Anti-Stupidity Quotes

Some unfortunates are not intellectually gifted by virtue of genetic endowment or brain injury, through no fault of their own. These individuals lack the cognitive capacity to learn more than rudimentary knowledge or skills, yet they possess value simply by being humans.

Other individuals have sufficient intellectual capacity to be capable of acquiring understanding, yet they chose not to comprehend reality because of emotional biases. I find such willful stupidity so uttely infuriating that I have decided to collect some quotes that accurately denigrate ignorance:

God of the Gaps:
"The history of science shows us that patching the gaps in our knowledge with miracles creates a path that leads only to perpetual ignorance."
~ Jerry Coyne, The Great Mutator, in The New Republic

Intelligent [sick] design theory:
"As the philosopher Philip Kitcher shows in his superb new book, Living With Darwin, the theory of intelligent design is a mixture of "dead science" and non-science. That is, insofar as ID makes scientific claims (for example, that natural selection cannot produce complexity), those claims not only are wrong, but were proved wrong years ago. And ID is deeply unscientific in its assertion that certain aspects of evolution (mutation, in Behe's case) required supernatural intervention. Behe's attacks on evolutionary theory are once again wrongheaded, but the intellectual situation grows far worse when we see what theory he offers in its place."
~ Jerry Coyne, The Great Mutator, in The New Republic

YECs:
"There is no polite way to say this: people who resist scientific explanations for natural phenomena such as the age of the earth and the fact of evolution are guilty of childish thinking."
~ Sharon Begley in So That's Why Evolution is in Trouble!

Quo Vadis?
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Furor over Stupidity

It's high time that scientists and the educated organize against attempts by the dogmatically ignorant to undermine education in America. AiG's deceptive junk-tank monument to stupidity, aka the Creation Museum, has squandered $27 million in order to promote their LIES against scientific fact.

YECs appear not to be a particularly bright group, so it seems unlikely that many budding geniuses are being misled into ignorance. However, this is no reason not to decry the damage done to average children by causing deliberate confusion about science and reality.

The Founding Fathers were wise to separate Religion and the State, though not necessarily for prescient reasons. Whether or not they foresaw the likelihood that organized stupidity would attempt to undermine education, the Constitution should be used to protect education from superstition and ignorance. The mere fact of "scientists'" having signed a document against Darwinism demonstrates the desecration of science, critical thinking, and logic wrought by religious dogmatists. Polls indicate that far too high a percentage of Americans are so ignorant of the facts on which scientific theories are based that they hold a strict creationist view of origins.

Modern politicians, concerned more for their political ambitions than for truth, are all too aware of the vocal agitators who sway religious dogmatists on voting day, so they abrogate their responsibility to uphold the Constitution. To make matters worse, the most stupid president ever not-to-actually-be-elected resorts to claims of communication with God. It's intriguing to ponder how America came to be a nation that largely reviles knowledge while protecting organized stupidity. America has not come very far since 1925!

Statement of Concern
"We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis."

National Center for Science Education petition: http://www.sciohost.org/states

"One of the petitions, started by the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a Washington, D.C., group that focuses on church and state issues, says the museum is part of a "campaign by the religious right to inject creationist teachings into science education."'

Campaign to Defend the Constitution: http://www.defconamerica.org/

Elsewhere: Gallup Poll on Evolution, which reveals that the overwhelming majority of religious fundamentalists are ignorant of the fact of biological evolution : comment on Pharyngula : Religion—our maelstrom of ignorance: "Maybe we need to start picketing fundamentalist churches. Maybe it's about time that we recognize religious miseducation as child abuse."

Quo Vadis?
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Agnostic vs Atheist

"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”
~ W. K. Clifford (1879)

Those of religious bent and the fantasy prone choose to believe what they choose to believe. Such individuals seem to select whatever opinion provides most emotional appeal without regard to logic or empirical evidence.

