A passing thought

[avevale_intelligencer]

Just read this post, following a link from Clement's blog, and was intrigued by the way the writer describes how being exposed to creationism and other pseudo-science at an early age caused him to start thinking and questioning what he'd been told. This parallels my own experience; reading von Daniken caused me to question conventional science, from which I passed as a natural consequence to questioning von Daniken.

And that's one of the things that bothers me about the perennial claim that religion, or creationism, or pseudo-science, causes people's brains to shut down; the people making that claim have obviously encountered these things themselves, and it's had quite the reverse effect, as it had with me and the writer of the article. Either he, and I, and a select few, are examples of a superior race whose enhanced brains are immune to the numbing effect of the opiate of the people so decried by Marx (a suggestion which I view with a certain scepticism)...or ideas are just ideas, and people have control of their own brains, and it's just as easy to choose to be asleep at the wheel whether you believe in Richard Dawkins, YHVH or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or nothing at all. And just as easy to choose to wake up and question. (I should perhaps make clear that this latter is the explanation I favour. I don't have an enhanced brain.)

Comments

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

What caused me to start questioning things (at around 11) was going to a Catholic school, and having the bible promoted from a series of stories I took exactly as seriously as those of any other mythology to something I was expected to actually believe: and believe in conjunction with obviously self-contradictory nonsense. "Oh my god I believe in you because you have said it and your word is true" - what??? Can we spot a circular argument here?

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect that it's not the exposure to unorthodox material that causes people to question or not; rather, it's the insistence on some authorities' part that their views are unquestionably correct. The authorities who can provide verifiable evidence tend to create both stronger and better impressions on the questioners' minds, and also encourage more questioning of the sort that leads to more solid beliefs.

[howeird]

It is not so easy to wake up and question when everyone you know reinforces the religion, myth or pseudo-science. I have a friend who is an astronomer, she says she has been asked by a lot of people this week if it's true that some comet is going to crash into the earth and destroy us all, and when she tells them no, not even close, they refuse to believe her. She thinks the reason they asked was not to get the right answer, but to have an Expert validate the myth which they believe in.