Rosenau claims there's a disconnect between scientists and science deniers: scientists will focus on scientific facts and evidence, while deniers will focus on moral and social repercussions.
The conversation might begin with a dispute about the evolution of the bacterial flagellum, the significance of antibiotic resistance, or the veracity of Archaeopteryx fossils, but before long the discussion leaps to the implications of evolution for the human soul, morality, or religious truth. Discussions about vaccines may open with fears about autism, heavy metals in preservatives, or how many antigens a baby’s body can handle, but rapidly shift to anger about limits on parents’ rights to make choices for their children. Climate change conversations rapidly shift from science to free market capitalism and private citizens’ right to make decisions about their families and their homes. Without addressing these fears first, it is impossible to correct scientific errors and undo the harm caused by science denial. [emphasis added]Rosenau explains that science denial gets rooted in social identity. Perhaps creationists feel they can't really be Evangelicals if they accept evolution. Same thing with climate change and being conservative. Maybe parents of children with autism feel more socially supported by the anti-vaccine groups than by medical offices.
Trying to force feed evidence to people is only so effective when we don't address the social, emotional, and psychological reasons for denial in the first place. It may be more effective to highlight people within these social groups that already do accept the scientific claims. As Rosenau says,
The messengers most likely to break through will be those who share a social identity with the science-denying audience. Their mere existence undercuts the belief that an individual cannot belong to this group and accept the science.He goes on to list examples of people already working from this strategy.
I think most people prefer to see the world in black and white; it's easier to understand and work with. In fact, a big part of why I like the sciences is because the answers are black and white. Objective evidence is unaffected by human emotion, social custom, or even morality. Scientists (being human) may cloud the truth through error or even sabotage, but with enough people following the scientific method, the truth wins out. Science leads to more than never-ending, conflicting opinions; it leads to verifiable answers. I love that.
While scientific truths may be black and white, peoples' beliefs are all shades of gray. Our thought processes are complex, and we form our beliefs based on many factors in addition to (or in spite of) raw evidence.
Promoting scientific truth, then, may require a more complex strategy than reiterating evidence and deriding anyone who resists. We'd like for everyone to be purely logical and rational, but that's not how people are. We can't just talk about chemistry, biology, or physics; we need to talk about emotions, social identity, religious beliefs, political views, psychological states. Science denial isn't just about physical reality; it's about people.
This is particularly interesting to me, on the issue of creationism, as I've recently (maybe a year ago) re-reversed positions, and for exactly the reasons he stated.
ReplyDeleteBut there is definitely a movement amongst Christians to rectify Darwin with Genesis, and it is having any effect at all precisely because it doesn't seek to deny but affirm Christian belief. Dawkins succeeded only in further polarizing the issue and forming reactionary camps, whereas someone like this guy stands an actual chance of changing peoples' minds.
I don't know a great deal about the history of science and Christianity, but I'm under the impression that this isn't the first time Christianity has resisted a scientific assertion and then eventually come around to accepting the same assertion. I expect it will ultimately be the same way with evolution.
DeleteAnd I talk about Christianity specifically because I know even less about other religions.
It's really quite a shame since a number of great scientists have also been priests (yay Mendel!). But then I remember a lot of those priest-scientists are Jesuits that more conservative Catholics try to get excommunicated every half century or so :P
DeleteThe only other time "Christianity" has resisted a scientific assertion, to my knowledge, was the Galileo controversy. Yet even there, Kepler some decades earlier than Galileo had published his results proving mathematically that planets move in elliptic orbits with the Sun at an epicenter, with no resulting torments to his person. People may have found it hard to accept because it was new, as everyone did and still does with quantum mechanics.
DeleteI'd say that there really hasn't been an issue like evolution, so far as religious and scientific arguments go.
My sympathy on this subject is about zero, save for climate change because it's both harder for the common man to observe climate change than evolution or vaccination and because climate change is far and away the most politicized topic.
ReplyDelete"Their mere existence undercuts the belief that an individual cannot belong to this group and accept the science."
Until the most nauseating voices of that group say those people aren't 'real' members of their group and the sheeple (I hate that word but it's utterly appropriate) decide they should follow the loudest and most unbending voice in the group.
"We'd like for everyone to be purely logical and rational, but that's not how people are."