Religious types come in various levels of dogmatism and subscribe to different human-invented creeds. Most are theists, whereas others believe in equally nutty nonsense like the so-called "Science of Mind" that has zip to do with science.

Creationists of various ilks deny our close relationship (more than 98% shared DNA) with the chimpanzee in order to protect their illusion of Special Creation.

Technically, an agnostic holds that the existence or nonexistence of a supernatural deity is unknowable. While this is philosophically rigorous, what is the point of copping out by leaving room for the indeterminable supernatural?

As soon as a supposed supernatural entity has interacted with the physical, then that purported supernatural agent has entered the realm of the physical and has abandoned supernatural status. Those religions that include creation myths necessarily make a claim that the formerly-supernatural has interfered with the physical. This creation-interaction must, by definition, reduce, or elevate, the supernatural to the physical. Goodbye special supernatural status.

Agnosticism can take the position that the possibility that whatever claimed teapot or deity actually exists is vanishingly small, but agnosticism allows some wiggle room for the vanishingly remote possibility that any particular candidate-claim has validity.

Whereas agnosticism carefully perches on the fence, atheism expresses more certainty than to say, "we just can't know". The small "a" atheist simply says, "I don't believe that God exists", wheras a capital "A" Atheist is certain that, "God does not exist." Philosophical purism aside, all the evidence indicates that the God of the Bible does not exist.

Christians, my prime targets in this expose-stupidity campaign, hold that their supposed Creator did indeed interfere in the physical up until 2,000 years ago, since which time God appears to have understandably grown bored with Christians. Of course, Christians keep this conditionally-loving God on hand for their supposed afterlife, aka death.

Bertrand Russell was a famous debunker of religious nonsense and said in Is There a God?, “If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”

Russell, as ever, makes a good point. Any fantasist can concoct any fanciful story, padded with a layer of non-falsifiable protection, and can insist that the story is accurate by virtue of the glitch that it cannot be disproven. Such a claim, of course, commits the logical error of argumentum ad ignorantiam. If the claim was first made in antiquity, it is imbued with an undeserved veneer of credibility.

The invention of supposed prophecies did not, of course, end with Jesus. Supposed prophets have been popping up with dismaying regularity since Jesus' preachings.

The problem for creationists, particularly for YECs, is that Genesis does make falsifiable physical claims that do stand disproven by science. Somewhere along the way, some creationist has comprehended enough science to realize this major problem and the era of Misleading Pseudoscience for Dummies was ushered in. The fact is, creationists promulgate ignorance and falsehoods in support of what they mistakenly call "Truth". YECs lie about the actual age of the Earth, while believers in pseudointellectual intelligent [sick] design theory accept the actual age of the Earth, but lie about the identity of the supposed-designer, and distort science ranging from cosmology to evolutionary biology.

Considering the ubiquity of invented religions, evolution clearly has not expanded our intellectual capacities to a sufficient degree for humans to justifiably designate our species as "sapiens" and certainly not as "sapiens sapiens".

___

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

YEC yack

Rather than merely editorialize the fact that creationists hold unfounded opinions and make illogical arguments, here are comments on some snippets of their views:

C1: "I would like to meet the "scientist" that can PROVE that evolution is true and not a theory."

Of course this writer would not really like to meet any such scientist because creationists display absolutely no desire to understand reality.

Symptomatic of their black-and-white thinking, creationists love to make challenges demanding proof. Biological evolution is a demonstrable fact upon which theories of evolution are based. The evidence for biological evolution has been pronounced as "overwhelming" by credible experts in the field. Facts can be empirically demonstrated, but no scientific theory, or any other inference based on induction can be proven, though hypotheses and theories and claimed-to-be-facts can be disproven. The writer goes on:

C1: "That of course is impossible since no one was living millions and billions of years ago, and I mean NO ONE and NOTHING."

This is patently untrue! There is abundant evidence that life existed on this planet several billion years ago.

