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Why Myths Persist
lottameez recommends an article in the Washington Post about recent research into the persistence of myths. In short: once a myth has been put out there (e.g., "Saddam Hussein plotted the 9/11 attacks"), denying it can paradoxically reinforce its staying power. Ignoring it doesn't work either — a claim that is unchallenged gains the ring of truth. Over time, "negation tags" fall out of memory: "Saddam didn't plan 9/11" becomes "Saddam planned 9/11." From the article: "The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths... The research is painting a broad new understanding of how the mind works. Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious 'rules of thumb' that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency."
It took 5000 years to come to this conclusion?
Maybe this explains why religion persists in the face of logic, it was here before science.
This is the most amazing thing I've seen since I founded Slashdot.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
or such is the Myth they are trying to manipulate.
Oh come off it. Slashdot dupes are an urban myth!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Wait, you mean Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11? Then why did you guys invade Iraq?
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
Why not extend the slant, which wasn't present in the article, to go both ways? I can't tell you how many people I know who believe Gore won Florida and base it on the idea that major media sources verified it. You can go show them the opposite and they don't care.
What it comes down to is this, people are more inclined to believe stories which correspond to what they already believe to be true, even if the evidence against such a belief is overwhelming. It is all about change and accepting mistakes. There are too many people resistant to change and resistant to admitting mistakes.
So when informing the public about false information, one should avoid using negations?
Instead of saying "Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11.", you should instead say something like "It was al-qaida, who didn't particularly like Saddam Hussein, that were responsible for 9/11."
- These characters were randomly selected.
"Conspiracy Theories"
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Negation (in natural language) is a tricky business, even if we forget about the psychological part for a minute. Just to give one example:
Presuppositions - I have seen her again. and I haven't seen her again again. both presuppose that I saw her (before) so large parts of what I say persist under negation.
In addition, results from psycho-linguistic research suggest that negation involves some sort of double processing, that is we transform a negative statement in an equivalent positive one before we further process it. That in all this the negated statement stay activated and is thus reinforced is more than plausible.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
interests within our government and defense industry worked VERY HARD on inventing and perpetuating it. And our corporate media did their usual lapdog routine, and went along without questioning anything.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
That link is to the second page, for those that like to read from the start here is the first page
It seems that unless you have an account you can't click the links on the page to go back to the first page, but you can click next (from the first) and you can get to either page externally. Don't ask me why.
Actually, religion persists because of "common sense," which this article seems to help demonstrate. The problem is that commonly passes as "sense" is not very logically sound. Common sense is not a great tool for discovering the truth.
This is why the scientific method is so invaluable
Too bad most people are scientifically illiterate.
There are many stupid people who will believe whatever they want to believe, regardless of proof. They will generally want to force you to believe what they believe even if you have proof that directly contradicts them. And, if you refuse to believe, they may try to silence.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Bush lied, LIED LIED LIED about Saddam planning 911.
You are still re-enforcing the Saddam <-> connection.
You need to leave Saddam out entirely.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
There are many decent arguments both for and against the veracity of religion.
Don't be a troll and act like the rejection of religion is a slam dunk for all thinking persons.
No you dim witted troll, he said that religion is a man made construction around faith. He also said that faith is a belief beyond proof that something more exists. He also claimed that science has had many leaps of faiths that have lead to logical foundation throughout its existence. He never said that God was a man-made construction, only that the rituals to worship and appease God might be man-made around the faith that a creator exists.
Some of you people are so intent on being snide that you don't even read the post you're responding to. (It makes you look like a real dumb ass.) I hope someone with some common sense mods you down, even if they agree with you're slashdot-populist message. Straw manning someone to ridicule them is unnecessary.
"I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I've never had an affair with her." He should have just said "I went to lunch with my wife.. we had a cigar".
"...don't worry dad, I'll get him."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I think it was used as the example for reasons of the repercussions of that specific propaganda, not the percent of sheeple who believe it.