This really isn't a people problem. This is a problem with the United States, large numbers of Americans belonging to ass-backward sects of Christianity (there's other religions that cause trouble but their numbers are insignificant compared to Christianity), a crappy K-12 education system, and people's propensity for pulling their children from the K-12 system (or never putting them in the system to start with) once they start teaching their children immoral subjects like evolution and how everyone is not straight. I absolutely support parents' rights to educate their children as they please so long as they meet a basic educational standard, but I'm not gonna stand around and pretend like a lot of times home education is not a vehicle for indoctrinating children into the most inane, illogical ideologies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution
I'm sure somebody could make me actually prove the causation, but the trend is fairly obvious: Countries with worse basic education and higher religiosity, particularly non-mainstream Christianity and Islam, show less belief in evolution. There's not much we can do about people's religiosity, but if we fix our friggin education system, I'd bet money that we'd have way less of a problem with anti-evolution and anti-vaccine movements.
What do you think is different in American forms of religion compared to Europe, for example? Is it that Americans are more religious than other countries, or is it that Americans approach their religions in a different way than other countries?
DeleteAlso, why do you think evolution is more observable than climate change? The first thing I thought of was that evolution takes place over an even longer period of time, so it seems like it would be less observable.
Either way, I still think it comes back to a "people problem". That is, even if Americans are more resistant because of their particular Christian denominations, it still comes back to people letting factors other than evidence influence their perspective. And regardless of why Americans are different about this compared to other countries, the question remains: how do we improve the situation? I agree that improving our education system would help, regardless of religious views. But I also think people would be less resistant if they didn't see evolution (or vaccination) as a threat in the first place.
I understand the notion that it shouldn't matter whether evolution is a "threat" or not, it should only matter whether it's true. But how we think things should be doesn't change how they actually are, and maybe understanding and responding to why people resist will help us more effectively spread truth.
"What do you think is different in American forms of religion compared to Europe, for example? Is it that Americans are more religious than other countries, or is it that Americans approach their religions in a different way than other countries?"
DeleteBoth. There's less religion, and the religion that does exist is generally either Catholic (which accepts evolution) or mainline/state Protestantism (which also accepts evolution).
"Also, why do you think evolution is more observable than climate change? The first thing I thought of was that evolution takes place over an even longer period of time, so it seems like it would be less observable."
We've seen bacteria evolve the ability to digest nylon (a man-made polymer) in our lifetime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria
We can also artificially speciate fruit flies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation#Artificial_speciation
Or we can observe the fact that a new flu shot is needed every year. If evolution didn't exist, we would be able to use the same flu shot every year.
Etc. There's a million different ways to prove evolution because the theory has been around so long.
"But I also think people would be less resistant if they didn't see evolution (or vaccination) as a threat in the first place."
Honestly, the solution there would be disallowing parents to remove their children from school in order to indoctrinate them into their insulated and ignorant world view, but again that approach would be far too Orwellian for my taste. For now, I think education is the big factor, and once it becomes apparent to the majority of the population how dumb you have to be to reject things like evolution or vaccines, I suspect the problem will become minuscule as people either take a moment to rethink their beliefs or at least stop loudly stating their beliefs so the whole world can hear how backwards they are.
A new flu shot is needed every year. But it's still the flu.
DeleteBacteria can eat nylon. They're still bacteria.
Fruit flies can be artificially speciated. They're still fruit flies.
Seagull around the arctic rim exist in a flux of being able to interbreed with some neighboring gull breeds but not others. They're still sea gulls.
Peppered moths went from white to black to white. Still peppered moths.
^ That's why some people don't consider evolution directly observable. Those are the sorts of things critics of evolution mention when I bring up any of the commonly cited observable evidences of evolution.
Those same people may even acknowledge natural selection as a real working phenomenon that is presently at work in the world... but just deny that it is how the majority of the diversity of plant and animal life originated. I could very well acknowledge that the bacteria changed from one form to another in the same breath as acknowledging the universe and all the bacteria species in it to be 6000 years old and created by the hand of God. The main objection to evolution isn't that things change, but the origination of the changing things in question.
Frankly, I don't see how it matters. The earth is 6,000 years old and bacteria can develop resistances to medicine. How am I any worse off than anyone else?
"Honestly, the solution there would be disallowing parents to remove their children from school in order to indoctrinate them into their insulated and ignorant world view, but again that approach would be far too Orwellian for my taste."
I'd like to point out, creationists are just as apt to call your worldview insulated and ignorant and accuse you of trying to indoctrinate children at an early age. No one would believe creationism if it wasn't taught to them as children, maybe... but in the same way no one would believe evolution if it wasn't taught to them as children, as I think the resistances to accepting it only make all too clear.
The phenomenon of disbelief in evolution seems too big to be explained primarily by home-schooling. Is home-schooling really that frequent?
