If people avoid information that contridicts their beliefs....

[OverVolt]

By saying "many if not most" you are showing that you really don't understand the people you are analyzing. In my family I have a few cousins who are gay, and I also have many aunts, uncles, cousins who are very much involved in their church functions, some are members of their church's board, one is even a pastor.

My personal experience with religion is at least 3/4 are tolerant of people who are homosexual(talking about today, not 20 years ago, not 40 years ago, today), they simply aren't the ones who voice their opinions loudly. They are the soft-spoken ones who primarily just want to go about their own lives in peace. You're going to have to provide a lot more detail into how you developed your conclusion "many if not most absolutely refuse". My guess it's a gut feeling you have and assumed it was correct?



Luckily for you performing a good job of understanding others isn't a requirement for liberalism



I also categorize those who vehemently believe they are smart and well-informed when they actually are not, also as a mental disorder hehe

#1 My experience is the same as someone who was raised catholic in the northeast

#2 Its because his only source of information is the internet and so he has a very skewed view of the world. There are more and more people like him these days. He doesn't have a people to identify with in real life. The internet is his people. People's beliefs is a very geographic phenomenon and he is likely unhinged from wherever it is he is from. North Dakota I believe. Which I can understand might have alot of backwards small towns but I don't think he realizes how badly he misses the mark on say... the 7 million people in NY. Sportage needs to travel and see what everyday LA, NYC, Philly, etc is really like.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/opinions/sutter-climate-skeptics-woodward-oklahoma/

I found that a fairly interesting article about how local people's beliefs are. Mostly it boils down to many of the jobs in the area being in Oil and Natgas if you catch it in the article.

 

[ivwshane]

Are we debating philosophies or personalities?

It was supposed to be personalities.

 

[bradly1101]

nickqt, I don't disagree with anything you said, but this:

If, as a culture, we make the idea of being unbiased and objective superior to being biased and having a built in avoidance of truth that we find personally distasteful, in other words, as long as we create a value system where objective is superior and biased is inferior, why would it not be OK to describe being worshiping objectivity while avoiding the fact of out bias be anything other than defective? How can believing something is good and what you are to be bad and not being able to see that be not defective. Isn't being biased being defective if the standard of perfection is objectivity?

I guarantee that the biased don't see themselves as inferior. Loyalty and strictly held beliefs are seen a strengths. Objectivity and open mindedness are seen as wishy-washy, wavering, and weak.

I've grown up believing that inclusiveness beats exclusivity and that government can have a strong and supportive role, and that regulation is the only barrier between greed and the destruction of health, the environment, our future... To others that means too much interference. To me my point is valid, to them so is theirs. Only the truth of seeing these policies through in success or failure will bring people around. I'm surprised that our dying rivers, coal ash ponds all over next to those rivers, successes in water treatment, seat belts, airbags........ would sway all people toward one side of that issue, but lobbyists and money decide.

I don't think 'CBD' as you call it veils the truth, rather conservatism comes from tradition; their parents were conservatives much like my liberal father before me. He showed me a path and it seemed like the most logical. Growing up I saw that the conservatives were beating and killing blacks in the South, that's all I needed to know. Different logic I don't think of as a 'defect' because I feel that would lower my level of discourse. If I see the other side as defective, that's how they'll see me. Being treated with honor may open eyes, minds, and hearts to something different.

My first partner was a staunch Reagan Republican. I never argued politics with him and he never questioned my beliefs, but he had lots of questions about them. And without trying to change him or pointing out where I thought he was wrong, he changed. Without opposition his mind was open to a new path. If we call those who don't believe as we do "defective" all they'll see is the enemy.
-----------------------------------------
The worst thing in politics next to the financial corruption is that the side in opposition are so afraid that they're wrong about the policies of those in power - that they'll succeed - that they won't put them up for a vote to watch what they hope would be a disaster. But what if they work? To them that would be the worst kind of tragedy. It's left over behavior from the schoolyard and has no place among adults trying to realize society's forward movement. We can't even get our roads fixed; I'm afraid I look like a drunk driver weaving around all the potholes.

 

[ivwshane]

The key to your partners change (and anyone's for that matter) isn't that you answered his questions in a non aggressive way, it's that he was willing to ask questions in the first place. Look at the posts on this forum, look for those that ask legitimate questions and those that do not, you will notice the one asking questions is the one that is willing to change their mind.

