Is Ignorance Bliss?

Caught an interesting line from a post over on The Slowly Boiled Frog: "The conservative Christian freak-out over Barna's Gen-Z study".  While's its subject isn't my usual cup of tea, I was caught by one line in particular:

"Religious literalism causes people to be wrong most of the time yet never uncertain. In effect it is a celebration and affirmation of ignorance. "

'Wrong, but never uncertain!'   It certainly can explain a few things, maybe even more than a few things.  Theists are always so sure, whether or not they can articulate any sort of valid reasoning for what they are so sure about.  I think that's one of the things that annoys me the most.  They embrace ignorance, celebrate it, want to pass laws protecting it, and  . . . worst of all . . . demand the right to force their ignorance on all schoolchildren, not just their own.

I know any theists will claim not to be ignorant, but the word applies.  What does a theist usually do when faced with actual evidence?  Look at little kennie ham and his Kentucky ministries for example.  He ignores it.  If he cannot ignore it, he denies it.  If that doesn't work, he rationalizes it.  When pressed he comes up with the most outlandish stories to remain as ignorant as possible.  Plus, like all to many others, he makes his living pushing such ignorance.

OK, if you want to argue semantics, I guess it's acceptable to be ignorant when you are not exposed to something.  But once you have been exposed, remaining ignorant is a choice, and it's one all too many theists make.  What they 'know', particularly when it comes to science, is pretense.  Here is a Jesus and Mo strip that explains it well:

" . . . as long as there are questions, there are people who will pretend to know the answers!"  Great line, but it gets even worse when they convince other people to join them in their pretense, and then they get organized and the followers pay for the privilege of being ignorant.  The final step is they want everyone, not just their followers, to pay for their ignorance.  Think about how much money the taxpayers of Kentucky have paid and will continue to pay for little kennie's ministries!

Now, just to be clear, when I say 'ignorant', I am not talking about intelligence.  There is nothing to indicate theists are more or less intelligent than non-theists.  While there was a study that some sites tried to make such a claim, it really doesn't support that idea. (Did a Study Find That Atheists Are Smarter Than Religious People? Not Quite.)  What the study did find that when intuition comes into play, non-theists tend to do better.  I believe that's because a theists intuition will invariably follow their religious beliefs -- which often turn out wrong in the real world, as we stated above.

The old saying "Ignorance is Bliss" doesn't seem to apply either.  I mean are theists really more blissful than non-theists?  The more hardcore ones certainly are not.  They are at war with the rest of the world all the time.  One of the most common reasons for war are religious differences.  And we are not just taking war, but fighting and disagreements in general.

Case in point, remember Tammy Kitzmiller, she was a parent in the Dover PA school district and one of the 11 parents who were plaintiffs in the Dover suit. For whatever reason her name was listed first so the suit is commonly referred to as Kitzmiller v. The Dover Area School District. According to Lauri Lebo's excellent book "The Devil in Dover" and many articles about the trial, Ms Kitzmiller and her family suffered verbal abuse and attacks from self-identified Christians. In a York Dispatch article they mentioned some of it:

• One letter she received, scrawled in big letters across a sheet of yellow notebook paper, begins, "When you open your eyes in hell. ..."
• One boy at school told the girls to tell their mother to "go to hell," delivering the message through a third person.
• The atmosphere worsened as campaigning began for a hotly contested school board election and people prepared for the trial. There were nasty phone calls and confrontations in restaurants and on the streets.

These attacks were enough to have her stop her daughters from even answering the phone! This isn't the only example. The judge in the Dover, Judge John E. Jones also received death threats as a result of which he and his family were given around-the-clock federal protection. I believe the parents who sued John Freshwater after he burned a cross into their son's arm also received similar backlash once their identity was revealed. The members of the Iowa State University, after they refused to give Guillermo Gonzalez tenure -- tenure let me remind you that he failed to earn -- were vilified by some online blogs and posts, same with Ball State University's president, Jo Ann M. Gora and the whole Hedin/Gonzalez issue (yes, the same Gonzalez who screwed up so spectacularly at ISU).