C1: "There are plenty of Creation Scientists that can show proof as to why the earth can only be 6000 years old(give or take a couple of hundred years)."

There are NO creation scientists because creationisms is religion and not science, so "creation scientist" is an oxymoron. The statement is completely untrue. Falsifying details and publishing unfounded attacks on scientific facts does not constitute science. No matter what an individual's educational background, fallacious argumentum ad verecundiam pronouncements that run counter to the facts and to the knowledge of credible experts in a field are without any value as science.

The mythical YEC figure of 6,000 years is based on Bishop Usher's Bible-based estimate. Science has categorically demonstrated that the Bible is incorrect in its depiction of dates–in effect, disproven.

C1: "Carbon dating and other dating methods that the scientific community has relied on for so long now are proving to be very inacurate and more and more evidence keeps popping up to prove thousands of years instead of millions or even billions of years."

No scientist claims that carbon dating can be applied to dates earlier than 70,000 years ago. Other radioactive isotopes with longer half-lives are employed in obtaining the older estimates, which are always reported with the range of error indicated. Creationists are typically woefully ignorant of actual science, preferring as they do to parrot the pseudoscientific falsifications on junk tanks such as AiG. The planet is approximately 4.7 billion years old, no matter how many times ill-informed and biased YECs claim that Usher's date is accurate.

C1: "When is the "scientific" community going to take its head out of their "evolutionary ooz" and realize that CREATION IS SCIENCE!"

Shouting does not help this writer's ridiculous argument. Science is based on application of empirical scientific methodology, creationism is religion based on an ill-founded assumption of Biblical literacy. Creationists have attempted to hijack science in order to strengthen their received, preconceived notions of Biblical inerrancy. They will never succeed in convincing any but the already-deluded because scientific methods have disproven the Biblical statements that relate to scientific areas. The Bible is an allegorical creation myth followed by pseudohistorical moral fable.

C1: "God was the originator of science and created everything we see, and plenty of things that we don't even know exist yet."

Creationists seem to believe that whatever nonsense they make up about their supposed God will hold true simply because they say so. Such thinking is totally in keeping with the emotionality, obstinate ignorance, and illogic of their arguments. If God originated science, then the Bible is the received Misleading Pseudoscience for Dummies text, and God scores a Z- in science.

C1: "I can't imagine holding onto the idea that we evolved from some "ooz" of some of some sort and that's all we are, an accident, and there is no purpose to our lives. I think that's very sad."

That says it all. The writer, for highly emotional reasons of his or her own cannot imagine how life could have arisen from chemicals and then evolved. This is a failure of comprehension, a failure of logic, and deliberate ignorance of established facts. A sense of purpose is a psychological phenomenon. If the writer cannot sense some purpose to his or her life without being the product of Special Creation, then that, in addition to manifest and obstinate ignorance about reality, is very sad indeed.

Here's another creationist stating YEC beliefs:
C2: "YEC does not say that God created all animal life, for example, in the state it is in today. YEC does not deny that some biological evolution occurs. YEC believes that change does occur (what they believe actually requires it) but YEC believes that change can only happen within a created kind."

Because there is so much evidence for continuing biological evolution (covered by the creationist buzzword microevolution) creationists see nothing to be gained in denying that, for example, bacteria can acquire antibiotic resistance. Creationists do not perceive currently occurring genetic change as a threat because they are obsessed with denying the distant past (biopoiesis and macroevolution) in order create that gap into which they insert the man-invented notion of Special Creation.

The reference to design pays homage to intelligent [sick] design theory, which is merely creationism in disguise.

C2: "Naturalistic secular science begins and ends with the unfounded assumption that the material is all that exists, that God does not exist, etc., etc."

