming information.
A further example in the book describes the results of a bogus demonstration of telepathy. The demonstration was designed to help keep class interest up during lectures on scientific methodology. The hoped for result, after the "demonstration" was that the class would tear apart the methodology of the ruse. Didn't happen that way. More to the point, even after the professor admitted the ruse and revealed how it was done, many members of the class persisted in contending that it was a genuine instance of telepathy and not a trick, "Maybe you have ESP but don't know it!"
That all goes to show the strength of the will to believe.
So how is it some fight their way free of the bonds of superstition? The answer is probably different for each.
So what can we do against the will to believe of Christians? Other than continue to provide clear refutations of untenable postions in the not entirely vain hope of reaching some at least on occasion, I do not profess to know. I spent almost 20 years enlisted in the Navy, and I can verify that there is a huge number of fundamentalists out there. I was contiually appalled at the level of disbelief in evolution among the enlisted. Out of a crew of over a hundred enlisted men on the more selectivly chosen crew of nuclear submarines, I would find myself being the only defender of Darwin. Only a few would openly challenge me, but almost no one believed or even understood.
Its a little scary.
ttfn
mike in ca.