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

[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.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I'd have said that the existence of verifiable evidence leaves no room for questioning of the thing thus justified. Whereas a dogmatic assertion without evidence (like this one) gives you the choice; to accept without question, or not to.

And then again, if there's one thing von Daniken's books are full of, it's verifiable evidence. Everything he adduced to prove his theories is actually there, and can be seen as pointing the way he says it points. In some cases we still haven't (AFAIK) come up with a better explanation. The only way to combat that is to assert dogmatically, without any justification and in the face (as it seems) of his piles of evidence, that "aliens have never visited earth, because that would be silly, and therefore he must be wrong," and having taken that as an unquestioned truth, seek other theories to account for his facts.

But that's just my opinion.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Well, one could say "I do not know of anything else to account for these facts, but that does not mean that a reason that neither I nor von Daineken has thought of does not exist".
His theories are not proof that aliens have visited Earth, only that their having done so remains an intriguing possibiliity. The middle ground. The admission of "I do not know". I have verifiable evidence that it's possible to do this :)