Of course science studies the natural world – scientific method can only be applied to the physical, observable, tangible, and measurable. However, that is the only thing in which C2 is correct. It is not necessarily an unfounded assumption to believe that the material is all that exists, even though scientists concede the physical may not inhere all of existence. Only the material is accessible to the scientific method. The question of existence beyond the physical belongs to speculative philosophy and theology. Science is religion-neutral and does not assume that God does not exist. Scientists may privately believe that there is no deity, particularly in view of the fact that science provides far better explanations than "God brought it about by a miracle." However, scientific method can only be religion neutral. C2 is merely using the creationist buzzword "secular" to attempt to place all scientists in the infidel camp in an association fallacy.


C2: "(Creationism) is not about religion; it is about the Truth."

This is an utter falsehood. Of course creationism is about religion. Creationists and others of religious persuasion make a claim of "Truth" for their beliefs, but they have no good evidential, logical foundation for doing so. This is the reason that the terms "faith" and "belief" are more accurately applied to religious beliefs.

C2: ". . . God, who Jesus is, life after death, but those are all tied to this issue."

If creationism is about God and Jesus, then C2 has just revealed him or herself to have lied when saying that creationism is not religion.

C2: "True, one can be a Christian and not believe in a six day creation, but such a person is not really being consistent in their beliefs. If Genesis is open to such liberal interpretation as some give it, then why not do the same to the resurrection account of Jesus? If there was no literal Adam and Eve that literally disobeyed God (sinned), then there is no need for a Savior."

Yup. This is the underlying reason for dogmatic insistence on Biblical literalism, these black-and-white thinkers are aware that their rigid beliefs will not allow for any latitude. It's no accident that Genesis depicts knowledge as the enemy. Knowledge does not make us sinners, but religious beliefs cannot survive full critical scrutiny.

"Genesis is foundational to the Christian faith, and it is true."

Genesis is an allegorical creation myth that is clung to by particularly reality-ignorant Christians. Genesis is disproven.

"The Bible says that those that do not want to see the Truth will be blinded to it."

Since the Bible was written by men this statement remains accurate concerning the human foible of denial. The fact is that the actual truth is not what creationists credulously take to be "the Truth".

C2: "Those that want to cling to the religion of evolution will always find a way to make it seem right in their eyes."

Poor, fuddled C2 is totally muddled as to what is science and what is religion. Biological evolution is a fact, the modern synthesis of evolution represents the best current scientific explanation of the observable facts. Evolution is not religion in C2's earlier definition, where it is labelled as secular science.

Creationists are typically so illogical that they do not even realize that they are making self-contradictory statements in an attempt to justify emotional beliefs. I suspect that because these individuals desperately want and need to believe that they are the salvation-selected products of Special Creation they become easy prey for any falsehood or illogical argument that appears to support their indoctrinated beliefs. (Let's be honest and call a stupid argument a stupid argument.) The stupid arguments work to support creationists' emotional beliefs, so creationists ignorantly fail to detect the illogic.

The sentence would have been accurate if it had been written as, "Those that want to cling to the religion of creationism will always find a way to make it seem right in their eyes."

No matter how passionately an illogical ignorant argument is made, that argument remains utterly without validity. YEC vehemence is really tantamount to bragging about exhibiting stupidity. It is not surprising that many Christians hold YECs in contempt.

I believe that YEC and ID appeal to those who have a cognitive disorder in that they have not attained an internal desire for logic. Further, most creationists of my acquaintance also appear to lack mastery of many operations of logic.

Piaget's "genetic epistemological" research into the developmental acquisition of cognitive schemas did not proceed beyond the achievement of formal operations by about age eleven. However, beyond the logical schema acquired in childhood, not all individuals attain the full repetoir of logical operations necessary for critical thinking. The worldviews of many adults exhibit considerable philosophical tension, and many adults display internally inconsistent, illogical, emotional reasoning fraught with many of the errors found in fallacious arguments. Religious beliefs, in general, force illogical inconsistencies into the thinking process.

Creationists' arguments on religion are highly emotional, their arguments concerning science are falsehoods, their arguments about morality are rigid and bigoted, their views on politics are usually greed-motivated, hubris-filled, and doggedly unperceptive.

