New Darwin Documentary Shows Creationists Aren’t Dumb. They’re Fearful.

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/12/new-darwin-documentary-shows-creationists-arent-dumb-theyre-fearful/

New Darwin Documentary Shows Creationists Aren’t Dumb. They’re Fearful.
By Amanda Marcotte
Wednesday, February 12, 2014 9:56 EST

HBO released a new, hour-long documentary Monday night—Darwin’s birthday is today—called Questioning Darwin, and if you can spare an hour to watch it, I highly recommend it. The documentarians juxtapose interviews with creationists about what they believe and why they believe it with historians and scientists talking about Darwin’s life and work. The movie ends with a quote from Darwin’s eulogy when he was buried in Westminster Abbey, saying there’s no conflict between Darwin’s theories and religion. While the movie doesn’t take a point of view, really, I couldn’t help but think the hour before that suggests, in fact, that there really is such a conflict.

By going back and forth between creationists and Darwin’s life story, the documentary crafts a compelling image of the conflict between two world views: That of curiosity and that of incuriosity/fear. I agree with the New York Times reviewer that the creationists are presented non-judgementally, but as these clips amassed by Gawker make clear, the creationists do all the work for you anyway. There’s a pastor explaining he would have to accept it if the Bible said “2+2=5″ and people talking, over and over again, about the strategies they have to employ to shut down their minds in the event that they’re presented with an opportunity to think more broadly. The major emotion that comes off them in waves is that of fear: Fear of asking questions, fear of the “world” (which is always talked about negatively), fear of difference, fear that thinking might lead them into dark places, fear that they really aren’t special that manifests in making up a God who loves you so you never have to go a moment without that feeling, fear that they will fall into the abyss without blind obedience to authority, and, of course, fear of death.

Meanwhile, the narrative of Darwin’s life is of a man whose insatiable curiosity drove him to disregard very real fears that he would be socially shunned or that he would disrupt his very happy marriage to a devout Christian. Neither happened, which quietly suggests exactly what is so wrong with letting fear rule your lives, as it does for fundamentalist Christians. He comes across, as he usually does (because it’s true) as an admirable man who was a gentle soul and whose courage to do what he did stemmed not from an unusual amount of bravery but more a desire for truth so great that he couldn’t let fear get in his way. That he was a kind, gentle, loving man—and that this part of him is what drove him to reject religion because he couldn’t reconcile the ugliness in the world with the myth of a loving god—always stands out to me in biographies of him. It stands in such contrast to the fear-based slandering of his reputation from creationists, who try to tie the name “Darwin” to horrors such as Nazism. (And also to graffiti, something that Ken Ham seems to fear in equal parts to fascism and something he seems to think evolutionary theory somehow created.) I can’t help but think that if creationists got to know the real Darwin, they’d find that he’s a more admirable man than the fictional god they worship, both in his intellectual curiosity and in his goodness. Of course, they fear that, too—learning about the real Darwin might incline you to stop thinking that freethinkers are evil people—so they’re never going to go there.

That the conflict here is about curiosity vs. incuriosity is incredibly important, because I think a lot of rationalists tend to fall into thinking creationists are just dumbasses. What I really liked about the documentary was that it didn’t hesitate to show how creationists can be articulate and actually quite persuasive, if you accept their premises. Indeed, a lot of them talked at length about how their belief in a loving god who specifically created the universe for them is fundamentally incompatible with evolutionary theory (and other scientific theories based in astronomy, physics, and geology that demonstrate that the universe and our planet are very, very old—Ken Ham at one point tries to argue down the idea that light from stars is millions of years old when it gets to us), and you know what? I found that argument persuasive. Certainly more persuasive than the typical attempt to reconcile the obvious fact that evolution is true with the desire to believe in a loving god, which is usually some variation of, “Well, God created the universe through evolution.” To believe that, the creationists point out, you have to believe their god is a complete and utter moron, that he spent billions of years spinning out galaxies and stars and let the Earth lay dormant for billions of years before sparking a single-celled life into being and then spending the next billion years carefully guiding evolution until finally he got what he wanted: A human civilization that is literally only a few thousand years old. If you’ve ever been to a museum where they put a piece of paper on top of a rock formation to show how insignificant we are in terms of time—or if you’ve ever pondered how tiny our planet is in the great expanse of space—then this is beyond idiotic. It’s like taking multiple generations of people tending an oven to make a cupcake.