Also, as stated in the article, people are much more likely to believe a myth that they simply want to believe, regardless of truth. People want to believe their tax dollars (and blood) are funding a valiant effort that is good against an evil enemy. Hence, any myth brought up that makes the enemy sound more evil, is also more likely to be believed regardless of how true it is.
It amazes me how actually looking and trying to find out the answer is looked down upon by religious people, when just deciding that some superman in the sky sneezed everything into existence is defended so vociferously.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb calls this the "narrative fallacy". Interesting stuff. Especially when you consider it specifically in realms of (seeming) randomness like finance. Who knows why the market fell yesterday? No one. But you can bet the front page of the Wall Street Journal will have a nice little blurb explaining the cause behind the effect. This little 'narrative' is not easily disprovable and our brains love it! It requires conscious thought and force of will to unlink these types of things and approach them with the level of respect that such unpredictability deserves.
Kind of hard to lose that one, don't you think?
There are many decent arguments both for and against the veracity of religion
Please list your arguments for religion. I'll start for you:
1 The Bible says so!
This article, and the study it references, is more about how to make people believe lies than about why myths persist. Defining your terms is important, and this just cries out to be misconstrued (and based on what I see in this discussion, it already is being used to foster the tedious "science vs. religion" argument.
The phenomenon being studied is more about how to associate two unrelated pieces of information so that people will begin to think they are connected, or how to plant a lie so that people will eventually believe it to be true. This is nothing new: everyone from politicians to writers to artists to horny teenagers have been doing this forever. The current studies are showing more of the details of how it happens.
Dr. Thompson recognized and clearly defined this phenomenon: make your opponent deny that he rapes barnyard animals and you're home free. "I am not a pigfucker", no matter how true a statement, will not get you elected.
I've spent some time living in the US, but I'm originally from the UK. The American people, in general, are friendly, warm, and very trusting. The American government, on the other hand, is pretty venal and corrupt. I think these two factors contribute to the growth of conspiracy theories; the populace have lost trust in their government and have sought out alternate authorities to put their trust in.
BRIAN: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand?! Honestly!
GIRL: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
BRIAN: What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!
FOLLOWERS: He is! He is the Messiah!
Source: Life of Brian"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
There's no single reason for the Iraq invasion. We must separate the initial drive for war and the different selling points that got the idea accepted. The compromises between the different selling points also contributed to the large failures in the project.
First, whose idea was the invasion? The idea belonged to a small group of strategists, who believed in the benign military power of the U.S. They thought they could finally solve the Gordian knot of the Middle East that was (1) causing terror attacks against the U.S., (2) threatening U.S. access to vital oil resources, (3) threatening the very existence of Israel (these strategists were committed to Zionism) and (4) condemning vast masses of Arabs and Iranians to tyranny.
The strategists argued the root cause of all these problems was the big mistake committed by Britain and the U.S. after WWII when they founded arbitrary kingdoms in the area and installed their vassals as rulers. The surprising examples of Eastern Europe, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines showed that all nations yearn for democracy and, more importantly, that doesn't spell disaster for the U.S. strategist interests. In other words, democracy is a win-win for everybody. So these idealistic strategists were convinced that the Middle East required true democracy from Morocco to Iran.
The idea was to start a positive domino effect whereby a few good examples will get the ball rolling and the remaining Arab states will follow example without U.S. military involvement. The project was started with Iraq for various reasons. Mainly, it was easiest to sell to the U.S. public and secondly, it was led by a sworn enemy of Israel -- even if the project should fail, at least Israel would have one less enemy to worry about.