I guarantee that the biased don't see themselves as inferior. Loyalty and strictly held beliefs are seen a strengths. Objectivity and open mindedness are seen as wishy-washy, wavering, and weak.

I've grown up believing that inclusiveness beats exclusivity and that government can have a strong and supportive role, and that regulation is the only barrier between greed and the destruction of health, the environment, our future... To others that means too much interference. To me my point is valid, to them so is theirs. Only the truth of seeing these policies through in success or failure will bring people around. I'm surprised that our dying rivers, coal ash ponds all over next to those rivers, successes in water treatment, seat belts, airbags........ would sway all people toward one side of that issue, but lobbyists and money decide.

I don't think 'CBD' as you call it veils the truth, rather conservatism comes from tradition; their parents were conservatives much like my liberal father before me. He showed me a path and it seemed like the most logical. Growing up I saw that the conservatives were beating and killing blacks in the South, that's all I needed to know. Different logic I don't think of as a 'defect' because I feel that would lower my level of discourse. If I see the other side as defective, that's how they'll see me. Being treated with honor may open eyes, minds, and hearts to something different.

My first partner was a staunch Reagan Republican. I never argued politics with him and he never questioned my beliefs, but he had lots of questions about them. And without trying to change him or pointing out where I thought he was wrong, he changed. Without opposition his mind was open to a new path. If we call those who don't believe as we do "defective" all they'll see is the enemy.
-----------------------------------------
The worst thing in politics next to the financial corruption is that the side in opposition are so afraid that they're wrong about the policies of those in power - that they'll succeed - that they won't put them up for a vote to watch what they hope would be a disaster. But what if they work? To them that would be the worst kind of tragedy. It's left over behavior from the schoolyard and has no place among adults trying to realize society's forward movement. We can't even get our roads fixed; I'm afraid I look like a drunk driver weaving around all the potholes.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Are we debating philosophies or personalities?

Perhaps I'll "throw in" here, to clarify. I'll try and make it short and sweet.

First, there's a platitude, probably drawn from something written by Noam Chomsky or Jacques Ellul: "One man's education is another man's propaganda. Let that fuel further discussion, but keep it in mind.

Second, you can study the History of Ideas as either a physicist or someone taking a course with that focus in English Lit. You mentioned "philosophy," and I may think some philosophies aren't good enough for a dime for a Starbuck's Mocha. Well, I'll qualify that, too.

Ayn Rand got her bachelor's degree at the University of Petrograd. She studied classic philosophy -- Plato, Aristotle and so forth. She studied languages -- toward her ability to write prolix books that took 10,000 words to say one thing that might have been said in a hundred. But as far as I can tell, her curriculum included little Mathematics, no Economics which is a social-science attempt to be scientific as pertains to economic phenomena. I don't think they had a political science class. But she was on a forward path by her thinking: Friedrich Nietzsche was her guiding star and intellectual titan of her worship -- something in common with the Fuhrer there. "Man and Superman." The Bolsheviks, by the way, allowed her to complete Film School (it was the early 1920s) in a graduate program -- despite her protests against the new regime, and she was on her way to be a protégé of Cecil B. DeMille.

I wouldn't trust one idea in the b****'s drug-addled narcissistic brain.

History of Ideas: Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. Empiricism (data collection and observation), and Logic (deductive reasoning, based on axioms and inferences applied with mathematical precision).

Those are two trustworthy and complementary approaches of modern science. [Those who like to make fun of the word "Theory" should stop driving their car, because the internal combustion is just the application of a "Theory" of Thermodynamics, Boyle's Law, the behavior of gases.]

Someone mentioned "Intuitive thinking." If that's a valid skill, it has supplementary usefulness. Genius can sometimes be the ability to see simplicity where everyone else sees the complex. Perhaps Einstein had the ability to take an intuitive leap through what would otherwise be several predicate calculus statements and empirical observations. And that's probably what he did, but Einstein knew the drill: it would require an expression in precise mathematics using the ratio of v^2/c^2 -- squares of an object's velocity and that of a photon. So he didn't avoid desCarte's methodology or take shortcuts.