DeleteSeems the issue is more about how we decide what to teach in public schools.
"Frankly, I don't see how it matters. The earth is 6,000 years old and bacteria can develop resistances to medicine. How am I any worse off than anyone else?"
DeleteYeah, I used to feel that way about it too, actually. But I think it matters because it sets a precedent for how we decide what to teach in public schools.
Also, much other biology depends on understanding evolution? As the article says, "Students around the world are deprived of lessons on evolution – the foundation of modern biology – leaving them without the tools to understand and participate in the revolutions in biotechnology, biomedicine, and genomics that will define society in this century."
Personally, I think schools should teach whatever the parents in the local school district want them to teach. Any parent who objects to that curriculum should be able to withdraw their children and homeschool them. I prefer to think of a school system as a collective sharing of individual homeschooling responsibilities.
DeleteAnd you are right, evolution is currently the fundamental theory for how all of biology is understood, much as Newton's laws were for physics prior to the 20th century.
I frankly don't know enough about biology to say how necessary it is to the fields in question that the researchers therein assert all life on earth to have arisen through millions of years of progeny differing subtly from their progenitors. It doesn't sound like it'd be important, but then I am actually ignorant of most of biology.
Except "endoplasmic reticulum". I remembered that word.
"^ That's why some people don't consider evolution directly observable. Those are the sorts of things critics of evolution mention when I bring up any of the commonly cited observable evidences of evolution."
DeleteMacro-evolution, to my understanding, is basically just micro-evolution on a macro scale. Little mutations and adaptations occur here and there, and over the course of however many thousand/million of years, the species acquires so many mutations that it has become a different species for all practical purposes. Rinse and repeat.
Actually, I think a good analogy is the Russian T-34 tank of WW2. The T-34 was introduced in 1941 and modified constantly with innovations as the war progressed. Fast forward to 1944, and the T-34 has been modified so many times that new models are given the designation T-34-85 because the tank has changed so radically from its original form. Was the T-34-85 still fundamentally based on the T-34? Absolutely. But it changed so much that it warranted being labeled as essentially its own species of tank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34
http://pkka.narod.ru/t-34-85.htm
Also, scientists are constantly digging up intermediary species in the evolutionary lines of animals. Basically all that's left is filling in holes from as-of-yet undiscovered intermediates, but even with the holes the evolutionary lines speak for themselves.
"Frankly, I don't see how it matters. The earth is 6,000 years old and bacteria can develop resistances to medicine. How am I any worse off than anyone else?"
If you want to hold that personal belief, I don't particularly mind, but when a bunch of people start holding that belief and then want to try and restrict teaching of a fundamental precept of biology and/or try to get a ridiculously unproven hypothesis taught side-by-side, then I have a problem.
"I'd like to point out, creationists are just as apt to call your worldview insulated and ignorant and accuse you of trying to indoctrinate children at an early age."
There ain't any equivalency here. I can refer to a vast body of scientific research or, heck, run tests on my own to prove my point of view. I actually almost took up artificial speciation of fruit flies for my biology project in high school, but my teacher and I decided it would take a little more time than I had.
We can always go down that rabbit hole of 'well how can you really be sure you're right?', but as we know that just leads straight to solipsism and any further discussion becomes entirely pointless.
"No one would believe creationism if it wasn't taught to them as children, maybe... but in the same way no one would believe evolution if it wasn't taught to them as children, as I think the resistances to accepting it only make all too clear."
Most children I know aren't taught evolution in any serious manner until middle school at the earliest, and furthermore the ability of parents to influence their children's beliefs is much stronger than a teacher's ability. Again, there's no equivalency to be had there. You can wander out into the natural world and find evidence of evolution if reading papers/book isn't your thing. Believing in creationism pretty much takes a parent or community consistently pushing creationism from a young age and insisting that any evidence to the contrary is just a lie. I highly doubt that creationism would hold any sway if children were taught creationism at an older age and outside the high influence of a parent.
"Except "endoplasmic reticulum". I remembered that word."
DeleteI lol'd. Definitely still remember that one too.
From what I understand, the major difference between macro and micro evolution is that there is no difference between them. Well, except one takes more time. There's no halting-mechanism on "micro-evolution" to prohibit offspring from going further and further away from an "average" member of their species.
Delete"There ain't any equivalency here. I can refer to a vast body of scientific research or, heck, run tests on my own to prove my point of view."
And I can point you right to God's Holy Word and show you, plain as day, how evolution is flatly contradicted to prove my point of view. :P
"You can wander out into the natural world and find evidence of evolution if reading papers/book isn't your thing. Believing in creationism pretty much takes a parent or community consistently pushing creationism from a young age and insisting that any evidence to the contrary is just a lie."