Now the strategists understood their project about an aggressive war to liberate an Arab nation wouldn't be well received by many people in the U.S. so they came up with a number of baits. They convinced some powerful politicians and industrialists with the promise of huge government contracts. They placated many conservative realists by assuring them that this was the only way to keep the oil. They assured the fiscal conservatives that looting the Iraqi oil will pay for the endeavor. And finally, they had an easy time selling the idea to the U.S. citizenry. At the time the Americans were in a militaristic fervor, and many, many conservatives had been feeling for a long time that the first Gulf War needed to be finished.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction pretext was just a formal gimmick. Nobody believed it, nobody cared except it was nice that the inevitable and much desired war seemed to have an objective justification.
The original idea really was to bring American-style happiness to the Iraqi people, and at first many Iraqis were hopeful. However, because of the necessary compromises that were needed to get the war sold, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have had to die. Since the war wasn't supposed to cost anything to the U.S., there weren't enough soldiers to secure the country and disproportionately many were dedicated to securing the oil facilities. Also, not enough money was granted for the infrastructure projects and what money there was was given to wasteful companies owned by U.S. cronies. The people were "liberated" but the free press was censored and reporters were assassinated.
The justification used in the run-up to the war was quite similar to this:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- From the Oval Office, President Clinton told the nation Wednesday evening why he ordered new military strikes against Iraq.
The president said Iraq's refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors presented a threat to the entire world.
"Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons," Clinton said.
Operation Desert Fox, a strong, sustained series of attacks, will be carried out over several days by U.S. and British forces, Clinton said.
Bush's and Clinton's speeches were virtually identical. The only instance of an administration official even relating Iraq and 9/11 happened well after the war had been approved and had begun, I believe it was Rumsfeld.
The truth is, Hussein had an obligation to prove that he had destroyed his WMDs. He did possess them before, and by the terms of the ceasefire for Desert Storm, he had to prove to weapons inspectors that they had been neutralized. He failed to do this. For more than a decade. That alone was proper justification for the invasion.
The idea that we attacked Iraq for complicity in 9/11 didn't show up until well after the war had begun, after US troops failed to discover any significant caches of NCB arms. Those that opposed the administration found it to be an effective strawman.
Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong on this. If anyone can dig up a pre-war speech that accused Hussein of plotting 9/11, I'd love to be corrected.
Politicians have known for a LONG time that psychologically, if you keep saying the same thing over and over again, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, eventually you'll believe it's true. This is how radio show pundits and 24-hour news channels get their agenda across (I'm talking on BOTH sides here.)
As Colbert would say, any statement has some level of truthiness to it. And truthiness can become the truth if you push it enough.
The reality is the people of Florida were denied their democratic process. Both parties asked for incomplete and biased remedies. The Florida Supreme Court, sorted that out and ruled for all the votes to be counted, according to the current law.
That meant each county was to establish it's standard, then perform the count.
We really don't know who won Florida, which is exactly why a lot of people call Bush "Selected, not Elected".
SCOTUS jumped in and made a bizzare ruling, essentially stopping the process. One reason, among many, was the idea that Bush might be harmed by completing the democratic process. FOX news had called the election, and SCOTUS considered that in their judicial process. (Yeah, he might be harmed! He might not have been the winner, but that's for the people, not SCOTUS to decide.) Other matters were about votes being treated equally, which is not a bad legal precedent to set, but also not a complete justification for ruling how they did. It was specifically noted that their decision was not to be considered for future decisions in kind of a "good for the country" kind of thing.
The whole affair is complicated enough to make myths easy!
Reality is our process failed. We don't know who won, only who was selected, the rest is history.
Blogging because I can...
If you ask me, the reason that religion has a bad name in some quarters is the propensity of those who are religous to do very unpleasant things to those who disagree with them about minor points of theology.
It's really hard to take the concept of a loving God seriously when the jerk promulgating it is beating the crap out of person or persons who are not members of the right club.
You folks need to clean up your act. Then we can talk.
(But I think [yes that's an act of faith, not reason] that probably by the end of this Century. the non-believers will have their picture of the universe all neatly tied up with all the loose ends tucked in. When (OK, if) that happens, you folks will find it harder to dismiss 'rationality'.)
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
He published several papers and articles on the use of propaganda.