The average voter probably has at least two modes of "thinking:" {Logic, empirical observation, deduction -- inference}, and emotion. [UPDATE:] A third mode: "pure Belief" -- a refuge of the lazy mind, with an insufficient dose of the first category, and an infusion of the latter.

Emotion leads to "I don' like his name" or "Ah voted fuh Bush cuz of that Monica and Clinton thing." [Oral sex is disgusting, in other words.]


So -- with my own intuitive leap (or is it? There's an observation) -- there was that election in 1932, with Hindenburg (IIRC) as incumbent.

Anybody want to make any intuitive leaps from that one? We can then go back and fill in the blanks to make sure it has sense.

Common sense and any other kind that doesn't fall into the category of "insane."

 

[TeeJay1952]

30 years of posting, BBS, CompuServe and Internet. Best reply ever. Take the trophy, Eat the cookie and drink the beer.

 

[Moonbeam]

I guarantee that the biased don't see themselves as inferior. Loyalty and strictly held beliefs are seen a strengths. Objectivity and open mindedness are seen as wishy-washy, wavering, and weak.

I've grown up believing that inclusiveness beats exclusivity and that government can have a strong and supportive role, and that regulation is the only barrier between greed and the destruction of health, the environment, our future... To others that means too much interference. To me my point is valid, to them so is theirs. Only the truth of seeing these policies through in success or failure will bring people around. I'm surprised that our dying rivers, coal ash ponds all over next to those rivers, successes in water treatment, seat belts, airbags........ would sway all people toward one side of that issue, but lobbyists and money decide.

I don't think 'CBD' as you call it veils the truth, rather conservatism comes from tradition; their parents were conservatives much like my liberal father before me. He showed me a path and it seemed like the most logical. Growing up I saw that the conservatives were beating and killing blacks in the South, that's all I needed to know. Different logic I don't think of as a 'defect' because I feel that would lower my level of discourse. If I see the other side as defective, that's how they'll see me. Being treated with honor may open eyes, minds, and hearts to something different.

My first partner was a staunch Reagan Republican. I never argued politics with him and he never questioned my beliefs, but he had lots of questions about them. And without trying to change him or pointing out where I thought he was wrong, he changed. Without opposition his mind was open to a new path. If we call those who don't believe as we do "defective" all they'll see is the enemy.
-----------------------------------------
The worst thing in politics next to the financial corruption is that the side in opposition are so afraid that they're wrong about the policies of those in power - that they'll succeed - that they won't put them up for a vote to watch what they hope would be a disaster. But what if they work? To them that would be the worst kind of tragedy. It's left over behavior from the schoolyard and has no place among adults trying to realize society's forward movement. We can't even get our roads fixed; I'm afraid I look like a drunk driver weaving around all the potholes.

Part of the fact that people avoid cognitive dissonance means that they do not see who they are. Why is that not a defect? We are dealing with a paradox that can't be resolved via linear thinking because that depends on language, one word, one thought after another. What people do not see or want to see is their own self contempt, but once it takes root, we are lost. We are taught to idolize reason, being intelligent, being able to critically think, when what we actually do is deflect anything that shows us to be otherwise. We were trained to despise being stupid and then told that we were. That has been internalized. People are not defective and they don't think they are, but they do believe they are and that belief makes it true. We are defective because we believe we are. Every time I call conservatives defective they react with anger and deflection because they feel I am right and don't know it. So I show them. Naturally they can't see that either. You can read my words, but you can't know their truth unless you can access what you feel. Between us and what we feel is a tremendous wall. That wall is the feeling, as you near it, of going insane. This is why the wise who have risked their sanity, call what they know foolishness and what we know wisdom. We are upside down to reality and rather funny. You have to see the joke, however, in all the millions we kill to keep that wall up.

 

[OverVolt]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Hmmmmmmmmmm . . . .

Tell ya what. I'm going to think about that. I'll neither dismiss nor accept until I sort it out with facts and logic.

 

[justoh]

If your beliefs are reasonable and flexible instead of sacred and revealed, then why would one experience dissonance?

Mainly a problem for the stupid/religious.

 

[Moonbeam]

If your beliefs are reasonable and flexible instead of sacred and revealed, then why would one experience dissonance?

Mainly a problem for the stupid/religious.

I' guessing you don't see the obvious bias if this opinion.