Quo Vadis?
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One Evolution, Many Creationisms

Like so much else connected to invented religious belief, creationism comes in a variety of guises in which invented beliefs range from the sublimely ridiculous (flat earthers, geocentrists, and YEC), through the pretentious (intelligent [sick] design theory). The variety of religious and creationist beliefs is directly attributable to the contrived, invented nature of all religious beliefs, none of which comprises an internally consistent logical system based on evidence.

Typically, creationists are theists who cling to religious views with varying levels of dogmatism whilst ignorantly choosing to deny or distort most or part of scientific knowledge. Such ignorance is religiously motivated, substituting varying levels of Biblical literalism and insistence on Special Creation for scientific fact.

At the most realistic, scientific end of this spectrum comes philosophical materialism. The following list is from TalkOrigins:

CREATION
Flat Earthers
Geocentrists
Young Earth Creationists
... (Omphalos)
Old Earth Creationists
...(Gap Creationism)
...(Day-Age Creationism)
...(Progressive Creationism)
...(Intelligent Design Creationism)
Evolutionary Creationists
Theistic Evolutionists
Methodological Materialistic Evolutionists
Philosophical Materialistic Evolutionists
EVOLUTION

Evolutionary science is complex because it includes information from so many areas of science. However, the fact of biological evolution is acknowledged by the majority of scientists and denied only by religiously-biased individuals, most of who are not qualified in the relevant areas.

Quo Vadis?
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Denial

Denial is an a la Freud defense mechanism – something that we sometimes do when confronted with an emotionally unwelcome fact. Denying a fact of reality does not alter or eliminate that fact, it merely affords us emotional comfort.

Denial is the most unfounded – hence the weakest – of any argument made against evidence. Professional creationists such as the pretentiously named Fellows of the so-called Discovery Institute (those who earn a living through their assertions on behalf of creationism), typically do not make this blunder, rather they resort to fancier argumentum ad nauseam, fallacies of logic.

Denial is, however, a common last resort for proponents of intelligent [sick] design theory, and is often the first verbal argument of biblical literalists. Both groups may phrase denial more reasonably as, "I don't believe in evolution". Disbelief is a more reasonable position since we have the personal prerogative of picking and choosing our beliefs, though incredulity remains a fatally weak argument against scientific facts. However, personal disbelief alone is not a good argument against that which is disputed.

Those who hold dogmatic religious beliefs, despite the complete lack of incontrovertible supporting evidence for any religious belief, may be so emotionally convinced that their beliefs represent "Truth" as to be unaware of their fallacious reasoning. In fact, having chosen to cling to the dogmatic content of religious inculcation, these individuals have chosen emotionality over logic and facts. This is a personal prerogative, but it does not make for cogent argumentation.

Refusal to accept the facts along with those legitimate theories that logically follow from evidence does not constitute refutation. This point is missed by creationists when they deny the evidence that led to modern evolutionary theories, or when they fail to understand that there is not one single theory that seeks to explain the fact of biological evolution, or when they mistake acknowledgement of incomplete explanation for a complete failure of explanation.

There are undoubtedly numerous explanations for the cognitive errors and illogic of collective creationist positions. Most obvious is the impact of poor science education in those areas of the U.S. in which fundamentalism is deeply entrenched.

Individuals who have been raised with insistent belief in special creation experience dissonance when faced with scientific facts, so they are likely to close their minds to those facts. The handful of scientists who make their living through the advocation of anti-science promotion of ID theory cannot be accused of lack of science education per se, so their motivation in promoting creationism must stem from cognitive bias founded in inculcated religious convictions.

The problem of dissonance is, of course, compounded for most creationists by anti-science policies adopted by those in charge of education in Bible Belt states. Such policies lower the standards of science education to deplorable levels for a supposedly advanced nation [NSTA, NSES, 8th grade, PISA]. For example, US students ranked between 20th and 27th of 4o nations in a 2003 comparison of scores on science testing (Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD PISA (Program for Student Assessment) 2003 database.)