It might leave a bad taste in your mouth, but you have to know your enemy.
Deleted
2) I really, really wish it was true.
Is there any other argument for religion left behind? Wait, I forgot, there is that grilled cheese sandwich with Virgin Mary in it. Great.
OK, I've been trolled. I can't believe I am about to do this on Slashdot.
Not everyone who professes to be religious believes in a white robed deity sitting on a cloud chucking thunderbolts. To a logical person, the concept of an anthropomorphic divinity is laughable - if you attribute truly "godlike" qualities to the divine (i.e. God is infinite), things like gender really become kinda silly. (However, I will grant that it certainly makes it easier to conceptualize and discuss - a fiction that people use to make lives easier, much like physicists can use algebra based equations (F = ma) rather than the calculus based ones which are more correct).
The problem is, what the hell language do you use to describe such a thing? You can call it "energy", or the "Force", but that gets you lumped in with the crystal wavers that are often more flaky than your traditional religious types. So you say God, knowing full well that 99% of the people who hear you don't have a clue what you really mean.
So I ask you - does someone who believes in an infinite, unifying principle beyond our current understanding sound to you like a cultist or a scientist?
Don't be so quick to dismiss those who profess to be religious. Damn near all of the greatest scientific minds of the last thousand years fall into that category.
...given the fact that we only use ten percent of our brains. :)
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Religion began as an attempt at "common sense". It aimed to answer the questions like "Why am I here?" or "How did the Earth come about?". It was largely lumped in with philosophy in an attempt to logically explain the universe. What happened was that in the course of events people started asking two types of questions. The "how" questions (e.g. "how does lightning strike?" or "how does ice form?") branched into science as we know it today. The "why" questions (along with the types of questions like "What is justice?") branched into philosophy and religion. But the fact remains that the earliest scientists were people who were into philosophy and religion.
Here ya go: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97063,00.html
6 -poll-iraq_x.htm
Perhaps everyone you've ever met doesn't fall into this 70% of all Americans: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-0
Spanish-American War, and then the resulting Phillipine insurrection, which we both won. All on our own.
D-day? Battle of Midway, June 1942? 'Battle' of the Atlantic 1941-1943?
Battle of the Ardennes, December 1944. 101st Airborne held out for ~1 week against a numerically and technologically super ior German force before being relieved by Patton's 3rd Army. And no, the USAF(technically at the time the Army Air Corps) was not involved because there was bad weather during that week. (A big part of the reason the Germans launched the offensive then was the forceast called for bad weather). Also held out in Wake Island, Luzon and Corrigedor(sp?) for a while. Yes, the garrisons eventually surrendered, just like every large force of every combatant that has been cut off from supplies did for the last 200 years. If you have a counterexample, I would like to see it.
The US had beaten the North Vietnamese on the battlefield in every single major engagement when they were deployed. Even after the bulk of US ground forces left and all that was left was advisors and air support. The '72 NVA offensive failed. It was only after the US stopped funding the puppet South Vietnamese regime in '75 that they collapsed.
If you don't agree with my assements I would like to what other countries have been so much 'better' than the US.
I disagree with many of the claims global warming scientists and their alarmist journalist/celebrity buddies are making. My disagreement is based on their lack of evidence (scientific evidence) of their claims. I am not at all religious. I also happen to think that the theory of evolution is a reasonable and consistent explanation of the available scientific evidence. Sorry to bust out of your pigeon hole.
You must live in a box, because you seem to think that everyone else does as well. The next time you're repositioning your refrigerator bungalow so the "this end up" points north, you might want to consider the possibility that not everyone who believes issue A also believes issue B. Boxing people into stereotypes limits your ability to argue effectively, as it makes it appear that you are unable to effectively argue issue A, so you bring up B to change the subject.
- Yes, I am posting at a -1, and no I will not use a proxy to bypass my circumstances.