I'm sorry man, but this completely ignores how any one ever came to believe in Creationism in the first place; it was those dessert nomads who wandered around in the natural world. Raise a kid and tell them absolutely nothing about the origins of life. I bet money 10 to 1 they come out believing some powerful being made everything.
"I highly doubt that creationism would hold any sway if children were taught creationism at an older age and outside the high influence of a parent."
And I highly doubt evolution would hold any sway if children were taught evolution at an older age and outside the high influence of a parent. In fact, we have an entire country as evidence that people not taught evolution as young adults are highly resistant to it.
Basically, people tend to view what they learn growing up as right and everything else as ridiculous.
I also don't accept this theory that we just need to educate people more, like they don't believe in evolution because they don't understand it.
ReplyDeleteIt's true, a lot of people don't understand evolution. A lot of Christians don't understand evolution and say things like "then how come there are still monkeys?" And a lot of actual believers in evolution don't understand evolution and say things like "people are evolving in to a Collective Unconscious with hive-mind capabilities."
But from my experience, that has nothing to do with it. There are people who understand and don't understand evolution on both sides.
Intelligent people are capable of understanding an idea or belief, and even articulating it, without believing it. That's one of the foremost signs of understanding. I know both Bryan and Laura are able to do this.
Even once you've taught an intelligent person what the theory of evolution is and how it purports to explain the diversity of species on earth, and gotten them to pass tests and write essays explaining it, you haven't gotten them to believe it.
Whether they choose to believe it I think really will have a lot to do with identity, as the OP said.
"Whether they choose to believe it I think really will have a lot to do with identity, as the OP said."
DeleteThat's a really good point. I freely admit that I couldn't adequately explain evolution any more than I could explain a lot of things in physics--including things I've learned and aced tests over--and I still accept them as true. It often just comes down to who and what you trust.
"It's true, a lot of people don't understand evolution. A lot of Christians don't understand evolution and say things like "then how come there are still monkeys?" And a lot of actual believers in evolution don't understand evolution and say things like "people are evolving in to a Collective Unconscious with hive-mind capabilities.""
DeleteI'm fairly certain people with a flawed understanding of evolution not believing in evolution is much more common than people with a flawed understanding of evolution that do believe in evolution. Sure, most people who believe in evolution have incomplete knowledge of the theory of evolution, but they've got the basic idea right.
"Even once you've taught an intelligent person what the theory of evolution is and how it purports to explain the diversity of species on earth, and gotten them to pass tests and write essays explaining it, you haven't gotten them to believe it."
Most intelligent people will go out into the natural world and see that evolution makes sense of the natural world, and they'll go 'hey, there's probably something to this theory.' Creationism provides essentially zero understanding of the natural world aside from the filling the void of answering how humans and animals came to be in their current forms. We can make predictions and connections with the theory of evolution in hand. Again, creationism provides nothing beyond the answer that some greater power did everything.
And that's why science has advanced humanity so much. Science helps humans understand the natural world and allows us to make predictions about what will happen if I do x, y, or z and then test those predictions. Creationism as a theory provides basically no ability to understand, predict, or prove anything, therefore it falls outside science, and therefore it has no place being taught in public schools.
"Sure, most people who believe in evolution have incomplete knowledge of the theory of evolution, but they've got the basic idea right."
DeleteI have to argue, if people who believe in evolution (and who seem to be more common than you think) propose that humans are "evolving" to form a Collective Unconscious Hive Mind, then they do not have the basic idea right at all.
This comic from SMBC says it pretty well.
Now, maybe in those highly coveted other countries where they get better education, people don't make stupid mistakes like mixing natural selection and teleology... but I really doubt it. The teleological fallacy is a allegedly a pretty basic part of human thinking.
Maybe we can agree, the majority of the entire population has a poor understanding of evolution. And I'll grant you, probably the largest part of that majority, and certainly the dumbest part, go on to become creationists, while a smaller proportion of that under-informed majority go on to believe in evolution. And that among those in the minority who understand evolution, I'll grant maybe the barest sliver of a fraction deny evolution.
"And that's why science has advanced humanity so much."
So I hate to be that guy, but let's try this.
The world is 6000 years old.
All the lifeforms in existence are in essentially the same form they were when they were first created by God 6000 years ago, with possible adaptations.
Humans were formed from dust by the hand of God, specially created, 6000 years ago, the literal Adam and Eve.
What advancements are denied me from these assertions?