So, what have we discovered?  While theists may be as intelligent as non-theists, often they are wrong when it comes to matters that impact their belief system - mainly because they rely on that system to answer questions it is unsuited to answer.  And while they may be certain, certainty is not a measure of being right.  By the same token, that certainty often bring them into conflict, conflict driven by those same beliefs.  That conflict manifests in everything from full-scale war to make attacks against people who refuse to share their belief system.

It's this close-mined certainty that makes dealing with many theists so challenging.  As soon as you challenge any part of their belief system, they avoid, deny, or outright lie to protect it -- regardless of any actual evidential support for their position.  Ignorance may breed certainty, but it sure doesn't bring out the bliss.

Jesus and Mo Strike Another Chord!

I just love Jesus and Mo!  You can easily see why:

Self-awareness is not exactly a trait I have found to exist in most theists.  Now, self-righteousness certainly, but not self-awareness.  Often I like to point out the hypocrisy to a theist for fun.  They never get it!

Look at those theists who support a certain hamster-haired serial liar and misogynist for example.  Or how about those who supported that silly clerk in Kentucky or Roy Moore in Alabama.  The mental gyrations theists have to go through to self-justify their support for such people just cracks me up!  No, self-awareness is not a common trait in theists.

Even now after hamster-hair has broken most of his campaign promises, they still support him!  Many of his supporters are on the verge of losing medical coverage, and they still support him.  Many are not going to see any advantages in his tax bill, and might even end up paying more in taxes, they still support him.  It boggles the mind!  It would be even more entertaining, if it wasn't so tragic.

Here is how I see it.  To all too many theists, it doesn't matter what someone actually stands for, as long as they appear to stand for some of what the theists believe that counts.  Hold up a Bible and you will have lots of support.  It doesn't matter if it's never even been opened, it doesn't matter if you are a liar, a misogynist, or a pedophile -- it's the appearance that matters, not the content of your character! 

Pandering politicians are another popular example.  Regardless of what they actually believe, saying the right things and supporting ridiculous bills, such as trying to have the Bible as the official State Book, gains them lots of support -- even though it's a meaningless gesture.  Seriously, how many people even know what their State Book is, or even if their state has a State Book.  Ohio has a State song ("Beautiful Ohio") and a State Rock Song ("Hang On Sloopy"), but no State Book.  I think something by Paul Laurence Dunbar or Erma Bombeck, perhaps?

You would think they would learn, but no, they have no desire to learn -- especially anything that might cause them to question their own beliefs.  They would much rather rationalize than learn.  Appearance seems to be the only criteria to gain support from theists, and the more conservative the theists, the more support they give to the appearance of sharing their beliefs.

Jesus and Mo "Whatever Happened to Freedom of Religion

Timely strip from Jesus and Mo:

Remind you of anybody?  Or even a few groups!

Another Cartoon, Another Shot to the Heart of the Discovery Institute

What a week for Cartoons!  First there was Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and then Non-Sequitur.  Today I caught a new Jesus and Mo that had me thinking about the Discovery Institute.  Here it is, for your enjoyment:

As soon as I read it, I was reminded about a post from several years back, "So there is nothing religious about ID? Part V". It's part of a common theme about catching the Discovery Institute doing something purely religious while constantly trying to sell us on the idea that their pet version of Creationism, Intelligent Design, is not religious.  This particular post concerned a conference that was announced on their own site . . . yea, you know the one, Evolution 'News' and Views.  The title of the post was "Darwin v. Design Conference Coming to Oklahoma to Address Debate Over Science and God"

The reason this cartoon reminded me so much of that meeting was the list of speakers.  The article was written by Dr. John G. West, who calls the speakers "four national experts ": Michael Behe, Jay Richards, Casey Luskin, and West himself. These are not 4 national experts on the subject of Science and God, they are 4 fellows from the Discovery Institute.  Now do you see the parallels to the cartoon?  The deck is certainly stacked!


Note to Jesus and Mo:  I did copy your comic image for inclusion here in case the image link doesn't work in the future.  I've had that problem on a couple of other sites.  If you object, please let me know and I will change it to a link.

Why Teaching Biology may be Harder than it Needs to be!