I think this is more what the GPP was getting at... However, if not, it is still a good, apt quote in my opinion.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
There have been philosophical arguments for God's existence, and all of them are really horrible. Things like "Every event must have a cause, and there must have been a first cause." Obviously from someone who has no concept of eternity.
There are also plenty of sound philosophical arguments against God, as he's frequently defined. For example: God is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent. Yet there is evil in the world. Therefore, God cannot be all three of these -- pick two.
There's another argument that says heaven cannot possibly exist, even if it was possible to have a God with these properties.
Now, that doesn't mean philosophy can't talk about God. It just means that you're not going to find a philosophical argument that will convince someone to be religious. The closest you could come is Pascal's wager, which doesn't account for multiple religions.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The US had beaten the North Vietnamese on the battlefield in every single major engagement when they were deployed. Even after the bulk of US ground forces left and all that was left was advisors and air support. The '72 NVA offensive failed. It was only after the US stopped funding the puppet South Vietnamese regime in '75 that they collapsed.
Following your much appreciated defense of U.S. military capability*, I have to point out an important lesson that is relavent today: We may have won every battle of Vietnam, but we still lost the war. Because in a guerilla war, winning battles in the field is not as important. Being able to crush the enemy when they dare to stand and fight is meaningless when the survivors, the smart ones, will just fade in the face of the attack and blend back into the population. The same holds true in Iraq, which is why invading Falluja was both a cakewalk and a fool's errand. Our forces far outmatch the insurgents, and that hardly matters for victory. It's very frustrating for those who want military solutions for everything, who think the problem with Vietnam is that we didn't spend enough blood and treasure, but it's a lesson we'll have to learn.
* I liked the part where the OP said the U.S. only attacks when it has overwhelming force. Duh, because that's a good strategy for winning! The primary strength of our armed forces is logistics, the ability to move our forces to where they are needed, and to keep them supplied, and to take ground piece by piece by dropping shit-tons of firepower on it. It's how the North won the Civil War against superior Southern generals, it's how we kept the march across France going, and it's what our last Secretary of Defense decided to throw out the window because he thought he knew better.
The enemies of Democracy are
No it isn't - he's off by 1000 years!
1/3 of jokes get modded OT. If you get the joke, mod 1 in 3 insightful/interesting/underrated to restore karma balance.
Many posts assumes myths are plain and simple lies (religion/politics/etc).
But there are another reason for myths: The wish to overcome our limited memories. Take the Diluve episode, exist in almost all the big (and not so big) cultures around the world, and in some traditions it is explicitely stated that the history/tale have to be told to transfer the knowledge that something so terrible that descendants will not believe it to be true had really happened.
So our memories are really limited, it's not strange that not literate cultures 'invented' myths as an efficient (time wise) transmission method.
What's in a sig?
...aren't really atheists, they're more likely to be garden variety anti-christians. They disprove god by choosing the most asinine examples from their youth and ridiculing them. The 100 proofs against god are all just negations of some idiot christians 100 proofs for god.
"If there was a god, I'd be happy, I'm happy therefore there is a god"
vs
"If there was a god, I'd be happy, I'm not happy therefore there is not a god"
Both statements are about as stupid as stupid can get and yet both sides of the debate choose to use this crap to gore their oxen. People actually choose to link to this drivel in their sigs. Why not just put "I'm a complete moron and proud of it" as your sig.
Feel like I should flag this one. From what I've read, Einstein didn't believe in gods. The quote about gods not playing dice was -- reportedly -- a metaphor.
A list of impressive people, though one could question whether their various strengths lend them credibility in theological matters. But regardless: doesn't asserting the right/imperative/ability of people to think and speak for themselves seem a bit contrary to claiming that the beliefs of others should be considered persuasive?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
So basically, religion is the problem AND the solution? Because I'm pretty sure it's killed more people than most causes, yet gives us "ethical principles" you espouse, presumably based on religion, due to your contradiction of the GPP.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
A list of impressive people, though one could question whether their various strengths lend them credibility in theological matters. But regardless: doesn't asserting the right/imperative/ability of people to think and speak for themselves seem a bit contrary to claiming that the beliefs of others should be considered persuasive?
