science cant work if you refuse to allow the evidence dictate what you believe. here we have a prominent religious scientist admit that to him the evidence does not matter. to him the bible overrides any evidence. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand." Kurt Wise doesnât need the challenge; he volunteers that, even if all the evidence in the universe flatly contradicted Scripture, and even if he had reached the point of admitting this to himself, he would still take his stand on Scripture and deny the evidence. This leaves me, as a scientist, speechless. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have a mind capable of such doublethink. It reminds me of Winston Smith in 1984 struggling to believe that two plus two equals five if Big Brother said so. But that was fiction and, anyway, Winston was tortured into submission. Kurt Wiseâand presumably others like him who are less candidâhas suffered no such physical coercion. But, as I hinted at the end of my previous column, I do wonder whether childhood indoctrination could wreak a sufficiently powerful brainwashing effect to account for this bizarre phenomenon. Whatever the underlying explanation, this example suggests a fascinating, if pessimistic, conclusion about human psychology. It implies that there is no sensible limit to what the human mind is capable of believing, against any amount of contrary evidence. Depending upon how many Kurt Wises are out there, it could mean that we are completely wasting our time arguing the case and presenting the evidence for evolution. We have it on the authority of a man who may well be creationismâs most highly qualified and most intelligent scientist that no evidence, no matter how overwhelming, no matter how all-embracing, no matter how devastatingly convincing, can ever make any difference. http://scepsis.ru/eng/articles/id_2.php
Exactly. I have seen family members of the actively dying ask us what else can we do for them. They received bad news a month earlier, held their prayer sessions, took to herbs, all of that. People cannot handle sometimes very difficult truths.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see, nor so deaf as those who refuse to hear. It is unusual to have one of the willfully ignorant own up to it but we already knew this willful ignorance goes on all the time. This very forum is rife with it. Many here blithely ignore true evidence that challenges their preconceptions and obliviously present false evidence to "support" the same preconceptions. There is very little convincing from one side to the other, because most come here with an agenda, and half of those agendas have nothing to do with evidence. But you don't stop speaking the truth just because some refuse to get it. Twas ever thus.
It would not matter so much if these kinds of people didn't have any influence on society in general. The danger of personal delusions comes from when they intersect with public policy.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/u0qiWq0hNgg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Atheists against Religion and science. what religion does to the mind - meeting