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is an online comic strip that I think I don't look at nearly often enough.  To the right is an old one that was recently passed to me.  It was too good not to pass on.  Have you run into someone so entrenched in their position, nothing in the way of logic or evidence can possibly dissuade them?  I know I have! It does illustrate that it can be hard to get some points across, particularly when the person you are talking with has been indoctrinated in their view that evidence gets summarily dismissed.  I do enjoy, as odd as it might sound, driving believers to the point where they have to invoke their deity to keep their belief set in play.  Check out panel 4: "Put here by Satan to fool non-believers". Funny, I have heard two versions of that.  On the one hand it was placed by Satan to fool folks, however more often I have heard the evidence was placed by God to test people's faith.  The end result is the same, the believer denies the evidence.  But sometimes I want to put two of them in the same room and let them duke it out to determine who 'planted' the evidence.  It always amazes me the lengths people will go to to maintain their delusions! It's not just theists, but people who believe in other supernatural foolishness, homeopathy, climate-change deniers, and -- of course -- the whole anti-vaccination movement.  Evidence is only meaningful if it can be twisted to support their entrenched position! Hopefully there isn't an actual 'Creation History Foundation', but you never know.  How often have we spoken about the Discovery Institute re-writing history? Think about how their pseudo-historian Michael Flannery, for example, has been telling us how Darwin is responsible for racism and Hitler -- regardless of the fact . . . and I do mean fact . . . because Hitler claimed to have been given a divine inspiration! While many Christians hear that and get upset, claiming that Hitler wasn’t a Christian that he just used the Bible as an excuse to justify and rationalize his actions. I agree! But then why does the DI insist that Darwin’s work caused the Nazi atrocities? Sounds a little self-serving and more than a little dishonest. Here is a something from Main Kampf just to prove my point: " . . . [Jews] very existence is an incarnate denial of the beauty of God's image in His creation." (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt) History re-writes abound, things like the whole 'The US was established as a Christian Nation' to the DI re-baptizing people who are safely dead as 'Intelligent Design' supporters.  I commented on that a few years back in "Social Studies next on the firing line?" and Laurie Lebo had an article in 2011: "Fundamentalist-led Texas History Standards get 'D' from Conservative Think Tank."  There she reports that: "Texas’ new standards are evangelical-led revisionist history" So while there may not (yet) be a 'Creation History Foundation', one may come to pass.  I will be pretty confident that it will have as much to do with history as the DI has to do with science and it will probably be based in Texas . . . sorry Texas! I hope that you enjoy SMBC as much as I do, and as much as I plan to do on a more regular basis.  I do have a link to a short list of comics I do read daily.  That list includes XKCD, Dilbert, and Jesus and Mo.  I will be adding SMBC to that list. Note to SMBC:  I did copy your comic image for inclusion here in case the image link doesn't work in the future.  I've had that problem on a couple of other sites.  If you object, please let me know and I will change it to a link.

Religion = Crazy? It might work!

Jesus and Mo has done it again!  You have to see this one:  Wow.  After you read it and stop laughing, think for a second.  What tactic has not been tried by folks like kennie ham, the Institute for Creation Research, or those less-than-reputable folks at the Discovery Institute?  How crazy have some of those tactics been?  Is there anything they won't do in the cause of their religious beliefs?  Lying for Jesus, misrepresenting real science and science methodology, Quote-mining, and re-baptising historical figures as Creationists are just a few examples.  While I wouldn't be surprised if they tried what Jesus and Mo are suggesting, I think their next crazy tactic is to try and limit free speech by outlawing any criticism of a religious belief, sort of like the old-style blasphemy laws.  Of course, as usual, any law would only apply to Christianity, since Evangelicals tend to not accept any religion is a real religion except for theirs.  Burning Bibles is bad, but burning Korans would be a perfectly acceptable hobby.

Jesus and Mo

An oldy yet a goldy from Jesus and Mo.  If they had gone with the DI, the word 'God' would have a strikethough and instead of offering to pay, they would hit you up for a donation.

One of my favorite places on the Web is Jesus and Mo.  Today's strip summed up all the recent comments supposedly in support of Creationism perfectly.