Good point. However, I was not trying to make an appeal to authority. The GP was trying to make the assumption that faith and intelligence are mutually exclusive. My point was to show that there are really smart people who believe in a higher power as evidence that it is possible to be both smart and religious. Religion is not a symptom of a weak mind.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Not everyone who professes to be religious believes in a white robed deity sitting on a cloud chucking thunderbolts.
No, but let's be honest; the God most religious people believe in is indistinguishable from Santa Claus. Otherwise, why are people always asking God for stuff?
The problem is, what the hell language do you use to describe such a thing? You can call it "energy", or the "Force", but that gets you lumped in with the crystal wavers that are often more flaky than your traditional religious types. So you say God, knowing full well that 99% of the people who hear you don't have a clue what you really mean.
So, what you're saying is, the really reasonable religious believers are actually the ones who are lying-by-ommission about what they believe just to look cooler than the dirty hippies?
Yeah, how very reasonable and intelligent of them. I can't imagine why on Earth people think religion is for the small-minded.
Don't be so quick to dismiss those who profess to be religious. Damn near all of the greatest scientific minds of the last thousand years fall into that category.
Spinoza's God doesn't exactly count as a religion. It's more like a bumper-sticker people who are atheists at heart put up so that they don't get burned at the stake. It's more like necessary camouflage in a religious society - because, frankly, us atheists don't get a lot of help from you so-called reasonable moderates.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
So Nobody has ever ODed on Religion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown The Jonestown suicide/massacre would seem to be a counterexample to that.
There are also countless examples through-out history of people that have died or killed themselves for their religion
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
I'd think about removing George Washington from that list. There is considerable evidence that he was at least a deist and probably leaning towards atheism. Unlike Thomas Jefferson who was probably atheist leaning towards deist.
The church was a much more powerful force in people's lives back then and rejecting the concept of God made little political sense back then as well.
My twitter
So... I've been worshipping a cat this whole time?...
Gravity isn't a fact. It's a theory. It's "just" a theory, in the same sense that Evolution is, by the way.
Not all facts are mathematical in nature. "Facts" can refer to observations, as well. Even observations that are not 100% repeatable or 100% accurate come within the realm of fact. The effects of gravity and evolution are observed facts. Various theories (there isn't just one theory of gravitation, you know) have sprung up to help us understand those observations. So, GP was right: It's a fact that if he jumps up, he will come back down. Is it faith to say that the same thing will happen every time he tries the experiment (as long as he stays on planet Earth, at least), he will get that result? My answer is no: It's a statement consistent with every observed fact that might be relevant to the question. You are equating faith with inductive reasoning, but I don't think that equation stands.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
well,
Actually it's not partisan politics. It's partisan politics if the democrats accuse bush of saying exactly that, which I haven't seen. The point the post you replied to was making and you completely chose to ignore calling it "all partisan politics", had nothing to do with partisan politics at all, but rather the basic point the OP made.
If I talk about bob and in the same breath mention 9/11, if that sentence comes from somebody in a position of knowledge or power, enough times, everything between bob and 9/11 blends, and misforms, and becomes bob caused 9/11
This is the beginning of Myths. nothing partisan about it. For a completely unpolitical thing. Bob saw Lisa at the bar last night (Bob saw her from across the room, but the phrasing is key and it's perfectly accurate), will eventually become Bob went out with Lisa, to Bob and Lisa are a couple, to Bob had sex with Lisa. Now all Bob did was see her from across the room, and now both their names are attached to this stigma.
are you completely ignoring the fact that dispite the fact that nobody in the administration said that Saddam caused 9/11, that there is still a belief among many people that he was in fact the cause? Also it doesn't have to be composed solely of idiots, idiots can repeat what they thought they heard, and repeat it ad nauseum eventually non-idiots will hear that myth. or recieve it in the form of email and forward it to 50 of their friends, who send it to 50 of their friends, and soon we have people wondering where this whole thing came from.