[Prophet 451]

1. I disagree with the final paragraph you quoted

Put simply, what's a few billion years to a supreme being? We know that our perception of time speeds up as we get older, how much quicker must it be for an entity older than the universe?

And while I concede that not all of them are, many (maybe most) creationists are dumb as posts.

[Warpy]

5. They want to think all they need is only one book

and that book tells them everything they need to know about the whole universe.

Yeah, it looks dumb to us. However, it really is fear that they're going to be ostracized by everyone they know and love if they start to look beyond that book.

In a more enlightened age, we'd pat them on the head and leave them to their own insanity, keeping them away from government and other dangerous things. If they started to get messages from gods and devils, we'd hospitalize them and give them medicine to make all the voices go away.

[flying rabbit]

6. That struck me as well

That a supreme being that transcends time and space would perceive time the way we do. How very arrogant (and short sighted, intellectually weak and ego centric) to put such limitations on a god that supposedly created us.

[Javaman]

2. pushing fear is money in the bank these days.

it runs our government agencies. It provides money for local police depts. it give jobs at the airport for security theater companies. it keeps the mouth breathers voting repuke. and most of all, it's easy to sell.

fear of the unknown as always been a money maker.

we are foolish people.

[HereSince1628]

3. Consistent with findings from social-psychology a decade ago.

A decade ago, Jost et al, “Political conservatism as motivated social cognition” (Psychological Bulletin vol 129, pp 339-375).

The researchers included 80 or so studies about conservatism from around the world in a meta-analysis (aka an analysis that pools and analyzes previous studies). They found 8 elements that account for most of the variability in motivation to conservative social behavior.

The authors reviewed the work to understand the influence of world-view on political conservative. From the review, Jost et al derived two features that represent persistent features of conservatism regardless of its geopolitical or temporal context. They used these to describe the core dimensions that characterize conservative frame of reference:

1. Opposition to change (which privileges status quo or urges return to an idealized old state)
2. Acceptance of inequality (which legitimizes asymmetries of wealth and status).

They considered other dimensions of conservatism to be context dependent and called them peripheral dimensions. Because of the influence of circumstance some of these may play more significant roles than at one time than another time.

The theoretical proposition in the work seem to be that day-to-day politically conservative behavior reflects responses to problems that create psychological need to mitigate fear and distress with respect to core conservative dimensions. Such need(s) motivates conservative individuals toward predictable manifestation characterize day-to-day conservatively motivated behavior.

Within the 80 or so studies they included in their meta-analysis (analysis that analyzes previous studies) they found 8 elements that account for much of the variability in motivation to conservative social behavior. These are listed below according in order of strength of the correlations:

death anxiety (r =.50)
system stability (r = .47)
intolerance to ambiguity (r =.34)
openness to experience (r=-.32) here the negative correlation suggests closed-mindedness
tolerance of uncertainty (r=-.27)
needs for order/structure/closure (r=.26)
ability to integrate complexity (r=-.20)
fear of threat and/or loss (r=.18)
self-esteem (r=-.09)

[qazplm]

4. of course it's about fear

Fear of death. We all have it, and we all deal with it in different ways. One of the biggest ways is religion. Doesn't mean that all folks who are religious are equally fearful, or unable to be rational or logical or intelligent, but for creationists (and other ultra-religious folk), it means that fear of death and a need for absolute certainty of their continued existence after death so overwhelms them that yes, they would indeed believe 2+2=5 if the Bible told them so.