Fundamentalist Skeptics Apparently Dumber
A survey of University of Oklahoma College students early last year revealed that the more education a student receives, the more likely they are to believe in aspects of the paranormal.
One of the commenters on author Michael Prescott’s blog muses that this may be a result of the location of the survey, where fundamentalist religious beliefs hold sway in the popular culture. assumptions like this are disingenuous, and I doubt that the commenter has ever been to Oklahoma.
The Skeptical Inquirer-types were probably in a dither, calling for more “structured enculturation” (read: “mind control”) of our poor, deluded students, most of whom will go on to productive careers and lives, with their beliefs affecting their work little if at all.
What the students learned is that any subject deserves a hearing, where open public debate determines the efficacy of any idea. This is how a functioning democratic society should operate. Fundamentalist thinkers like debate too, as long as everyone understands that there is One True Answer and that people will realize this when the discussion is over. How does this make them different from the religious zealots they are so courageously fighting?
My suspicion is that people with a higher degree of education realize that we don’t have to come to any conclusion on something as peripheral as the paranormal, and are willing to suspend their disbelief with belief, a loaded term and one that should be discarded when discussing “damned” (to use Charles Fort’s term) ideas and data.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 10:43 am and is filed under Psychic Phenomena, Uncategorized, Wake Up Down There. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.
del.icio.us Digg Reddit BlinkList Google Ma.gnolia StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Help
- Related News Stories:
- Tim Binnall Interview Tonight »
- Fundamentalist Skeptics Not In The Majority »
- Christians Want UFOs Discussed In Schools »
- “New” Ufology »
- Examples Of Alien Writing »
|
Jun 24 2007 
June 24th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Anybody who really understands science will understand that scientific knowledge is not necessarily the definitive answer. It is always being revised. It’s our best guess based on the evidence we’ve pieced together. Science also has a bias towards a naturalistic and materialistic explanation. Any scientist who writes a paper arguing that X Y or Z can best be explained by Divine, supernatural or alien intervention is going to have a hard time getting published, because it is going to be assumed that there is a simpler explanation (even if it hasn’t been found yet). Intelligent scientists will state that anything beyond the material realm is beyond the scope of science.
I’ve found that many vocal hardened skeptics don’t really understand the above. They behave as though scientific knowledge is more or less infallible. They seem to believe that Occam’s razor is a universal law, not just a principal. They also ignore the
“all things being equal” part of Occam’s razor as well as that the simplest answer only ‘tends’ the be the best. They seem to believe that Occam’s razor will always produce the correct answer, and put forward explanations that fit only some of the data, and believe it explains everything.
They also seem to believe that when they produce an explanation for a phenomenon, they have no burden of proof for their explanation, only that they must be right because the other person failed to produce ‘extraordinary evidence’ (whatever that means)
But anyway, college didn’t seem to be about indoctrination of a particular viewpoint so much as broadening horizons and teaching new ways of thinking. I guess because of that, I don’t find these results that surprising.
June 24th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Hey Greg and Nick and everyone! Check out this amazing video on qigong master John Chang, wherein he ignites a ball of paper on fire with his hands and he emits amazing electrical healing energy and does spirit communication. He’s tested by scientists in the video as well and has since gone back into deep meditation.
http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/final-qigong-demonstration-of-john-chang/
June 24th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Uth,
Agreed. This is all part of our continuing crusade against fundamentalist thinking of all sorts–brought to you as a public service from UFOMystic.
June 25th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
You know Gregg, if someone considers themeselves a adherant to a faith, movement or belief system that has a structured knowledge base and a strict guideline considering behaviors then fundamental thought is not a bad thing.
Consider a christian minister or a jewish rabbi who is an adherant to a conservative form of their faith. Within their personal lives and their own community that fundamentalist thinking is critical to the success of the group. In the public forum, they bear an important message to the body politic of the nation and balance to a debate. You would not want purely conservaitive or liberal ideologies controlling an argument. So in fact fundamentalism (loosely used here) is a benefit to society as a whole, whatever its form. Where fundamentalists run into trouble is when they expect everyone else to think like them, that simply wont happen. I gave up years ago trying to convince anyone of my politics, faith, whatever, instead I try to tell my story and paint pictures why I see things the way I do. Which is far more powerful. This blog has been an exception in some cases.
So I submit to you that fundamentalism has its place and you wouldn’t want those people/opinions to disappear. Fascism, violent extremism and xenophobic nationalism, those are the ugly heads of the hydra I would like to see abolished, but again wont happen in a free society. So we have to suffer that too.
Jess