The idea that faith is a belief beyond proof is a relatively recent one (in historical terms), and a reaction to the encroachment of reason and science into realms that were previously those of the church. Redefining faith to be a righteous, unwavering belief in the face of rational arguments to the contrary was a defensive reaction on the part of the church, and a fairly effective one, it seems.
Faith, in its original meaning, is loyalty, confidence, trust. "In good faith" means something done with loyalty to a cause or agreement. One has faith in one's spouse, faith in one's king, and faith in one's god, meaning you stick with them through thick and thin. Loyalty to your god was exactly the meaning of the 1st commandment - "thou shalt have no other gods before me". Testing one's faith was the same as testing one's loyalty; losing faith meant throwing one's lot in with Baal, or Osiris, or another god who might offer you a better deal, and one could certainly do this without any loss of belief in gods or even in God. One could even forsake God or all gods, without loss of belief - the test of Job was not whether he would lose belief (it's hard to lose belief when suffering from the wrath of God), but whether he would lose loyalty.
In the primitive world, belief in some god was not necessarily irrational; there was an awful lot of stuff that begged for an explanation, and precious little hard knowledge that afforded an explanation. Believing in gods as the ultimate cosmic actors was an entirely different matter than offering one's loyalty to one or another of them.
But in the modern world, the pernicious idea that faith is a belief beyond reason (and that this is somehow a good thing), is dangerously irrational and entirely without merit. Belief must be consistent with reason, or else it is insanity. It is possible to rationally believe in gods (one simply has to define god appropriately), but incredibly most of the "faithful" prefer the insanity option.
Stupidity is not exclusive to religious people.
(I'm not even a religious person by any stretch, but this concept that believing in a deity is automagically negative to your well-being is silly.)
Not silly, just treating the religious the same as everyone else. If I believe in invisible people, talk to them, and think they talk to me, I am declared crazy, and it is automatically considered negative to my well being. If I call them Jesus and God, somehow this is supposed to make me not crazy? Now, THAT is silly.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
December 12, 2002
MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS
FROM: WILLIAM KRISTOL
Subject: Iraq - al Qaeda Connection
This morning's front page article in The Washington Post, "Report Cites Al Qaeda Deal For Iraqi Gas," should not come as a surprise. Over the past months, we have had several detailed reports of links between Iraq and al Qaeda. For example, in "The Great Terror (March 3, 2002)," Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker described the relationship between Saddam Hussein's intelligence services and al-Ansar, a bin Laden-affiliated terrorist group in Northern Iraq, which a government official in today's Post says was involved in smuggling the nerve agent out of Iraq. In the current issue of Vanity Fair, David Rose reports on additional links between Baghdad and the al Qaeda network. And in October, CIA director George Tenet flatly declared in a letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that based on credible reports "Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."
What all of this means is that the president has been right in saying that the coming war to remove Saddam is part of the overall war on terrorism. Regime change in Iraq and the destruction of al Qaeda are two related fronts in one war, and both fronts should be prosecuted aggressively and simultaneously.
FTFA: The experiments do not show that denials are completely useless; if that were true, everyone would believe the myths. But the mind's bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts. And since TFA wasn't enough for you, here's more of the same, from long ago: historian Thomas Bailey observed that "because the masses are notoriously short-sighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run interests. Deception of the people may in fact become increasingly necessary, unless we are willing to give our leaders in Washington a freer hand." Commenting on the same problem as a renewed crusade was being launched in 1981, Samuel Huntington made the point that "you may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has done ever since the Truman Doctrine"
You can't take the sky from me...
Strawman. To a logical person, the concept of a divinity is laughable.