 

[justoh]

I' guessing you don't see the obvious bias if this opinion.

It wasn't opinion. Contradiction would only further the truth, which is welcomed. Only a religious person wouldn't understand why the truth matters.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It wasn't opinion. Contradiction would only further the truth, which is welcomed. Only a religious person wouldn't understand why the truth matters.

Maybe I can moderate this little squabble about caricature and belief systems.

A lot of religions include an afterlife. Leaving aside what that actually does for the least advantaged among humankind, there was once a schism in the Early Church in which the Gnostics valued knowledge more, and the others put higher value on Faith. This again becomes a factor in how you interpret the Bible, or how you read it -- literally or otherwise.

But at some point, if you are a Believer, you accept certain things without any worldly proof or manifestation. Or you make a deduction about the manifestations and attempt to say that it only means one thing.

So there's a difference between beliefs that arise from making observations in the World about how things actually work, making theories about how they work, testing the theories and advancing human progress in the World; and simply beliefs for accepting a Mystery or refusing to put a book into a context of time, cultures, and the people who wrote it.

What does it mean when you say "I know God?" What does it mean when you say that you "believe" Asteroid Gammy-XYZ will hit the earth in 25 years, based on a large number of observations and calculations you made?

 

[JEDIYoda]

Why are you including their weight and age and what relevance does that have to do with their voting?

why does it bother you that he included their weight and age??

 

[justoh]

Maybe I can moderate this little squabble about caricature and belief systems.

A lot of religions include an afterlife. Leaving aside what that actually does for the least advantaged among humankind, there was once a schism in the Early Church in which the Gnostics valued knowledge more, and the others put higher value on Faith. This again becomes a factor in how you interpret the Bible, or how you read it -- literally or otherwise.

But at some point, if you are a Believer, you accept certain things without any worldly proof or manifestation. Or you make a deduction about the manifestations and attempt to say that it only means one thing.

So there's a difference between beliefs that arise from making observations in the World about how things actually work, making theories about how they work, testing the theories and advancing human progress in the World; and simply beliefs for accepting a Mystery or refusing to put a book into a context of time, cultures, and the people who wrote it.

What does it mean when you say "I know God?" What does it mean when you say that you "believe" Asteroid Gammy-XYZ will hit the earth in 25 years, based on a large number of observations and calculations you made?

moonbeam 2.0?

 

[davmat787]

Maybe I can moderate this little squabble about caricature and belief systems.

A lot of religions include an afterlife. Leaving aside what that actually does for the least advantaged among humankind, there was once a schism in the Early Church in which the Gnostics valued knowledge more, and the others put higher value on Faith. This again becomes a factor in how you interpret the Bible, or how you read it -- literally or otherwise.

But at some point, if you are a Believer, you accept certain things without any worldly proof or manifestation. Or you make a deduction about the manifestations and attempt to say that it only means one thing.

So there's a difference between beliefs that arise from making observations in the World about how things actually work, making theories about how they work, testing the theories and advancing human progress in the World; and simply beliefs for accepting a Mystery or refusing to put a book into a context of time, cultures, and the people who wrote it.

What does it mean when you say "I know God?" What does it mean when you say that you "believe" Asteroid Gammy-XYZ will hit the earth in 25 years, based on a large number of observations and calculations you made?

Religion or a belief in higher power likely was an evolutionary advantage or adaptation. If you accept this as likely or fact the reading on this subject and related areas is absolutely fascinating, you might want to check it out if you haven't already.

That humans created the concept of God(s) becomes quite understandable for the advantages it provided. Too bad it didn't come with an expiration date for around the time industry, science, and modern values provided greater advantages.

 

[Moonbeam]

It wasn't opinion. Contradiction would only further the truth, which is welcomed. Only a religious person wouldn't understand why the truth matters.

It wasn't opinion? The statement, "If your beliefs are reasonable and flexible instead of sacred and revealed, then why would one experience dissonance? Mainly a problem for the stupid/religious." isn't an opinion?

How could a statement for which you offer no proof, and no proof, even if true, that you yourself have the capacity to understand it correctly or correctly apply it be anything but opinion? What is the truth? Why does it matter? How is the truth reasonable? How could the truth possible be flexible? Why do you think you can command all these things as applicable to your point of view without being stupidly religious? Why would you think, that if buried in a bucket of stupidity, in a cognitive dissonant state, you could remove only one impediment to your focus, and not still be suffering from many others? Why would only the religious suffer from erroneous beliefs?