The low level of science education of many creationist debaters is compounded by their repetition of information found in books and on websites with pro-creationist/anti-science bias. With little apparent comprehension of the scientific principles under discussion, and without apparent awareness that the information that they parrot is incomplete, biased, or inaccurate, creationist debaters are ill-equipped to refute the logic of science. They remain blissfully, if irritatingly ignorant of the theories that they attack, and most show no signs of willingness to acquaint themselves with those facts or to subject their own beliefs to scrutiny.

One glaring example of creationist ignorance of evolutionary science is illustrated by an insistence upon treating all evolutionary theory as beginning and ending with Darwinism coupled with an apparent lack of awareness of any form of mutation other than the point-mutation. They alone know whether they adopt this position of anti-science ignorance out of lack of acquaintance with scientific principles and/or with insistence upon the safety of attacking straw men. However, considering the anti-science education position espoused by the intelligent [sick] design theory platform, coupled with poor standards of science education and evident antipathy to science and to intellectualism, it seems probable that most of the cognitive errors and illogic displayed by most creationist debaters stem from obdurate ignorance of science (at the very least).

Another example of ignorance in creationist debaters relates to their failure to distinguish between abiogenesis – the theory that life arose in primordial chemicals – and biological evolution, those events that altered the frequency of alleles down through successive generations of live organisms. Although biological evolution acted upon the products of biopoiesis (abiogenesis), the two are no more the same than rusting is equivalent to automobile manufacture.

Young Earth Creationists, with a position rejected even by mainstream creationists, carry literalism to ridiculous extremes when they deny the scientifically established age of the earth.

Quo Vadis?
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Quo Vadis?

As the number of posts mounted, the site map became cumbersome and slow to load, so we have subdivided the map into sectional maps by category:


ɷɷ Atheism Theism Backlash
ɷɷ Bible Bumping
ɷɷ Canadian Bacon
ɷɷ Department of Silly Ideas
ɷɷ Design Debunked
ɷɷ EQ (emotional IQ)
ɷɷ Evolution of Ideas
ɷɷ Ex Ducare (Education)
ɷɷ Fancy Ticklers
ɷɷ FLQ (Functional Level of IQ)
ɷɷ FOL-ly (Fallacies of Logic)
ɷɷ Galleria
ɷɷ Love of Wisdom (Philosophy)
ɷɷ Nuts' Landing
ɷɷ Oh, the Humanities
ɷɷ Peregrinations
ɷɷ Political Shenanigans
ɷɷ Q & A
ɷɷ ¿Que es Mimble Wimble?
ɷɷ Quizling
ɷɷ Scientia
ɷɷ Sitia non Grata
ɷɷ Theocracy Aversion
ɷɷ Variegata dysfunctionosa
ɷɷ What's in a Word
ɷɷ Odds at End

Mimble Wimble

Sections

ɷɷ A-Deism ɷɷ Atheism Theism Backlash ɷɷ Bible Bumping ɷɷ Canadian Bacon ɷɷ Department of Silly Ideas ɷɷ Design Debunked ɷɷ Education ɷɷ EQ ɷɷ Evolution/Ideas ɷɷ Fancy Ticklers ɷɷ FLQ ɷɷ FOL-ly ɷɷ Galleria ɷɷ Love of Wisdom ɷɷ Nuts’ Landing ɷɷ Oh, the Humanities! ɷɷ Peregrinations ɷɷ Political Shenanigans ɷɷ Q & A ɷɷ ¿Que es Mimble Wimble? ɷɷ Quizling ɷɷ Scientia ɷɷ Sitia non Grata ɷɷ Theocracy ɷɷ Variegata dysfunctionosa ɷɷ What's in a Word ɷɷ Odds at End ɷɷ

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