The problem is, what the hell language do you use to describe such a thing? You can call it "energy", or the "Force", but that gets you lumped in with the crystal wavers that are often more flaky than your traditional religious types. So you say God, knowing full well that 99% of the people who hear you don't have a clue what you really mean.
No, you're misunderstanding. Those of us who argue against God aren't (by and large) trying to argue against the man in the white robes, they are arguing against every concept of a deity.
Don't be so quick to dismiss those who profess to be religious. Damn near all of the greatest scientific minds of the last thousand years fall into that category.
And close to all of the greatest scientific minds of the last hundred years don't. Sure, individuals can be religious and intelligent, but on the large, statistical scale, religious people are more likely to be stupid than those who are not.
I am trolling
Even if the fire weakened the steel, why did the building collapse at roughly free fall speed? The fire surely wasn't raging on the lower floors. How does the top of a building fall unhindered through the lower floors at free fall speed without support from underneath being removed? If it wasn't demolition, why weren't any of the 47 giant steel columns sticking up out of the rubble about 20 stories?
As for WTC #7, two large skyscrapers rained tons of debris (literally tons of steel and concrete) on it, it caught fire and was allowed to burn. There were large diesel fuel tanks for backup generators that probably fueled this fire as well. The FDNY had more important things on their hands and didn't wan't to risk more life unnecessarily. The fact that it contained things "convenient to dispose" for some shadow conspiracy is irrelevant, it was in a disaster zone and lots of other buildings were damaged to near collapse, and many buildings in that area probably fit the criteria of "convenient to dispose of".
What evidence is there that there was a raging fire at WTC 7? What evidence is there that any of the diesel tanks were breached? What evidence is there that raging fires have brought down other high rise structures? How do you explain the BBC reporting that the WTC 7 had collapsed approximately 20 minutes before it actually DID? How do you explain Larry Silverstein's statement that he told the firefighters to 'pull it'? Why didn't the 9/11 Commission Report even address WTC 7? At least the FEMA report tried to address, but this page explains some of the problems with that account. The FEMA report has even gone on to say that your explanation for the collapse of WTC 7 has a low probability (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch8.pdf). See section 8.2.5 I believe.
We know Al Qaeda tried to blow it up once before, there is pretty damn compelling evidence that they tried again and succeeded. These conspiracies not only fail Ockham's razor, they fail a simple logic-check: if there existed a conspiracy powerful enough to orchestrate the collapse of WTC #7 to get rid of data and services, they would be powerful enough to accomplish it by means less crude than blowing up two adjacent buildings and then collapsing it in the mayhem.
Once again someone knows who Al Qaeda is; let me guess, you heard it on the news or read it in a book? 'Al Qaeda' tried to blow up the WTC once before, and I presume you're referring to the '93 bombing. Interesting how all of the people implicated in it (except the FBI informant) were on the CIA payroll in Afghanistan.
As for the Ockham's razor argument, you forget also the motivation the neocons might have to 'blow up' the buildings by planes. The reasons for collapsing the twin towers is pretty easy to detect, and the reason for using planes isn't terribly difficult to discern as well (fear from the sky helps secure funding for missile defense and other new weapons, easier to explain hijackings bringing down towers than bombs placed within the building, etc). WTC 7 was conveniently located to bring it down in the process and few would question it when there were two much more exciting collapses nearby and something at the Pentagon. The fact that WTC 7 is hardly ever mentioned in the media and was totally ignored by the 9/11 Commission Report seems to support the idea that no one
And people say slashdot is "left-leaning"? Bullshit. It's pathetic to see the right-wing jesusbots downmodding anyone who points out the insanity of religion.
Care about privacy? Read this!
The Gospel according to lolcat
No ill effects because of faith?
Everybody you know is going to die an early death because of the faith of those that have been here before us. The use of faith to impede science has literally killed ALL of us.
I don't know about you, but that really pisses me off.
Did not specifically target religions because they were atheist. They targeted anyone who could possibly have been a rival.
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