Thursday, July 07, 2011

The Backfire Effect « You Are Not So Smart

The Backfire Effect « You Are Not So Smart

The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

Wired, The New York Times, Backyard Poultry Magazine – they all do it. Sometimes, they screw up and get the facts wrong. In ink or in electrons, a reputable news source takes the time to say “my bad.”

If you are in the news business and want to maintain your reputation for accuracy, you publish corrections. For most topics this works just fine, but what most news organizations don’t realize is a correction can further push readers away from the facts if the issue at hand is close to the heart. In fact, those pithy blurbs hidden on a deep page in every newspaper point to one of the most powerful forces shaping the way you think, feel and decide – a behavior keeping you from accepting the truth.


An interesting look at Truth and our ability to recognize it.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Angry Atheists

Proof that religion doesn't have a monopoly on trailer trash pundits.

New Atheists.  The new face of non-believers.  Old white guys telling both believers and more tolerant non-believers what they are supposed to believe.  Quite of a few of them are fairly nice people, just a bit obsessed with forcing everyone to their standard or "rationality".  But there are a few who are really just angry, broken men with axes to grind who pontificate from their paid by welfare trailers in the middle of nowhere.  Not in anyway unlike Christian fringe nutcases who do the same thing.

Greg Laden is one of them.  Now, Mr Laden and I have not had any interaction since I unfriended and blocked him on Facebook last June.  But I was going through my portable hard drive and found a screenshot of one of the last things he ever said to me.  And I decided I would talk about him, as I'm certain he's still a scruffy controlling angry atheist pundit spewing filth and abuse all day, since he can't get a real job.  Here's the screenshot.



And there you see exactly how these men react to any disagreement.  Abuse, ridicule and insult.  Hostility.  In response to a sane comment. One of his syncophants continued to insult and attack and threaten me via personal messages.  And all my comments to him had been sane.  I could back my stand, which is that gun control is ineffective in dealing with violence, with statistics and research.  But, as is often the case with the fundy bible thumper, angry atheist dudes are unable to accept any but the data that supports their position.  Global warming was another issue we used to disagree on.  He used cherry picked data from the last few hundred years to "prove" that humans are the sole cause of global warming.  Anytime I offered data from millions of years or talked about how we are still working our way to the next glacial minimum, he either ignored me or insulted me . . calling me names.

Which led me to come to the conclusion that some atheists are just as delusional as their religious cultist counterparts.  From the New Atheist site: Delusions are irrational beliefs, held with a high level of conviction, that are highly resistant to change even when the delusional person is exposed to forms of proof that contradict the belief

Okay, now that is out of my system.  I am unsure if he is so controlling that he Googles himself constantly, so I am unsure if he will ever know that one lone voice of reason is telling the world he's an angry, abusive atheist with delusions of importance and he's dead wrong.  But it makes me feel better to put this out in the blogsphere.

Catholic church gives blessing to iPhone app

The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession.

The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99).

Described as "the perfect aid for every penitent", it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament.

Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first.

Read more . . .