Monday 5 March 2012

Strange Ideas that refuse to die

Its odd that so many people hold views that are not only against the norm, but are factually provable to be false or at best misguided, or worse led by powerful interests intent on lining their own pockets (Tobacco???)

Consiracy theorists, Bigfoor hunters, anti vaccination lobbies, Anti taxation of the wealthy, no need for insurance just dont get sick, there is a god, Obama's an african, (or a commie), they won't give us the cure for cancer cos it'll cost them, The Royal family are flesh eating lizards, the illuminati have prison camps ready for us, Evolution is a lie, we can prove the world is 6000years old....the list goes on and on.

Occasionally I get myself involved in "debates" with these people but its really pointless...I must stop myself, when people refuse to accept any view point but their own, no matter how crazy or mad it is you have to wonder exactly how their thought processes work.

These are not stupid people, often far from it, they've read and disseminated huge amounts of informaton, even spent time analysiing it, formed an opinion, then re-inforced that opinion by only listening to other like minded people.
The problem is they have not taken the basic neutral stance you need to take in order for make an informed opinion...if all you do is build "evidence" to re-enforce a false idea while ignoring or dismissing any other evidence, then you are just really good at defending that falsehood.

So when you come along and point out a factual issue, they have mountains of "evidence" to hand to refute your claims of fact...The evidence however does not normally pass the simple tests of what constitutes evidence, its usaully some "opinion" spread by a person or group with some agenda to gain.

So you point out the failings in the source and supply accurate information and when that fails, they resort to the good old, ah but you're not really being told the truth, argument!!! More conspiracy! Can't trust those pesky facts and provable evidence, its all been set up to protect the powerful interests of the world..or religion, or whatever.
Even worse, and often funnier is when due to lack of understanding of the other viewpoint they try to discredit it while not having a clue.
For me Creationists are the worst at this, certanly the most organised since they often have churches behind them, I do reserve the right to call these people stupid..and here's some proof.



2 words...water cycle...why let a bit of factual science get in the way of a perfectly good but of athiest bashing.

Homeopathy comes close 2nd...hey do you know what they call Homepathic medicine thats been proven to work...Medicine!! I could probably list 10 or more...most are crackpot harmless..But some...some really worry me.



I really do despair at times, I just said that these people are not stupid, but they really do have some bloody stupid ideas...and thats why we're all ultimatly fucked!

Life is never dull, but it is sometimes deeply confusing. And its very late, I've done a shed load of work today, and have more to do tomorrow so time for bed.



Ahthankyew

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you actually an atheist? I am just wondering. Also, People are so dumb, that poster was hilarious especially since it appears there are some citations.

Boring old Fart said...

very much so. I have no issue with people who are relgious, we all need our reasons for existance, but there really is no need to push them on others.

Relgion to my mind is utter evil which has held humanity back for eons and still does. I really hope that we see and end to it in my lifetime, but we won't.

Tomorrow the cult of the ressurected flash drive will be the next big thing we're killing people over cos we're do dumb to read and understand some science books.