 

[Moonbeam]

moonbeam 2.0?

Hehehehehehe! What happened to all that reasoning and flexibility?

 

[Moonbeam]

Religion or a belief in higher power likely was an evolutionary advantage or adaptation. If you accept this as likely or fact the reading on this subject and related areas is absolutely fascinating, you might want to check it out if you haven't already.

That humans created the concept of God(s) becomes quite understandable for the advantages it provided. Too bad it didn't come with an expiration date for around the time industry, science, and modern values provided greater advantages.

Yup, we don't have to try them by drowning anymore to get them to confess their heresy, we can just use nuclear weapons. I believe Einstein may have suggested something about the dangers of our technological skills outpacing our emotional maturity. What greater emotional immaturity could we have that the certainty that we know things based on assumptions we hold as a result of painful programming, assumptions we can't raise to consciousness because we do not want to feel that pain again?

I would only offer you the insight that the wonderful state of the world you see around you is a preference we have chosen over the pain of awakening. We would rather the world die than know our real inner state. Now if that is so, how would you ever get their by reason alone. You would have to go on the Hero's journey through hell I would think. Are you ready?

 

[justoh]

What is the truth? Why does it matter?

Rest my case.

 

[OverVolt]

Rest my case.

Lol oh dayum.

 

[Moonbeam]

Rest my case.

Exactly, by proving mine. You came in and will leave the same unconscious factory of bricks that create your delusional reality, incapable of facing their foundational immateriality, brain dead to the core and at rest at your case, but pleased as punch thinking you have slain dragons.

 

[davmat787]

Yup, we don't have to try them by drowning anymore to get them to confess their heresy, we can just use nuclear weapons. I believe Einstein may have suggested something about the dangers of our technological skills outpacing our emotional maturity. What greater emotional immaturity could we have that the certainty that we know things based on assumptions we hold as a result of painful programming, assumptions we can't raise to consciousness because we do not want to feel that pain again?

I would only offer you the insight that the wonderful state of the world you see around you is a preference we have chosen over the pain of awakening. We would rather the world die than know our real inner state. Now if that is so, how would you ever get their by reason alone. You would have to go on the Hero's journey through hell I would think. Are you ready?

The conditions that led to the creation of the God or higher power concept and which produced evolutionary advantages OR proved advantageous over the godless via adaptation wasn't the result of programming by definition.

Perhaps this topic isn't a good one to use as a jumping off point for your rambling psychobabble.

If you wish I can start a thread discussing the fact that nearly all serial killers weren't breastfed and you can go to town in that one.

 

[Moonbeam]

The conditions that led to the creation of the God or higher power concept and which produced evolutionary advantages OR proved advantageous over the godless via adaptation wasn't the result of programming by definition.

Perhaps this topic isn't a good one to use as a jumping off point for your rambling psychobabble.

If you wish I can start a thread discussing the fact that nearly all serial killers weren't breastfed and you can go to town in that one.

You began with, "Religion or a belief in higher power likely was an evolutionary advantage or adaptation." I like that you said likely, but I don't find an assumption you find likely to be any reason for me to assume it might be likely at all. I find the most likely reason that folk invented religion was an experience of a God conscious state. I would say in fact that anybody who experiences a God conscious state doesn't really fit the definition of the faithful. He or she doesn't believe in God. He or she is a manifestation. There is one of these, I think, from the state of Kerala in India named Mata Amritanandamayi.

 

[MongGrel]

I wonder how much of that primative thinking, if any is attributed to our ancestors.

The conservative brain seems to be centered on personal experience and black and white thinking. Those would seem to be useful traits for individuals hunting/living by themselves or in relatively small groups. However as humans began to work together in much larger numbers and in societies where more and more people became specialized in their capabilities, the ability to accept and understand someone else's experience becomes more efficient and necessary as society expands and evolves (complexity and technologically).

This primative thinking would also help to explain why conservatives are motivated by emotions. A necessary trait when living in the wild or a threatening environment but one that isn't needed as humans formed into more advanced societies.

You really can not in many cases, as hard as they try to frame their responses more or less.